Alternative Design
We want to help designers of space think like futurists so we can become makers of a better future.
Alternative Design
Live, Work, Learn: The Lifestyle of a Forever Student
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Join us as we explore the landscape of lifelong learning and the evolution of educational spaces. Heather McGowan, future-of-work strategist, keynote speaker, thought leader, researcher, and author, leads us through a paradigm shift away from a linear model of learning and career paths toward a lifestyle characterized by perpetual growth and adaptability. This “Live. Work. Learn.” lifestyle will feature learning that is lifelong and personalized to the student and will change the way both classrooms and public spaces are designed.
Read the blog, From Classrooms to Lifelong Journeys.
Heather's Website: https://heathermcgowan.com/
Heather's YouTube Channel of Talk Clips: https://www.youtube.com/@heatheremcgowan/videos
Welcome to the Alternative Design podcast, where we explore the power of foresight and design to create future-ready spaces. In each episode, we talk to diverse voices to discover the ways our world is changing and uncover insights that will influence the built environment of tomorrow. I'm your host, kaelin Reed, an interior designer and certified futurist, and I want to help designers think like futurists so we can take actionable steps today to become makers of a better future. You're probably familiar with the concept of the Live Workplay Model, which emphasizes the convenience of having housing, offices, shopping, recreation and more all in one place. However, we're now witnessing an evolution of this idea that incorporates learning as an accessible and integral part of our daily lives. In our last episode, we predicted that adaptive lifelong learning will revolutionize the way classrooms are designed both on and off campus. In this episode, we're joined by future-of-work strategist Heather McGowan to explore the current trends, envision the future of education and discuss the implications for designers who will shape these environments. This is Episode 25, live Work Learn the Lifestyle of a Forever Student. What does lifelong learning truly mean? In the past, the traditional learning path involved a linear progression from early education to higher studies, ultimately leading to a degree and a fixed career path. But times are changing rapidly and various factors, from tech advancements to a loneliness epidemic, are shaping the world we live in and what that means for the future of learning. We'll explore these trends, but first let's imagine a future where everyone becomes a lifelong student, an education is personalized to cater to individual needs and an evolving career journey.
Speaker 1It's 2029, and your day is a seamless blend of work life and continuous learning. Your personal AI assistant has analyzed your sleep patterns and determined that your optimal learning window for the day will be between 8 and 10.30 am, based on the quality and duration of your sleep last night. On your commute to work, you stop at a coffee shop to grab breakfast and the adaptogen latte. With 20 minutes to spare before the next metro arrives, something in the corner of the cafe catches your eye an eduPod advertising a 15-minute learning module on data privacy. Resulting from an innovative collaboration between universities, furniture manufacturers and furniture dealers.
Speaker 1Edupods create affordable, accessible learning journeys by bringing immersive learning to the third place. You scan your university ID and place your hand on the sensor. With a friendly chime and a green glow, the door unlocks, confirming that you're in an optimal state to learn and retain new concepts. Inside the eduPod, you settle into a comfortable seat as a screen displays a dashboard of your comprehensive learning portfolio, a digital collection of verified skills and experiences supporting your professional journey. It also shows how the newly acquired data privacy knowledge and skills align with the needs of the top five local businesses in your area.
Speaker 1You press begin and the pod instantly adjusts the lighting to a soft, focused glow and the surround sound system immerses you in a gentle ambient soundscape designed to improve concentration. As you progress through the module, the eduPods AI system adapts the content to your unique learning style and pace, ensuring that you stay engaged and challenged through the whole experience. If you have a question, you can communicate with on-demand instructors that are connected via the university's online learning platform. Within minutes, you're presented with proof of your microcredential and are offered articles and podcast recommendations related to data privacy. Grabbing your latte, you gesture to start up the suggested podcast top data hacks of 2028, and step out of the pod to catch the metro. By bringing high quality education into everyday spaces, these eduPods empower learners to pursue knowledge and skills development on their own terms, seamlessly integrating learning into the fabric of their daily lives. What is your future?
Speaker 2Yeah. So life-loving learning is a concept used to mean like, oh, somebody who's bored with their professional career is taking Spanish classes on the weekends or learning to play the banjo, or what it is now is just an imperative, like, if you want to stay relevant, you are going to have to keep learning this is Heather McGowan future of work strategist, author and keynote speaker.
