http://www.narrativescience.com/solutions.html
-----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 PHD-DESIGN automatic digest system
Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2011 7:00 PM
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Subject: PHD-DESIGN Digest - 5 Oct 2011 to 6 Oct 2011 (#2011-245)
There are 23 messages totaling 2011 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Design Education: Brilliance without Substance (18)
2. tenure-track position in Retail Merchandising-University of Minnesota
3. SV: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
4. [Fwd: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance]
5. Survey to all Portuguese list subscribers (2)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 18:17:23 -0500
From: jon kolko <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
For whatever it's worth, here are two papers I wrote about this,
recently, for interactions magazine and for the AIGA's New
Contexts/New Practices conference:
http://www.jonkolko.com/writingConflictingRhetoric.php
http://chapters.aiga.org/content.cfm/new-contextsnew-practices-six-perspectives-on-design-education?pff=1#changing_conditions
Best,
Jon
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 21:39:15 -0500
From: Sauman Chu <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: tenure-track position in Retail Merchandising-University of Minnesota
Position announcement
Assistant Professor in Retail Merchandising, Management and Technology
Focus College of Design, University of Minnesota
The Department of Design, Housing, and Apparel in the College of Design,
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities invites applications for a tenure-track
Assistant Professor in retail merchandising with a focus on management and
technology. The Retail Merchandising program highlights the interface
between retail merchandising and design expanding beyond apparel to
encompass a broad array of designed products in the global marketplace and
their relationships to the consumer. This new faculty member will lead
future developments in online learning, management and retail technology.
This is a 9-month, academic year tenure-track appointment to begin August
27, 2012. For a full position announcement and application instructions,
please go to:
http://design.umn.edu/about/employment/documents/RetailMerchandisingAsstProfFinalAnnouncementFY12.pdf
The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and employer.
--
Sauman Chu, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Graphic Design
College of Design
University of Minnesota
612.624.9705
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 10:54:47 +0200
From: "Derek B. Miller" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
A brief interjection on the design education thread:
I'm currently guest lecturer at AHO — the Oslo School of Architecture and Design — and through that experience I have started to get my thoughts in order. I'll stay far away from the artillery shells of the senior design specialists here as I am thoroughly out of my depth in addressing Design Education writ large. I'll say only this, and from my perspective as Director at The Policy Lab:
1. There may be some value in aligning educational conduct (i.e. what we teach and how) with actual evolving design practice.
2. That means, as designers (at least some designers) are pushing the boundaries of design practice into new areas (or are helping shape and re-conceptualize familiar areas), it seems pretty clear to me that they nevertheless lack some of the needed intellectual skills required to properly engage those new practices from a degree of professionalism.
3. Mapping those gaps between the "know-how" and the "need-to-know" seems less a theoretical task than a pragmatic one to keep education both current and innovative.
4. My immediate concern is that students are not really being prepared for the work they think they are going into, and more to the point, they don't know they aren't prepared because their education is so distant from the social sciences and other fields necessary to illuminate their own gaps.
As The Policy Lab is now cooperating with numerous design firms and schools in order to design new services, I can experience first-hand their skill sets in tasks such as interviewing, structuring research, differentiating research questions from interview questions, and rendering interpretations on findings. Among other things.
Just like undergraduates entering a first-year class on qualitative research methods, these students are totally unprepared for serious research.This is only one slice of the larger pie you are all discussing, to be sure. This would not be a problem if it were not for the fact that design schools are not establishing in their students the foundational intellectual skills needed to conduct the work they then assign to the students.
At The Policy Lab, we are increasingly convinced that the design juncture is the key nexus for attention in crafting policy and programming.
There is a brave new world to be discovered in separating "designing" from "decision making" in democratic processes in recognizing that design puts options on the table, while decision making removes them from the table. That small, conceptual shift (of both inserting design, and distinguishing design) could fundamentally alter how we approach major public challenges (almost all of which fall under the common design rubric of "wicked problems").
The challenge may be design. The question is whether designers will be the ones to contribute to that challenge. As of this very moment, I'm not so sure.
Derek.
_________________
Dr. Derek B. Miller
Director
The Policy Lab
321 Columbus Ave.
Seventh Floor of the Electric Carriage House
Boston, MA 02116
United States of America
Phone
+1 617 440 4409
Twitter
@Policylabtweets
Web
www.thepolicylab.org
This e-mail includes proprietary and confidential information belonging to The Policy Lab, Ltd. All rights reserved.
On Oct 5, 2011, at 3:19 AM, Andrew J King wrote:
> Don Norman's abstract of his article for Core77 on design education seems to echo exactly the thesis of an article I read in the old UK Chartered Society of Designers journal, probably in the mid 80's.
>
> Being currently on the other side of the planet, I don't have access to my paper archives, so I can't offer a reference. The article was mainly concerned with furniture design rather than product, but the general gist was similar: design education remains too much based in craft and craft skill, and not enough in education for industrial design. That this should still be an issue is profoundly worrying, but I think it goes much deeper: Since the collapse of the Modernist consensus, undergraduate design education seems to be mired in a crisis of theory: What to teach and how? This would be a happy and creative opportunity were it not that, too often, it seems to be an unrecognised crisis, or at least, one unrecognised by those who ought to be doing something about it. That it has been going on for so long, is a tragedy, and I sometimes feel we are in danger of 'losing design' altogether, in the sense of losing all recognition of it, in the specialisms of the academy and in public perception, as an integrative discipline, and not a mere collection of assorted industrial crafts.
>
> With new technologies of manufacturing beginning to mount an assault on the last bastions of skill, it seems to be ever more urgent that design education re-invents itself and shows that it is something bigger and more important than the ever more fragmented specialisms that seem to be popular in many colleges.
>
> Andrew J King
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On 5 Oct 2011, at 09:16, Don Norman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> For your amusement (or perhaps annoyance). My latest essay on design
>> education on the core77.com website:
>>
>> Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
>> http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/design_education_brilliance_without_substance_20364.asp
>>
>> We are now in the 21st century, but design curricula seem stuck in the mid
>> 20th century, except for the addition of computer tools . . .
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 11:12:48 +0200
From: Jan Dittrich <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
The "hochschule für gestaltung ulm" (Germany) is an interesting
institution to take into account if we discuss bringing design and
science together. They had a very scientific approach of design which is
is often regarded as having been exaggerated. They only existed form
'53-'68; nevertheless their ideas and model of education seems still
very interesting since what was discussed back than seems to be similar
to what we discuss now.
Sadly I am not an expert on the hfg Ulm, but I hope this could be a
valuable pointer regarding Don Normans essay.
-- Jan Dittrich
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 14:35:21 +0200
From: Birger Sevaldson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: SV: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
Sinse Derek mentiones the Oslo School:
Here we are stuck in a way of teaching the two years of master level in an old fashioned way that has not cought up with what happens on our PhD level and in our nummerous research projects. There is a gap we need to bridge. It is not the design activities and various practices, even traditional ones, that are the problem. The problem is, we do not have any research training for the master students in addition and in interaction with the skills-building activities and design practices. This becomes a problem when master students are engaged in very complex tasks that are intentionally in the forefront of the design realm e.g. the design for disarmement projects Derek and I teach together here.
