Richard,
I am following with interest your research and preparation for the new school at Irvine.
I would like to comment on a couple of your points.
Richard Taylor:
"I view this situation as one in which design is now crossing a major threshold,from craft to (dare I say it?) science or engineering."
I believe that product design made a transition after the arts and crafts movement and during the period of the Bauhaus roughly one hundred years ago from being a craft based activity to being a cross disiplinary activity which includes an understanding and practice of cross disiplinary problem solving. These disiplines include sculpture, human factors including social sciences and anthropology, production engineering and marketing and many other fields. The nature of problem solving process in design I belive is different to science and engineering. What is happening at present is that Product design is finding more recognition as Corporations are becoming more powerful than National Governments and their need to sell products is becoming one of the key needs in global consumer culture which is now the dominant culture in the world. As design is becoming a key driver of exchange of value in society mpore money is being spent on design and the field is becoming more rigorous. In some cases as rigorous as science and engineering. But I would like to think that it is a different activity requiring different process and thinking. On another list I recently presented several hundred questions which I put togeher to form a brief for a complex furniture system project. These questions reach into many areas of science, behaviour perception, economics, trends fashion, manufacturing,cultural and political considerations. There isn't a scientific process which I am aware of which could take the answers of these questions and find the best design solution. Ultimately the solution is a complex compromise.
In a discussion last week I imagined a paraody of Charles Eames "Powers of 10" movie where a camera was focused on a designer at Ford working. As the camera zoomed out, first the viewer saw the factory implementing the design, then the suburbs of Detroit with the workers travelling back and forth to the factory then to the many cities in the United States, in California and New York where people were driving the cars designed by the designer, then the camera moved in eventually to the atomic level where the viewer could see the altering of environmental chemicals due to the effects of the car which the designer had designed.
The second point which I would like to comment on relates also to your comment about design originating as a type of craft.
In a recent survey I did of 100 advertisements and job skills sought by employers of designers. Sketching was the number one skill then a variety of computer programs and well down the list were thinking skills. The reality in the United States at least is that employers of designers are still looking for designers to be form-givers and hand crafts- people. It is the product designer who is able to diferentiate the television in Sears which you decide to buy. To ignor craft skills in design education would be dangerous at present for your students. The large employers of undergarduate students such as Nike and Ideo still value the ability to draw and build form to a higher level of skill than most Design schools are able to train students. They tend to focus their job offers on a small collection of Schools where these skills are intensely taught by master practitioners. Our school in Detroit claimes to have trained more designers working in the car industry than any other school globally. Research, engineering and design science are becoming more important but still only part of the tool kit of a working product designer.
Looking at your estimates of student numbers. They seem high to me. Art Center and CCS each with 100 year histories have roughly half those numbers. Assuming that you will be teaching both craft hand skills and design science/research skills to a high level in the program, are your students going to be new students or drawn from other institutions. As Art Center has such a good record for employment for graduates how are you going to attract the numbers of students which you intend? I would say that you would have trouble teaching craft skills to a higher level than Art Center due to the unique and rare nature of their instructors; and employers of designers are looking for these skills.
The issue of China is an important question. Do you intend to draw students mainly from Asia? How do you see the major changes in global centers of manufacturing which are likey to happen over the coming decade affecting your program's emphasis.?
Richard Taylor:
"to what degree can this knowledge about design be captured and studied rigorously?".
Leading design schools such as Art Center, RCA, IIT and CCS do have a rigorous process of education. There is however a general lack of textbooks and other teaching resources in the area of Product Design and little reliable quantifiable data about the design process. Each of these schools relies on a relatively small number of highly skilled and experienced instructors rather than documented teaching resources.
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R o b C u r e d a l e
Professor, Chair Product Design
College for Creative Studies Detroit
201 East Kirby
Detroit MI 48202-4034
Phone: 313 664 7625
Fax: 313 664 7620
email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.ccscad.edu
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