Hired guns and having cake / response to Chris Rust
Can you have your cake and eat it too? What if you have a cake the size of
the world? Will you still be able to eat it? Can you claim to own a cake
that big? How big must a cake be before it¹s your moral duty, as a human
being, to share it? Not just to let the rest of humanity nibble at your
world-size cake, but actually to let it go lay down your claim to solitary
ownership. If the cake is really that big, you can eat it and have it and so
can everybody else.
The analogy is clear. If not crystal clear, then at least clear as frosting.
Design cannot, at the same time, be a human activity that we all partake in
and the privileged property of designers if by designers we mean people
who have graduated from a design school. Our understanding of design and
designing involves still more. Design was always much more than boxes for
engineers to put things in. It is also be more than a method practiced by
designers. But the moment it comes to be seen as a basic human activity,
designers must acknowledge that they have no special right to define it.
Therefore, designers cannot hold the grounds of design research. Research is
not a basic human activity, like eating, sleeping and designing. Research is
codified and rigorous, it has rules and regulations and these basic rules
are shared by all fields from comparative literature to mathematics and
medicine. Structuring knowledge has brought tremendous advantages to all
scientific fields. The key to success lies in the structure, in the
stricture of the structure and, ultimately, in the structuring of the
creative process. All scientific research has a creative element
researchers use it to navigate at the point where the structured knowledge
of their disciplines ends. Here, and in the communication of research
results, we might say that researchers take part in the basic human activity
of designing.
When I was in research I designed articles, semester plans, papers, two 300
page dissertations and arguments aplenty. I even helped design the
department when we were moving that was interior design, process planning
and soft-core branding. Now I am in the process of designing a design
university. If designing is creative and intellectual processes that are
aimed at changing and shaping, at giving form to the yet unformed then,
clearly, I am a designer. If design is product design and visual
communication then I may not be a designer depending on the definition of
products and visuality.
Anyway, if I don¹t qualify as a designer, I am quite happy to be a hired
gun. After all, if you look at it, a hired gun is someone you bring in if
you have a job that you cannot solve either for lack of skills or guts.
Hired guns are specialists, bought at a high prize. They tend to die in the
end. But they get to wear black. Today, hired guns are called consultants
they still wear black, they are still expensive and they still ride into the
allegory of a setting sun when their job is done. Many designers, by the
way, function as hired guns. They are brought in on projects. They do their
thing and they are off either to unemployment or to the next project. And
although this is usually the hallmark of architects, many designers wear
black.
Bringing in reinforcement is often a good idea. THE most successful design
company, IDEO the winner of most design awards for 12 consecutive years
has an even more radical recruitment policy than the one I suggested for
UCI¹s SD. And IDEO isn¹t even into research, in the scientific meaning of
the term.
When true interdisciplinarity is the working order of the design business,
why insist on the insular perspective in design research? Today, already,
design research is infused with non-designers. Neither Ken Friedman nor
Richard Buchanan have traditional design backgrounds and Dennis Doordan has
a degree in architectural history, yet I would say that they have done their
bit to further the agenda of design research. The agenda I¹m pushing at
Danmarks Designskole involves practice based research as well as basic
research and strategic research and a research equivalent for design
practice at the highest level. In my view, bringing in hired guns will not
do it alone. It is equally important to upgrade design practice and make
design education research based. If design research does not come off the
ground properly at Danmarks Designskole, I am quite convinced that we will
suffer severe cuts in funding and live on as a small arts and crafts
school. This basic situation is probably very common. In order to pull it
of, design research must begin by having a realistic understanding of its
own situation and of the challenges (still) ahead.
I have no hard statistics to back this up, but it wouldn¹t surprise me if
CERN alone costs more money, each and every year, than all of the world¹s
the design research. If not, just throw in NASA or Cambridge. This is just
to say, that the enormity of expertise, intellectual capacity, funding, etc.
of traditional science¹ is so overwhelming that the mere suggestion that
design research which is still trying to find its feet, and which is
leaning heavily on the social sciences should be the source of inspiration
for traditional science¹ is naïve. Or, if not naïve, then at least powered
by a lack of respect for the professionalism and creativity of traditional
science¹.
I¹m not saying this to diminish design knowledge nor to deny design research
its enormous potential my personal belief, and one of the reasons why this
is such a fascinating place to be, is that design research will come to see
an explosive growth in capacity and influence it WILL rock science but,
hey, we¹re not quite there yet. And the hubris of saying so will not further
the agenda of bringing legitimacy, rigor and recognition (not to mention
funding) to design research.
True science is changing but the change occurs at the cutting edge of
science. Science is not changing because of ideas cooked up in a tiny field
that insists on making it all up from scratch. How, Chris, should designers
even communicate their ideas to traditional science¹? Putting articles in
central periodicals, I suppose. But try to get your ideas into The Lancet,
Harvard Business Review or Physics Letters. You might find that fighting
past peer review can be a long and arduous task. Perhaps traditional
science¹ is not ready but it is more likely that design research is not
ready.
A basic human activity, after all, is a thing of considerable size. A cake
the size of a basic human activity might threaten to alter the orbit of
planet earth.
Best regards,
thomas schødt rasmussen
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