Professional design has become a forceful, persuasive and omnipresent reality of contemporary world by influencing
patterns of human consumption and aspirations. This influence is not limited to the clients or the consumers, but
impacts the society and environment at large—local as well as global levels. A professional designer plays a pivotal
role in creating the ‘world by design’, and, hence, shares the social responsibility of the larger consequences of the
process/act of design. Therefore, it becomes important to examine the values imparted to design students, the future
design professionals.
Design education programmes generally claim to impart values of sustainability as social responsibility of designers.
Does this intent get manifested in their course curriculums and actualised in the pedagogies? The paper addresses
this question by examining the role of design education programmes and the challenges in imparting the
values of sustainability as social responsibility of designers.

Authors: Sanjeev Bothra