Change in Industrial Designers’ Jobs: The Case of Turkey, 1984-2018

Abstract

This paper examines the change in the forms of employment of industrial designers between 1984 and 2018 in Turkey. The empirical data come from the graduates of the four oldest industrial design departments in the country. Utilizing multiple sources, we collected longitudinal data on forms of employment and duration of jobs for a total of 1205 individuals. Drawing on this data, we present a descriptive analysis of the changing job patterns in in-house employment, self-employment, freelance work, academic jobs and part-time teaching jobs. Our findings show that throughout the three and a half decades (1) in-house employment remains the main form of employment, in which UX-focused jobs emerge as a recent and consistently increasing subcategory, (2) the percentage of self-employed job types dropped significantly, and this lacuna was filled by freelance jobs, and (3) there is a considerable increase in women’s participation in industrial design jobs, particularly in in-house positions.

Keywords:

• Industrial design
• design jobs
• job market
• career
• gender
• Turkey

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on a research project funded by Middle East Technical University (Project number GAP-203-2018-2812).

We would like to thank the two reviewers for their inspiring and constructive comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This paper is based on a research project funded by Middle East Technical University (Project number GAP-203-2018-2812).

Notes on contributors

Pınar Kaygan

Pınar Kaygan (PhD, Sociological Studies) is associate professor in Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University, Turkey. Her research interests include creative work and workplace; interdisciplinary relations, collaboration and teamwork in design; and critical aspects of design management, including gender, hierarchy and power relations in the designer's work. She is associate editor of Design and Culture.

Ali O. Ilhan

Ali O. Ilhan is Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at Ozyegin University (OzU) in Istanbul. He also serves as the Co-Director of Graduate Studies for the PhD and MSc programs in Design, Technology and Society. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in industrial design from Istanbul Technical University (ITU). He completed his PhD in sociology at Washington State University (WSU) in 2013. His research interests include longitudinal/hierarchical data analysis, social network analysis, science and technology studies, sociology of education, sociology of design and critical studies of interdisciplinarity.

Işıl Oygür

Işıl Oygür is an assistant professor of industrial design at Özyeğin University, Turkey. She received a PhD from Individual Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program at Washington State University. Her research interests focus on design anthropology, health informatics, digital interactions, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Recent journal publications include “The Machineries of User Knowledge Production” (Design Studies, 2018) and “Exploring Mobility & Workplace Choice in a Flexible Office through Post-Occupancy Evaluation” (with Ö. Göçer, K. Göçer & E. Karahan, Ergonomics, 2018).