David,

Thanks for your good comments! I'd agree with 
most of them, but have a question about this one:

At 14:31 +0000 14.12.2003, David Durling wrote:
>On a related theme, occasionally people from non design backgrounds
>describe themselves as designers.  They base this upon having been
>involved in some way in the creation of an artefact or service.  They
>may be designers in some limited sense, but are certainly not designers
>in any professional working sense.  There is much more to being a
>professional designer than having an acquaintance with the body of
>knowledge and having dabbled at some level.
>
>One of the deep seated benefits of the traditional design training (and
>I do accept its limitations!!) is that it produces a particular way of
>seeing the world.  These acquired values, these ways of working
>sometimes intuitively or conjecturally, this comfort with ill defined
>problems or uncertain information, are all characteristics that may be
>special to traditional design.  They contribute to what has been called
>'designerly ways of knowing' (Cross 1982).  I sometimes feel that in
>the pursuit of systematic and methodical design, set within a
>scientific paradigm, these special ways of thinking may be lost.  I do
>however accept that there may be other ways of inculcating these
>desired values in design students.

Are you saying that a 'design background' and 
ability to develop and foster 'designerly ways of 
knowing' can only be acquired through 
institutional design education and training? (or 
is this just a wicked way of reading your 
text...?)

I feel that these are characteristics of 
designing, and that the institutional design 
ecucation is a programmed, more or less 
systematic and sometimes effective way to produce 
it, but definitely not the only way to get there.

Certainly people like Herbert Simon and Donald 
Schön seem to see design emanating from other 
sources as well....

I do agree with you that expertise and 
specialization make a difference, and there are 
many people who may have dabbled and may think 
they are designers but would not pass as such by 
my standards.

I am not trying to play sofist, I simply believe 
that there is so much 'design background' and 
'designerly knowing' out there in the world that 
design institutions do not have a clue of, and 
therefore have even less idea of how to 
incorporate it into their activities. I worry 
that if we see the design institutions as the 
only processes capable of producing designers, we 
may not be able to renew the institutions with 
help from the expertise that exists elsewhere.

And the reason why this is important right now is 
that we should at this point in time pay very 
special attention to where design is happening 
and how, in the world at large, to increase the 
relevance of design in a global, societal scale, 
and to seek the place for design institutions and 
'educated' designers also in the design processes 
that they do not understand too well at this 
point in history.

Did I misinterpret or exaggerate your point?

best, kh