I do not think that replacing design skills with e.g. social sciences is a good idea. Designers must not become social scientists. The value of design research is found in the middle ground between design practice and knowledge production. Design brings something new to research. (We have become very recognized for this at the Norwegian Research Council). It is also not a solution to import research practices from other fields e.g. social sciences without a criticallity that is possitioned in design so to reshape research to become proprietary for design.
Many of us have been working along this line of balancing the "import" of research methods, theories and practices with refining design practice as knowledge production. Unfortunately in many places we still need to fight for a shift of the design education where we are embedded and the disharmony between what some of us teach, and the surrounding systems and structures remain.
Meanwhile we continue to throw imensly complex challenges at our students for which they are not prepaired. The strange thing is that they love it, and they feel that design can be relevant and important. So the students are ready, we need to catch up.
best
Birger Sevaldson
________________________________________
Fra: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] på vegne av Derek B. Miller [[log in to unmask]]
Sendt: 6. oktober 2011 10:54
Til: [log in to unmask]
Emne: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
A brief interjection on the design education thread:
I'm currently guest lecturer at AHO — the Oslo School of Architecture and Design — and through that experience I have started to get my thoughts in order. I'll stay far away from the artillery shells of the senior design specialists here as I am thoroughly out of my depth in addressing Design Education writ large. I'll say only this, and from my perspective as Director at The Policy Lab:
1. There may be some value in aligning educational conduct (i.e. what we teach and how) with actual evolving design practice.
2. That means, as designers (at least some designers) are pushing the boundaries of design practice into new areas (or are helping shape and re-conceptualize familiar areas), it seems pretty clear to me that they nevertheless lack some of the needed intellectual skills required to properly engage those new practices from a degree of professionalism.
3. Mapping those gaps between the "know-how" and the "need-to-know" seems less a theoretical task than a pragmatic one to keep education both current and innovative.
4. My immediate concern is that students are not really being prepared for the work they think they are going into, and more to the point, they don't know they aren't prepared because their education is so distant from the social sciences and other fields necessary to illuminate their own gaps.
As The Policy Lab is now cooperating with numerous design firms and schools in order to design new services, I can experience first-hand their skill sets in tasks such as interviewing, structuring research, differentiating research questions from interview questions, and rendering interpretations on findings. Among other things.
Just like undergraduates entering a first-year class on qualitative research methods, these students are totally unprepared for serious research.This is only one slice of the larger pie you are all discussing, to be sure. This would not be a problem if it were not for the fact that design schools are not establishing in their students the foundational intellectual skills needed to conduct the work they then assign to the students.
At The Policy Lab, we are increasingly convinced that the design juncture is the key nexus for attention in crafting policy and programming.
There is a brave new world to be discovered in separating "designing" from "decision making" in democratic processes in recognizing that design puts options on the table, while decision making removes them from the table. That small, conceptual shift (of both inserting design, and distinguishing design) could fundamentally alter how we approach major public challenges (almost all of which fall under the common design rubric of "wicked problems").
The challenge may be design. The question is whether designers will be the ones to contribute to that challenge. As of this very moment, I'm not so sure.
Derek.
_________________
Dr. Derek B. Miller
Director
The Policy Lab
321 Columbus Ave.
Seventh Floor of the Electric Carriage House
Boston, MA 02116
United States of America
Phone
+1 617 440 4409
Twitter
@Policylabtweets
Web
www.thepolicylab.org
This e-mail includes proprietary and confidential information belonging to The Policy Lab, Ltd. All rights reserved.
On Oct 5, 2011, at 3:19 AM, Andrew J King wrote:
> Don Norman's abstract of his article for Core77 on design education seems to echo exactly the thesis of an article I read in the old UK Chartered Society of Designers journal, probably in the mid 80's.
>
> Being currently on the other side of the planet, I don't have access to my paper archives, so I can't offer a reference. The article was mainly concerned with furniture design rather than product, but the general gist was similar: design education remains too much based in craft and craft skill, and not enough in education for industrial design. That this should still be an issue is profoundly worrying, but I think it goes much deeper: Since the collapse of the Modernist consensus, undergraduate design education seems to be mired in a crisis of theory: What to teach and how? This would be a happy and creative opportunity were it not that, too often, it seems to be an unrecognised crisis, or at least, one unrecognised by those who ought to be doing something about it. That it has been going on for so long, is a tragedy, and I sometimes feel we are in danger of 'losing design' altogether, in the sense of losing all recognition of it, in the specialisms of the academy and in public perception, as an integrative discipline, and not a mere collection of assorted industrial crafts.
>
> With new technologies of manufacturing beginning to mount an assault on the last bastions of skill, it seems to be ever more urgent that design education re-invents itself and shows that it is something bigger and more important than the ever more fragmented specialisms that seem to be popular in many colleges.
>
> Andrew J King
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On 5 Oct 2011, at 09:16, Don Norman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> For your amusement (or perhaps annoyance). My latest essay on design
>> education on the core77.com website:
>>
>> Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
>> http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/design_education_brilliance_without_substance_20364.asp
>>
>> We are now in the 21st century, but design curricula seem stuck in the mid
>> 20th century, except for the addition of computer tools . . .
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 14:39:54 +0200
From: "Prof. Bernhard E. Buerdek" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [Fwd: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 15:00:35 +0200
From: "Derek B. Miller" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
Following up from Birger (then signing off the day!),
One thing that Birger and I have noticed in working together is the need to have a educator-level discussion about curricular development and educational objectives for at least some aspects of the design field.
As Birger teaches about systems, and the need to think about systems to design for, or into them, it is becoming evident that for students to move beyond mere metaphor into taking that effort seriously, they are going to have read something and do some writing to get their thoughts in order. I have no idea what the balance is that Birger is also seeking. Which is precisely why we're looking to get this conversation started in earnest.
But the experience of banging our heads — both against one another and against the problems themselves — have rattled some interesting things loose. Next step is to codify this thinking, get a white paper drafted, and start a conversation. Create what we sometimes call "a group of interested parties."
d.
_________________
Dr. Derek B. Miller
Director
The Policy Lab
321 Columbus Ave.
Seventh Floor of the Electric Carriage House
Boston, MA 02116
United States of America
Phone
+1 617 440 4409
Twitter
@Policylabtweets
Web
www.thepolicylab.org
This e-mail includes proprietary and confidential information belonging to The Policy Lab, Ltd. All rights reserved.
