Dear Chuck, Ken, Peter and all,
Thanks to Chuck for pointing to changes at IBM. I have a great respect for IBM having seen for example interface design work at IBM emerging decades later in OSX, and the way that Watson technologies offers to make many difficult design problems relatively trivial. Thanks to Ken and Peter for their insightful analyses of design education.
I feel there is another perspective.
The characteristics of design thinking include: being solution and outcome-focused and drawing on study of, and empathy with, users, and better knowledge about their needs and the benefits to them of particular designs.
These core elements of of design thinking are also seen in marketing and various management approaches.
It could be argued that universities practiced design thinking before it became popular with design businesses.
The picture I've seen across a variety of universities is as follows. I'm aware other people's experiences may be different but I suspect the academic role of 'design thinking' is similar
It started when universities began to regard students as clients and users in the mid-1990s. That opened the way for course designers to focus on studying students' needs in terms of the outcomes as seen as important by students and those now (privately) paying for the students studies. In some cases, this involved students looking for something that would be fun to do, and parents paying to ensure their offspring got a degree.
A form of design thinking was what got universities to understand how to design courses to provide the appropriate benefits that aligned with student needs.
In universities we have design thinking of the form:
Course designers studying the needs and wants of users (students) to create design solutions (courses) that can be implemented by the design sponsors (university business administration).
In design businesses we have design thinking of the form:
Product designers studying the needs and wants of users to provide designs that can be implemented by the design sponsors (other business's administration).
In many universities, this led to designing curricula for design programs that would be attractive to students to undertake. This meant courses could be designed to be highly profitable to the point that the design programs could become a cash cow (in BGC matrix terms) to help fund courses in other fields that were less profitable or had low student numbers or low income compared to their costs (e.g. in the Humanities, Art, Law and Architecture).
Including the wants, needs and benefits of universities, designers and the field of design as users in such 'design thinking' about creating courses aligned well with the above ideas to the benefit of university administration and other fields that got the extra cash.
Over time, it became clear that design courses could be made highly attractive to students and a highly profitable cash cow for the university as a whole without any obvious loss in educational quality because there was no expectation of a high standard in academic theory in design. In short, in many programs the acceptable standard was whatever was produced.
I suggest 'design thinking' was what led to quality problems in design education and design research.
Its clear there are advantages in improving the quality of theory, education and research in design disciplines.
The question is how? On evidence, a simple application of design thinking doesn’t seem to be the best tool.
Chuck has identified that something in the spirit of change of IBM needs to be applied to design education. Ken has argued against design thinking. Peter is suggesting we have been doing design thinking... What seems clear is design education needs to improve by doing something different.
Warm regards,
Terry
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Dr Terence Love
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
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-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Sunday, 15 November 2015 8:33 PM
To: PhD-Design <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [SPAM] Re: Design Thinking at IBM
Dear Peter,
Thanks for your reply. Describing the problems in our field is not a case of self-flagellation. If the problems exist, there is reason for concern. If these problems do not exist, then I’m wrong. It’s one case or the other. If there is evidence for concern, it’s not self-flagellation. If there is no evidence, I’m simply mistaken. If the problems are real, the concerns are reasonable.
Let me describe the problems that I see in the fields of design education, research education, and research. Then you can tell me if there is reason to be concerned.
Design education programs:
While I agree with your analysis of the twelve or so programs you name, these dozen schools do not form a reasonable sample of the design field, not for education and not for research.
The programs you list (including the old “Top Ten”) are outliers. They are not representative of design education across the world’s 23,729 universities (Cybermetrics Lab 2015). This number seems a little high to me, but the Cybermetrics Lab gives its methodological approach, so you can judge for yourself. In this number, they seem to include polytechnics empowered to deliver graduate programs and single subject university-level graduate schools, and that stretch may reach a total of 23,729 university-level institutions. There are certainly more than the numbers I’ve hear recently — over 14,000 universities in the world today. When you add polytechnics, independent design schools, and the like, as well as universities that offer different design programs in different disciplines (f.ex., design degrees in faculties of engineering, HCI, and communication design) or complete programs at different campuses, there are easily 20,000 degree-granting programs for design education in the world.
