Terry Love kirjoitti 22.8.2012 kello 2.07:

Taken together, it appears there is a need to rethink Design Education in
ways that have a much less central  role for   'Design History', and,  in
terms of the length of time Design education has now been a university
discipline, this rethinking would appear to be becoming overdue.

Terry succeeds again in his quest of triggering discussions, and I must leap in.
I largely agree with his facts about Design History, but instead of hush-hushing Design History in a dusty closet, I would like to rescue it, and even offer it a more prominent role than it has now.

How come? The reason is that Design History may be the only remaining corner in Design Research where artifacts are still taken as objects of serious research, and that is something we must cling to for the sake of our identity. This may sound  rather odd, but look at what we publish in papers: artifacts serve there only as scenic factors, as props for real, interesting topics such as design methods, designer thinking, or user experience. It is even a bit difficult to see, what sort of research could be done on artifacts, beyond a historical account. Given that the reason for the existence of the profession is the creation of new artifacts, this lack of interest is – interesting, to say the least.

It is true, like Terry says, that such Design History that treats artifacts only as art objects does not contribute much to the understanding but only serves as a repository of what is there to beg, steal, and borrow (which may have a value of its own: it is probably just as good that our budding designers beg, steal, and borrow from the best available sources in their identity-building...). Objects of art, cut from the practices, are subject to only art theorizing, resulting typically nothing more complicated than classification; styles and genres and so on. Important side of education, but not enough, indeed.

I also agree with Terry that to become a more true academical discipline we need more theoretically grounded teaching (not to say anything about research...:-)). But I am less optimistic than he that the theories needed for a change in education are already here; there may be some, but I believe that one essential piece is still missing, and we can only get it through Design History.

We joked in the Doctoral Education in Design Conference in Hong Kong  2011 that we should redefine design as "clinical social science"; not very accurate definition because social sciences are not geared towards change, but there is a grain of truth as well. In any case – to be clinical, we need a body; where it is?

Humans, groups, organizations and society are bodies for social and organizational sciences; turf already taken. Our body has to contain artifacts – but artifacts in their pure technicality belong the body of engineering; new angle needed. And we are not interested in only what is now but also what may be – our body is on move: artifacts and practices in their co-evolution, culturally and historically contextualized. Dynamics of human materially-mediated practices, to put it shortly. Because we are dealing with historical matter – what has been and is now will influence what will come – there will be no magic formulas: dynamics through and through. But even dynamics can be studied and understood for good, like Terry has kept reminding us.

This is the area that needs some theorizing – or  better understanding and partial explanations through conceptualization and pattern-finding; the word theory is so ballasted in English. But how to get there? The fastest route to start is with historical records of what has happened when artifacts are conceived, designed, used, and changed, and that's where we will need Design History. The New Design Historians, taking inspiration from STS instead of art history, will be the vanguards leading us towards deeper understanding :-). Design History may well already be on its way – the actual discussion there is a far cry from the object of art - textbooks – but it has not yet publicly  taken the flag, so to say.

We have something available already: there are studies of how cities and houses evolve over time and why. There is also a beautiful body of research on technology evolution in STS, only lacking the perspecticve of a designer. And I was delighted to see the Norman & Verganti paper on incremental and radical innovation that Don friendly made available to us last winter; technical and cultural bound together in an historical analytical attempt to understand what happened. I hope that it is a harbinger of things to come.

Let's not ditch Design History; it is our hope for future...:-)

best regards,
--Kari Kuutti
Univ. Oulu, Finland