On Oct 6, 2011, at 2:35 PM, Birger Sevaldson wrote:
> Sinse Derek mentiones the Oslo School:
> Here we are stuck in a way of teaching the two years of master level in an old fashioned way that has not cought up with what happens on our PhD level and in our nummerous research projects. There is a gap we need to bridge. It is not the design activities and various practices, even traditional ones, that are the problem. The problem is, we do not have any research training for the master students in addition and in interaction with the skills-building activities and design practices. This becomes a problem when master students are engaged in very complex tasks that are intentionally in the forefront of the design realm e.g. the design for disarmement projects Derek and I teach together here.
> I do not think that replacing design skills with e.g. social sciences is a good idea. Designers must not become social scientists. The value of design research is found in the middle ground between design practice and knowledge production. Design brings something new to research. (We have become very recognized for this at the Norwegian Research Council). It is also not a solution to import research practices from other fields e.g. social sciences without a criticallity that is possitioned in design so to reshape research to become proprietary for design.
> Many of us have been working along this line of balancing the "import" of research methods, theories and practices with refining design practice as knowledge production. Unfortunately in many places we still need to fight for a shift of the design education where we are embedded and the disharmony between what some of us teach, and the surrounding systems and structures remain.
> Meanwhile we continue to throw imensly complex challenges at our students for which they are not prepaired. The strange thing is that they love it, and they feel that design can be relevant and important. So the students are ready, we need to catch up.
>
> best
>
> Birger Sevaldson
>
>
> ________________________________________
> Fra: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] på vegne av Derek B. Miller [[log in to unmask]]
> Sendt: 6. oktober 2011 10:54
> Til: [log in to unmask]
> Emne: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
>
> A brief interjection on the design education thread:
>
> I'm currently guest lecturer at AHO — the Oslo School of Architecture and Design — and through that experience I have started to get my thoughts in order. I'll stay far away from the artillery shells of the senior design specialists here as I am thoroughly out of my depth in addressing Design Education writ large. I'll say only this, and from my perspective as Director at The Policy Lab:
>
> 1. There may be some value in aligning educational conduct (i.e. what we teach and how) with actual evolving design practice.
>
> 2. That means, as designers (at least some designers) are pushing the boundaries of design practice into new areas (or are helping shape and re-conceptualize familiar areas), it seems pretty clear to me that they nevertheless lack some of the needed intellectual skills required to properly engage those new practices from a degree of professionalism.
>
> 3. Mapping those gaps between the "know-how" and the "need-to-know" seems less a theoretical task than a pragmatic one to keep education both current and innovative.
>
> 4. My immediate concern is that students are not really being prepared for the work they think they are going into, and more to the point, they don't know they aren't prepared because their education is so distant from the social sciences and other fields necessary to illuminate their own gaps.
>
> As The Policy Lab is now cooperating with numerous design firms and schools in order to design new services, I can experience first-hand their skill sets in tasks such as interviewing, structuring research, differentiating research questions from interview questions, and rendering interpretations on findings. Among other things.
>
> Just like undergraduates entering a first-year class on qualitative research methods, these students are totally unprepared for serious research.This is only one slice of the larger pie you are all discussing, to be sure. This would not be a problem if it were not for the fact that design schools are not establishing in their students the foundational intellectual skills needed to conduct the work they then assign to the students.
>
> At The Policy Lab, we are increasingly convinced that the design juncture is the key nexus for attention in crafting policy and programming.
>
> There is a brave new world to be discovered in separating "designing" from "decision making" in democratic processes in recognizing that design puts options on the table, while decision making removes them from the table. That small, conceptual shift (of both inserting design, and distinguishing design) could fundamentally alter how we approach major public challenges (almost all of which fall under the common design rubric of "wicked problems").
>
> The challenge may be design. The question is whether designers will be the ones to contribute to that challenge. As of this very moment, I'm not so sure.
>
> Derek.
> _________________
> Dr. Derek B. Miller
> Director
>
> The Policy Lab
> 321 Columbus Ave.
> Seventh Floor of the Electric Carriage House
> Boston, MA 02116
> United States of America
>
> Phone
> +1 617 440 4409
> Twitter
> @Policylabtweets
> Web
> www.thepolicylab.org
>
> This e-mail includes proprietary and confidential information belonging to The Policy Lab, Ltd. All rights reserved.
>
> On Oct 5, 2011, at 3:19 AM, Andrew J King wrote:
>
>> Don Norman's abstract of his article for Core77 on design education seems to echo exactly the thesis of an article I read in the old UK Chartered Society of Designers journal, probably in the mid 80's.
>>
>> Being currently on the other side of the planet, I don't have access to my paper archives, so I can't offer a reference. The article was mainly concerned with furniture design rather than product, but the general gist was similar: design education remains too much based in craft and craft skill, and not enough in education for industrial design. That this should still be an issue is profoundly worrying, but I think it goes much deeper: Since the collapse of the Modernist consensus, undergraduate design education seems to be mired in a crisis of theory: What to teach and how? This would be a happy and creative opportunity were it not that, too often, it seems to be an unrecognised crisis, or at least, one unrecognised by those who ought to be doing something about it. That it has been going on for so long, is a tragedy, and I sometimes feel we are in danger of 'losing design' altogether, in the sense of losing all recognition of it, in the specialisms of the academy and in public perception, as an integrative discipline, and not a mere collection of assorted industrial crafts.
>>
>> With new technologies of manufacturing beginning to mount an assault on the last bastions of skill, it seems to be ever more urgent that design education re-invents itself and shows that it is something bigger and more important than the ever more fragmented specialisms that seem to be popular in many colleges.
>>
>> Andrew J King
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> On 5 Oct 2011, at 09:16, Don Norman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> For your amusement (or perhaps annoyance). My latest essay on design
>>> education on the core77.com website:
>>>
>>> Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
>>> http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/design_education_brilliance_without_substance_20364.asp
>>>
>>> We are now in the 21st century, but design curricula seem stuck in the mid
>>> 20th century, except for the addition of computer tools . . .
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 14:33:11 +0100
From: ALISON BARNES <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
Dear All
I think this is a very interesting thread, and it reminds me of the thread
about 'research' and 'Research' that was running a year or so ago.
At present I am trying to write an article for Iridescent (the Icograda
online journal) that grapples with these issues from a graphic design
perspective. I have recently successfully completed my own full time, AHRC
funded PhD, having achieved a first at undergraduate level and a distinction
at Masters level and taught in HE for 15 years. So, in theory you would
think I was well prepared to step up to PhD. In reality I found a huge gap
in my knowledge, in particular in relation to the traditions and academic
discourse of research. I took part in the training programme offered by my
University, which focussed primarily on practical research (more information
gathering and management) skills for first years, then academic writing and
viva/presentation skills for years two to five. Alongside these there were a
range of very interesting and sometimes useful seminars from guest lecturers
that focused on their own research. But I can't help feeling if the training
programme had begun with an introduction to research design and an
introduction to a range of qualitative approaches, I may have not only been
able to position the work of the lecturers more clearly within the wider
academy, but also my own. I feel this lack of introduction—which in many
fields outside of graphic design comes at undergraduate level—leaves graphic
design students on the back foot when it comes to starting doctoral
research. I too would not suggest that graphic designers become social
scientists, but personally I feel my own research and practice has benefited
hugely from engaging with disciplines external to design. Such crossing of
disciplinary borders would also help prepare students for multi-disciplinary
work where they have to contend with colleagues who come from quite
different backgrounds with different approaches. I think there's much to be
gained by crossing borders rather than trying to erect disciplinary fences.
