Soren:

I would be interested in hearing more about your research.  I am a professor
at University of Wisconsin in Madison, where we  have a graduate emphasis in
Design Visualization related specifically to interior design and
architecture.  I have several grad students working in areas that touch on
what you are studying.  What design discipline have you been focusing on?
In my own work, I have looked at ways to communicate the difference between
interface and content in design communication, and tried to steer discussion
toward strategy and philosophy.  In addition to my own 20 years of
experience in design communication, I began a series of interviews of top
architectural illustrators, and found that they had strongly developed
strategies and philosophies which overshadowed technique.  I applaud you for
setting up a framework and working towards establishing patterns that go
beyond anecdote and intuition, giving you insights into how designers really
think regardless of your own experience in design.  (Which is a central
problem in researching and discussing design.)

In terms of the idea of talent, I have been doing preliminary experiments
within my courses, and look forward to doing a more formalized study after
finishing the tenure process (when I have more time).  In the meantime, I
have theorized that what we often refer to as talent in interior design in
college students is often really the ability to communicate the design.
This would mean that those who communicate the best are seen as the "best"
designers.  As an experiment, I restructured my sketching and rendering
classes to focus on strategy, philosophy and storytelling rather than
technique, and was surprised by the results.  While I was used to a fairly
wide spread of ability at both the beginning and the end of the course,
after restructuring, the difference between the most facile students and the
least facile students at the end of the semester became quite narrow.  I
also incorporated the design process into the process of learning design
communication, and was struck by the resulting narrowing of the spread in
design "ability."  I presented the restructuring as a conference paper for
IDEC, and am working on several other papers that discuss the strategies and
philosophies that have resulted.

In terms of design talent specifically, I think that there are differences
in design subcultures and the way that design "success" is measured.  Recent
thinking in the area of IQ and genius seems to lean toward identifying
abilities in a broad variety of areas rather than the areas traditionally
measured.  In architecture and interior design, communicating with
multidisciplinary teams can be as important as being able to develop a
vision, and talent becomes a mixture of a broad range of skills and
abilities.  Also in architecture and interior design, a design is never
really completed, consists of much give and take, is difficult to evaluate
and ideally addresses social and cultural issues.  However, in other design
subcultures, designers work alone, produce an entire product themselves, and
can measure the success of their design using quantitative methods.
Developing research that applies across all  design subcultures will require
careful reflection on what concepts, behaviors and skills transcend
subculture and apply universally.

Mark

Mark S. C. Nelson RA ASAI IDEC
Assistant Professor
Environment, Textiles and Design
University of Wisconsin
1300 Linden Drive
Madison, WI  53706

Telephone: 608.261.1003
email: [log in to unmask]





-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf
Of Soren Petersen
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 9:32 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: talent and education


Hi Tena,
What an interesting debate (as always)! I am a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford
and have spent the last half year interviewing students and professionals on
how they present design concepts. Using a semi structured interview format
with questions based on IDSA award application and Designworks sustainable
management system and process I am starting to see patterns. As designers
mature there seems to be a shift from interface focus to strategy and
philosophy focus in there concepts descriptions. I would be very interested
to hear if anybody else has similar or different experiences.

Yours,

Soren

-----Original Message-----
From: teena clerke [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 6:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: talent and education

Hi Alan,

I agree that a way of compiling anecdotal information would certainly shed
some light on how educators see undergrads' application of talent/critical
thinking as applied to design, as they arrive and progress through
education, and then beyond to the workplace. Does anyone have any statistics
or compilation of anecdotal evidence in this area?

teena
--
Teena Clerke
PO Box 1090
Strawberry Hills NSW 2012
0414 502 648