Dear Colleagues,
"Sing to me of the man, Muse,
The man of twists and turns Š"
My American Odyssey is over and I am once again home in Sweden. Alas,
jet lag has hit me worse this way than the other, so I am missing the
Bollywood party where my friends and colleagues at Denmark's Design
School are celebrating the season. This is too bad, but it may not be
all bad. After seeing digital images of Thomas Rasmussen's outfit, I
am not sure that I would have survived a close encounter of the first
kind.
This note is your invitation to join G K van Patter and me in
generating 1000 challenges for the UCI School of Design in the next
24 hours.
The project description appears below.
Please list YOUR challenges for the School of Design at the
University of California. We will gather them and present them to the
school. When they are compiled, we will include the challenges in our
conference proceedings, and post them to PhD-Design.
Writing up my closing notes from an endless plane ride is interrupted
every few hours when I fall asleep. If I can stay awake - and alive -
long enough to finish, I will be back in a few hours with my closing
statement.
In the meantime, we invite you to generate challenges and post them
to the special email address we have established at:
[log in to unmask]
Best regards,
Ken
p.s. When I emerged from the Oeresundtaag at Svaagertorp, my dog
Jacob recognized me. My wife Ditte still isn't sure.
THE 1000 CHALLENGES IN 24 HOURS PROJECT
Here is your opportunity to influence the direction of the new design
school in Irvine.
OBJECTIVE
Our objective is to generate as many "Design in the University"
related challenges as possible in the next 24 hours. If each person
on the list sends just one challenge, we will more than reach our
goal of gathering 1000 challenges.
In this exercise, we consider the Irvine proposal as a first draft
and not a final, fully baked solution. We have one final chance in
the next 24 hours to influence its focus and alter its trajectory.
Consider this conference a fact-finding exercise. Based on what we
discovered and learned from each other, we want to make a divergent
list of challenges for the University of California Irvine to
consider before launching the new school on the model depicted in
their proposal.
It is time now to do some focused idea generation work without
judging each other.
After you generate your ideas, please send them to:
[log in to unmask]
OUR BASIC PROCESS (Where are we?)
1. Formulate Challenges
Identify Fuzzy Situation (Irvine Study was here/Conference started here)
Conduct Fact Finding (Conference dialogue was here)
>>>> Diverge/Generate Specific Challenges
>>>> WE ARE NOW HERE!
Organize Challenges into Categories (Irvine Team to do this later)
Converge on Selected Challenges (Irvine Team to do this later)
2. Formulate Solutions (Irvine Team to do this later)
3. Implement Solutions (Irvine Team to do this later)
BASIC GUIDELINES
Challenges are questions that will later be addressed with possible
solutions. (See examples below)
All submitted challenges will be considered anonymous.
No challenge will be connected back to any particular contributor.
Frame issues, suggestions, and input in common language challenge
form. (See examples below)
Try to avoid intertribal language that might not be clear to
neighboring tribes.
We are diverging on challenges. That means we defer judgment!
Diverge Means
- Ideate
- No Judgment
- No Logic
- WIDEN
- Quantity
- Imaginative
- Free
- Gut
- Child
Later the Irvine team will do some categorizing and converging on the
challenges generated.
Converge Means
- Evaluate
- Yes Judgment
- Yes Logic
- NARROW
- Quality
- Judgmental
- Disciplined Intellect
- Adult
EXAMPLE CHALLENGES
How might we (UC Irvine)
assure that our new design program ideas are grounded in the
realities of today's marketplace?
make sure that our new program is focused in the future?
create a new kind of design school that embraces cross-disciplinary learning?
create a new design school where all faculty members are trained in
cross-disciplinary team dynamics?
create a new school of design that has one common language of
innovation spanning all disciplines?
become a model for how new schools of design are created?
link research and practice effectively?
ensure that our approach to design education serves all the
stakeholders we should serve?
make sure that we deliver on our promises to our students?
develop a new school focused on educating and training future design leaders?
PLEASE DO NOT POST YOUR CHALLENGES TO THE LIST.
We have set up a special gathering system at the Denmark Design
School for this purpose.
Please send your challenges directly to this email address
[log in to unmask]
Thanks to all for the many great contributions to this conference!
-- G K VanPatter and Ken Friedman
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