Shared understandings.

Ken, thank you for your introduction and thanks for asking me to take
part in this on-line conference.

Michael, I hope you don’t mind me addressing you in the first person as
opposed to the third. I feel that one of the qualities of this list,
even though we are dealing with an on-line conference, is the informal
nature of the discussions.

I’ve pondered a while on your contribution, trying to find a way in,
but I must admit, the longer I read what you’ve written the more I can
see the complexity of what you have to say. I think the reason is that
you have managed to lift the concept of design education and its
ramifications out of the narrow sphere of producing design solutions to
a level that considers the flow and dynamics of collaboration with
others and the interactions of “shared understandings”.

Your introduction to this fifth session is literally peppered with
ideas and approaches that I’d like to take up. I’ll try and stick to a
few, whilst at the same time introducing a few thoughts from previous
contributions, notably Keith Russel, Charles Burnette and Linda Drew.

As I read your post, you discuss how the UCI’s proposals “create a
space” where “issues” and “questions... can come to the forefront” and
that these can effect the interaction of attitudes and educational
approaches towards both design and the university as a whole.

You quote Prof MP Ranjan: “industry calls the shots in design training
at least in the past. Our research found that some areas of industry
are beginning to see the benefits of “theory” or “research” in design,
mostly as an engine for innovation...”

And you continue:
“I really think the primary benefit of a School of Design at the
university will derive from its capacity to generate new forms of
knowledge that are presently unknown, or at least unappreciated. 
Design seems not only to allow, but to actually require collaboration
across disciplinary boundaries, so it can serve as a nexus that unites
disparate areas of the university, and that in itself will create more
opportunities for interdisciplinary work...
The connection between Arts and Engineering is usually invoked as a
foundation for design programs, but in the proposal we argue that
binary model is very misleading and really constricts the more
pervasive influence design can have in bringing together fields of
management and business (both as professional and as academic fields),
computer science, social sciences, and the humanities. ”

And finally:
...”The integrative power of design as a conceptual process should be
an object of knowledge in itself ...(One member of our UCI faculty, a
distinguished expert in decision theory, told us that the articulation
of this aspect of the design process could be a genuinely new
contribution to the understanding of how human beings deal with complex
decisions as part of their interaction with the material world.  That
is an example of what I mean by the potential for design to contribute
new knowledge beyond the customary limits of the field.)

I could go on displaying your thoughts as the string of pearls they are
and with regard to the concept of cross discilinary contributions to
design thinking and education, I think your post puts to shame the
notion that it is only so-called “real designers" who can relate to
and articulate design issues.

Just to put my thoughts into context, I would like to refer to the last
few days I’ve had at the local design school. I’ve been censor for
interactive media graduates who’ve been presenting thier recent work
sfor clearance to take their final graduation projects. Those students,
dealing with “real life projects with local companies”, who had
collaborated with other students from the local business and marketing
department of the local university presented projects that clearly
indicated an understanding and grasp of a much broader range of issues
and a discovery of values that even the host company had not
considered. The students concerned were very taken up with the fact
that their main contribution to the companies concerned was an
interactive product.
They failed to realise that their presence in and interaction with the
company players had enabled the compay to identify a range of “soft
values” that were vital for the company’s network and communication to
the rest of the world. The company concerned was a freight company.
They (the students) also failed to understand the difference between
“presenting” a concept to a company, to that of inviting company
players to take part in collaborative design activities, which would
allow the company to also identify areas of concern, stake a claim to
the process and thereby engender a sense of identificaction with and
ownership of the final result.

I would like to challenge the notion that it is industry that calls the
“qualified shots”. It could well be that they “call the shots”, but
generally speaking - in design terms and in my experience - the shots
are of yesterday. Here I feel we have a clear indication of the value
of design students being educated in a research environment that
grounds its research practice in an appreciation of industry’s practice
and concerns, yet moves forward to indicate richer possibilities.
If this were to be the basis for a design education, then I feel that
well educated and innovative design students will be those that
introduce new practice and methods to industry. By taking the
initiative in this way, one can consider a design education that is not
continually trying to ape the so called “real world practice”, but an
eduaction that asks the students to take part in the development of new
collaborative practice and design methods that they can then introduce
and share with industry. The graduates will be the innovators, and will
fulfill their role of contributing to industry and of expressing the
innovative design research of the eduactional institutions they come
from.
Unfortunately I think the potential of a post to this conference has
been overlooked. Unfortunate, because I think Linda Drew identified,
what to my mind, is one of the main aspects that new design thinking
can contribute to industry, namely the whole concept of collaborative
practice and context oriented learning. Linda also quotes Charles
Burnette, who touches on the “how” of helping students understand and
articulate their own process and design thinking.