Seeing what we are not, can also help define what we are, or what we can be.
I hope to start introducing such references into my own teaching as I return
to a position in HE. Especially as the graphic design students I have worked
with often engage with ethnographic methods or content analysis (albeit in
simplistic terms perhaps) but they just think, as Keith Russell said on the
list in 2010, that they are simply solving the brief set for them—they are
unaware they are using research methods.
Best,
Alison
On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 1:35 PM, Birger Sevaldson <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> Sinse Derek mentiones the Oslo School:
> Here we are stuck in a way of teaching the two years of master level in an
> old fashioned way that has not cought up with what happens on our PhD level
> and in our nummerous research projects. There is a gap we need to bridge. It
> is not the design activities and various practices, even traditional ones,
> that are the problem. The problem is, we do not have any research training
> for the master students in addition and in interaction with the
> skills-building activities and design practices. This becomes a problem when
> master students are engaged in very complex tasks that are intentionally in
> the forefront of the design realm e.g. the design for disarmement projects
> Derek and I teach together here.
> I do not think that replacing design skills with e.g. social sciences is a
> good idea. Designers must not become social scientists. The value of design
> research is found in the middle ground between design practice and knowledge
> production. Design brings something new to research. (We have become very
> recognized for this at the Norwegian Research Council). It is also not a
> solution to import research practices from other fields e.g. social sciences
> without a criticallity that is possitioned in design so to reshape research
> to become proprietary for design.
> Many of us have been working along this line of balancing the "import" of
> research methods, theories and practices with refining design practice as
> knowledge production. Unfortunately in many places we still need to fight
> for a shift of the design education where we are embedded and the disharmony
> between what some of us teach, and the surrounding systems and structures
> remain.
> Meanwhile we continue to throw imensly complex challenges at our students
> for which they are not prepaired. The strange thing is that they love it,
> and they feel that design can be relevant and important. So the students are
> ready, we need to catch up.
>
> best
>
> Birger Sevaldson
>
>
> ________________________________________
> Fra: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
> research in Design [[log in to unmask]] på vegne av Derek B.
> Miller [[log in to unmask]]
> Sendt: 6. oktober 2011 10:54
> Til: [log in to unmask]
> Emne: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
>
> A brief interjection on the design education thread:
>
> I'm currently guest lecturer at AHO — the Oslo School of Architecture and
> Design — and through that experience I have started to get my thoughts in
> order. I'll stay far away from the artillery shells of the senior design
> specialists here as I am thoroughly out of my depth in addressing Design
> Education writ large. I'll say only this, and from my perspective as
> Director at The Policy Lab:
>
> 1. There may be some value in aligning educational conduct (i.e. what we
> teach and how) with actual evolving design practice.
>
> 2. That means, as designers (at least some designers) are pushing the
> boundaries of design practice into new areas (or are helping shape and
> re-conceptualize familiar areas), it seems pretty clear to me that they
> nevertheless lack some of the needed intellectual skills required to
> properly engage those new practices from a degree of professionalism.
>
> 3. Mapping those gaps between the "know-how" and the "need-to-know" seems
> less a theoretical task than a pragmatic one to keep education both current
> and innovative.
>
> 4. My immediate concern is that students are not really being prepared for
> the work they think they are going into, and more to the point, they don't
> know they aren't prepared because their education is so distant from the
> social sciences and other fields necessary to illuminate their own gaps.
>
> As The Policy Lab is now cooperating with numerous design firms and schools
> in order to design new services, I can experience first-hand their skill
> sets in tasks such as interviewing, structuring research, differentiating
> research questions from interview questions, and rendering interpretations
> on findings. Among other things.
>
> Just like undergraduates entering a first-year class on qualitative
> research methods, these students are totally unprepared for serious
> research.This is only one slice of the larger pie you are all discussing, to
> be sure. This would not be a problem if it were not for the fact that design
> schools are not establishing in their students the foundational intellectual
> skills needed to conduct the work they then assign to the students.
>
> At The Policy Lab, we are increasingly convinced that the design juncture
> is the key nexus for attention in crafting policy and programming.
>
> There is a brave new world to be discovered in separating "designing" from
> "decision making" in democratic processes in recognizing that design puts
> options on the table, while decision making removes them from the table.
> That small, conceptual shift (of both inserting design, and distinguishing
> design) could fundamentally alter how we approach major public challenges
> (almost all of which fall under the common design rubric of "wicked
> problems").
>
> The challenge may be design. The question is whether designers will be the
> ones to contribute to that challenge. As of this very moment, I'm not so
> sure.
>
> Derek.
> _________________
> Dr. Derek B. Miller
> Director
>
> The Policy Lab
> 321 Columbus Ave.
> Seventh Floor of the Electric Carriage House
> Boston, MA 02116
> United States of America
>
> Phone
> +1 617 440 4409
> Twitter
> @Policylabtweets
> Web
> www.thepolicylab.org
>
> This e-mail includes proprietary and confidential information belonging to
> The Policy Lab, Ltd. All rights reserved.
>
> On Oct 5, 2011, at 3:19 AM, Andrew J King wrote:
>
> > Don Norman's abstract of his article for Core77 on design education seems
> to echo exactly the thesis of an article I read in the old UK Chartered
> Society of Designers journal, probably in the mid 80's.
> >
> > Being currently on the other side of the planet, I don't have access to
> my paper archives, so I can't offer a reference. The article was mainly
> concerned with furniture design rather than product, but the general gist
> was similar: design education remains too much based in craft and craft
> skill, and not enough in education for industrial design. That this should
> still be an issue is profoundly worrying, but I think it goes much deeper:
> Since the collapse of the Modernist consensus, undergraduate design
> education seems to be mired in a crisis of theory: What to teach and how?
> This would be a happy and creative opportunity were it not that, too often,
> it seems to be an unrecognised crisis, or at least, one unrecognised by
> those who ought to be doing something about it. That it has been going on
> for so long, is a tragedy, and I sometimes feel we are in danger of 'losing
> design' altogether, in the sense of losing all recognition of it, in the
> specialisms of the academy and in public perception, as an integrative
> discipline, and not a mere collection of assorted industrial crafts.
> >
> > With new technologies of manufacturing beginning to mount an assault on
> the last bastions of skill, it seems to be ever more urgent that design
> education re-invents itself and shows that it is something bigger and more
> important than the ever more fragmented specialisms that seem to be popular
> in many colleges.
