Rob
I confess I am not quite sure how to read your response.
Anyone who has not lost the passion for finding out (also sometimes
known as a work ethic) will not find themselves in the position of
senior mismanagement. Those who are deaf and dumb to change either do so
deliberately or should never have risen to that position.
Nuture design students and the chances are that when they reach senior
positions they will still posses the thinking habits that include a
'passion' for their subject - and because design is undeniably a social
act, that 'passion' should have enough mileage left to care for the
people being designed for.
Utopian? I did not find this to be the case in Scadinavian and Finnish
design thinking (I find myself developing a quiet 'passion' for Finnish
design thinking, not least because it helps me change my 'mind'). Which
makes me realise I am also equating 'passion' for and in design with a
'socialist viewpoint', in the sense that I believe in social
constructivism, which would be false if I did not view design as being
able to alleviate (and partly solve) social problems - the glamour
platforms for design are the illusory ones that create rampant
consumerism.
Perhaps we should be 'identifying our existing Newtons of Design
Thinking' - but then we all know design thinkers like this, now, who are
doing good work throughout the world, people who have the three/four
dimensional (design) thinking skills to tackle the world's most pressing
problems.
There is nothing in the future, the 'present' does not exist except as
an illusion, and everything is in the past. We need a new mindset:
everything simply is. The answers to problems (if we can speak in such a
'short-cut' way as if the process is that easy) are already there, for
us to 'unhide' in Heidegger's sense. They are not hiding themselves, we
cannot see.
A certain form of passion (for design, for life, for your own growth)
will allow you to 'unhide' things you could not see before, and if you
want to use research language and be rigorous, you can call this
grounded theory mixed with Gordon Pask's Conversation Theory (not
forgetting entailments), and with a good measure of phenomenology thrown
in.
Johann
Johann van der Merwe
HOD: Research, History & Theory of Design
Faculty of Informatics and Design
Cape Peninsula University of Technology
South Africa
>>> Rob Curedale <[log in to unmask]> 03/01/09 9:06 PM >>>
Johann,
Should we be identifying our existing Newtons of Design Thinking and
be giving them the power to deal with the big problems?
That is, ask Steve Jobs or Jame Dyson to identify solutions for
Detroit or global warming. In most organizations the more senior a
manager is, the less they are able to find new solutions.
Rob
www.curedale.com
On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 9:55 AM, Johann van der Merwe
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> To Rob, Ken and others
> 'Passion' is what students of design seem to lack today - whether you
> translate that as curiosity (not 'mere', but the 'I simply have to
find
> out' kind) or innovation (I want to do something different, but how?)
or
> creativity (the finger-itching, mind-buzzing kind) - these are all
> manifestations of the agency/structure dance of life (or should be).
> Perhaps Terry should travel 60km to buy a small something on more
> occasions, perhaps we should follow 'a whim' more often in
> Wittgenstein's sense of trying to identify landmarks in the fog that
at
> first surrounds as as we search for something new and innovative that
> can also inspire us as human beings.
>
> Passion can be outlandishly and operatically loud and still be
creative,
> or it could be very quite and not be noticed until something triggers
> it, as in this story of the fish soup:
> http://www.clusterflock.org/2009/01/a-meal-in-venice-1978.html
>
> This is perhaps what Ken had in mind with 'appropriate passion'? - in
> this example something that simply drives you, at that moment, to do
> either better than before, or to do something you have never before
> attempted, because 'in the moment' you realise you do not have to do
it
> alone - agency and structure comes alive as one fluid and unfolding
> movement.
>
> Rob writes: 'I intuitively think that these type of personalities are
> born with the potential capacity to transform though they probably
also
> require nurturing environments.' Even those not 'born with' these
> passionate natures can be nurtured in design education to care more -
> that is happening to our product design students as if by nature and
not
> nuture. Expose them to systemic and holistic design thinking and
varying
> degrees of 'passion' start to emerge. They WANT to change things for
the
> better ... their 'passion' begins with becoming more involved with
those
> (underserved-by-design/disadvantaged) they can design for.
>
>
> Johann
>
> Johann van der Merwe
> HOD: Research, History & Theory of Design
> Faculty of Informatics and Design
> Cape Peninsula University of Technology
> South Africa
>
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Rob Curedale | President | Curedale Inc | 22148 Monte Vista Drive
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