I would like to thank Ken both for his work on this conference and his very 
much appreciated introduction. I think this forum has given all of us the 
opportunity to look at design education from a broader perspective, one 
that moves outside of our own particular area of expertise. As a 
communication designer and rhetor, interested in expanding the usefulness 
and uses of visual/verbal forms, I am grateful for the opportunity to think 
more carefully about design writ large.

Dr. Clark eloquently summarized the nature of design from a broad vantage 
point as having a "syncretic element" that "helps define design as an 
academic field and distinguishes it from other fields of expertise." He 
also stated, "[t]he integrative power of design as a conceptual process 
should be an object of knowledge in itself...."

These observations have encouraged me to feel bound me to practices in 
design that I had never felt as connected to before. His perspective 
encourages inclusion between research and practice -- the collaboration of 
business with academia. I find myself caught up in the possibilities he 
encourages. But I also see a potential for problems in the development of 
that inclusiveness, which I believe could result from the very research 
that will forward our field.

Dr. Clark talks about the design school's, "capacity to generate new forms 
of knowledge that are presently unknown, or at least unappreciated."

I completely agree with this statement. I want to contribute to those new 
forms. But in order to optimize the opportunity for design practice, 
education, and research to benefit from these new forms of knowledge, we 
must consider the cognitive cost they will bring. Design research will not 
just add knowledge, I believe it will produce radically new knowledge, the 
type that requires the learner to change his or her context of 
understanding (Petrie, 1979). As that radically new knowledge moves from 
the research journal to design practice, it will be even more important for 
practice and research to find ties to one another because radically new 
knowledge is not easy to assimilate.

Eddie Harmon-Jones states that cognitions can be broadly defined as "action 
tendencies" (1999, p. 93). When we encounter radically new knowledge we 
find that "effective and uncontested action" (93) has to stop until we can 
absorb the new knowledge and understand its usefulness. That is a difficult 
moment. So, this radically new knowledge we all want and all believe will 
change our field could also lead to even more fracturing between related 
design professions because dissonant information can result in negative 
emotions. (Harmon-Jones, 1999) According to Harmon-Jones, those negative 
emotions arise because it is cognitively difficult to halt action in order 
to consider the radically new.

If I believe the world is flat, it is a big leap to begin thinking about it 
as round.

I offer up this observation only because I have begun, through this 
conference, to care more about the integration of these four design areas 
in terms of research and practice. Because radically new knowledge can be 
fracturing, we must be ready for it. We must find the ties between practice 
and research, between product and print that pull us together, so that as 
we discover the radically new, we will also understand the value of 
stopping uncontested, and "seemingly" effective action, in order to 
consider the value of the new.

How this begins is an area for speculation, but I wonder if it will not 
have some element in core readings concerning particular theories and core 
observations concerning particular practices and products that hold all of 
us together. I believe we must find those readings and observations and 
encourage their inclusion in all schools of design, not just this emerging 
new school.

As a rhetor, I was first exposed to Aristotle's "Rhetoric." There is 
probably no one in rhetoric, no matter what their specific area of 
expertise, who is not familiar with that text. I have found anecdotally 
that when rhetors encounter useful radically new knowledge in that 
discipline, they also have problems with it. They may unfortunately dismiss 
it. But the core that holds them together may also keep them from 
fracturing so easily.

While we have considered this question of fracturing in different forms 
throughout this conference, I think the issue must be addressed from a 
different angle. As the process of discovering the radically new unfolds in 
research and business institutions, and radically new knowledge forces us 
to reconsider our contexts of understanding, what specific core will help 
to hold our areas of expertise together even if radically new knowledge 
does contribute to fracturing? Are there perspectives from Dr. Clark's 
presentation or from others in this conference which should form a part of 
that core?

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to contribute.

Susan

Petrie, Hugh G. “Metaphor and Learning.” In Metaphor and Thought, edited by 
Andrew Ortony, 438-61. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 
1979.