> >
> > Andrew J King
> >
> >
> > Sent from my iPad
> >
> > On 5 Oct 2011, at 09:16, Don Norman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> >> For your amusement (or perhaps annoyance). My latest essay on design
> >> education on the core77.com website:
> >>
> >> Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
> >>
> http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/design_education_brilliance_without_substance_20364.asp
> >>
> >> We are now in the 21st century, but design curricula seem stuck in the
> mid
> >> 20th century, except for the addition of computer tools . . .
--
* * *
Dr. Alison Barnes
School of Graphic Design, LCC
University of the Arts, London
www.alisonbarnesonlineportfolio.tumblr.com
http://informationenvironments.academia.edu/AlisonBarnes/About
http://geo-graphic.blogspot.com/
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 08:49:56 -0700
From: Jacques Giard <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
All,
Allow me to add yet another layer to the discussion about why and how design
education must change. This layer applies to design education in the USA,
but could equally apply elsewhere. This is the layer of accreditation.
The curricula of most reputable design schools in the US architecture,
interior design, industrial design and graphic design often conform to an
external accreditation process. In other words, the profession itself plays
a leadership role in advising and approving the curricula of design schools.
With architecture and interior design, the accreditation process is rather
prescriptive and rigorously applied. In my opinion, the same situation does
not exist for industrial design and graphic design.
The accreditation for both of these design programs is governed by a set of
guidelines that are very broad and lacking in specifics. Consequently,
programs in industrial design and graphic design regularly meet the
standards. If they don't, then time is afforded them to meet the standards,
but the accreditation is rarely in doubt. This despite the fact that the two
professional associations IDSA and AIGA were originally involved in
stipulating the accreditation rules.
The result is self evident, as has been pointed out by several list members.
The curricula in many design programs are not changing. And why should they?
Many schools are accredited as well as being over enrolled. Why rock the
boat?
Clearly, the industrial design and graphic design professions via their
professional associations could be playing a more effective role in
curricular development. So far, however, they have failed to provide the
necessary leadership in creating relevant accreditation standards. It is my
contention that design schools would more likely examine and revise their
curricula if the accreditation standards were modified to reflect the needs
of the profession.
Please do not get me wrong. Accreditation standards are not a panacea. In
the American context, however, they are an extremely important device when
matching design education to design practice.
Jacques Giard PhD
Professor of Design
The Design School
480.965.1373
http://web.me.com/jrgiard/Site/Welcome.html
P Go Green! Please do not print this e-mail unless it is completely
necessary.
On 10/5/11 4:17 PM, "jon kolko" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> For whatever it's worth, here are two papers I wrote about this,
> recently, for interactions magazine and for the AIGA's New
> Contexts/New Practices conference:
>
> http://www.jonkolko.com/writingConflictingRhetoric.php
>
> http://chapters.aiga.org/content.cfm/new-contextsnew-practices-six-perspective
> s-on-design-education?pff=1#changing_conditions
>
> Best,
> Jon
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 17:21:54 +0100
From: Robert Harland <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
Hi
I read Don's article with interest, as I also read his previous article 'Why design education must change'.
Two personal experiences came to mind regarding his comment:
'we need to emphasize working in multidisciplinary teams. Modern design is not done in isolation'
First, from the mid-1980s I worked in graphic design practice in London for fifteen years or so. No projects were ever done in isolation. They were invariably done with car makers, bankers, venture capitalists, real estate consultants, television executives, finance directors, street furniture manufacturers, architects, planners, historians, highways engineers, photographers, illustrators, type designers, printers, web designers, optic fibre cable manufacturers ... and more. Not all together, I should add. Each specialist area brought their own subject knowledge to the project team, as I did. Design practice as I experienced it seemed to be inclusive and require an ability to understand, adopt, and adapt ideas to make artefacts, systems and services, often in combination. I saw this as engaging with 'matters of the world, of business and politics, of social forces and of modern technology' all be it on a scale perhaps different to Don.
Second, I vividly recall one client, considered a pioneer in his field, being completely enamoured in the middle of a meeting by an ability I had to pick up a pencil and simply draw something he was struggling to convey in words. I was as astounded by this as he was. Aside from the general discussion between a surveyor, architect, marketeer and graphic designer, about Chase Bank's affordability ratio*, this seemed a distinctive moment for me in differentiating a particular contribution to the design process that we were all involved in – not to mention those who would further contribute to realising the project but were not in the room.
In the various design practises I knew of at the time, this would have been a common collaborative process of working. And most of the graphic designers I knew would have received the same craft-ideas based education I had, with an ability to draw and make, as well as empathise with the specialist knowledge of others and work within a team. The outcomes often satisfied the needs of all contributors to the process and many working relationships prospered, as did my own. Clients usually had a close understanding of their audiences and this informed their input to the process of designing.
I thought of this as 'modern design', not 'craft', even though craft was an important part of the 'modern design' education I had received in the early 1980s, which further enhanced an ability to pick up a pencil and draw. I now teach 'modern design'. Craft is an important part of this, amongst ideas from numerous other disciplines from architecture to social science.
I therefore don't identify with much of what Don is saying. If design education needs to change, we may need to carefully manage the expectations of those who assume designers can 'draw' what they, as surveyors, bankers, etc, can't. Perhaps 'designers' or 'design educators' who don't draw, make, call it what you will, should colonise a different space. Maybe that's a bit contentious, even defensive.
As I write this, an afterthought is that the term graphic design seems to make a reasonable attempt to define what it does, even if it is tautological to some extent. I know its not surveying or banking.
Regards, Rob.
*defined as 'occupancy cost as a percentage of operating income'
Dr Robert Harland | Lecturer | School of the Arts | School of the Arts, English and Drama | Loughborough University
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/staff/robert-harland.htm<http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/staff/robert-harland.html>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 17:41:24 +0100
From: ALISON BARNES <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
Hi Rob
Nice to hear from you, and always good to get another graphic design
perspective.
With regard to design educators who don't draw or make, I was chatting to an
Australian colleague recently who expressed concern that if all new
appointments in Australia (as seems to be the current thinking) demanded a
PhD, then there was a danger that graphic design courses would find
themselves short of educators who could actually 'do'. I would be no means
subscribe to dishing up so much 'theory' that students' pencils remained
unused, I think it's absolutely important to get the balance right and
engage them in both theory and practice—preferably with the two inextricably
linked via their studio projects.
Also, I often think of graphic design as like a vaccuum - it is empty in
itself, and that vaccuum is only filled when one has content to work with.
Given that on most projects that content is not usually graphic design
based, but could be anything from banking to bowling, it seems it is, in
some ways, inherently interdisciplinary and therefore perhaps that is why we
have an ability to understand and work in a broad range of settings and
with a range of collaborators. Just ruminating, not a completely formed
theory...