What percentage of these are doing serious work that would enable graduates to practice design at the top end of the field? Who knows. Over the years, I have visited several hundred design schools or art and design schools. At more than half of them, someone — usually a dean or a department chair — has told me seriously that his or her school is among the “top 5% in the world today.”
The problem is not the fact that half doesn’t fit into 5%. The problem is that so few of these people understood what the best schools look like or what they do.
While I don’t think that it is easy to use design thinking to improve the field of design education, I agree completely with Chuck on the need to do so. The describe the situation as it is is not a case of “flagellating ourselves (educators) and wearing sackcloth over the designing and advancement of education programs.”
Research education and research training programs:
As for research, it is hard to determine exactly how many research programs there are. Part of the confusion arises from the fact that many design schools are doing something they call research that doesn’t involve contributing to the knowledge of the field. If you want to see what they label research, you must visit what is called a “research exhibition” at the local gallery of the school where the researcher works. They don't publish anything, either, at least not in peer-reviewed journals where indexes and abstracts allow the rest of us to learn from it.
There is also a great deal of confusion about the nature of PhD programs. There are now at least 500 universities around the world offering a PhD degree in design. It is hard to say exactly because many PhD programs in design award degrees through schools of art, architecture, engineering, HCI, IT, or even psychology, as well as through schools of design. Of the programs offering a PhD in design through well established PhD programs in engineering, HCI, IT, or psychology, most of the degree programs are solid.
Of the remainder, perhaps 5% offer PhD programs where the structure of doctoral education is based on university-wide standards that ensure that any graduate of that university will have a solid foundation of research skills and robust training in methods, methodology, and research practice. Another 5% of the programs come from excellent units within a larger design school, college, or faculty, in which PhD students in that unit get the skills they need. This may not be true of other units within the same school. Finally, there are a scattered number of outstanding individual supervisors located in otherwise problematic PhD programs. If a PhD student is lucky, he or she may get an excellent education.
Many universities that do well with research and research training in physics and philosophy, history or medicine do not to well in design. They simply leave it to the department — not recognising that a new PhD program in a young field may not do as well as disciplines dating back a hundred years or several hundred years.
I discuss some of the contributing factors for this problem in a book chapter (Friedman 2014) titled “Writing for the PhD in Art and Design. Issues for Research Supervisors and Research Students.” A working paper version of this appears in the section on PhD Training, Skills, and Supervision of my Academia page at:
https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
There is a body of evidence that will allow you to make your own assessment of doctoral education in the design field today — the completed PhD thesis projects of doctoral graduates. Heico Wesselius and I have been collecting PhD theses in design from around the world. It’s still growing, but we have already collected around 500 PhD theses in different design fields. If you’d like to download our collection to read it for yourself, you are welcome to do so. Just right me off-list and I’ll arrange for you to have access.
Design research:
To assess research in a broader sense, you can read the journals of the field to draw your own conclusion. The top fourteen journals range from excellent to reasonably solid (see: Gemser et al., 2012, Table 2, p. 12). The leading forty journals are mostly solid (see: Gemser et al., 2012, Appendix, p. 21). But once you move down past the top forty, the population of research journals in design becomes problematic. A 2008 study (Friedman, et al.) identified just over two hundred journals in the design field — some were really magazines, but the method for collecting recommendations required us to list them.
This list would be far larger now with the explosion of problematic open access journals organised by companies that make a living from PhD students and young researchers desperate to publish (see, f.ex., Bohannon 2012). How many of fraudulent open access journals are in the design field? No one knows. Of the hundreds that now exist, several dozen seem to be in various corners of design. (Our field also has several serious open access journals.)
