Universities and other research centres are possibly an ideal place for
B & C to happen. Partly because they're not as well understood as A;
maybe because their nature is to be riskier (we won't know for sure
without more research).
I find it frustrating how so much North American research funding is
tied to industry contribution. It seems to me that this impacts badly
on our abilities to pursue B- & C-type research.
So perhaps one way of getting more B & C in North America will require
changing people's minds about the need for industry support for research....
2 cents.
Fil
Rosan Chow wrote:
> David and others
>
> I agree with you and I understand the relations among A, B, C. They are
> different "foci in a field". I said that at the beginning, my proposal was
>
> not unfamiliar but desperately needing promotion. I want to give voice to
> B and C because there are, as you point out, very good practical reasons
> why B and C are on the back burners....and because B and C really should
> be on the front burners, especially, I believe, for doctoral research.
>
> You asked what other designers do. I worked for Philips for a while some
> time ago. Perhaps things have changed now, I don't know. Then, we spent
> half of the time doing B and C.
>
> We have heard comments about the inertia of the car industry, how about
> our own design research enterprise? Will financial and other constraints
> prevent us from taking B and C as foci of research? This, I leave you all
> to reflect and here I end my contribution to this thread.
>
> Best Regards. Rosan.
>
> David Sless wrote:
>
>> As to, the ABC thing. I tend to think of B and C as opportunities
>> that can arise at any stage in the process. I may have said something
>> about this in an earlier post in relation to Liz Sanders' work. But I
>> think it is part of a much broader 'state of readiness', being
>> prepared for the unexpected, etc. One of the routine things we do is
>> diagnostic testing of our designs—very much a formal, evaluative
>> (seemingly) non-creative activity. But when we get together after the
>> testing to look at the data, the first question that we ask ourselves
>> is 'what struck you?'. Often, when you least expect it something new
>> suggests itself and we go off and play with it. The practical reason
>> why I tend to see this from within working method A, Rosan, is that I
>> can get people to pay me for A, but it's very difficult to find
>> people willing to pay for B and C. So, we cross-subsidize (as it
>> were) from A to B and C.
>>
>> But that is just an aside, as I asked in my last post: I'm curious to
>> know what other designers might do?
--
Prof. Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University Tel: 416/979-5000 x7749
350 Victoria St. Fax: 416/979-5265
Toronto, ON email: [log in to unmask]
M5B 2K3 Canada http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/
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