Hope all good in Loughborough,
Alison
On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 5:21 PM, Robert Harland <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
>
> I therefore don't identify with much of what Don is saying. If design
> education needs to change, we may need to carefully manage the expectations
> of those who assume designers can 'draw' what they, as surveyors, bankers,
> etc, can't. Perhaps 'designers' or 'design educators' who don't draw, make,
> call it what you will, should colonise a different space. Maybe that's a bit
> contentious, even defensive.
>
>
>
> Regards, Rob.
>
>
>
>
> Dr Robert Harland | Lecturer | School of the Arts | School of the Arts,
> English and Drama | Loughborough University
> http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/staff/robert-harland.htm<
> http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/staff/robert-harland.html>
>
--
* * *
Dr. Alison Barnes
School of Graphic Design, LCC
University of the Arts, London
www.alisonbarnesonlineportfolio.tumblr.com
http://informationenvironments.academia.edu/AlisonBarnes/About
http://geo-graphic.blogspot.com/
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 17:04:06 +0000
From: Diaz-Kommonen Lily <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
Hi:
Very nice and relevant discussion. Thanks!
In agreement with Don, it is the case that in many contemporary design practices, such as with digital media, the so-called 'content' that you are referring to Alison, is expressed in a mathematical format. And in order to participate in the discussions and negotiations, there is a need to be conversant in mathematics. Consider for example the creation of a series of special effects for a movie, such as rendering fire or water where the knowledge is based on physics.
Still, what I find it interesting that in our program, that is interdisciplinary, the engineers seek to enroll in drawing classes and the artists seek to enroll in courses where they learn about programming. So there is a need for reaching both ends of the spectrum, from the extremely formal to the embodied experiential knowledge. This is one of the challenges to becoming a designer. And this is also relevant to Jonas point regarding the importance of studio education: What is the design studio education about in the 21st century?
Best regards,
Lily Díaz
On 6.10.2011, at 12.41, ALISON BARNES wrote:
> Hi Rob
>
> Nice to hear from you, and always good to get another graphic design
> perspective.
>
> With regard to design educators who don't draw or make, I was chatting to an
> Australian colleague recently who expressed concern that if all new
> appointments in Australia (as seems to be the current thinking) demanded a
> PhD, then there was a danger that graphic design courses would find
> themselves short of educators who could actually 'do'. I would be no means
> subscribe to dishing up so much 'theory' that students' pencils remained
> unused, I think it's absolutely important to get the balance right and
> engage them in both theory and practice—preferably with the two inextricably
> linked via their studio projects.
>
> Also, I often think of graphic design as like a vaccuum - it is empty in
> itself, and that vaccuum is only filled when one has content to work with.
> Given that on most projects that content is not usually graphic design
> based, but could be anything from banking to bowling, it seems it is, in
> some ways, inherently interdisciplinary and therefore perhaps that is why we
> have an ability to understand and work in a broad range of settings and
> with a range of collaborators. Just ruminating, not a completely formed
> theory...
>
> Hope all good in Loughborough,
> Alison
>
> On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 5:21 PM, Robert Harland <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> I therefore don't identify with much of what Don is saying. If design
>> education needs to change, we may need to carefully manage the expectations
>> of those who assume designers can 'draw' what they, as surveyors, bankers,
>> etc, can't. Perhaps 'designers' or 'design educators' who don't draw, make,
>> call it what you will, should colonise a different space. Maybe that's a bit
>> contentious, even defensive.
>>
>>
>>
>> Regards, Rob.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Dr Robert Harland | Lecturer | School of the Arts | School of the Arts,
>> English and Drama | Loughborough University
>> http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/staff/robert-harland.htm<
>> http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/staff/robert-harland.html>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> * * *
>
> Dr. Alison Barnes
>
> School of Graphic Design, LCC
> University of the Arts, London
>
> www.alisonbarnesonlineportfolio.tumblr.com
> http://informationenvironments.academia.edu/AlisonBarnes/About
> http://geo-graphic.blogspot.com/
----------------------------------------------------
Dr. Lily Diaz
Professor of Systems of Representation
and Digital Cultural Heritage
Head of Research
Department of Media
Aalto University, School of Art & Design
Finland
+ 358 9 47030 338
+ 358 9 470 555 (FAX)
<[log in to unmask]>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 11:09:33 -0600
From: Harold Nelson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
Dear DRS
Interesting to see the contrast between this thread on (industrial) design education and the series of debriefs on Steve Jobs and his approach to design that are appearing in the press with his passing. I guess that is why so many in technology have found education to be irrelevant or dangerous to their work.
Regards
Harold
[log in to unmask]
http://www.haroldnelson.com/
organizational design competence
http://www.organizationaldesigncompetence.com/
advanced design institute
http://www.advanceddesigninstitute.blogspot.com/
accidental vagrant
http://accidentalvagrant.blogspot.com/
>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 18:13:34 +0100
From: ALISON BARNES <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
Nicely provocative Harold!
Can you be more specific and give us some quotes?
Alison
On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 6:09 PM, Harold Nelson <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> Dear DRS
>
> Interesting to see the contrast between this thread on (industrial) design
> education and the series of debriefs on Steve Jobs and his approach to
> design that are appearing in the press with his passing. I guess that is why
> so many in technology have found education to be irrelevant or dangerous to
> their work.
>
> Regards
>
> Harold
>
>
>
> [log in to unmask]
> http://www.haroldnelson.com/
>
> organizational design competence
>
> http://www.organizationaldesigncompetence.com/
> advanced design institute
>
> http://www.advanceddesigninstitute.blogspot.com/
>
> accidental vagrant
>
> http://accidentalvagrant.blogspot.com/
>
>
>
>
> >
>
--
* * *
Dr. Alison Barnes
School of Graphic Design, LCC
University of the Arts, London
www.alisonbarnesonlineportfolio.tumblr.com
http://informationenvironments.academia.edu/AlisonBarnes/About
http://geo-graphic.blogspot.com/
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 11:21:54 -0600
From: Harold Nelson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
Dear Alison
I think David Pogue in his NY Times column (Pogue's Posts) "Steve Jobs: Imitated, Never Duplicated" is a good place to start.
Regards
Harold
[log in to unmask]
http://www.haroldnelson.com/
organizational design competence
http://www.organizationaldesigncompetence.com/
advanced design institute
http://www.advanceddesigninstitute.blogspot.com/
accidental vagrant
http://accidentalvagrant.blogspot.com/
On Oct 6, 2011, at 11:13 AM, ALISON BARNES wrote:
> Nicely provocative Harold!
> Can you be more specific and give us some quotes?
