​My great thanks to Birger Sevaldson.

Although I care deeply about the training of designers, I have grown weary
of the ongoing debate, so weary that whenever a new item about design and
maths arrives, I simply delete it without reading.​

Birger's note, however (critical parts below), is an excellent example of a
constructive commentary on education.

The one major item I would add is that we need to distinguish among the
many different means of the word "designer." Birger's suggestion is an
excellent first pass, but it could perhaps be enhanced by segregating
designers a bit more. Then, the classification of "All," "most," "a
majority of," and "a minority" of designers would differ among the classes.

What are the categories? Well, one way of categorizing might be specialty,
such as graphic, industrial, service, ...  Or perhaps product from service.
Or physical from virtual. Or systems.  I can imagine the discussion about
categories becoming incredibly complex, argumentative, and tedious.
 Another might be simply to distinguish academic from practice, or perhaps
researchers from practitioners. Obviously too simple a set of categories.

Note that many engineers are trained in math, rather substantially, usually
including advanced calculus, probability theory, matrices, tensors, ...),
but then as they go on to practice their engineering craft, find that they
almost never use anything beyond algebra. (I'm an example.) So even in
engineering, the research community makes use of very advanced analytical
methods, but the practitioners seldom do. (Many of their advanced tools
make the task of applying the maths invisible and simple.)

For the moment, we might distinguish PhD training of academic scholars in
design from MA level training of practitioners. Their requirements are
dramatically different.

As an analogy, consider the training of a PhD student in Business with the
training of an MBA student at the same university and even by the same
professors. The MBA is akin to terminal training of designers: a lot of
very practical skills, little in the way of theory. PhDs get a lot of
theory, but very little practical knowledge (in both fields, I might add).

The article that Scott Klemmer and i wrote about design training never
mentioned mathematics: we were arguing for a broader education and
knowledge of the world. Yet another way to categorize things. We also
neglected to distinguish among categories of designers.

But we agreed strongly that the wonderful craft skill of designers, the
role of thinking through drawing, sketching, and making, must not be lost.

http://goo.gl/K0Z0R5

Thank you, Birger.

Don

On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 2:58 AM, Birger Sevaldson
<[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> All designers need (almost all designers): Composition skills,
> synthesizing skills, ethics, ….
>
> Most designers need: Creativity, flow etc (as described in cognitive
> creativity research), intuition (as an expert feature described by Dreyfus
> and Dreyfus Skill Acquisition model), sustainability, design thinking,
> esthetic skills, some media knowledge, skills in tools and design media,
> drawing, sketching, computer graphics …..
>
> A majority of designers need: Social skills, empathy, cultural knowledge,
> cross-cultural understanding, communication skills, business understanding,
> innovation, systems practice and understanding, product service systems,
> visual thinking, some spatial understanding, co-designing, facilitation ….
>
> A minority of designers need: political knowledge, society, statistics,
> academic writing, management skills, lower level mathematics, coping with
> thrownness, artistic skills, engineering skills, marketing, advanced
> understanding of space, ability to redefine and open new fields for design,
> some basic systems theories ….
>
> Some few designers need: High level mathematics, ethnography, systems
> theories, information visualization skills, …..
>



Don Norman
Director, Design at UC San Diego: Think Observe Make
Nielsen Norman Group, IDEO Fellow
[log in to unmask] www.jnd.org  <http://www.jnd.org>

"Stupid Smart Things" and other LinkedIn
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 |  Core77 Essays <http://www.core77.com/blog/author/don-norman/default.asp> |
Essays on my website <http://www.jnd.org/dn.pubs.html>
Book: "Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded<http://amzn.to/ZOMyys>"
(DOET2).
Course: Udacity On-Line course based on
DOET2<https://www.udacity.com/course/design101>
 (free).


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