The Digital Natives are here, where is Design Education?

The Digital Natives are here, where is Design Education?

Prof Arvind LodayaUpdated: Friday, June 03, 2022, 11:38 PM IST
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Today’s Millennials, Gen Z or Gen Alpha, as we call them, form a segment called “Digital Natives”, while the pre-digital generations are called “Digital Immigrants” - these terms were coined by the American author Marc Prensky to describe the two different demographics.

“Digital Natives” or the generations born in the “digital era” have adapted to the norms and values of digital technology organically. On the other hand, for “Digital Immigrants” or generations from the “pre-digital era”, adapting to digital technology may feel much like migrating to a new place and learning about its languages and cultures. The only difference here being, the pre-digital generations are not migrating to a place physically but to a digital world as “Digital Immigrants”.

In this ever-increasingly digitized world, the transition for generations not born into digitality to naturally becoming a digital native now may seem like a herculean task but is slowly becoming essential for their survival. The extent of digitality that has entered our lives over the years is perhaps best epitomized by the viral image of a baby trying to ‘swipe’ the scene outside the window. The proverbial nail in the coffin was the COVID-19 pandemic – which forced a mass digital migration like never before, one that seems irreversible now.

As the pre-digital generations are slowly vanishing and as the world population is steadily adding on digital natives, embracing digital technology is the key and is the future.


Designing for the new normal:

How is life different for someone who has grown up with their world playing out on a screen dashboard? Prensky invokes a “digital language” – comprising computers, video games, and the internet – that comes naturally to these demographics. To this, we may safely add social media as well, seeing that Prensky wrote his piece in 2001. Prensky even raised an alarm about educators trying to teach outdated pre-digital language to a population that speaks digital language today.

What we need to realize is that our daily life is slowly moving from a pre-digital mode to a digital mode. Everyday products, services, governments - everyone has now started adopting the “immigrant” approach to digitalization. Digital word processors are now mimicking the earlier typewriter. Digital readers are mimicking the earlier books. With time, these legacy relics will cease to hold meaning and value as pre-digital memory will no longer be helpful in the digital era. Young innovators are bypassing the transitional phase and leaping ahead to envision a world where the population speaks the “digital language”.

A radical, “native” design revolution is unfolding, unencumbered by pre-digital constructs — but unfortunately, it’s not happening where you would expect it to happen first: Design Schools.

Good News and the Bad News:

Starting off with the bad news first: Most of the Design Schools today are mired in the past and remain heavily invested in pre-digital values and approaches. Being led by digital immigrants, it is understandable as they want to retain aspects of the pre-digital era that seem to offer value academically even at present. For today’s “digital natives” unfortunately, this means temporarily unlearning “native” skillsets in favour of certain pre-digital ones, and then re-learning them when they join the real world innovation.

Erasing memories of a pre-digital life for someone with a pre-digital “immigrant” mindset is not at all easy. As each and every aspect of our life falls to digital disruption, the digital immigrants will have to, sooner or later, adapt to change. Pre-digital methods are slowly becoming inefficient and unviable, and at some point, they will slowly be pushed into obsolescence by the exponential potential of new technology.

Design schools, by definition, should be at the forefront of innovation and change rather than clinging to legacy norms and values – but as of now, such change is being pushed only in a few tech schools inspired by MIT.


The good news now: There are indeed a few cutting-edge Design Schools that have come up with an exciting and futuristic curriculum, which will enable the students to join the innovation race running in the digital world. While most legacy, as well as new schools confusedly, keep both the old and new ‘streams’ flowing, the newer schools are entirely focused on digitality and unencumbered by the legacy mindset. The Design Program at Vidyashilp University, Bengaluru is one such.


Studying Communication Design:

The Design courses of today must be prepared to keep in mind - the “digital era” and the “digital natives”. The Communication Design curriculum needs to be written with a clean slate approach – with a clear look at and addressing contemporary & emerging practices and needs of the profession, without the deadweight of legacy baggage. This calls for high proficiency in content creation & curation, and an in-depth understanding of digital media production, distribution, and consumption. It also needs to be written with a view to impacting enterprise communication across scale and sectors, not the consumerism segment alone – which has been the usual career destination for most earlier graduates.


Article by Prof.Arvind Lodaya, Professor of Design, School of Liberal arts & Design Studies, Vidyashilp University

Prof. Arvind Lodaya

Prof. Arvind Lodaya |

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