>
> Alison
>
> On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 6:09 PM, Harold Nelson <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
>> Dear DRS
>>
>> Interesting to see the contrast between this thread on (industrial) design
>> education and the series of debriefs on Steve Jobs and his approach to
>> design that are appearing in the press with his passing. I guess that is why
>> so many in technology have found education to be irrelevant or dangerous to
>> their work.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Harold
>>
>>
>>
>> [log in to unmask]
>> http://www.haroldnelson.com/
>>
>> organizational design competence
>>
>> http://www.organizationaldesigncompetence.com/
>> advanced design institute
>>
>> http://www.advanceddesigninstitute.blogspot.com/
>>
>> accidental vagrant
>>
>> http://accidentalvagrant.blogspot.com/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> * * *
>
> Dr. Alison Barnes
>
> School of Graphic Design, LCC
> University of the Arts, London
>
> www.alisonbarnesonlineportfolio.tumblr.com
> http://informationenvironments.academia.edu/AlisonBarnes/About
> http://geo-graphic.blogspot.com/
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 19:14:18 +0100
From: Robert Harland <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
Hi Alison,
On 6 Oct 2011, at 17:41, ALISON BARNES wrote:
> With regard to design educators who don't draw or make, I was chatting to an
> Australian colleague recently who expressed concern that if all new
> appointments in Australia (as seems to be the current thinking) demanded a
> PhD, then there was a danger that graphic design courses would find
> themselves short of educators who could actually 'do'.
Unless, of course, they 'did' part of their PhD, as you 'did'. Perhaps as valid, if not more so, as the 'doing' I mentioned earlier in an industrial context.
> I would be no means
> subscribe to dishing up so much 'theory' that students' pencils remained
> unused, I think it's absolutely important to get the balance right and
> engage them in both theory and practice—preferably with the two inextricably
> linked via their studio projects.
My thought here is that in the context of a PhD 'pencils' are used as a tool in the service of research. In the context I mentioned earlier, it is used as a tool in the service of industry/commerce. This seldom required theorising beyond the development of a personal dialogue. The 'method' (or action) of using a pencil is the same in a research or industrial context, the difference for me is the motivation to report of the experience beyond, say, a client meeting.
>
> Also, I often think of graphic design as like a vaccuum - it is empty in
> itself, and that vaccuum is only filled when one has content to work with.
> Given that on most projects that content is not usually graphic design
> based, but could be anything from banking to bowling, it seems it is, in
> some ways, inherently interdisciplinary and therefore perhaps that is why we
> have an ability to understand and work in a broad range of settings and
> with a range of collaborators. Just ruminating, not a completely formed
> theory...
I don't ever see graphic design as a vacuum. For me graphic design is either 'relational', or not. If it is, it is always connected, integrative and interdisciplinary. Its defining properties (things or objects, e.g. line, shape, tone, colour, texture, form) at a basic level exist and are configured to create and communicate meaning.
For me, the process of configuration, as I described it in the earlier email, is always informed by more than just oneself. Isn't that an impossibility? No client ever issued a brief and then disappeared. The meaning of any drawing is never not seen. Even a choice of typeface (say Gill Sans) benefits from some kind of 'posthumous' interdisciplinary collaboration with Eric Gill. I think I prefer the view that graphic design cannot exist without content. Is it possible to draw nothing?
Rob
>
> Hope all good in Loughborough,
> Alison
>
> On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 5:21 PM, Robert Harland <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> I therefore don't identify with much of what Don is saying. If design
>> education needs to change, we may need to carefully manage the expectations
>> of those who assume designers can 'draw' what they, as surveyors, bankers,
>> etc, can't. Perhaps 'designers' or 'design educators' who don't draw, make,
>> call it what you will, should colonise a different space. Maybe that's a bit
>> contentious, even defensive.
>>
>>
>>
>> Regards, Rob.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Dr Robert Harland | Lecturer | School of the Arts | School of the Arts,
>> English and Drama | Loughborough University
>> http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/staff/robert-harland.htm<
>> http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/staff/robert-harland.html>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> * * *
>
> Dr. Alison Barnes
>
> School of Graphic Design, LCC
> University of the Arts, London
>
> www.alisonbarnesonlineportfolio.tumblr.com
> http://informationenvironments.academia.edu/AlisonBarnes/About
> http://geo-graphic.blogspot.com/
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 20:21:45 +0100
From: ALISON BARNES <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
Hi Rob
Good points... Yes, perhaps what I mean is that the building blocks or
defining properties are 'inert' or something like that. One configures them
to create meaning, but invariably it is what one wants to mean/communicate
that drives the configuration.
I don't ever see graphic design as a vacuum. For me graphic design is either
> 'relational', or not. If it is, it is always connected, integrative and
> interdisciplinary. Its defining properties (things or objects, e.g. line,
> shape, tone, colour, texture, form) at a basic level exist and are
> configured to create and communicate meaning.
>
> For me, the process of configuration, as I described it in the earlier
> email, is always informed by more than just oneself. Isn't that an
> impossibility? No client ever issued a brief and then disappeared. The
> meaning of any drawing is never not seen. Even a choice of typeface (say
> Gill Sans) benefits from some kind of 'posthumous' interdisciplinary
> collaboration with Eric Gill. I think I prefer the view that graphic design
> cannot exist without content. Is it possible to draw nothing?
>
>
Cheers,
Alison
Dr. Alison Barnes
School of Graphic Design, LCC
University of the Arts, London
www.alisonbarnesonlineportfolio.tumblr.com
http://informationenvironments.academia.edu/AlisonBarnes/About
http://geo-graphic.blogspot.com/
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 20:36:23 +0100
From: ALISON BARNES <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
Hi Harold
From my perspective, and experience in UK HE with graphic design, Jobs'
views seem entirely in keeping with a lot of the stuff we try and
inspire/engage students with. So maybe it is a cultural issue or a
difference between design fields? His mantra sounds quite 'art school' to
me.
I have little experience of HE in the US, other than with 3rd year exchange
students, who did seem to follow a very different design process. They
seemed driven by a need to execute highly polished pieces of graphic design,
and the idea of some kind of communicative concept underpinning the work was
alien to them. It was all about polish and fitting in with what was already
out there. Certainly they had amazing software skills, but seemingly no
desire to 'think different'.
Cheers,
Alison
> I think David Pogue in his NY Times column (Pogue's Posts) "Steve Jobs:
> Imitated, Never Duplicated" is a good place to start.
>
> Regards
>
> Harold
>
>
Dr. Alison Barnes
School of Graphic Design, LCC
University of the Arts, London
www.alisonbarnesonlineportfolio.tumblr.com
http://informationenvironments.academia.edu/AlisonBarnes/About
http://geo-graphic.blogspot.com/
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 22:02:30 +0100
From: Inês Redondo Pinto Pereira <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Survey to all Portuguese list subscribers
este já está :)
bjs
2011/10/5 leonardo Pereira <[log in to unmask]>
> Dear all
> My name is Leonardo Pereira and I am conducting a small survey, for my own
> PHD research Project, which is dedicated to the development of IPTV
> Interfaces' Design guidelines for Portuguese elderly people.
> Therefore I would like to invite all of this list's Portuguese subscribers
> to answer some questions about their parent's Television sets.
> Note that you should only answer the survey if your parents are both,
> either
> 55 years old or older.
>
> The survey is available on the following link:
> https://www.kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=OKJDFL_3a9c083f
>
> Thank you all, for your time and attention.
