Friday, my AD418 Research Methods for Art and Design students gave their
final presentations. The students did an excellent job showcasing the work
they did for the class, the variety of their topics, and how it relates to
themselves as creative people in the world.  They seem geninuely happy
with the results of our experiment in anthrodesign education. I am curious
as to how this experience (US based in School of Art and Design without
Ph.D.) compares to the experiences in Europe. Here are some of the themes
that came out of the experiment:

1.
Design education focuses too much on "practice" and not enough on "research."

What I mean by that controversal statement is that is that design
education in the US does not engage students with open-ended processes
where there is no clear problem let alone answer. The core text in the
class was H. Russell Bernards, Research Methods for Anthropology, Altamira
Press 2005. He distinguishes between research and practice (which is drawn
from the Belmont Report that governs ethics in US research) in terms of
their intentions, outcomes, and expectations.

Research intention:contribute to general knowledge
Practice intention: specific solution

Research outcomes: Principles, theories, principles about relationships
Practice outcomes: diagnosis (evaluation), treatment (solution), or
therapy (series of solutions).

Research expectations for outcomes: unknown
Practice expectations for outcomes: success

From my students responses to the class, most of their education is spent
solving problems using type, image, materials, form, etc. Even when they
were given the opportunity to define their own problem, they initially
struggled with the indeterminancy of anthropological research where there
are so many ways to approach things. This lack of practice in
"indeterminancy" erodes the confidence of designers in terms of being able
to say something about the world beyond it should or should not use "dummy
quotes."

2.
Skillful and systematic attention to creative conceptualization (through
research) produces more innovative creative thinking, because it exposes
gaps in people's assumptions.

The narrative arc of many of the students' presentations is how they
assumed the problem/issue was X, but the understanding of people showed
them that it was really Y.  Some examples of X, Y,  are:

Sara Bassick's project: X= form and content of personal letters and Y=
community building among mail art participants.

Chris Kalis's project: X=typography and childen's reading speed and
accuracy and Y=textbook layout and design and children's reading
comprehension.

I am really excited about where the students will take the research in
terms of crafting solutions to some of these issues.

3.
A deep grounding in anthropological research methods extends beyond
ethnography.

The class explored interviewing, observation, and self-documentation
techniques, which of course are not particular to anthropology. But the
course was specifically framed by anthropological questions regarding
art/designs relationship to human attitudes, behaviors, and actions and
anthropological assumptions regarding the ethics of presenting human
experience from the perspective of the people studied (i.e. ethnography as
a philosophical orientation).  Yet, the research projects that students
explored covered issues of usability (of public transit by elderly, blind,
and low vision by student Leilah Rampa, of the uic.edu website by student
Elizabeth Salvi, and aforementioned work by Chris Kalis) and participatory
design and art (one student, Mary Carideo, had various non-artists paint
Cubist paintings) as well ethnographic  perspectives, which was exciting
to see in terms of common disciplinary research platforms.

4.
These kinds of courses, Research Methods, should be a core element of
design education at especially the graduate level.

The feedback that the students' gave in terms of (1) being able to use
these methods in their work as they go forward and (2) feeling more
confident as they approach their thesis is what I hoped to gain from
teaching the class.

So how does this experience compare?