I am simply impressed by the extraordinary erudition and deep insights
that Christena's (may I use the first name?) comments have carried.  She
has simply gone beyond the issues that I have raised and introduced many
elements that I am happy to be exposed to.  

First of all, I must confess that I am sort of new to the design game
and an amateur compared to many others who have figured in these
exchanges and who have considerable formal training in this area.  I
defer to you for all the wisdom. I am in an applied field of Consumer
Research where I study users' reactions to the aesthetics and the
functionalities of new technologies as well as everyday products
including facial creams to living room furniture.  Typically, I enter
the picture after the fact, that is, after the product has been produced
and introduced into the market.  Only recently, have I  begun to delve
into design issues as a natural extension of my work.  

I just finished a paper with one my former students on "Consumer as an
Aesthetic Subject." As a former ballet dancer (semi-professional) she
brought in some insights having to do with performative aspects of
consumption-peformativity understood both literally and rhetorically.
Another student from Sweden, currently at Stockholm University, is doing
an in-depth study of 10 Swedish companies about their design
philopsophies on which is based our abstract which I submitted. She is
trained in art history and aesthetic philosophy. Another student is
looking at design issues concerning video games for children. Her
background is in development psychology. She is looking at design issues
cross-culturally. I myself am involved in a project that is aimed at the
devlopment of a Family Portal, which is a user interface deigned  for
family use. Assisting me in this project are a visual (digital) artist
and a computer scientist. As you can see, I would be hard pressed to do
any meaningful research without the assistance my associates. I say all
this to show the interdisciplinary imperatives in design studies. I am
lucky that I have some researchers with varying backgrounds who are
coming together. From a design education point of view this illustartes
new challenges facing some of us. 

So much for an autobiographical note.

Thank you for yor attention.

alladi

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Christena Nippert-Eng
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 10:34 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Comments on Venkatesh


Greetings everyone, from Chicago!

I am just delighted to have been asked to join in this dialog, Ken.  And
I'll be sure to put a check in the mail for that far too generous
introduction.  You make me want to meet myself!

I have very much enjoyed a great deal of the dialog to date.  It is
especially lovely to hear from so many new voices, as well as some
treasured past acquaintances.  

And now we turn to Alladi.  

Well, if analogies to exquisite cuisines, fundamental skill sets,
knowledge cores, purposive practice and systems thinking aren't enough,
here we have Professor Venkatesh presenting us with yet another way of
thinking about design - and a school that should be prepared to embrace
it:  "design as a state of mind...viewed more as a collective attitude
and a way of thinking that contains a potential for constantly
generating new ideas which cannot be reduced merely to the notion of
style."

As a cognitive sociologist, of course I love this.  Design as a
mentality is a very juicy notion indeed if we think of it as a mentality
ready to manifest in countless more visible behaviors and artifacts.  It
fits nicely with a favorite analogy of my own:  good design is not
unlike coming up with the perfect gift for someone.  You take your
knowledge about 1) the recipient, 2) the resources you possess, 3) what
might be made, acquired, and/or imagined with them, and 4) the cultural
norms and expectations regarding exchange and value.  One then produces
with all of this (and by the appointed deadline) something special.
Something so special, in fact, that will delight, fulfill, and perhaps
even inspire the focus of your affection.  (It may even have a plethora
of secondary gifting effects, of course, largely unnoticed except by the
future inhabitants of the earth, say, or the individuals who produced
some of the ideas or materials or the item, itself, that you chose.)

The thing about a gift is that there are gifts and then there are gifts.
A purchased tie, a scarf, a pair of gloves, or slippers - these are
good, generic gifts, likely even to be used.  But, as a grown up, try
giving such a thing to your lover, your father, your mother, even your
child.  What does this say about your state of mind?  What is it likely
to induce in the recipient's?  There better be something very special
about such a thing indeed (e.g., handmade, a joking reference to a
shared experience, battery-heated for geriatric feminine feet) - or
else.  This gifting thing is a process with an acute awareness of the
past, present and future built into it and one that reveals at least as
much about the social relationships and priorities of our lives as
anything else.

More to the point, then, is the question of how one creates an
educational experience designed to support and encourage a profession
that is essentially about the mentality, the art (and craft and science
and philosophy) of making and giving wonderful gifts to people you may
have never met.  How does one, in fact, foster a certain designerly
state of mind in a couple of hundred undergraduate and graduate students
each year? 

Alladi's discussion of the feminization of computing within domestic
environments and "The Family Portal" intimate just how important it is
to get this right, and the rich possibilities of invention and
satisfaction that await those who apply themselves to the task.  In
particular, he asks, "what design ideologies are appropriate and how
does design as a state-of-mind converge with design as user experience?"
This certainly seems to summarize a great deal of the dialog we've had
in this conference so far.  And, fortunately, it draws us back to the
focus of the conference:  the UCI Design School proposal.

