Dear Sanjoy, Kari-Hans, Carma, Michael (Hohl) and others

thank you for your posts. i would like to take the approach Kari-Hans has
recommended for our discussion on who 'should' be teaching design practice and
design reflection+articulation. in brief, it is an idealized discourse, in
which we momentarily suspend all the practical constraints we all most face in
real life. and use it as a guide to make decisions when it comes to real
hiring for which many compromises will be made.

thus i comment on the first half of Sanjoy's comments and leave the second
half for another occasion for which i love to return. as far as i can see, the
second half is a problem that requires some creative solutions.

(the first half)

>  Questions have been raised about what kind of people would be
> doing the teaching (Christena).  This is a hard question to answer, though
> there is a pat answer: good people. There are many questions:  What are we
> asking about?  Qualifications & training?  Experience?  Past
> record?  Innovativeness in idea generation?  What they will teach?  Who
> they will teach?  Will they be doers, thinkers, researchers,
> motivators?  How will they teach (Rosan, Carma and Michael's points)?  The
> answer is that we would like all of these, and have made provision for them
> in the SoD proposal.

(the second half)

> But there still remains the question of how to find
> such people, and how to ensure that they will continue to do what they
> promise.  Some things will have to work out later, but the selection of the
> people is without doubt a crucial component of the implementation.

as individuals, we all know that we cannot have everything. thus we set
priorities. so please allow me to reframe Sanjoy's comments: what are the most
important qualities in people who teach design practice and design
reflection/articulation, given the state of design practice, design education
and the world in general? (it is assumed on my part that these qualities will
be passed on to the future generations of design students/designers. so it is
a matter that carries serious implications).

this question carries us to slippery ground, to the matter of character,
ideology (thanks MP Ranyan), and ethics (thanks Jan, Lorraine) which i don't
think we can all agree. in this light, i would like to put the concept of
kindness on the table for yet another consideration.

i have, in a paper presented at the 5th EAD conference this year, attempted to
bring 'kindness' into our design discourse and hopefully eventually makes its
way into practice. In this essay, I reflect on some neglected aspects in the
discourse on design for needs (DfN). Based on Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of
basic needs and Erik Erikson’s notion of identity crisis, I claim that people
in need include designers ourselves. We have a need for a coherent identity
and design for people in need can address our own need. Having pointed out
that, I stress that satisfying our own need is a consequence not a purpose for
DfN. Using William Hamrick’s philosophy of kindness, instead of following the
current discourse driven by an ethics of duty, I suggest that kindness can be
a purpose.

Given the complexity of the subject matter and the concepts involved, my
attempt to bring up the notion of kindness as a purpose for DfN is a very
crude one. Knowing that, why do I dare? I feel strongly that kindness is a key
to genuine changes in the practice of design. I must rely on my own intuition
to direct my inquiry.

everything being equal, if i had to choose between a very creative/innovative
but less kind design teacher and a very kind design teacher but less
creative/innovative, i would choose the latter.

my humble opinions. rosan

Chow, Rosan. "Kindness. A Purpose of Design." 5th European Academy of Design
Conference : Techné, Design Wisdom (Barcelona, 28 Apr-30 Apr).

Hamrick, William S. 2002. Kindness and the Good Society - Connections of the
Hearts. Albany: State University of New York Press.

--
Rosan Chow
Female Doctoral Student
University of Arts Braunschweig, Germany