The DIA hosted a Define Design forum on 2 August. We invited Dr Laura Kostanski, Senior Social Architect for the CSIRO and DIA member, to lead the discussion representing a fantastic example of the design community coming together across disciplines to shape policy and advocate for their professions.

The forum was held to hear directly from members and others in the design sector what working as a designer looks like in 2023. This information was used to prepare the DIA submission to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) review of occupation codes. We collected evidence on job titles currently in use in different roles and specialisations, as well as the varied education and experience pathways that lead into design occupations.

A diverse age group of Designers working as sole practitioners, members of corporate teams and in higher education identified a range of issues in the Forum arising from the limitations of the current classification structure:

Confusion for jobseekers and employers, causing mismatch in skill expectations.

Inaccuracy in our job description affects what education is available, affects perception, even by employers and HR, and this ultimately affects our wages.

Importantly, thanks to the wide range of designers contributing, the DIA was able to compile evidence for the first time about the many new design roles that have been established since the last review of Australia’s official occupation codes.

The codes are used by the ABS to collect, publish and analyse occupation statistics. They are also used by governments for labour market, immigration and education planning, for example. They are organised into a framework known as Anzsco (the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations). Currently, design jobs are mostly listed in the Design, Engineering, Science and Transport Professionals stream, in the subsection Architects, Designers, Planners and Surveyors.

We are proposing that a new higher-level category in Anzsco be created to allow all the professional design occupations to be grouped together under the heading of Design. All the design job titles currently in use could then be grouped in five clusters, expanded from the current three. This change would better reflect the contemporary labour market and also allow new and emerging specialisations to be more easily incorporated in future.

The DIA’s other key recommendation to the ABS coming out of the consultation is to restore the Interior Design occupation (232511) to Skill Level 1, commensurate with industry expectations of education and experience. The occupation was the only design profession to be listed as Skill Level 2 in the last ABS update in 2006. Our argument is that the industry standard for these jobs aligns with the minimum qualification for other design disciplines, that is, a degree from a recognised tertiary education provider. In order to be registered with a state building authority or other regulatory body a relevant degree is required. Qualifications such as Advanced Diploma or Diploma (Skill Level 2) are insufficient unless equivalent experience is demonstrated.

The submission to the ABS is the culmination of months’ long consideration by the Working Group, which was led by Dr Kostanski and included past DIA President David Robertson and experienced designer Simon Goodrich.

The forum included a panel discussion on the relevance of the ANZSCO profiles to the design profession with Dr AJ Lanyon from the ABS, Simon Goodrich and the DIA Continuing Custodians Advisor Nicole Monks, followed by breakout sessions focusing on job titles at a deeper discipline-specific level. The list of new design job titles compiled as a result of these activities is shown below.

A podcast of the Define Design forum is currently being produced and will be available on the DIA website soon. The DIA would like thank our partner Creative Victoria; moderator, speakers, forum attendees and the DIA advocacy team. 

DIA Proposed New Design Occupation Groupings