Speaker 2I mean, I have a lot of expressions around it like learning is a new pension. That's how you create your future value. Every day, learning is earning. It makes you more valuable in the future than you are today. And if you're not learning, your job's moving away from you, because that's how we have to think about it. So the future work is learning. So in every organization we used to learn and then work and then retire, and now I think it's learn, leverage, longevity. So it's learn to learn. Learning and work are combined. Act, that's leverage. And then longevity you remain engaged. That's the shift in the lifespan. And then you mentioned going to get a degree. Going to get a degree or getting a credential is just one kind of learning. That's a smaller, smaller by the smallest percentage of learning. Most of the learning is in the flow of work or in the flow of an activity, and I think we need better methods and systems to help people realize even when they're learning and how to reinforce things that they've learned.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's interesting. What are the current needs of the workplace? That's sort of driving this trend. You say that the future of work is learning. That makes sense, but why? What are some of the key things? For someone who maybe is coming to this conversation totally green, why is that?
Speaker 2Well, one of the things I say to some of my audiences if you're doing your job the exact same way you did it three or five years ago, it's probably you're on your glide path out, because most jobs are getting disrupted every three to five years, whether it's a new piece of technology that's coming in to do something, it's a consolidation, because we need fewer people doing this, but we need new people doing that. So the idea that you can just learn once in order to work no longer matches. So it's really more about how do I become more effective, more efficient, more insightful, more productive in what I do? And that inevitably means doing something differently, and so one of the things I make my audience say, especially leaders, is repeat after me, I do not know. We train our leaders to be these unquestionable experts who can make decisions in certainty. Most of them are leading teams of people, or will soon, that have skills and knowledge that they don't. So we're moving from individual intelligence to collective intelligence. It's a different style of leadership altogether.
Speaker 1So we've identified. One of the major trends that's influencing this idea of lifelong learning is the need for employees to upskill. The World Economic Forum estimates that more than half of all employees around the world will need to upskill or reskill by 2025. That's a lot of new learning and for more tenured employees, which lines up exactly with what Heather's saying about moving to collective intelligence, where, over time, the knowledge of the group grows to a level that surpasses what any individual on the team could produce or ideate on their own.
Speaker 2So if you're just used to saying I know how to do it, I'm the boss, I mean, there was one viral thing that went Instagram or TikTok one of those things the other day, where a woman was playing golf and she was correcting her golf swing, so she was trying something new, so it was rusty, and this guy came up to him, was like listen, I've been playing golf for 20 years, I need to have. He didn't know, he was talking to a pro and so it was just and that's why it went viral because she was like and then she did her old golf swing and she just smacked it out of the park and he's like see what you mean, you took my advice and she was like, well, thanks. So but that's sort of that mindset of I'm going to tell you how to do it, because I've always done it that way is actually a huge liability now. So you have to be vulnerable, you have to be authentic, you have to listen, you have to sort of connect the dots more than just pushing forth your own doubt.
Speaker 1I think that, while there's value and traditional wisdom and the transfer of knowledge between generations I'm interested in what Heather's saying regarding the shift to collective intelligence One of the things we could see is businesses placing more value in diversity of thought, perspective and learning experience, especially since generation alpha is the most diverse generation in US history. One of the unknowns is how people will value different learning journeys in the future. It's the give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime idea. But we'd have to realize that there's a lot of different ways to fish. Every professional with college degrees in interior design or architecture could be working beside someone who acquired their education on Coursera or YouTube. This has a lot of potential implications, but I believe we're going to see lifelong learning become supported by more personalized or adaptive forms of education.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think it's important to, before we talk about that is to sort of talk about how we got here so people can understand the difference, because sometimes I think that's helpful. So you know, back in the day you went to school, back in maybe my day in Republic or my day you got given an exam, there was a right and a wrong answer and if you would either get the answer right or wrong, if they just looked at the answer or if you showed your work, they could understand where you were in the process, when the human could sit down and help you. Fast forward to putting that into technology, where they have something called adaptive learning, which would understand what you knew and what you didn't know and then sort of push you to the edge of your you know. So you still feel confident, but pushing you to try a little bit longer. But it was really on sort of a predetermined path. Like I want you to learn algebra, so I'm going to give you the questions that you get a few in a row, and then I'm going to give you a stretch one and then, if you fall back, I'm going to give you something in between just to keep you on that journey. So that's adaptive learning. That's been out there for about a decade now.
