RECONSIDERING RETAIL DESIGN EDUCATION: today’s challenges and objectives

Abstract

Retail has always been a highly competitive sector. More and more retailers need to respond to the challenges caused by e-commerce, digitalisation, omni-channel in retail and the consumer’s changing shopping behaviour. From the perspective of retail design, it is the retail designer’s task to translate retailers’ objectives and brand DNA into successful concepts. In doing so, designers should know the potential consumer and their needs and have an understanding of the developments in society and the market. The practice of retail design is challenged by current transitions in retail since today's retail designers need to think beyond the walls of the physical store and integrate other digital touchpoints of the customer journey. Designing a commercial space entails more than merely the design of functional and aesthetic spatial elements. Retail designers go through an interdisciplinary design process as they orchestrate retail design variables related to interior design, architecture, product design, graphic design and recently also digital design. Moreover, they combine designerly skills with knowledge from fields such as marketing, branding, communication and the social sciences. Therefore, the field requires highly skilled retail designers who are able to get a grip on this complex game of interactions. The objective is to understand how future retail designers should be trained in order to cope in a holistic way with increasing interdisciplinarity, complexity and digitalisation. We want to identify a retail designer's current and future required skills and knowledge to manage the design process. Thereupon, we want to gain better insights in the retail design process in order to understand how this process can be translated into a retail design methodology for the retail design studio.