I am picky but wildly eclectic in my own research and teaching, finding
inspiration and discovery in the most unexpected places.  I hate
censorship of any kind, too.  This leaves me interested in but less
concerned with defining Design and The One Best Way to teach it, for
instance, or the proper relationship between philosophy and practice.  

I am more interested in elements of this proposal that are in fact, very
much about a designer's state of mind - or, better, a designer's dynamic
of mind.  Mentalities uniformly depend on the cultural, categorical
systems that one uses to make sense of the world.  Such conceptual,
classificatory schemas inform everything we see and experience.  To see
the world through one set of categorical boundaries is to see it
differently from someone who uses a different schema.  Becoming
"disciplined" is very much about learning and living through the
classification schema that defines membership in a particular social
group.  

Political conflict is frequently manifested in not only the definitions
of categories, but which classes of things will be added, subtracted,
and modified within an existing classificatory framework.  It may
sometimes emerge in conflict over which framework, itself, will be
assumed.  Creativity, on the other hand, may well be stimulated by the
same activity.  (e.g., Sanjoy's most enticing and entirely alien list -
to me -- of space-concepts.) 

One of the places this notion of design as a mentality takes us, then,
is to the importance of which categories, classification systems and
boundaries are embedded in the working assumptions of the Irvine
proposal.  The extent to which these enable new, frontier, on-the-edges
design is quite important.  

The decision to begin the school already firmly embedded in others'
traditional categories and classifications of design, i.e., the four
tracks, has some fairly predictable consequences for how students will
learn to think about design.  Sometimes, the most creative stuff happens
when you ignore pre-existing pigeonholes - or at least pick different
ones.  The categories we think with not only shape how we think, but
their job is often to preclude more from our thoughts than to include
within them.  This 4-track choice clearly constrains the designerly
states-of-mind and practices that may emerge within the school and
community.  A more amorphous, bacteria- and radiation-friendly kind of
ooze might have a very different outcome than what is proposed here.

The proposal's focus on hiring and inviting visits from faculty who are
"prominent" has interesting potential consequences, too.  A mix between
such folks and people who are just good to think with -- in new ways, no
matter how well-known they are yet -- may be more important.
"Prominent" people sometimes get that way because their success may be
predicated on a very narrow focus and the relentless pursuit of it.  (At
least in the Academy and within my realm of experience this has proven
true.)  One wonders if prominence is either sufficient or even necessary
for the success of this particular kind of endeavor.

In fact, if we really want to think about the kinds of individuals who
would be absolutely necessary to make such a school really succeed, what
should our list of adjectives/categories/classifications look like?
What kind of a designerly mentality should underlie the hiring decisions
for this school?

Well, number one, this school will not be well served by people who are
stuck on transmit.  It's not for the faint of heart, either.  It's not
for those whose lack of experience and maturity in life makes them
defensive and territorial (as a general rule/on most days.)  It would
not succeed if it were staffed by people who make decisions based on
fear, I believe.  Rather, the faculty for this hypothetical school must
have a mentality based in (dare I say it?) love, respect, service, and
making the circle ever wider - with regard to their and others'
disciplines, the school, the work, and all the people one would be
working with and for.  They need a generosity of the heart that leaves
them respecting what has come before and what might be yet to come.
They need a heart that seeks and supports the synergistic possibilities
that lay at the intersection of biography and discipline - the joyful
center of the spirit of learning that lies within all of us.

In short, this place will need to be staffed by real designers, with a
real designer's mentality, as I have come to know it.  It will demand
people whose love of imagining what might be takes them into places
where others would never dare to go.  I don't really care who currently
pays them, either, nor the route they took to get here.  I just know
that if Irvine is going to be what it wants to be, these are the folks
who need to end up there, so that they can teach others to be like this,
too.

I love the Irvine proposal.  To me, it is a wonderful step in the
direction of creating, in Tuan's sense, both a space (unlimited
possibilities, freedom) AND a place (the comfortable, the known, the
taken-for-granted) for amazing work.  Jay Melican, whose research is
featured prominently in the doctoral program section of the proposal, is
currently working with me as my post-doctoral fellow.  It is difficult
to describe the joy of finding someone like this to work with and the
really amazing things that we convince ourselves we have discovered each
day at the office.  That's what the Irvine thing should be about, I
think.  At least, this is how I have envisioned its possibilities ever
since I first heard about it at Nirmal Sethia's NSF symposium on
leadership in design and innovation that I attended, and where Chuck
Pelly presented the plan.  

This proposal is a labor of love and it would produce more of it.
Alladi, Sanjoy, Dick, Chuck, all the advisors - this is a HUGE amount of
work and vision.  We can only nit-pick at it now because they were brave
enough to put the prototype out there for us.  And now, I wonder if
there is anyone else out there who wants to talk about the kinds of
people it make take to make this thing really happen - create the kind
of mentality you would like to see in the future designers of the world?

Christena Nippert-Eng, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Sociology
Illinois Institute of Technology
312-567-6812 (office)