And the design field also has some truly odd ventures. One company publishes a “curated” collection seven design journals where the same two people edit all seven! This company uses a model in which they also sponsor conferences — if you pay to attend one of their conferences, you can then send your conference paper direct to one of their journals. And everyone who reviews a paper in an issue of the journal is listed as an “associate editor” for that year. This model is starting to bite some of the folks who publish conference papers in the journals. The easy scheme that seems to reward people with three ticks on the research activity metrics sours a bit when people find that a paper they have published in a journal nearly no one reads turns up to prevent a publication elsewhere because the editors of serious journals check to see that submissions differ to prior articles by the same authors.
Is this self-flagellation, or do we really need to modernise the field? Don Norman (2010) wrote “Why Design Education Must Change” five years ago. He wrote. “I am forced to read a lot of crap. As a reviewer of submissions to design journals and conferences, as a juror of design contests, and as a mentor and advisor to design students and faculty, I read outrageous claims made by designers who have little understanding of the complexity of the problems they are attempting to solve or of the standards of evidence required to make claims. Oftentimes the crap comes from brilliant and talented people, with good ideas and wonderful instantiations of physical products, concepts, or simulations. The crap is in the claims.”
The problem now is that the explosion of problematic conferences and poor journals mean that much of this crap passes through the massive fleet of reviewers and one-time reviewers designated as associate editors who do not know how to evaluate claims. It gets worse when people are reviewing for conferences where organisers need to enrol a specific number of participants to break even. It is worse yet when any paper accepted at a conference can be passed along to become a journal article.
I’ve put the evidence forward. You describe a dozen or so top programs. Based on these, you conclude that “Every graduate design program I know of now has become uniquely adapted to a context and a value proposition.” My suggestion is to look at a wider range of design programs among the world’s 20,000 or so design programs. Once you seen more than a few dozen, you can tell me whether each of these is “uniquely adapted to a context and a value proposition.”
What's not to love? The larger number of programs that are not redesigning design education, places where people and programs don’t move at all.
Research training? Read a broad sampling of PhD theses and tell me how the field is doing.
Research? Read a broad sample of conference papers and articles — don’t stop with Design Issues, Design Studies, or International Journal of Design. Dig a bit deeper. Look into the two-hundred-plus journals that publish design research today. Sample the proceedings of the hundred or so conferences every year that focus on design or offer design streams.
I agree with Chuck Burnette on the need for improvement. I simply questioned the likelihood of using design thinking to make significant improvements to the wide, global fields of design research and design education.
I agree with you on the specific schools that you praise. I simply say that these are outliers that do not define the field. A dozen programs out of 20,000 or so provide a tiny sample of a vast field.
Most of the field does not reach the level of the top schools you name. That is why they are at the top. Most people can’t name the top 5% — that would mean knowing roughly 1,000 programs. Top 10%? Forget about it. And 90% of an iceberg is under water.
Sorry if I seem gloomy, but describing the problems in there field is not a case of self-flagellation. There is reason for concern.
In my reply to Chuck, I did not say that *all* firms do well. I said that *some* firms do well, and I gave examples. I did not even say that IBM is doing well — I gave the reasons that make it seem that they *might* do well. In my conclusion, I explained why I don’t think design thinking can help the field as a whole.
There is no reason for your optimism across the field — you offered some good *local* examples. As I wrote to Chuck, and repeat here, I believe that these kinds of improvements are happening on a local level where real stakeholders seek new ways to engage in design research — and seek new ways to teach and learn design. That requires legitimate stakeholders, skilled design thinking teams, and a long-term commitment to cultural change.
Warm wishes,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
—
References
Bohannon, John. 2013. "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?” Science, 4 October 2013: Vol. 342, no. 6154, pp. 60-65 DOI: 10.1126/science.342.6154.60 Available from: https://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.summary
Cybermetrics Lab. 2015. Webometrics Ranking of World Universities. Madrid: Cybermetrics Lab, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). URL: http://www.webometrics.info/en/node/54
Friedman Ken. 2014. “Now That We’re Different What’s Still the Same?” Doctoral Writing in the Creative and Performing Arts: the Researcher/Practitioner Nexus. Louise Ravelli, Brian Paltridge, and Sue Starfield, editors. Faringdon, Oxfordshire, UK: Libri Publishing, pp. 237-263.