Speaker 2You mentioned YouTube. That's great. Youtube sort of pays attention to what was the content that you were watching. Let me put some more of that in front of you and let me go a little bit to the left, a little bit to the right, sort of figure out and fine tune what you're interested in, but it's still really just pushing consumption at you. There's no sort of evaluation in that process. So you could think about like a Netflix version of that that would have married sort of the adaptive piece with the Netflix piece where you say, okay, based upon your interest in these areas, why don't you try this over here? And then based on how your performance of it would marry your interest with your abilities, and then sort of take you on a path that you wouldn't have picked on your own.
Speaker 2Because, if you think about it, we still ask young kids what do you want to be when you grow up. We ask university students to pick a major for their stuff On campus and then the first thing you ask each other is what do you do? So that's a fixed that builds a fixed occupational identity at a time when you people would be much more fluid about careers because you're changing a lot, so having that kind of example in education earlier. So people got used to trying, failing, trying again, trying different things.
Speaker 2I didn't know what industrial design was. I happened to fall into RISD, happened to walk over and meet somebody, happened to learn it was all accident, accident, accident. But what if, from the age of six or seven, they said, based upon how you like to build and how you like to think and how you like to ask questions, let's try this, try this, try this. And that would take me through what you're talking about in terms of a personalized learning journey, but using the insights that the different types of technology can lean about us, that we may not see about ourselves, and then use that to help guide our path.
Speaker 1As Heather was talking about a more self-paced form of education, I immediately had a question about how we currently approach grouping students by age, particularly in K through 12 settings. If we adopted a more individualized approach to learning, would age-based grouping become less relevant? What if students of different ages find themselves working on similar topics or skills? If so, would multi-age learning environments become necessary?
Speaker 2So our system of education were designed to turn farm workers into factory workers and we organized people by age, which is kind of as arbitrary as organizing them by height. You know, it really doesn't make any sense. We still do it. Conlab School in California organizes children and said by their independence level and their competency level, and it's a physical classroom and so everybody has to work through competencies. Everybody has to be a teacher and a student. So if I'm really good at math and you're really good at English and I need help with English, I would pair up with you, you would help me with English and I'd help you with math. So you start learning collaboration and shared learning early and then everybody has an independent research project because they want to build agency in early on. That's been going on, I think, for a decade or so.
Speaker 2Khan Academy wanted to experiment. They said who will only experiment with their own children? They set up a physical school and they put. They said well, what's important for people to know? And they said let's start with our children, let's not limit them by age-gating them through a process with predetermined skills and physics to acknowledge in these arbitrary gates. Let's try to get them engaged, let's get them to care, let's get them to have agency, let's get them excited about work. I mean, if you look at the research after the age of five, you stop asking questions, you stop being curious, you stop being engaged, because after kindergarten we tell you to be obedient, because, again, we were trying to make farm workers into factory workers.
Speaker 1AI and immersive technologies are poised to revolutionize education, enabling personalized learning experiences that allow students to explore subjects, skills and career paths at their own pace. By leveraging tools like virtual and augmented reality, students can explore various industries and job roles early on. But the benefits of this virtual test kitchen approach extend beyond just technical skills. Engaging in simulated workplace scenarios and interactions can help students develop crucial soft skills and emotional intelligence like communication, collaboration, problem-solving and adaptability. These skills are increasingly important in the modern workforce.
Speaker 2Yes, absolutely. And I just want to comment you folks have competency-based classroom already happening. Competency-based education became a big thing and it was going to replace all colleges. You know it was going to be like everybody we can. Just you can go through college in six weeks if you have all the competencies, and it's going to be super cheap and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2Competency stuff is only as good as what you can codify and transfer. So that is explicit knowledge. That's things you can easily test. So I think that's level one like competency-based like can you perform a task to a benchmark level? Can you draw an existing knowledge? That's sort of the domain of skilling and rescaling. Right Next up from that, I think, is capability. Can you take your competence and you apply it to a new challenge, and that's sort of like up skilling and in rescaling. That's sort of like the next level, still in the domain of largely explicit knowledge and no knowledge. And then above that is capacity Can you formulate new questions, can you frame new problems, and we need to make sure we're not hitting just the lowest level.
Speaker 2And I think it lines up with the four industrial revolutions, which are imperfect Way to explain all things that are happening, but they're good for jobs and skills. So first and second industrial revolution was competency. We trained you to do something. You repeated it. That was, you drew on that for your whole career, largely in the same job or industry function. Second, capability was really kind of the third industrial revolution. We're like get an advanced degree, everyone should go to college, everybody should learn STEM. And now we're seeing that not only do we have enough people learning STEM, but a lot of the STEM stuff can be done with AI. And then capacity is where can we find the people who can find and frame new challenges and formulate new knowledge? And that's the argument that we're in now.
