A professional designer should be able to demonstrate creativity, professionalism, skills and knowledge in all aspects of their work, equally, design education should be able to evidence the teaching and learning of these core criteria.

The CSD Course Endorsement Programme requires the course content, delivery and outputs to be mapped against these 4 core criteria and 16 competencies within the CSD Genetic Matrix™ before an award will be granted. The same CSD Genetic Matrix™ underpins all CSD membership assessments and is universally applicable across the industry and throughout design disciplines.

The core criteria within the CSD Genetic Matrix™ are:

Creativity
the core essential criterion for a designer, encompassing imagination, inspiration, intuition and the development of insight that enables the generation of ideas relevant to industry.  All CSD Endorsed courses are required to demonstrate how the learning advances a learner’s ability to generate, evaluate, scope and analyse ideas for further development and how to innovate

Professionalism
within each design discipline there are specific professional competencies defining professional design values, such as integrity, inclusivity and ethical conduct.  All CSD Endorsed courses are required to demonstrate how professionalism is communicated and understood through both methodology, application of business standards and practical experience within specific environments

Skills
the attainment of technical and practical competences to deliver design, through the development of generic and sector specific skills that are fit for purpose in industry, whether practical and / or theoretical.  CSD Endorsed courses are required to provide evidence on how courses develop discipline specific skills in learners, alongside the enhancement of personal and professional skills

Knowledge
understanding and management of delivering design in context through the development of both empirical and experiential learning. CSD Endorsed courses are expected to demonstrate how effective they are at developing transferable design industry and sector specific knowledge along with how learners acquire and manage that knowledge