Hi Gunnar and David,
Thanks to Ken for raising this as it offers an opening for design education
and industry to come up to speed on many new arenas of understanding.
One way of looking at these things is in terms of very deep-seated processes
of providing evolutionary competitive advantage or survival capacity for the
the human animal. (Design activity can be seen as the external aspect of
this gaining of evolutionary advantage.)
Understanding human individual development in this way makes sense across a
wide variety of human conditions that appear to compromise individuals'
overall fitness of purpose or generla health, yet provide societies with
groups of individuals with special talents that offer advantage to the
whole.
Another way of seeing this is that any organism that develops specialist
advantage does it by compromising its potential maximal holistic
functioning (a special case of local suboptimisation).
Seems to me these naturally beneficial alternatives from a 'norm' in human
functioning can be seen as individual advantages, evolutionary advantages
for human kind, medical 'problems' or physiological misfunctioning - depends
on your mileage (thanks Fils). Some examples:
* Slow (as opposed to fast) nitrous oxide percolation in the brain
results in an even tempered personality type with slow mood shifts. In
design terms, there are advantages in this in maintianing a steady focus
regardless of the moment to moment emotional responses from considering
partial design solutions or part sketches. As a connection to Ken's new home
up here in Australia, Swinburne University has a particualr strngth in this
work (see e.g. the research of Ciorciani and Stough and colleagues).
* Mild to mid-severe manic-depression (bipolar) offers the potential of
periods of very high performance 'paid for' by recovery periods. Many
sucessful designers use the benefits of biploar disease using its advantages
in e.g. brainstorming and being able to align high performance with need for
outputs. A similar functioning is found in the ability of 'A' personality
types to function as high performance for several years before burnout,
heart attack or chronic fatigue. There are some claims that simialr
variation is found in a shorter term in blood group differences.
* The ability to draw and sketch well has been shown to be tightly
related to damage, failure or blocking of a particualr brain region rather
than development of a particualr capacity. It ioccurs in cases of brain
damage or, commonly, in This to the extent that non-drawers can magically
improve their sketching skill simply by having that brain region blocked
using a strong magnetic field applied outside the skull and focused on that
brain region to scramble its functioning.
* An unusually high proportion of designers in the more technical design
realms such as engineering design, ICT design have Asperger's syndrome -
associated with under development or failures of other brain realms. High
intelligence and PhD qualifications are also associated with higher than
expected proportions of Asperger's syndrom in these populations.
* Dyslexia has been associated with improved Art skills. Some forms of
dyslexia are 'explained' by a failure in the different speed channels of
messaging to and from eye and other parts of the brain.
* Autism occurs significantly more often in families in the fields of
engineering, mathematics and physics
* Some individuals have bodies more optimised to take advange of the
great differences in day length and environmental support in high
lattitudes (more sunshine sunshine, warmth, light, day length, food etc in
summer than winter). These individuals can peform highly for very long
periods on negligeable sleep in summer and 'hibernate' in winter.
Technology and interior lighting in modern society has made human
functioning expectations similar all year round. In consequence the
optimised individuals suffer a range of seasonal disorders such as seasonal
affective disorder .
David, some of this suggests different mechanisms for gaining advantage on
the different realms of 'sketching' , 'highly developed spacial awareness'
(biologically a male trait - not sure being male is a disease!) and
'expressing complex geometry through drawing' (primarily a mathematical
skill?)
To improve design education and to do great design activity will benfit by
taking some of these factors into account - especially in the new realms of
design where the ability to draw abstract ideas and abstract relationships
is likely to be more relevant than sketching 3D real world surface
appearances.
Thoughts?
Best regards,
Terry
PS. Sound research info on all the above can be effortlessly obtained via
Google. I've given up providing references.
____________________
Dr. Terence Love, FRDS, AMIMechE, PMACM
Founder member Design-focused Research Group, Design Out Crime Research
Group
Researcher, Digital Ecosystems and Business Intelligence Institute
Associate, Planning and Transport Research Centre
Curtin University, PO Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845
Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask]
Visiting Professor, Member of Scientific Council
UNIDCOM/ IADE, Lisbon, Portugal
Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise
Development
Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
____________________
-----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 Swanson,
Gunnar
Sent: Saturday, 22 November 2008 12:40 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Designers Think Through Einstein
David Balkwill wrote on Fri 11/21/2008 6:19 AM
> How much information is available of the detailed thought processes of
> designers while they're designing? Any IRM scans while designing?
[snip]
> Maybe some of the other designers reading this could add some personal
> experience to the thread.
Although I think I know what you mean, my personal experience and my problem
with the question is that I'm not really sure when I'm designing and when
I'm not designing, That's one of the things I was trying to get at with the
Flash movie I made in response to the thread in June about definitions of
design. It's at http://www.gunnarswanson.com/definedesign/ (If it doesn't
inspire response, I'd appreciate comments--on or off list--about why it
doesn't seem to develop conversation.)
> Are there any established links to autism amongst designers? I have
> feelings about the trade off of our highly developed spacial
> awareness, and the ease of expressing complex geometry through
> drawing, against some other missing abilities.
I've never seen or heard of a link. In my family, the people who test high
for traits of autism are all mathematicians. I don't know if it's apocryphal
but I've heard many times that graphic designers are second only to writers
in rates of dyslexia but this is the first time I've seen speculation about
autism.
Gunnar
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