Speaker 1This is an extremely valuable insight Heather just shared about this shift we're seeing today from a capability to capacity style of learning that's becoming more and more necessary in the world we live in, and not just for the design industry.
Speaker 2Speaking to art and design professionals, which is what interior architecture, interior design, architecture, dutch design, if you want to throw it in there, because you're talking furniture companies too most of what they do is experiential. Most of what they do is expanding capacity. Most of what you do in art and design is finding frame, new challenges, propositional thinking. It's formulate something that is proposed, something that doesn't exist before, whether it be a product, a service, an environment, an experience. That's most of what we do in art and design education. It's not what we do in other types of education. Every other types of education. It was you know, will it be on the test and is this the right answer? That's where I think my understanding capacity comes from my own experiences in that, and I think we need to infuse more of that into other types of learning.
Speaker 1So if I could ask you you know, if you were to design these spaces what would be some of the requirements or things that you would deem as necessary to really make this experience of learning successful?
Speaker 2I think that we probably need to think about classrooms the way we should be thinking about offices. Right now we're not talking desks in a row anymore. We're not talking cubicles anymore Any of that. So task and isolation can be done anywhere. We've got the technology. You can do it anywhere, and some people prefer to do that not in a combined environment. Other people get better structure by doing it in a combined environment.
Speaker 2I think a lot of the spaces we're going to need for both work and learning are going to be collaborative spaces. They're going to be meeting spaces, can be spaces that we can alter things, that we can move things around, that we can make it very modular and set up for the thing that we need at the moment that we need it, and then break down and change for the next experiment. I mean, that's sort of desks in a row thing. You know, take out your book, take out your laptop and plug it in. You know, never really changed.
Speaker 2But now I think we're looking more and we have been for probably 20 years now for honest looking at spaces that work the way more studios do, where we can say, okay, let's roll our surfaces together, that we can have one combined surface. We can have one at different heights. We can have, you know, four people around six people around two people having an intimate conversation, one person presenting to 10 people to get feedback, and then, you know, the audience becomes participatory in that as well. So I think we need maximum flexibility and fluidity.
Speaker 1You know it's funny. I've been having a lot of chats lately about the future of work and learning and there's definitely a common thread emerging. It seems like the rise of hybrid work has really underscored this value of physical places as hubs for connection, collaboration and the water cooler moments that spark creativity. And from what I'm hearing, it looks like hybrid learning might be headed in a similar direction, with educational environments increasingly designed to foster teamwork and interaction. But here's the thing I love how Heather touched on this. We can't just assume that one size fits all.
Speaker 1Recent data from the World Economic Forum highlights the importance of physical classrooms for many students, particularly those from lower income backgrounds or with limited access to technology. So what does this mean in practice? Well, I think, when it comes down to our favorite word these days flexibility we need furnishings and layouts that can easily morph to support different postures and activities, whether that's huddling up for a group project or hunkering down for that deep solo concentration. By designing with agility in mind, we can create learning environments that are really going to cater to diverse needs of every student in the moment. And while this live work learn concept that features lifelong and adaptive learning gains steam, it could disrupt way more than just the future classroom.
Speaker 2You know they have seen that in the countries that have done the really large scale four day work weeks. One said they've done it, particularly like in Iceland, where they did it with what I know they have a small population but still they did it with 10% of their population. They found one of the things that came out of the four day work week was increased productivity in a lot of areas, equal or increased almost across the boards, better health outcomes and they were a bit surprised to find more people pursuing advanced degrees, credentials, new learning opportunities. It was one way they were using some of that extra time. Now I don't always think that it's sort of still that sort of night school model, like you go to work and then you close your briefcase and open your backpack to go to school. I think those are going to more of be merged environments as well, because it's going to be in the interest of the organization to keep your people learning, because your organization capacity at any company is your greatest hedge against uncertainty.
Speaker 1I think these merged spaces Heather's speaking to is what we're going to continue to see in the built environment. Life as we know it has become more merged, with more opportunities than ever before to customize your daily activities based on your personal needs and values. Gensler just put out some incredible research backing this idea, with data suggesting that single use spaces are giving way to the multimodal spaces where people can choose of our own variety of experiences and activities all in one place. What this could mean for design is an infiltration of learning environments into third places like hotels, restaurants, even coffee shops.
