Don wrote:
"This is a general problem for ALL disciplines, not just design. In fact,
it perfectly describes the ailment affecting how engineering is taught.
Engineers graduate with a lot of abstract knowledge and little or no
understanding of how this applies to the world of practice. Similarly,
business professors seldom have worked in a business. This ailment impacts
all of academia, not just design.
Time for a change: More professors who understand research in design: More
professors who have experience with real jobs in the world for all
disciplines.."
This is why the design research community at large should to my mind put more effort into the development of research by (through) design and develop a more critical positions towards imported modes e.g. from medical research and other fields, e.g. evidence based design, ethnographies, sociology etc.
As I have stated before these things are not without value but they are marginal to design.
The danger of alienating design research and education by putting too much trust into these alien sciences instead of developing further the domain specific forms of knowledge production within a design-practice-based research approach is acute.
I was recently teaching a group of design engineering master level students and i can only confirm Dons statements on the engineering education. They did not have the faintest intuition on putting together things. I would say they were useless as engineers far from designers. They knew their maths and rules and formulas but were totally helpless in the simplest engineering tasks. It is a total disaster.
Let us not go anywhere near that path.
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