Hi Victor,

Thank you for your message. We seem to be on different wavelengths.

As I understand it, we are talking about the field of Design as a whole. 

Less than 10% of the design field, however, is primarily concerned with
visual aethetics. I estimate the traditional 'Art and Design' subfields
comprise between 5% and 7% of the total.

The remaining 90% of design fields align well with conventional quality
assessment - with the caveats expressed  by Chris.

I suspect you are talking only about the 5% of the design field in the 'Art
and Design' sector?

Even so, most  of the issues in the Art and Design academic sector such as
'quality of argument', 'avoiding false arguments', 'avoiding misleading
rhetoric' are central to and well addressed in conventional disciplines -
hence the quality assessment can be similar for thise points at least. Which
parts, exactly, are not well addressed.

One of the accusations pointed at Art and Design  (and other parts of the
Humanitities) has been that quality and standards are low and that pleading
that they are a special case and shouldn't be assessed by the same standards
as others is a way of hiding this. How would you argue that claims by Art
and Design to create a discourse with its own rules of evaluation are not
evidence of this?

You raise the issue of interdisciplinarity. Increased working with others,
however,  suggests the need to align the quality assessment of Art and
Design with other disciplines rather than split it off.

You suggest we should assess journals by their influence on the field. This
seems dodgy and  smacks too much of the tail wagging the dog. 

In essence, journals are simply a tool to reduce the hassle of accessing
reliable information. The role of academic journals is to reduce transaction
cost for researchers. It is a mechanical role, and the design factors that
journals must fulfil and by which they are judged are simple and few:
filter the information accurately and reliably to the standards required by
researchers; provide material in an easily accessible way; be cheap to
access.

From a user's point of view, immediate  design improvements for journals are
down the sort of path that  the International Journal of Design has been
taking. The IJD makes good advances along all of the above three design
factors.

Thoughts?

Best regards,

Terry





-----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 Victor
Margolin
Sent: Thursday, 26 June 2008 9:42 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: design journals

Dear Gavin, Chris, Terry, and other listers both active and lurking, 

Gavin makes an excellent point about a field or practice needing to create
its own discourse with rules for its evaluation. 

Design is in a somewhat tricky position because it does touch on both the
humanities and engineering. As someone coming from the humanities, I can say
that criteria for excellence in an article or book are based on a developed
understanding among peers about the quality of arguments. But, then again,
this is also true in the sciences, particularly math where solutions to
problems are frequently described in aesthetic terms as "elegant." 

As I wrote in a note to Gavin, each of the ten colleges in my university has
established a set of criteria for judging the value of the work done in that
college. Thus, a graphic designer is judged on numbers of exhibitions,
recognition by peers in various forms, prizes, awards, medals etc., rather
than by the number of articles published in a journal. This is as far as I
can tell an issue in the community of practice-based research in the UK,
where new or additional criteria must be devised to evaluate work that does
not fit traditional scholarly molds. 

I believe that we are moving into a more interdisciplinary mode of working,
teaching, and also evaluating and need to create new and more flexible
models of judgment. If indeed, different fields have their own languages for
determining quality, then these need to be recognized by others outside
those fields rather than forcing everyone to conform to a single mode of
producing "quality" work. 

I also believe that journals need to be evaluated on the basis of their
effect on a field rather than on the structure of their selection process.
This too requires more flexibility than reviewing bodies are able, for the
most part, to provide. In short, we have a paradox for design research. If
design research is about improving the quality of design than it ought to be
able to propose a redesign of the system that evaluates it, which is, in my
deconstructivist view, a designed product. If it doesn't work to the
satisfaction of its user group then, were it a mechanical device, we would
say it was badly designed. 

To design a better national system for evaluating research is perhaps what
Chris is addressing and the need to be able to evaluate a particular
discourse (i.e. design
discourse) on terms of its actual efficacy is a challenge that I believe
Gavin poses. It should be least of all the community of designers and design
researchers who are frustrated by unworkable systems. The best response is
to clarify their problems and argue for a redesign if not actually propose
one.
Best from the shores and chores of Lake Michigan Victor
--
Victor Margolin
Professor Emeritus of Design History
Department of Art History
University of Illinois at Chicago
935 W. Harrison St.
Chicago, IL 60607-7039
Tel. 1-312-583-0608
Fax 1-312-413-2460
website: www.uic.edu/~victor