Thomas Schødt Rasmussen wrote:
"Why design has been so successful in resisting change is a mystery - design,
usually, prides itself of being a factor of change, an avant-garde activity,
not a conservative force. Anyway, I think this has to do with the
conservatism of professional pride. If education consists mainly of training
students to master a craft, disciplines solidify in stead of seeking shared
methods and knowledge. And, what is worse, they tend to insist on their own
right to define their profession in every aspect - even when it comes to
defining theory and concepts of research."
I certainly agree with Thomas's observations. I
think the reticence to change comes from many
sources, some legitimate, and some less so.
Sticking to my own field and the example I used
in my opening remarks concerning "The Art of
Computer Programming", a decade or two ago there
were many who felt that the act of programming
was fundamentally creative and that it was best
taught in an apprenticeship manner. Tools for
automating software development activities were
deprecated by many. As the field has progressed,
however, much has changed. Some types of
programming are done entirely automatically now,
with enormous gains in quality and productivity
as a result. Tools for managing configurations
of software, deployment, issue tracking, and so
on are commonplace. The domain of much
discourse about design has been shifted to a
higher level of abstraction. Processes for
development and programming are better
understood, and alternative processes are
compared and contrasted with regard to their
effectiveness and place of appropriate use. If
you boil this all down what you find is that some
"accidental" difficulties associated with the
design of software have been removed through the
development of better tools and techniques,
allowing designers to more sharply focus on the
"essential difficulties". And with regard to
those essential difficulties we now have
approaches which are demonstrably better in
heading you towards a successful design than
alternative approaches.
Does this mean that creativity has lost its place
in software development? Not at all. Rather,
designers can now focus their creative talents on
those aspects of the problem that demand the
creativity by their essential nature, rather than
requiring "artful moves" just because their tools
or disciplines were so poor that they had no
recourse. There is still a place for study of
masterful designs and the habits and acts of
master designers. The goal of research though is
the careful observation of these to yield
insights which are dependable over some domain.
That is, you want to know what you know and know
what you don't.
Rasmussen then further wrote:
"... why not build research by appointing, say, half of the
faculty from other disciplines - anthropologists, economists, a physician,
an art historian, a philosopher, who knows, you might find a German
philologist or a PhD in theoretical physics surprisingly useful. Allowing
experienced researchers to work full-time with design issues - in stead of
inviting them in as lecturers and visiting professors - will place
interdisciplinary research methodology right in the middle of an emergent
design research discipline."
I couldn't agree more. Indeed we on the SD
committee have said that the most important and
difficult sequence of classes to develop will be
the introductory sequence, since it is supposed
to be very interdisciplinary. We agreed that we
would have to have the class team-taught and that
we would need to require that all the instructors
be present for all the lectures --- not just
their own. The building of those essential
cross-disciplinary ties will only come if we take
these challenges seriously.
Dick
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Richard N. Taylor +1-949-824-6429
Professor and Director +1-949-824-1715 (fax)
Institute for Software Research [log in to unmask]
University of California, Irvine http://www.ics.uci.edu/~taylor
Irvine, CA 92697-3425
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