I didn't go to school for design, but I met people who exhausted themselves while getting great education. And I think there's room for both options. 

I think that there's a sensibility or a pattern of thinking, which is valuable to somebody who is in the design discipline: It's about keen observation and curiosity. It's about always probing and taking a deeper look at something; an inquisitive kind of mindset and trying to understand why something is the way it is.

When you turn that sensibility on, it becomes disruptive to your day to day life because you can no longer look at anything the same way again. You get in an elevator and you're analyzing the position of the buttons. You are looking at the dashboard of a rental car, and you're evaluating whether you know how design decisions for it were made, and why. And, of course, on any website--you're always evaluating.

I think that developing that sensibility and natural curiosity is the first most important part of going down this path: Not being afraid to ask questions, learn, experiment and fail. Sure, this is true of many different disciplines, but I think that design as a discipline is interesting because it is a clear outward representation of that type of thinking: Everyone sees it. And so if you think like that and apply that pattern of thinking, you're going to be very good as a designer, because you don't get locked into idea-driven processes that are insensitive to new information or learning.

Your thinking should be informed by a rigorous process--combining research with this constant asking and curiosity. Nothing is designed from scratch, and there are always inputs from other sources. This constant rethinking and improving is amplified in the extreme with a career in the design disciplines.

I had the fortune of working in an environment where I learned a lot on the job, but not everybody gets that opportunity. I've seen people come out of very strong programs with great toolkits, but if they lack that kind of natural curiosity, it's a problem.

I think that education can give a great start. Somebody coming out of education will have the toolkit for solving some real practical problems. They have some training to fall back on, but very quickly, when they get into a real-life scenario, that training will bump right up against the practical limits and the realities of what it takes to be successful. So, the training will only get's one an early advancement in one's career. The rest will be hard-won by applying experience.