Rosan Chow: On Kindness - Comments by M P Ranjan

Dear Rosan

Once you accept that values and attitudes form a basis for the
performance of a design and in particular the good performance from a
design teacher, we can see the need for all kinds of softer attributes
including kindness to and absence of selfishness in terms of their
willingness to share 'IPR' to come into play in all their interactions
with their students and their user groups in the performance of their
design tasks. In my model of the "Emerging Designer" that I have been
using for many years in my class to develop an understanding of the
profile of a designer (a new kind of designer)in my students' mind, I
have a model based on a tetrahedron as seen in plan view – as a triangle
with three nodes at the base and the node seen inside, that is the
top/apex node, which is the apex of the tetrahedron. (difficult to put
in words that which is so simple as a diagram, however I shall try to
make it clear) (see Bucky Fuller..for tetrahedrons in many orientations)

The three base nodes represent "Knowledge" i.e.. the ability to find and
know, the second is "Thinking" i.e.. the ability to process concepts and
images as in imagination and cognitive modelling, and the third is
"Action" i.e. the ability to act and do or make which includes skills
and negotiation and transactional abilities with materials and with
other people and the fourth node is "Values" i.e. to do with feeling and
sensing and discriminating with empathy, and in my view the word empathy
has a very significant role in design feeling, taking anothers point of
view with tolerance etc. The node in the centre is perhaps the most
important one for education but I do not know how many curricula state
this as its key objective. In a world heading towards a greater need for
ecological sustainability and social equity in a globalised arena, these
qualities may be the only ones that would perhaps inform and help
discriminate (even intuitively) those extremely complex issues that we
will be faced with as designers and design teachers. So your search for
kindness is not misplaced and I do agree that we will need to look
deeply into these qualities over and above the ones that help us
maintain a practical domain of action in economic and social and
functional terms.

This model was developed to help my students understand themselves in
terms of these four key attributes and as a basis for a group assignment
when from a class of 30 students (now 60 students) we were able to make
six or eight groups who would go out into the city of Ahmedabad and
interview local designers, each group meeting designers from one
discipline and they were required to represent their findings on these
four attributes in a composite model about the chosen discipline,
usually richly illustrated with images typical of the tools and
materials used in each respective discipline. Such an exposure we found
brought a sense of humility and understanding of their own interest or
highlighted their dislikes, and it helped them form an idea of a role
model for their own future career orientation. We have tried this out
with our students for more that ten years now and each time we sense
that the students come back enriched with a sense of conviction about
the discipline of design and of their own place in that space. I have
explained this model at length since I see a similarity to the notion of
kindness that needs to be at the heart of every effective teacher and I
would like to offer the term "empathy" as another way of looking at the
same or similar quality that you perhaps have in mind.

with warm regards

M P Ranjan
from my office at NID
10 December 2003 at 11.30 pm IST

Rosan Chow wrote:
> 
> Dear Sanjoy, Kari-Hans, Carma, Michael (Hohl) and others
> 
<snip>
> 
> 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 > keyto 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