>
> My best regards,
> Leonardo Pereira
>
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2011 08:14:24 +1100
From: Teena Clerke <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
Dear Alison,
like you, many of the design courses in which I have been involved in teaching at undergraduate
level often continue to neglect or struggle to include basic qualitiative research skills and processes
that, for example, generate researchable questions and research designs.
On the other hand, while yes, it seems that in Australia one has to have a PhD to even get a job
interview to be an academic these days, many people working as academics are designers with
PhDs, rather than academics with no design experience – indeed, my own PhD research has found
this to be the case both here and in the UK. Perhaps one of the reasons is that the courses they are
required to teach in are pragmatically focused on designing, while undergraduate students are
pragmatically focused on becoming designers, rather than broadening their perceptions about what
being a designer means to researching. That is, students often generally avoid reading at all, let
alone critical engagement with scholarly articles, and also resist moving outside the albeit slippery
boundaries of design.
At first glance, this might seem like a catch-22, yet my research involved talking to design
academics, most of whom had a PhD or were in the process of completing one, whose view was that
they were designers who also taught, researched and wrote about design. And, for the most part,
many of them struggled to learn how to research and write research, relying on design skills and
reading outside the field to do so while continuing to design. They also consciously DID NOT promote
their research qualifications to their design clients as they did not see this as enhancing their design
credibility. That has also been the case for me, enrolled in an eduation faculty rather than design,
and is the subject of a paper I am writing a paper for the DRS conference in July next year – how I
used visual communication design skills to analyse qualitative interview data for my PhD.
So, rather than deskilling the academic workforce in relation to designing, I suggest instead there
are many design academics who embody this crossover, and subsequently embed their research
knowledge within their teaching practices that must be crossing over to students, despite the lack of
formal research subjects.
I wonder, do other design academics on this list also have this experience?
cheers, teena
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 22:21:37 +0100
From: leonardo Pereira <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Survey to all Portuguese list subscribers
Olha ela.
Também por aqui andas? Obrigado amiga. e um beijinho.
Leo
2011/10/6 Inês Redondo Pinto Pereira <[log in to unmask]>
> este já está :)
>
> bjs
>
> 2011/10/5 leonardo Pereira <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > Dear all
> > My name is Leonardo Pereira and I am conducting a small survey, for my
> own
> > PHD research Project, which is dedicated to the development of IPTV
> > Interfaces' Design guidelines for Portuguese elderly people.
> > Therefore I would like to invite all of this list's Portuguese
> subscribers
> > to answer some questions about their parent's Television sets.
> > Note that you should only answer the survey if your parents are both,
> > either
> > 55 years old or older.
> >
> > The survey is available on the following link:
> > https://www.kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=OKJDFL_3a9c083f
> >
> > Thank you all, for your time and attention.
> >
> > My best regards,
> > Leonardo Pereira
> >
>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 23:05:01 +0100
From: Robert Harland <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
Hi Teena
On 6 Oct 2011, at 22:14, Teena Clerke wrote:
-snip-
> like you, many of the design courses in which I have been involved in teaching at undergraduate
> level often continue to neglect or struggle to include basic qualitiative research skills and processes
> that, for example, generate researchable questions and research designs.
Agreed. Although some 'basic qualitative research' skills are also practiced unknowingly in art school environments. This is directly aligned with what a social scientist may refer to as visual methodology, but in art schools is better known as sketchbook development, or equivalent. I find it is not so much a struggle, more an issue for language use to connect what has traditionally been an 'implicit' rather than 'explicit' practice. In fact, just recently, in reviewing a first year PhD animation student, I tried to encourage how grappling with the language of research methodology may be the key to collaboration beyond art and design. In that particular case, it was about the need to articulate the process of animation to the non-animator, as a potential research method explaining how animation can support research in traditional scientific research. Perhaps I'm stating the obvious to say that regarding generating research questions, the process of good sketchbook inquiry represents a desire to find something out, but usually evidenced through 'images' more than words.
-snip-
> how I used visual communication design skills to analyse qualitative interview data for my PhD.
I became increasingly aware of this in my own recent PhD experience, whereby, the experience I had in graphic design practice sensitised me to critiquing artefacts in a way I cannot imagine being able to do had I not been so closely aligned to the data I collected. But, as I understand it, this sensitisation is a typical PhD experience in qualitative research.
-snip-
> I wonder, do other design academics on this list also have this experience?
> cheers, teena
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 23:25:54 +0100
From: ALISON BARNES <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
Hi Rob/Teena
I totally agree about the language issue Rob, as Keith Russell said a while
back on the list, undergraduate students are using research methods, but
unaware of it, as they just think they are solving the brief. I guess this
is, as you say, about moving from tacit knowledge to a position where
through reflection it can become implicit and capable of articulation.
However, I don't think it is just about language, as by knowing there is a
language out there that relates to a body of work you can dig further into
the methods/approaches/ideas. I also think students aren't just engaging
with social science in relation to visual methods. I think a lot of what
might considered to be ethnographic methods (and others) are used as well,
but again students are unaware of this.
Also, relating to the earlier posts about sketching/drawing, depending on
the type of designer you are, one's sketchbooks aren't necessarily going to
be full of sketches, or perhaps visual in the traditional sense. As someone
who is primarily interested in relating to the world through language and
typography, mine are full of words. In the past have had to defend students
whose work develops in a similar way to this with colleagues who think the
only way to work with a brief is to find the answer through experimenting
solely with media.For me, 'sketching' can take a variety of forms, not all
of which are solely visual.
Cheers,
Ali
On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 11:05 PM, Robert Harland <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> Hi Teena
>
> On 6 Oct 2011, at 22:14, Teena Clerke wrote:
>
> -snip-
>
> > like you, many of the design courses in which I have been involved in
> teaching at undergraduate
> > level often continue to neglect or struggle to include basic qualitiative
> research skills and processes
> > that, for example, generate researchable questions and research designs.
>
> Agreed. Although some 'basic qualitative research' skills are also
> practiced unknowingly in art school environments. This is directly aligned
> with what a social scientist may refer to as visual methodology, but in art
> schools is better known as sketchbook development, or equivalent. I find it
> is not so much a struggle, more an issue for language use to connect what
> has traditionally been an 'implicit' rather than 'explicit' practice. In
> fact, just recently, in reviewing a first year PhD animation student, I
> tried to encourage how grappling with the language of research methodology
> may be the key to collaboration beyond art and design. In that particular
> case, it was about the need to articulate the process of animation to the
> non-animator, as a potential research method explaining how animation can
> support research in traditional scientific research. Perhaps I'm stating the
> obvious to say that regarding generating research questions, the process of
> good sketchbook inquiry represents a desire to find something out, but
> usually evidenced through 'images' more than words.
>
>
------------------------------
End of PHD-DESIGN Digest - 5 Oct 2011 to 6 Oct 2011 (#2011-245)
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