Friedman, Ken, Deirdre Barron, Silvana Ferlazzo, Tania Ivanka, Gavin Melles, and Jeremy Yuille. 2008. Design Research Journal Ranking Study: Preliminary Results. Melbourne, Australia: Swinburne University of Technology Faculty of Design. Accessible online: http://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/swin:10413
Gemser Gerda, Cees de Bont, Paul Hekkert, and Ken Friedman. 2012. “Quality Perceptions of Design Journals: The Design Scholars’ Perspective.” Design Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 4-23. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2011.09.001
Norman, Don. 2010. Why Design Education Must Change. Core77, 2010 November 26. URL:
http://www.core77.com/posts/17993/why-design-education-must-change-17993
> On 2015Nov15, at 02:44, Peter Jones | Redesign <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Ken and Chuck - Thanks for the tip to the article. Toronto has a
> significant IBM office and presence, as well as an annual technology
> conference (CASCON) they host https://www-927.ibm.com/ibm/cas/cascon/
>
> OCAD U's Strategic Foresight and Innovation program has drawn a few of
> their best UX designers, and then they tend to leave for more
> independent, creative pastures after completing our degree.
> http://www.ocadu.ca/academics/graduate-studies/strategic-foresight-and
> -innovation.htm Experienced IBMers have actually been through practice
> transformations before. Their boast of "hiring 1000 designers" seems
> to me just a brute force market move and not a thoughtful business
> strategy at all. Design practices do not diffuse by push or volume
> into business operations. They diffuse by socialization, which takes
> time but is highly resilient and connected across service lines. I
> wrote a business case study backed by a bit o' structuration theory on
> this process of design skill infusion in We Tried to Warn You (2008,
> http://www.amazon.com/Tried-Warn-You-Innovations-organization/dp/19348
> 40513
>
> In nearly every large company where I've worked or consulted, I've either been an early or first UX/HF/human-centered design advisor. And whenever I've seen designers forced into an organization, especially when they are "privileged" actors given special work freedoms and "room for creativity" the enterprise has failed. Design interests and outcomes within a product/service organization are not separable from business goals, and these are negotiated. In the new design thinking world, as we've done since the mid-90's anyway, product managers and customer representatives in the company become design literate and attend research, participate in workshops. A few good designers, building relationships in a team-based practice, makes all the difference. 1000 designers? It doesn't even make sense as a strategy. There are so many types of creative and research skills, it quickly become pluralized beyond design. And this privileging of "design thinking" as a skill base strategy suggests a Hail Mary pass approach. Anyway, we shall see. It takes a village to "create sustainable services for clients loved by their customers."
>
> I do take issue with our flagellating ourselves (educators) and
> wearing sackcloth over the designing and advancement of education
> programs. Every graduate design program I know of now has become
> uniquely adapted to a context and a value proposition. We developed
> the MDes in Strategic Foresight and Innovation in 2008-09 and it’s the
> most popular grad program at Canada's largest design school. We are
> starting Canada's first healthcare design program, launching in 2016,
> also innovative in structure and pedagogy
> http://www.ocadu.ca/academics/graduate-studies/design-for-health.htm
>
> I've visited Tongji, worked with Oslo's AHO and HIOA design programs, know Case Weatherhead's program, have had good fun with Potsdam's d.school community, and these are all doing innovative, future-adaptive work. I'm impressed with the new CMU grad program, the Stamps Integrative Design at Michigan, the re-energized CCS in Detroit with Cincinnati DAAP's Sooshin Choi and now Paul Pangaro, a cybernetics expert heading their IxD program. There's the old Top Ten: IIT/ID, DAAP, Pratt Art Center, Parsons, SVA, CCA, etc. and they are all actively inventing. What's not to love? We are all redesigning design education. It just takes little time to get people and program moving.
>
> Best regards, and safe wishes wherever you may be traveling in these
> edgy times -
>
> Peter
>
>
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