Session 5: Closing remarks and some…part 1- M P Ranjan

As the online conference winds to its close I choose to look back at all
the submissions and add a few notes to the comments and issues that
touch me the most as a designer, a design teacher and finally a design
researcher with the privilege of having a last word in this (session) at
this august gathering of over 1200 design scholars.

When Ken introduced the online conference on “Design in the University”
on the 14th of November with his welcome post I realised that Design had
come of age, at least having got past the toddlers stage when compared
to the well-established disciplines of the languages and that of the
sciences. We had a group of visionary scholars looking at the future of
design and it felt good to be part of this process. While reading his
review of the School of Design proposal a thought crossed my mind that I
did not post immediately. This thought was that perhaps Universities
need Design in more ways than one for the integration of knowledge and
for building bridges of SYNTHESIS between the vast array of
specialisations and bodies of expertise that have been developed over
the centuries of existence of these Universities. This was a reflection
of the trend in so many disciplines to specialise and subdivide
particularly in the research traditions of Universities notwithstanding
the various attempts to do cross-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary or
multi-disciplinary approaches to solve the need for integration of
knowledge that was available to us.

Further down in his review his comment on the four specialisations to be
offered at the UCI Irvine left me puzzled about the lack of Graphic and
Communications as one of the core disciplines at the school. There has
been much debate on this matter through numerous posts in the conference
and I still feel that this may be an area for review and resolution in
the days ahead.

Professor Richard Taylor in his opening post raised the issue of
ownership of design and offered a suggestion that we search for bridge
building materials in “boundary people” and “boundary objects” and this
is a wonderful concept to search for in a world that seems to value
subject experts with deep and penetrating knowledge in a small area
rather than such boundary people who could bring together various
threads of knowledge to solve vexing problems that seem to defy
solution. However his mention of “The Science of Design” had my guard up
immediately with a reaction that “Design is not a Science”. This is
another matter that will need to be resolved at a future date. The issue
is not whether it is one or the other, but in my mind these are
different classes of activities, all of which are needed and cannot be
substituted one for the other. Design borrows heavily from all known
disciplines as the context emerges and this to me is the very nature of
design and therefore it takes on the hues and forms of the activity from
which it borrows, for a brief moment but then we must move on to resolve
the problem at hand as demanded by the context, the deadlines and the
exigencies of the situation.

Thomas Rasmussen in his post (15 November) makes a comment on the nature
of research in design schools and on why design seems to resist research
so adamantly for so many years since the idea of research in design was
first mooted in he seventies. This is an important question to answer in
the context of the school of design debate. Perhaps the answer would lie
in our search for designers who have dared to wander beyond design, in
the boundary sense offered by Professor Taylor above and to try and
build the school that can indeed facilitate such a wandering. In my view
the answer may not lie as much in the import of research into design,
although I may be wrong here. However his comment that trying to build
basic research solely on industry funding would be highly risky points
to the fact that we will need to locate other forms of funding for
design research if it is to take root within the University system.

The other major debate that had my attention was the one on the need for
sketching and drawing and model making in an era of CAD and Rapid
Prototyping as core skills in the future of design education. Much has
been discussed on these topics so I will not go over ground covered
already by others. However I do submit that the promise of CAD is far
from evolved to substitute some of the early visualisations that are
critical for design synthesis and false promises from the IT industry
may skew the curriculum in an undesirable way which needs to be avoided.
In my view the kind of drawing and sketching that may stand the test of
time may well be a different kind of activity and ability from the kind
taught at schools of art and communication.

John Feland shares his views on the history of engineering from his
Stanford perspective and rightly calls for caution in moving design away
from practise into an “Ivory Tower” situation. I would suggest that we
can look at another model for design and this I choose to call” Relaxed
and Thoughtful Practise” which is possible within a University setting
to deal with design tasks that are way ahead of the needs of current
industry and their perceptions of priority. This would mean that funding
must come from sources other than industry, from social sources or from
the tax collections by government. This would give the school the
freedom to choose its priorities of action, autonomy to model and
experiment new areas and provide a platform for advocacy and a platform
for direct action in a demonstrative sense with a great deal of risk
reduction for the individual practitioner. This is to follow the spirit
in which Russel Nelson calls for new models and to avoid the imitation
of science or any other discipline for that matter.

I have run out of time just now but will get back with part two of my
closing submission late tonight. Ken, I hope this is all right with you?

With warm regards

M P Ranjan
from my office at NID
16 December 2003 at 10.45 am IST