Hi don, chris and listers. I will blow my own published trumpet here and suggest you read my racent article in design stuidues which makes the point using a bibliography that is much broader than the article you refer to to show that while there may be some universal concerns about doctoral design the USA is not the model for the world's concerns. Rather more attention should be paid to regional specificities in this and most matters to Do with design education.
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Rust <[log in to unmask]>
To: Rust, Chris <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 3/05/2009 6:41:15 PM
Subject: Re: An excellent article on research in design
Don Norman wrote:
> I'd like to recommend Meredith Davis's article in the International Journal
> of Design for an excellent treatment of the place that research has in the
> academic world of design. The focus is on American PhD programs in design,
> but in my experience in Europe and Korea, the same issues apply there as
> well.
Thanks Don,
This is an interesting article focusing almost entirely on the situation
in the USA, the experience of designers and academics in the USA and the
possibilities for development of doctoral research in the USA. It starts
by referring to a well-known work by John Christopher Jones which, to my
mind, makes a fetish of complexity and the planning of whole complex
systems as the ultimate destination of designers. I am not sure that's
the way things have or should have worked out and I'm not sure that
Jones would stand by that work today.
Meredith Davis gives an interesting example of this by contrasting two
pieces of work presented by:
"graphic designer Milton Glaser and technologist Nicholas
Negroponte...Glaser unveiled a poster for ONE.org, showing a human hand,
with each finger in a different skin tone, and the phrase 'We are all
African'...Negroponte showed MIT’s $100 laptop...designed to bring the
educational opportunities of the Internet to children in developing
countries. Both objects addressed the issues of poverty, but
Glaser’s poster reduced an enormously complex, systems level
problem to a phrase and an emotional image distributed
on the streets of New York City. Negroponte’s solution, on the
other hand, addressed the complexity of poverty as something
to be managed – not simplified – through tools and systems."
It seems to me that Meredith Davis is labelling Negroponte's idea, that
what Africans need is cheap versions of what he has, as somehow more
moral and relevant than Glaser's attempt to alert his own community to
the situation of Africans and our responsibilities in it. Both are
narrow, both acknowledge system problems, both are questionable, both
might help. Maybe one or other gets closer to the heart of the problem,
maybe each is just addressing what they are capable of addressing with
no idea what is actually needed. We cannot see here which is most likely
to achieve its particular goal and that is probably the most interesting
question.
It's always useful when theorists point at examples of designing and ask
awkward questions, Victor Papanek made his reputation by doing that. But
it is easy to make the same mistake as many designers, of not applying
serious critical tests to the cases they cite. Maybe we all do that,
maybe we are all too quick to seize on something that seems to support
our belief. As scholars we need to resist that temptation.
best wishes from Sheffield
Chris
...............................................................o^o
Professor Chris Rust FDRS
Head of Art and Design
Sheffield Hallam University, S1 2NU, UK
+44 114 225 6772
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Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the
future of the human race. - H. G. Wells
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