Dear Martin,
Thank you for your email.
It was good to read Emeritus Professor Cross's earlier comment that posts to phd-design should contribute to or advance the discussion of PhD studies and related research in design. This is important.
Those were the reasons for my post to which you seem to be objecting.
Once upon a time, it was considered important that designers were able to analyse designs and design developments in terms of culture, social, economic and political issues and the like. It was seen as important that designers were taught to be able to draw on the rich knowledge of the Humanities and Arts - social sciences, history, economics etc. as the basis for an accurate understanding of what they were doing and of predicting the ways their designs would result in outcomes in the world.
At heart, it was to address the important issue of enabling designers to go beyond appearance and opinion when designing.
Sir Terry Pratchett described the issue in terms of having first and second sight.
He described second sight as the ability to be able to see what isn't there. It is a highly-valued skill among particular groups of people.
Sir Terry then went on to point out that second sight is what almost everyone uses, and that second sight is a problem. Almost anyone can see what isn't there. They do so through their personal illusions, beliefs, their conditioning, things that could have been taught better and their own wishful thinking.
In contrast, first sight is much more rare, and much more difficult. It is the ability to see what is *actually* there. It requires training and study in awareness and clear thinking, and knowledge of the insidiously adverse effects of aspects of the personality, muddy thinking, social influences on thought as well as deliberate manipulation via fallacious reasoning and power.
Learning the ability to have 'first sight' is perhaps the most basic and most important skill for a PhD student in their research.
Similarly, understanding first sight, and the difference between it and second sight, and being able to teach PhD students the ability and skill of first sight is a basic competence required of PhD supervisors.
In your comment (In your post below) you seem to be complaining that I described "The design activity of 'Helping clients to make lots of money by creating for them psychologically-manipulative visual designs' as a pretty accurate description of what a 'graphic designer' does."
Let's go back to that expectation that designers should be competent in the skills of the Humanities and Arts - i.e the skills of critical thinking, sociological analyses etc.
Designers would prefer themselves and their activities to be seen in particular ways and they and others create and disseminate a picture of what designers are and what they do that puts designers and their activities in a good light. It is second sight when designers and the public believe it, have it as an illusion, are conditioned into thinking that way, etc.
A first sight view sets that second sight picture completely to one side and starts with, e.g., the standard sociological analyses that are taught in school.
One could ask for example, 'Who benefits and how?'
As I wrote before, if there is a benefit to particular stakeholders. Then it has a financial equivalence for them.
One could also ask, 'Do the activities of designing involve arranging things so that people can more easily interpret things in ways that are wanted by some stakeholders?' If so, such graphic design activity is one of psychological-manipulation.
I could have asked more questions but they was sufficient to demonstrate the first sight approach that leads to "'Helping clients to make lots of money by creating for them psychologically-manipulative visual designs' is a pretty accurate description of what a 'graphic designer' does."
Since I wrote that definition, I realised I was not as accurate as I might have been. A better 'first sight' definition would have been,
"'Helping clients increase their power and/or make lots of money by creating for them psychologically-manipulative visual designs' is a pretty accurate description of what a 'graphic designer' does."
The above applies to graphic design, and similar kinds of 'first sight' analyses apply to all other design fields. An interesting challenge is to create such first sight definitions for say mechanical engineering design, software design, services design, etc....
This approach to analysing design to identify definitions from a critical perspective is not new and is widely taught in sociological, political and economic fields, as well as in critical education. Illich wrote several classic texts in this area in the 1970s. Other material is in the area of sociology of work, which is basic reading for design researchers working on products and services of use in the workplace, as is the literature on Critical Theory. Other relevant strands of academic knowledge and analysis are found in economics, political theory and philosophy of technology. These are all basic to researching design at PhD level.
More important, perhaps, is that PhD supervisors should be competent and fluent in this critical thinking material in order to teach their PhD students the basic skills of first sight: without which, I suggest they are failing their students.
To use your words, if PhD supervisors are not capable enough in these areas they are owing their students an apology for being 'crass, ignorant and disrespectful to them.'
It's time for change. It is time for better PhD research and PhD supervision in design fields.
Thee above are all issues that contribute to, or advance, the discussion of PhD studies and related research in design as Nigel requested.
