Hi everyone --

Woo-hoo!  This is getting exciting.

Okay, Maria, this is the point where, if we were at a physical, real-time conference here in the U.S., I would try to buy you what would probably be the most expensive cup of coffee from your own country that both of us have ever had (Starbucks logos on paper cups intimating exorbitant prices for Columbia’s best -- and really, really lousy service to boot.)  But even in this much cheaper forum, I can still say that if you are ever in Chicago again, you absolutely must look me up!  That goes for anyone else on the list who finds themselves here in town for some reason and who wants to have a proper chat.  I’d be delighted.

I would like to respond to Maria and others with the following thoughts.

The UCI proposal is a perfect opportunity to think seriously about the idea of comparative design – perhaps even a required (!) exchange or field research component.  This could be an elective-type survey course, it could be a one semester exchange program, it could be an entire master’s track, and/or it could be a piece of the requirements for a doctoral degree (much more useful than a language requirement, I think.)  I am talking about, in its ideal form, a mentored experience in another cultural location in which a design student would work as a designer on a project or set of projects with a local, native designer in order to learn more about the profession and the skills it requires.  This should not be perceived as a matter of philanthropy (let’s send wealthy country designers to go help out the poor folks.)  Rather, it should be seen as good and necessary training for the kinds of designers Ranjan and the rest of us are talking about:

“…we are indeed looking at a new form of design that is being invented as we speak, that will need to have humility and behaviourial attributes in the designer that can enable team think and team work, quite unlike the design of the old order where individual brilliance was celeberated by museum exhibits of objects as works of art or by design journals showcasing individual designers as super-stars!”

Such a component would not be just an opportunity to learn more about team think and team work but to do so with and for colleagues around the world, in the least fashionable places as well as the most.

I am off again to the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy soon in order to lecture and meet with students about their research projects.  The last time I was there, I taught a one-week course on “privacy.”  I learned more about the embeddedness of this concept in one week with students from, like, 11 different countries, than I have in all the reading I’ve done on the topic in the last five years.  It leaves me practically salivating at the idea of taking Alladi’s already remarkable list of collaborators and throwing a similar diversity of economically developed and developing nationalities at it.  

Here’s the sort of thing I’m talking about.  When I first joined my current institution, I discovered that IIT civil engineering department hosts a bridge-building contest each year.  Having experienced, read, thought and written about bridges for some time, I was quite interested in this event.  Well, it wasn’t as interesting as I thought.  They build these models and then a prize is awarded to the bridge builders whose model holds the most weight before collapsing.  

This is an important and fun lesson for an engineer, of course, but it’s not really making the most of an even greater learning opportunity.  Where, for instance, was the anthropology of bridge design here?  

Where was the background work in reviewing bridges, construction materials and techniques throughout history, across the world?  What if you have to build your bridge from native, locally available materials in, say the Amazon?  What if you didn’t have electricity available to you for the entire project, from being forced to actually hand-draw any ideas during the day (I’ve forgotten how to use a slide-rule, but I once knew how, that’s how old I am) to keeping yourself warm/cool, provide meals for your labor, haul in materials, work them together, etc., etc.  What if its cost could not exceed $100 US?  

It was about the same time that I learned about this contest that I heard of tragedy striking in Seoul, Korea:  a large commuter bridge collapsed and many were killed.  Commentary on the public radio station included a discussion of the lack of bridge-inspection programs around the world.  Holy cow, I thought, how would THAT change the nature of bridge design, and the boundaries of a design engineering firm’s responsibility?  

And where in the contest format was the discussion of use behavior and how that might change your design, especially when certain use-patterns are associated with different locations around the world?  Okay, these contest models aren’t really to be used, but it doesn’t mean you can’t talk about it.  The famous opening of the Millenium bridge in London comes to mind.  If I remember various newspaper reports correctly, it hit a resonance at its grand opening/dedication ceremony that scared the heck out of people and resulted in its immediate closure.  The designers tried to attribute it to – I’m serious – people using the bridge inappropriately.  I read accounts of interviews with the heads of the firm.  There were too many people, walking too quickly, they said, that’s why this happened.  It wasn’t a flaw in the design, in other words, it was a flaw in the people using it.  Well, shouldn't the anticipated use of the bridge affect its initial design?  What if it were burrows, 
children, and adults using it, but no cars?  Tanks, but no foot traffic?  Toddler and silverback gorillas?  (I can't help it -- I teach a course on observation at an aquarium and a zoo and students design for these kinds of habitat dwellers, too.)

So many of our students are from other parts of the world and all they are taught is how to do whatever it is here, in the US, according to our expectations and resources.   This leaves them taking so many things for granted and being so uninformed about the beauty of design, it cannot be right.

This would undoubtedly address Francois-Xavier’s lovely sentiment:  “Upon reading Maria F. Camacho's presentation, on one hand, and in consideration of the proposed innovative UCI School of Design curriculum, on the other hand, one is left to wonder how those fresh, new breed of professionals, nationals and/or aliens, may work to 
alleviate or, even better, reverse the trend of so many hopeless situations as briefly reported by Maria. Would there realistically be a slight way the proposed UCI School of Design could contribute to make a difference from the present?”

Again, though, I don't think this should be thought of as a philanthropic exercise.  First of all, it could provide an essential component of students’ training.  But secondly, in my experience, any time a relationship begins with the idea that “I am here to help you” instead of “we are here to help each other,” it is destined to fall apart.  Reciprocation is essential for healthy working relationships (as well as others.)  The focus of what I have in mind would be on real work, real training, and insights that are shared between foreign hosts and UCI students (wouldn’t it be lovely if faculty could do this, too,) – via academic or practice-based mentors in other parts of the world.

The point would be not only to help foster the global community of the design profession, but that students could learn so much about user-centeredness and the cultural context of design, they’d be thinking this way for the rest of their lives without even realizing it.

The most exciting work I’ve heard presented by and for designers in the last three years assumes such a mentality.  Perhaps Maria has shown us a way to help produce it.

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