Speaker 2In terms of the third place stuff. I think that's really interesting because we are in the midst of a really profound loneliness epidemic in this country. It's been increasing for many decades. It really spiked in the pandemic and it's continued. Today we're seeing a decline in time people spend together and increase in the people who live alone. If you live alone and then you work from home, you're not seeing anybody. When you're lonely your amygdala goes under overdrive. That puts you in fight or flight mode. That puts you in us versus them mode. It's not hard to draw line from that to the political polarization we have today. I'm not going to get into politics in the third rail, but that's where we're at. We're kind of going are they one of us or are they the enemy? I really think that comes from deep within our brains. When you start talking about third places, I think any place that can create more community, more connection, we can have conversations about something other than politics. Because I guarantee you I say to every single one of my audiences I speak to, if we went out there and we had a beer or a coffee or whatever, we would find so much more in common than we find in difference. We're just missing that opportunity.
Speaker 2One of the things I just started in the town I'm in right now I'm in my winter house in Florida is a silent book club. Have you heard of silent book clubs? You go to a bar, a coffee shop some people do it at the beach you invite people to show up. They bring whatever book they're reading For an hour. Everybody's quiet reading their book. After that you have conversations about what you're reading. You have conversations, you meet your neighbors, you meet people you didn't know before. It makes you sit down silently and read for an hour a week, which is good for all of us.
Speaker 1The need for a more balanced, customizable lifestyle is driving some major shifts in how we live, work and learn. I couldn't agree more that this loneliness epidemic is a huge part of the equation. People are craving flexibility, autonomy and the ability to tailor their experiences to their unique needs and their preferences. That's where this live, work, learn concept comes in. The implications of that go beyond the future of formal learning environments like classrooms. It suggests a reimagining of all the places we spend our time, from coffee shops to restaurants, to hotels and public spaces.
Speaker 1I love the example of the Silent Book Club because it speaks to this idea of carving out intentional moments for reflection, learning and human connection in unexpected places and in a world that can feel increasingly polarized and isolating. That's really powerful. So, as we look to the future of design, I think we have this amazing opportunity to create spaces that foster these kinds of interactions and experiences. Whether it's a classroom that's doubling as a co-working space, a hotel lobby that hosts a Silent Book Club, or a restaurant that transforms into a learning lab at night, the possibilities are endless.
Speaker 2Yeah, I would say that the pandemic was not the end of place, whether it was work or school. It was the evolution of place. We figured out what we could do alone in isolation. And now let's look at what we need as humans and what we need to drive in performance in our organizations and drive in learning in our learning environments, and drive in both when we get together for organizational capacity. Let's think about how we evolve those spaces.
Speaker 1As we wrap up this episode, let's consider the implications for the stakeholders who are going to shape the learning environments of the future. Universities have a significant opportunity to collaborate with furniture manufacturers and dealers to create innovative learning solutions that extend beyond the traditional campus setting. By partnering to design flexible, accessible spaces, even in third places, like the coffee shops and the community centers, universities can support the growing demand for lifelong learning while strengthening their connections to the wider community. Campus designers have a key role in shaping furniture solutions that cater to the evolving needs of modern learning typologies. By collaborating with facilities managers and even exploring advanced tech maybe in robotics designers can tackle the challenge of how to seamlessly reconfigure learning spaces with products that are going to stand up to that kind of use. Likewise, designers in sectors like workplace healthcare and hospitality can incorporate learning spaces into their floor plans now to support the development of new knowledge and skills.
Speaker 1The shift towards a more integrated and holistic approach to education recognizes that learning isn't just about acquiring information. It's about developing the skills and mindsets needed to thrive in our ever-changing world. By recognizing and embracing this shift, we have the power to create spaces that nurture continuous growth and development. That's it for this episode. If you're loving our content. We'd be so grateful if you head to Apple Podcasts or Spotify where you can rate us and leave a review. We'd love to hear your thoughts on where you think education and design are headed next. Thanks to Heather McGowan for being our guest on today's show and thanks to Mark Bryan at Future Today Institute for helping us learn and adapt their signal collection, trend development and scenario frameworks as we develop the content for these episodes. This episode was produced by myself, andrew Reid and Brandy Small, audio production and scoring also done by Andrew Reid. Alternative Design Podcast is brought to you by Campbell International. Thanks for listening, thank you.