MSC Nelson (and Rosan)
Well said indeed.
I believe that in India and at NID where I teach we have a lot of
experience with the B and C kinds of design, simply because our industry
and government just did not use design through any form of commission
even when the ability was built up at our Institutions over the past
forty five years or so. The demand for design is however changing with
more type A tasks appearing on the marketplace for our students and the
local design community. Many opportunities also now exist for foreign
design consultancies and many are setting up shop in India with the
ongoing programme of liberalisation and the pressures of globalisation
as a powerful trend.
However design research and investments in design explorations, or
should I say "design inplorations", are far too small IMHO when compared
to investments in science and technology as far as India is concerned.
Today our National Ministry of Human Resources has declared an
investment plan of INR 800 crores (Rupees 8000 million approximately USD
175 million) for new science education in the country and this does not
include the approximately Rs. 60,000 crores (one crore is 10 million)
that is spent on science and technology establishments in the public
sector in India. Compare this with the (very shabby) Rs 100 crores
(approx USD 22 million) that would be spent over a five year period on
design research and education in the country if we look at the level of
current spend on design in India.
The perception that design can bring fundamental benefits to society and
nations is as yet not understood and I do believe that we are still far
from changing these perceptions in industry and government alike without
some breakthrough demonstrations coming from the use of type B and C
design research that Rosan is talking about.
The approach and methods will vary in these as in my experience with
company funded projects the design teans are usually dealing with a
small part of the total task while in self initiated design tasks ot the
meta level of system the design team is compelled to include issues and
develop solutions for many levels of the system from material, process
and policy all at the same time. Serious research into these approaches
will bring home the real power of design when such integrated efforts
show great results and some of us in India have been teaching design
with the assumption that many of the opportunities for design use are in
society and not only in industry as it is defined now. Some of these
efforts are shared on my website throegh the documentation of my course
titled "Design Concepts and Concerns" and my ongoing work on Bamboo as a
sustainable material for the Post-mining economy that we anticipate in
India in the years ahead. See
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp> and follow the links for documents,
papers and presentations on the above.
The research question is then "is there a new or different genre of
design for society" that requires new methodologies and new attitudes
and new knowledge etc.
You may wish to see a recent paper on Indian design on Core77.com by
Niti Bhan.
<http://www.core77.com/reactor/02.06_desi.asp>
With warm regards
M P Ranjan
from my Mac at home on the NID campus
10 February 2006 at 9,50 am IST
MSC Nelson wrote:
>
> Rosan is once again pointing out that there is a cultural bias in this
> discussion related to the design subcultures of this group's participants.
> There are those who design artifacts, those who design systems, those who
> design meta-artifacts and those who design meta-systems. (In reality, most
> designers do a combination of all four, but maximize certain areas more than
> others) One concept it is important to teach students who want to be
> designers is that we must all be careful not to fall into the habits of
> non-designers and focus only on what we know about (a house painter tends to
> ignore faulty brickwork, while the mason tends to ignore the inside of a
> building).
>
> Perhaps Rosan is suggesting that the group focus on designing a meta-system
> for inquiry into the field of design and establish a framework that can be
> used to integrate the systems and artifacts generated by other aspects of
> the discussion. This is what other disciplines have, and what design lacks;
> what I see is frameworks that work at the system level but do not make a
> transition to the meta-system level because they break down when applied
> beyond a narrow subculture of design.
>
> An automobile tire or perhaps even a transmission might be examples of
> artifacts. The automobile itself, as well as a building, might by
> considered meta-artifacts (and sometimes urban design fits this category as
> well). Ergonomic designers often engage in design at the system level.
> Process designs would be examples of meta-systems, and to a certain extent
> an urban design can be a pure meta-system.
>
> The traditions of academic discourse tend to use the design characteristics
> of meta-systems, where ideas from many different thinkers (universalizing
> "designers" to include all those in academia) are synthesized into a
> meta-system of thought. However, most of this discussion seems to focus on
> the smaller elements of the meta-system of design research, without having a
> larger meta-system to plug into.
>
> <<A. engage in solving problems (problem defining implied).
> <<B. seek new opportunities (experiment with new technology, for example) C.
> <<create alternatives to what exists (quite restlessly, perhaps just for
> <<fun, not necessarily making something better)
>
> In terms of the "Rosan" categories, those who design artifacts are often
> paid to do "A", as are designers in the other three categories I have listed
> above. However, especially in design subcultures that work at the
> meta-level, a great deal of time is actually spent on "B" and "C".
>
> For instance, to use a real world example where designers are getting paid
> to do B and C, large building projects are often designed very quickly from
> top to bottom, in order to begin the process of construction, which may take
> several years. However, a final design may take years to complete. If the
> design were finished before the construction began, the time frame might be
> doubled. What is done is that the entire building is designed quickly, and
> then the design for the utility and foundation work is completed as soon as
> possible and construction is started. The rest of the building above the
> foundations will change completely, but had to be designed the first time in
> order to begin the foundation construction. Then the next few years are
> spent looking for alternatives to the original design, often going through
> numerous alternatives that will never be built. In the meantime,
> construction progresses and a final building gradually takes shape. The
> building is a meta-artifact, and the process used to design the building is
> a meta-system that is itself constantly being redesigned.
>
> The academic world is the ideal place to actively pursue B and C, because
> the traditions of academia focus on developing systems of ideas rather than
> artifacts.
>
> Mark
>
>
>
> M.S.C. Nelson
> Assistant Professor
> Environment, Textiles and Design
> University of Wisconsin-Madison
> Room 235
> 1300 Linden Drive
> Madison, WI 53706
> 608-261-1003
>
>
> -----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 Rosan
> Chow
> Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2006 5:35 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Let's try again: Chris' call for research approach (Re: It's
> still a research question)
>
> 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?
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