Abstract
Design education faces ongoing challenges in bridging the gap between theory and practice. This paper explores how practitioner voices can serve as a critical educational resource by fostering distributed and experiential learning. Using a collection of interviews conducted by students of the Information Services Design program at Masaryk University and published on Medium, this study illustrates how engaging with real-world design narratives can promote reflexivity, critical thinking, and ethical awareness in future designers. By integrating practitioner insights, students move beyond learning static epistemologies and methods toward developing adaptive approaches to complex challenges. This paper presents a model for incorporating practitioner dialogues into design education and highlights the value of storytelling, narrative inquiry, and critical reflection as tools for building design literacies that prepare students for an ever-evolving professional landscape.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2025.131
Citation
Suchá, L.Z.,and Novotný, R.S.(2025) From Interviews with Practitioners to Distributed Design Knowledge, in Clemente, V., Gomes, G., Reis, M., Félix, S., Ala, S., Jones, D. (eds.), Learn X Design 2025, 22-24 September 2025, Aveiro, Portugal. https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2025.131
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Statement of Pedagogy
From Interviews with Practitioners to Distributed Design Knowledge
Design education faces ongoing challenges in bridging the gap between theory and practice. This paper explores how practitioner voices can serve as a critical educational resource by fostering distributed and experiential learning. Using a collection of interviews conducted by students of the Information Services Design program at Masaryk University and published on Medium, this study illustrates how engaging with real-world design narratives can promote reflexivity, critical thinking, and ethical awareness in future designers. By integrating practitioner insights, students move beyond learning static epistemologies and methods toward developing adaptive approaches to complex challenges. This paper presents a model for incorporating practitioner dialogues into design education and highlights the value of storytelling, narrative inquiry, and critical reflection as tools for building design literacies that prepare students for an ever-evolving professional landscape.