Three Things College Students Majoring In Interior Design Struggle With
Welcome to another edition of Dakota Design Company’s Guest Expert Interview series. We’re thrilled to share expertise from female business owners, service providers, and leaders in the interior design industry – from interior photographers to marketers, financial advisors, branding experts, and beyond.
Each of our expert guests was selected because they can share their unique insights and perspectives on a range of topics that will help any interior designer take their business to the next level. These experts are Dakota Design Company insiders, and many of them have worked directly with us and our clients in the past. We hope you enjoy this series and that it brings new insights, tips, and tricks to add to your interior design toolbox!
Education is a lifelong endeavor. It doesn't stop at the classroom but continues with real-life experiences. Each experience brings growth in our knowledge and our confidence, so you could say that life is one big classroom!
This week, we asked Dr. Gloria Stafford to share three things college students majoring in interior design struggle with. Gloria is a wealth of experience and knowledge (the perfect package!), and who better to talk about the struggles of designers who are just getting started.
She has over twenty years of experience as a residential and commercial interior designer, is NCIDQ certified, and is a Certified Interior Designer in Minnesota. Her vast education includes an M.A. in Interior Design from Savannah College of Art & Design and a Ph.D. in Human Environmental Studies from the University of Missouri. She’s also a design educator with two years as an Assistant Professor at North Dakota State University and eleven years at the University of Northern Iowa, departing as a tenured Associate Professor. All this, AND she’s been working with Dakota Design Company for over two years.
Gloria knows her stuff and is happy to share it with the Dakota Design Company community.
OVERVIEW OF COLLEGE-LEVEL INTERIOR DESIGN PROGRAMS
College-level interior design program curricula are typically quite robust, as they must comply with the educational standards of the Council for Interior Design Accreditation. Often, at universities, an interior design degree requires considerably more credit hours than, say, a History or Psychology degree.
Interior design students typically learn several software programs that are core to the business, including AutoCAD, Revit, Adobe Photoshop, Trimble SketchUp, and maybe also CET Designer and 2020 Design Live.
These programs are a lot to learn by themselves.
Then add on design elements and principles, history of design, materials, drafting and CDs, lighting and color, business practices, building codes, construction processes, and building systems, and it can be overwhelming.
So shout out to those interior design degree recipients; congrats on an amazing achievement.
But, even beyond the breadth of the curriculum, Gloria has noticed in her 13+ years of teaching that interior design majors often struggle with the same three things. She shares them with us below.
THE HUGE NUMBER OF STANDARD SIZES AND DIMENSIONS INTERIOR DESIGNERS NEED TO KNOW
Interior designers have to know a huge number of standard sizes and dimensions, such as the sizes of furniture and cabinetry, doors, plumbing fixtures, and the list goes on. After years of practice, these numbers become second nature. But initially, this is a lot to remember, and interior design students struggle to memorize all these size standards (standard closet depth is 24”, kitchen counter height is 36”, for instance).
I also see interior design students struggle with the U.S.’s cumbersome Imperial system of feet and inches with its awkward units of 12. The Metric system is SO much easier, since it’s based on units of 10. So, a student learns that a standard door is 6’-8” high, but can they immediately convert that in their minds to 80”?
I find that college students are not adept at these inches and feet-to-inches conversions: that 42” is 3’-6”, for example. I used to start my Space Planning class with a five-minute warm-up exercise: Convert 90” to feet and inches, convert 2’-8” to inches only, etc. so it would become second nature, almost like muscle memory.
SIDE NOTE FROM KATIE: When interior designers tell us they’re “not good with numbers,” we know that is absolutely not true. While you might be intimidated by your financialsor your financial software, you ARE good with numbers. Your job depends on it!
SPATIAL PROBLEM SOLVING
Several years ago I became aware of research showing that mental visualization skills exist along a continuum across the population. This is the ability to picture something in your “mind’s eye.” I always thought that, like me, anyone could conjure a mental image of anything in their mind’s eye.
But it turns out some people have no “mind’s eye” at all. You cannot put yourself to sleep by counting sheep if you cannot picture a sheep in your mind. (This is a fascinating subject. Google “Aphantasia” — the absence of visual imagery ability — if interested.)
I theorize that designers tend to have very strong visual imagery skills — they can visualize what a room would look like painted a different color, or what a window would look like with draperies added, etc., but not everyone has this ability.
This insight has helped me understand why some interior design students struggle with spatial problem solving. If I am helping a student work on a building floor plan, and I say, “If you rotate the stairs 180 degrees and shift the wall over - see - it will all work out!!!” and they look at me like I’m speaking a foreign language, I realize they are not able to visualize a plan revision in their mind’s eye before they draw it on paper or computer screen.
Interior design students who lack strong mental visualization skills have difficulty with several aspects, particularly space planning and developing color palettes.
OBSERVING THEIR ENVIRONMENT
My favorite interior design teacher when I was in school said every designer’s mantra should be: “Observe, observe, observe.” I always tell my freshman students this, and those who take it to heart tend to make fewer errors in their designs because they look to examples in their immediate environment to guide them.
For instance, I tell them, next time you are in a bathroom in a restaurant or other commercial building, and you are sitting there with nothing else to do for a few moments, look around. How high up the wall does the tile go? What kind of base is used? What material are the toilet partitions made of?
Good visual observers become good problem solvers about conditions of the built environment and tend to make fewer of the crazy mistakes I see in students’ plans, like putting wall sconces and wall signage at 9’ high (rather than eye level) or drawing a formal dining table at 24” wide, or drawing the top of a bathroom mirror at 5’, etc.
Rather than make an inaccurate guess about a measurement, students who are diligent about observation will think through what they have experienced in their own environments and consider why a condition or size matches human body measurements. Design aptitude is strongly correlated with diligent observational skills.
Students who are not astute observers really battle to get things sized correctly on their plans and elevations.
Learn more about working with Gloria. She supports the Dakota Design Company community in the following programs:
101 | Design Business Foundations - for new designers just launching their business
201 | The Designed to Scale® Method - for designers looking to streamline their services, pricing, and processes
301 | The Studio - for established designers who are looking to propel their business growth and hit that next level of success
If you’re new to the industry or are just starting your design business, be sure to check out these additional resources:
Six Week Program: Design Business Foundations Program
On the Blog: As A New Designer, Do I Need To Source Trade & Use a Receiver?
On the Blog: Sales Tax Basics for Interior Designers
On the Blog: How to Get Clients When You’re Just Starting
On the Blog:Six Ways to Price Your Interior Design Services
