Optimising the Employability of Product Design Graduates Through Co-Design

Optimising the employability of graduates is a key consideration for UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in recent times, with government remits to address skills gaps and increase graduate employability for the benefit of the economy. The aspiration for many students pursuing higher education is to increase their employment prospects. However, employers in the product design industry report that graduates are not fully prepared to operate in the workplace at entry level. University careers teams acknowledge the need for greater subject-specific employability support with the literature advocating for individualised approaches (Williams et al, 2019) which are time and resource intensive. This creates a pressure for HEIs in the UK, with employability performance being measured by graduate employment statistics. Predominantly, the literature indicates that employability can be defined as not only getting a job but keeping a job (Yorke, 2006), framing employability as a lifelong set of personal attributes to develop over time. Furthermore, individual ownership of employability is identified as a fundamental approach to students developing their own employability, with support, guidance and agency. This study investigates how higher education (HE) teaching and learning materials need to develop in order to optimise the employability of product design graduates in the UK. This is explored through the co-design of an employability toolkit, ‘The Design Graduate’ app, for product design undergraduate courses. A qualitative research methodology is utilised, applying research methods associated with product design practice, including co-design and design thinking in combination with phenomenographic semi-structured interviews. The findings present the different perspectives of key stakeholders: students, graduates, employers, careers teams and academic teams predominantly from three UK institutions, with further contributions from six UK institutions, in the co-design of employability skills and attributes development. Data collection and analysis took place over a span of five years from 2018-2022. Participants included 97 undergraduate product design students and 7 postgraduate 3D design students from University 1, 12 undergraduate students from University 2, 20 undergraduate students from University 3, 11 product design academics from Universities 1-3 and 6 from other UK HEIs, 17 employers/industry professionals in product design fields, 8 product design graduates from UK HEIs and 11 careers team members from Universities 1-3, with an additional 8 from other UK HEIs. This study makes an original contribution to knowledge in adapting the notion of the ‘best self’ to the employability of product design graduates, acknowledging that an individual’s wellbeing is a significant factor in performing well and maintaining employment over time. Furthermore, it makes a contribution to knowledge through the methodological approach of co-designing for employability by key stakeholders to ensure maximum relevance. The digital toolkit outlines a set of recommendations for product design courses in order to optimise employability within their teaching and learning materials. This digital resource supports physical teaching and allows for availability of learning materials digitally, supporting widening participation and retention. Co-design provides the method for continuous improvement and ongoing validation of the effectiveness of this resource.