An most interesting posting and request,
I joined Newcastle Poly and started teaching ergonomics into the Industrial Design Department in 1976. I recall many long discussions with John about how Design should be taught and the importance of integrating function and usability married to good looks and manufacturability. I was also teaching on the "innovation" element of the OU's T100 Summer School which used J. Christopher-Jones's "Design Methods" OU text. Notions of perspective and integration were also big in OU "Systems" as well as the various design modules.
Moved into the Department when the Poly re-organised c10 years later - exciting times with small groups that always seemed to include some amazingly insightful students who were always destined to change the designed world!
Those were the days - when a paper and pencil was the automatic first choice when resolving ideas!
I was certainly influenced in my perspective/approach by John and continue to be so!
Mic Porter - still teaching in Northumbria!
> Hi Jerry,
> Thanks for your message.
> I'm happy to try to collate together John's thinking on design thinking. Others that might also remember are staff and students of Design at Northumbria Uni and Newcastle Poly as was, and the close knit small community of the DRS then. At the time John started talking about design thinking and domain-free design the idea of design thinking didn't really exist as a fixed concept in the design discourse. In part, at that time, it was used to differentiate 'design thinking' as an activity involving conscious thoughts and reflections and careful explicit consideration of factor, needs, processes and solution spaces. This is in contrast to designing using intuition and other forms of designing without conscious thinking. The idea of design thinking as I remember it then was drawing attention to the idea there are benefits in standing back and thinking and making strategic moves, rather than being wholly immersed and losing oneself in the design activity. It aligned with but differed from the similar separating of in and out that occurred in the design methods developed in the 1950s by Prince and Gordon.
> A challenge is that John used diagrams to pin down and describe complex concepts in rather than words. He used words though discussing design theory in long dialectic discussions whilst out walking, or, occasionally, at the pub.
> I'll have a go at remembering and documenting some of John's ideas. Watch this space. . . .
> All the best,
> Terry
>
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