Inter-Trans-Post Disciplinarity: Design Education in the Post-Industrial Era

Design appears to be a young academic field without a clear and defined domain, when it is compared to other disciplines which are historically stabilized and acquired a better recognized disciplinary theoretical apparatus. Design thinking has grown often touching far territories of knowledge and always placing its line of research on the track of innovation, between material and immaterial, product and service. As Design turns out to produce knowledge, while giving an interpretation to reality and being strategic for innovation, the following paper raises some questions: is Design a discipline without any given field? If we consider it as an open structure, what geometric organization is drawing while connecting other fields? Along with the occurrence of the post-industrial society of knowledge, should we still call the discipline industrial design? What are its epistemological assumptions? From a didactic and research experience at Carleton University in Ottawa (Canada) with the development of a Master of Interdisciplinary Design, the paper is a theoretical contribution through an interdisciplinary net of references, to witness the accomplishment of design as an academic discipline while sketching its complex character in contemporary post-industrial societies. Far from reductionism, the research pursues a conception of knowledge as a non-hierarchical social construct, developed in an interactive collaborative process.