Apologies for dual posting, if it happens. I also found Kari-Hans
comments provocative, sent this yesterday, yet got a note saying it was
undelivered.
> Hi, again, Kari-Hans and everyone --
>
> I can't resist responding to this new piece of the thread. I think about
> how to better teach designers, well, user-centered designers, all the
> time. How does one create opportunities for graduate design
> students to encounter and think about these multi-faceted aspects of what
> they do?
>
> So far, I am increasingly convinced that I can't do it through traditional
> course formats. Instead, I believe am most successful sharing what I
> know and learning way more about what I don't know from designers with
> three kinds of courses. This is in addition to one-on-one
> discussions. I use 1) project-based, interdisciplinary "courses" with
> definite design deliverables and a client, 2) courses that are field-based
> and for designers (and me) only, where there is a theoretical deliverable
> but the research process and specific research skills are the focus and
> there is no "client," and 3) film courses, where the films substitute for
> the ethnographic field and the goal is to read about and then apply useful
> (sociological) concepts and analytical frameworks to "the field."
>
> The key to each of these nontraditional formats is that we experience them
> together. In the first case, we are all team members on the project, in
> the field together and in the joint classroom meetings where we are
> further discussing and analyzing what we saw. In the second case, we are
> all present for the lecture/discussion of the day and then in the field
> together right after, watching the same stuff in front of us. (This is
> the aquarium/zoo-based observation skills course I discussed in La
> Clusaz.) In the third case, we all do the same readings/homework, all
> watch the same popular (usually blockbuster) films together, and then all
> discuss what we saw, either stop-starting our way through the film or, as
> skills increase, reserving discussion for afterwards. (I have two courses
> developed in this vein now, "Gender and Work," and "Privacy," the
> latter to complement my current Intel-funded research on the subject.)
>
> By experiencing all this stuff together, it reminds me to mention all
> kinds of books, theories, concepts, techniques, and kinds of evidence that
> I might not think of including in a classic lecture. Also, it is somehow
> a more natural way of learning -- and of demonstrating why it is so
> important to do your homework before thinking you can understand what real
> people are doing and why. The subsequent designs stem from a meta
> understanding of what's going on, that not only result in design that is
> more likely to be "right," but also knowledge that transcends a particular
> project. And, just as important, it takes me to new places of thinking
> and doing, as the graduate designers create the dialog with me around what
> we are experiencing together.
>
> Plus, it is just way more fun to fulfill my course load requirement like
> this!
>
> I would like to hear more about what others are doing regarding the
> execution of course material that they think has been pedagogically
> successful in creating important encounters for their
> graduate/undergraduate design students. I see much more about curriculum,
> rather than its actual execution at point of contact.
>
> Kari-Hans?
>
> Cheers, everyone!
>
> Christena Nippert-Eng, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor of Sociology
> Illinois Institute of Technology
> 312-567-6812 (phone)
> 773-288-4712 (fax)
>
> > Coming back to the design education and research - it is a great
> > challenge to try to design such education that helps students to grow
> > into this kind of thinking. And the doctorate should, in my opinion,
> > be a way to dig deep into the issues such as "making sense",
> > "judgement", "values", "responsibility", "want/need",
> > "desirable/undesirable", etc. and how to approach them within diverse
> > fields of life. How to so that in a scientific (and meaningful in a
> > design context!*) way, I have no idea...maybe someone has! But these
> > kinds of things MUST be available to a doctoral student as subjects
> > of research. Therefore, I think "designerly ways" must be available
> > and legitimate methods to them in their doctoral research - and will
> > in that also be further developed.
> >
> > This kind of design research could produce a lot of helpful insight
> > and more useful ways of working that actually help designers anywhere
> > to overcome the "overwhelming" and "paralysis" that Eric talks about,
> > and be able to "make sense" better, in order to design better. And if
> > design research can't help designers, design and society in this (and
> > other things of this nature), what is it worth?
> >
>
>
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