Art, design, science, and technology: the necessary melding

This paper endeavors to detail the importance of design education and how it helps to prepare students for the challenges that they will face in the design profession. The text is divided into five parts. The three first parts manifest various inherent dilemmas in the area of design: the first deals with the dilemma of the innovation chain, the second studies the conflict between reliability and validity, and the third part tackles the area of creation in design. The fourth topic introduces the necessary path that should be taken to resolve these dilemmas: the educational path. In the fifth section of this paper several examples are presented, which portray design experiences that seek to undertake the dissolution of the schism and emphasize the dialogue between the context and user. This text highlights the need to establish strict correlations between the disciplines of art, design, science, and technology. These areas should not only be contemplated as individual units, but also as a combined organic whole. In contemporary design, cultural transformations are a complex process; with this in mind, the paper reaffirms the belief that responsibility and ethics can help new designers to decide how to and if it is necessary to use constrained social and technical innovations.