Learn to love learning.

We are in a results-orientated culture.

Capitalism, the world’s leading economic ideology for managing trade, wealth generation and growth, and the rise of meritocracy, the American 20th century model for living has in my view, relentlessly focused the notion of success upon increasingly measurable criteria: money, time, efficiency and consumption.

The global fascination with symbols of wealth and expressions of success that provide many cultures with identity and those individuals within it, self-esteem, has also, in my view, profoundly influenced some of our centers of learning such as schools, universities and colleges. The influence spans student expectations from such institutions and also teaching methodologies.

So, naturally we were delighted to be invited by The University of Washington to support a ‘live’ project with the faculties’ Industrial Design Department.

The goal was to try, in some small way, to remind the young designers of tomorrow that the true value of being at a center for education excellence was the journey of discovery and not necessarily the just the grades achieved upon completion.

I have noticed over the past 15 years that many students from institutes in London, New York and California have become increasingly obsessed with grades and less passionate about the joy of learning and exploration.

Teague has a long history of supporting the University of Washington through sponsorship, mentoring, recruitment and advice, and it was high time to refresh and engage our relationship with the institution.

Having close and meaningful links to great institutions of learning are crucial for any company who’s core product is intellectual capital. Creativity is informed by culture. Be it social, technological or environmental. Young or old.

Universities and the young, passionate and diverse individuals within them are a vital source of knowledge, naivety, inquisition, exploration and critique. It’s deliberate discourse with the wider business community that it serves, is an essential dialogue that makes for a richer society at large.

The brief for our engagement, a combination of thoughts from John Barratt, Tad Toulis and myself, was a subject close to many of our hearts. It was a relevant subject matter for all Teaguers, sympathetic to our company vision and provided a wide and fruitful platform for our young design collaborators to explore meaningful research, strategy and design:

How can we make the flying experience more human?

We tabled three areas of interest: security, adaptability in-flight and how to reintroduce personal interaction within a volume and transactional business model. We also invited students to identify their own areas of interest.

Our thinking was to deliberately set a wide and open brief. The very act of placing their own parameters on a potentially wide scope would be the first challenge for the student teams.

Designers, in the absence of a clear brief, have to do this all the time. We also wanted to encourage a large element of team work with the potential for self-exploration. Thus, our direction for the project had two major deliverables: A team insight that was extracted from group research that informed individual explorations for product, environment, system, communication or service design.

The 16 week project started at the Customer Experience Center (CEC) with a formal briefing. With assistance from Valerie Green, David Thomas, Nino Senoadi, Youjin Nam, Brian Conner and John Barratt, we took the students through a one-page brief word for word and shared with them some relevant consumer trends to inspire and inform.

Then, week by week, this core team spent 2–3 hours per week supporting seminars, brainstorms and reviews.

The project could be crudely divided into three key stages: research and insight, concept development and presentation. All three stages required a slightly different Teague skill set to support.

Different teams and indeed individuals develop at different paces. That is a truth that must be respected by anybody concerned with education. So, we remained flexible and supportive and did our best to provide guidance and direction but also empathy and respect. Our team did a really super job on all counts.

My own observations—it took a while for some of the teams to get to grips with meaningful research and investigation. By that, I mean researching for content that can help build to a conceptual declaration. I remember from my own personal development to develop a concept prior to research, then use the investigation process to prove or disprove conceptual intent. When the teams focused however and started to think users wants and needs, they quickly sought and deployed their entrepreneurial instincts to gather very interesting data that in all cases directly informed a series of well considered concepts.

I was personally also very impressed by the overall standard of written, visual and spoken presentation. There were for me, naturally, some stand-out presentations. The grand finale from our ‘Creative Class’ team was the most accomplished presentation I have ever seen from an undergraduate design team. The quality of content and execution was fantastic. You can see for yourself on the team’s website. This was quite outstanding work.

Other highlights for me included the design-for-aviation cabin flexibility group. They regrouped mid project and after some careful and thoughtful input from Teague developed an outstanding commercial and creative solution to the age-old yet still relevant question of cabin flexibility. They reclaimed redundant space within the lower-lobe of a 777 and transformed it (subject to passenger cargo load factors) to a commercially viable experiential zone.

The team that took on service had an outstanding deliverable. They for me really understood and explored how system, technology and service could benefit from the intelligent and integrated use of design. I was personally very proud of how the team delivered some complex and beautifully simple design solutions.

The team that took on security too, made a credible presentation that challenged the current status quo of retrofitted and chaotic service provision. With some extra thinking, this will be a noteworthy portfolio piece.

None of these briefs were easy but all teams presented well and professionally.

We intend to continue our relationship with The University of Washington and its our goal to expose more of Teague’s teams to the joys and benefits of collaboration with the designers of tomorrow.

My overall observation of the process – students learn as much if not more from each other, as they do college staff or outside visitors. And, I learned quite a bit in the process too. I look forward to similar adventures next year.