Session 3: Drew -- Commentary on Burnette and Mazumdar
Date: December 1, 2003
“...Chuck also refers to this as an issue for design schools:

‘We are only beginning to begin to look at the cognitive processes
involved in design and schools must begin to articulate and
scientifically, philosophically and humanistically explore what is
involved…
Learning to practice, whether in design school or simulated settings is
seen as a move towards full participation in a community of practice
(Lave and Wenger 1991; Lave 1993). That move to full participation
takes place by engaging in ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ which
is taking part in the authentic activities of the practice albeit with
guidance and at the edges of the practice community. These views
emphasise social practice as a premise for learning and that ‘knowing
in practice’ arises from participation in that social practice
(Billett 1998)...”

Michael, you mention how a decision theory expert focuses on the need
to articulate the “integrative power of design... and that it could be
a genuinely new contribution to the understanding of how human beings
deal with complex decisions as part of their inteaction with the
material world”.

This is music to my ears. My belief is that the issues of context
oriented learning, related to professional and collaborative design
practice - design learning - is and will continue to be a core area or
fulcrum of design research. And which, if duly considered and
understood, will contribute to allowing others than those with a
specific design eduaction to play a major role in any collaborative
design practice.

As with the pre-graduation students mentioned above, the ability to
actively engage a wide range of people in any collaborative design
solution, both users and company players is crucial for the development
of products that a company can both identify with and feel a sense of
ownership for and which can fulfill the needs of a product’s users.

A rich understanding of these processes of collaborative “decision
making”, or interactions, will also reveal that the process of
identifying values that are to be embedded into the product, will also
cultivate and establish a series of “soft values” of inestimable
importance to any company and those working or affiliated with that
company.

Keith Russell, in one of his posts to this conference, indicated a need
to identify a fulcrum around which the academic discipline of design
could rotate.
I wonder if the concept of the very human area of collaborative design
interactions, acting as a driver for design research, that could then
be introduced to industry via graduates, could serve as one fulcrum.
Just getting people together does not constitute a fulcrum, yet
understanding the interactions and sense of a “design process rugby
scrum” could well be rewarding.

On-line conference: Session 2: Keith Russell Response to Lorraine
Justice
Date: November 21, 2003
“...Design, as an academic domain, lacks the justification of a
discipline. In its efforts to secure political recognition, it keeps
putting up weak examples that do their job, at the political level but
fail at the intellectual level. The Tufte one, of why the Shuttle
should not have taken off, has the same failure at its core. Design may
well have its lever (economics - hence the China example of 400
schools) and it may well have its load (making everything different)
but it lacks, at the level of an academic discipline, a fulcrum.
Getting lots of diverse people together does not constitute a fulcrum
(more like a rugby scrum)...”

Michael, you mention in your post that:
“The resistance has come primarily from some faculty who simply are not
convinced that design is really a field of research, and /or they feel
that design lacks scientific/academic rigour...”

This makes me want to finish on a lighter note, by way of a short
anecdote from two spectators at a rugby match. Suffice it to say, those
concerned didn’t understand the rules.
Someone held onto the ball after being tackled. The whistle was blown
and the forwards crouched down to form the scrum. The scrum-half was
about to pass the ball into the scrum, when there was a loud remark:
“What are they doing? Are they trying to find something they’ve lost”?

Thanks for listening.

Best regards from an ex scrum-half.

Chris.

-------------

from:

Chris Heape
Senior Researcher - Design Didactics / Design Practice
Mads Clausen Institute
University of Southern Denmark
Sønderborg
Denmark

http://www.mci.sdu.dk

Work @ MCI:
tel: +45 6550 1671
e.mail: chris @mci.sdu.dk

Work @ Home:
tel +45 2620 0385
e.mail: [log in to unmask]