THE DESIGN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION IN BRAZIL: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF SIX UNDERGRADUATE COURSES (original) (raw)

The insertion of design management has increasingly become a discipline that helps companies to remain competitive in their markets, through the increase in quality, launching and improvement of products and services with added value and the creation of competitive strategies. Design and management have become areas that unify their efforts for the achievement of strategic and organizational goals. Design management is still a subject of little familiarity to Brazilian business people, but the designers themselves are also still learning this concept. This article is intended to analyze how disciplines associated with design management are approached in six undergraduate design courses in Brazil. The curricula and the syllabuses have been analyzed in order to perform a comparative study among the disciplines that approach management concepts and other areas of design. 1 INTRODUCTION The use of design management is a factor that helps companies to remain competitive in their markets, through the increase in quality, launching and improvement of products and services with added value, in addition to the creation of strategies that increase their competitiveness. In a global market, competitive differential has become a need for companies of all sizes, and imposes on them processes of continuous improvement in their products and services, by acting strategically and aiming at innovation as a competitive factor [4]. Through design, companies must be capable to communicate, expose and value their positioning, values and strategic goals to both the internal and external publics, and design must also be at the service of the development of new products and services for the companies. The use of design as a strategic asset for the companies is the result of a natural evolution of this area. Projects need a broader vision, and should not focus only on the product, but on the whole of its value chain-the consumer and his or her experience, the market and communication-, thus increasing the complexity and the number of factors to consider within a design project. The abilities to think systematically and strategically will be competencies that will be more demanded from professionals. The result of design is not the merit of designers alone, as the production of objects is done in an industrial manner; hence objects become the object of study by professionals of the areas of Engineering and Management [6]. This is the environment where design management emerges for designers, as a form of qualifying the professionals before a market that requires multidisciplinary and especially strategic knowledge. This new knowledge emerges to prepare the professionals to use the "business language", i.e., to be able to discuss strategy with business people, making their discourse evolve from the tactical and operational management levels to the strategic level of the companies. Business people will only put value on design when designers know how to position themselves as a strategic tool for their business, by trying to achieve along with them the strategic goals of the company, and not only by solving the problems in a "beautiful" or "creative" manner [12]. The difficulty of relationship between designers and managers arises from the lack of preparation of the design professional, he or she suffers from not being qualified to act before the challenges of present-day industry [1]. Designers must be prepared to act both in their offices and in the board rooms of the