Dear Gunnar,

Your questions are fair. They deserve answers, and answers are
available. While weak PhD programs fail to benefit design practice or
design education, strong programs offer serious benefit.

The situation at the moment is that PhD programs in fields outside
design have done more than programs in design schools. Some of this
has to do with the fact that the training is better, and the research
yield of better trained researchers is therefore more useful.

Those who have worked with Judith Gregory, Bryan Byrne, Susan
Squires, Chris Nippert-Eng, Pelle Ehn, Dick Buchanan, Patrick
Reinmoeller, or Klaus Krippendorff have worked with researchers who
have earned PhD degrees in other fields, whose work has advanced both
design practice and design education. The list could be expanded
significantly.

Bryan and Susan are bringing out an important new book this winter
that discuss some of these issues in depth:

Byrne, Bryan and Susan E. Squires, editors. 2002. Creating
Breakthrough Ideas: The Collaboration of Anthropologists and
Designers in the Product Development Industry. Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Publishing Group. [in press]

While the questions are fair, it seems to me you have not yourself
looked deeply enough into the growing literature on the issues you
raise. There is a tendency for practicing designers to show
impatience with the endless reading that research seems to require.
To discuss these issues requires reading: that is the only way to
gather the ideas, issues, and empirical data accumulated by hundreds
of active scholars around the world. It was no joke when Dick
Buchanan asked what I do for a living and I answered that this is my
job.

There is a body of literature that explores the issue of how research
benefits both practice and education. This is true in design and in
other fields. I'll once again make the offer I have made before.
Anyone wishing copies of two articles on these issues in the larger
context of design research and design practice should drop me a note
and I'll send them over. The articles are cover the themes, "Creating
design knowledge" and "Design science and design education."

There is one issue that can be addressed in a fairly concise way, however.

You ask, "Let us posit for a moment that we collectively control the
fate of graphic design programs in the US and are faced with the
question of whether we will accept a design Ph.D as the highest
degree in that field."

The Ph.D. has NEVER been proposed as the highest degree award in the
practice of graphic design. The College Art Association is on record
that the MFA in graphic design practice is the highest degree in the
profession, and many of us on this list agree with that.

The Ph.D., in contrast, IS and should be the highest degree awarded
in design research, whether research in graphic design or other
areas. The nature of research means that this is a broad degree that
comes to a sharp and focused point at the end, not the beginning.
Those who teach both studio and research courses require both
backgrounds in a dual-track education.

Where some of us find the issue a bit irritating is the number of
people with professional training and studio degrees, yet no research
training, and no obvious skill at research, declaring that at MFA and
professional experience is the equivalent of a PhD in research
training. It is not, and many of the disasters of design arise from
incompetent research projects and incompetent conclusions drawn from
research by perfectly skoilled practicing designers who do not
understand research issues. This is also considered -- with examples
-- in the two articles.

--


Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Knowledge Management
Norwegian School of Management

Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
School of Art and Design
Staffordshire University

Home office

Byvaegen 13
S-24012 Torna Haellestad
Sweden

+46 (46) 53.245 Telephone
+46 (46) 53.345 Telefax

email: [log in to unmask]