DOI - Mendel University Press

DOI identifiers

DOI: 10.11118/978-80-7509-832-0-0050

COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT OF PRODUCT DESIGNERS IN THE CONTEXT OF LABOUR MARKET NEEDS

Tomáš Chochole

The needs and demands of the global labour market affect many professions and have long shaped the field of product design. This premise became the basis for a research study that aimed to map the core competency set of product designers - students and professionals - that the profession requires beyond professional knowledge and skills. These are the soft skills that designers necessarily use in the context of interdisciplinary teamwork. In our research, we worked with students from three universities in the Czech Republic and China, while exploring the needs of professional designers. The research was based on a case study using innovative research methods combined with quantitative and qualitative data processing. The results of this field research were compared with professional studies that have mapped product design labour market needs over the past five years. The research findings were quite surprising, as the preferred soft skills of the respondents are also in demand in the global labour market according to international studies. This implies that product designers need them for a successful career. The survey identified the most important competencies, such as teamwork, problem solving, effective communication, time management and others. Thus, the results of this comparative investigation provide a great opportunity for curriculum development in both higher and secondary education settings with a focus on design, with emphasis also on developing the competency set needed for interdisciplinary teamwork.

Keywords: interdisciplinary cooperation, competencies, product design, labour market

pages: 50-57, online: 2022



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