# The Educated Designer

There is no point at which your design education is complete.

A degree does not finish it.

A bootcamp does not finish it.

Ten years of experience does not finish it.

Thirty years does not finish it.

When the profession continues to change and you stop learning, experience slowly becomes historical knowledge.

## Learn the fundamentals

Technology changes quickly.

Fundamentals change slowly.

Learn typography.

Learn hierarchy.

Learn composition.

Learn colour.

Learn interaction.

Learn language.

Learn information architecture.

Learn accessibility.

Learn how people perceive relationships between things.

Learn why something works before learning how to reproduce its appearance.

This becomes more important as generative tools improve.

When software can produce twenty polished directions in seconds, your advantage lies in recognising which one is appropriate and why.

## Learn the medium

If you design digital experiences, understand digital technology.

Learn HTML and CSS.

Understand responsive behaviour.

Understand how interfaces behave with real content and real data.

Understand performance.

Understand states.

Understand browsers.

Understand accessibility technology.

Understand enough code to have meaningful conversations with engineers.

Build prototypes in code when code gives you a better way to answer the question.

You do not have to become an engineer.

You do need to understand what you are designing.

## Learn research

Know when you are guessing.

Understand the difference between qualitative and quantitative evidence.

Understand the difference between what people say and what they do.

Know when analytics can answer a question.

Know when interviews can.

Know when neither can.

Do not turn five informal conversations into validation because the answers support the idea you already wanted.

Research should reduce uncertainty.

It should not decorate decisions.

## Learn business

Understand how organisations make money.

Understand costs.

Understand budgets.

Understand incentives.

Understand risk.

Understand why one project receives investment while another does not.

Understand how the people making decisions define success.

Designers who want influence need to understand the language in which organisational decisions are made.

## Learn outside design

Read economics.

Read psychology.

Read history.

Read technology.

Read literature.

Study architecture.

Study film.

Study organisations.

Study cultures other than your own.

Design works by connecting things.

A narrow education gives you fewer things to connect.

## Use AI to learn, not to avoid learning

AI can answer the question before you have understood the problem.

Used properly, this can accelerate learning.

Used badly, it produces the appearance of competence without the foundation underneath it.

If AI writes the code, read the code.

If it generates the interface, interrogate the decisions.

If it summarises research, return to the evidence.

If it gives you an answer, ask why.

The goal is not to prove that you can work without AI.

The goal is to make sure using it leaves you more capable.

_Foundations, 2 of 15 in [Design Professionalism](https://craigjamieson.com/design-professionalism/)_

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