Your critical comments of me seem to have been based on a second sight picture of design research...
Best regards,
Terry
PS: I enjoy the artwork on the covers of Terry Pratchett's books.
==
Dr Terence Love
MICA, PMACM, MAISA, FDRS, AMIMechE
Director
Design Out Crime & CPTED Centre
Perth, Western Australia
[log in to unmask]
www.designoutcrime.org
+61 (0)4 3497 5848
==
ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Salisbury, Martin
Sent: Thursday, 28 June 2018 11:51 PM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: RE: Clarifying my request about the word "Design." (Once again
"'the design activity of 'Helping clients to make lots of money by creating for them psychologically-manipulative visual designs' is a pretty accurate description of what a 'graphic designer' does."
Terry,
I think you owe an apology to all graphic designers for your crass. ignorant and disrespectful comments.
Martin Salisbury
Professor of Illustration
Director, The Centre for Children's Book Studies Cambridge School of Art
0845 196 2351
[log in to unmask]
http://www.cambridgemashow.com
http://www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/microsites/ccbs.html
________________________________________
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Terence Love [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2018 2:38 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Clarifying my request about the word "Design." (Once again
Dear Ken,
Adding the purpose to a definition of design to clarify is , well - clarifying, and offering improved precision.
Implicit in it, is that many people like loose terminology because it offers more status: and more precision cuts that down.
For example, I could claim to be an environmental designer (wow), but doing only the environmental design related to crime prevention is somehow lesser - though more accurate
The second half of my post was humour... illustrating both the benefits in precision of that path of defining design, and the way it chops away status.
Example:
The design activity of 'Helping clients to make lots of money by creating for them psychologically-manipulative visual designs'
is a pretty accurate description of what a 'graphic designer' does.
Yet somehow, for some (e.g. in a university course manual) it might seem a little uncomfortable for one's teaching or professional activities to be accurately described in that way. The public status moves away from design hero to something a bit not so nice.
If you remember the discussions you were involved in on 'demolish the business school' a couple of months ago. This fits with it. It all depends how you define design and how the public see it...
Warm regards,
Terry
==
Dr Terence Love
MICA, PMACM, MAISA, FDRS, AMIMechE
Director
Design Out Crime & CPTED Centre
Perth, Western Australia
[log in to unmask]
www.designoutcrime.org
+61 (0)4 3497 5848
==
ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Thursday, 28 June 2018 9:17 PM
To: PhD-Design <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Clarifying my request about the word "Design." (Once again
Dear Terry,
This seems to suggest that every phrase designating design or attempting to define a kind of design should be a gerund phrase of 9, 10, even 12 words.
The first thought that came to me on reading this was that this is an attempt to build a model of the design field that resembles the Ptolemaic model of the solar system.
There was a time during which Ptolemaic astronomy made more accurate predictions than Copernican astronomy. It did so at the price of a suite of Rube Goldberg mechanisms with deferrents and epicycles, wheels turning on wheels.
The Ptolemaic model was superficially accurate in the sense that it enabled correct astronomical predictions of planetary motion in the solar system. It was also inaccurate because it offered a misleading picture of the solar system and gave an utterly incorrect idea of the larger universe. The shift to the Copernican model allowed astronomers and physicists to conceive an understanding of the universe that ultimately became accurate and far richer. The Copernican model led to modern astronomy and modern physics. The price was thinking through and overcoming several centuries of challenges from Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton to Annie Cannon, Henrietta Leavitt, and Edwin Hubble … up through the discoveries we still make today. None of this would have been possible if we had remained mired in the epicycles of Ptolemaic astronomy.
Occam’s Razor suggests that there is reasoned simplicity as well as inaccurate oversimplification. 10-word-gerund phrase constitute a form of needless overcomplexification: “using a ten-word phrase when a two-word phrase will do.”
While Occam’s Razor is not a perfect guide to accuracy, it is a good heuristic. In this case, natural language works better that long gerund phrases. And I’d hate to imagine writing a paragraph that attempts to convert some of these phrases into descriptions. Fortunately, I don’t have to. We have plenty of usable words that do the job.
Yours,
Ken
—
Terry Love wrote:
—snip—
The same approach could be used to clearly identify to the public the purposes and activities associated with creating other kinds of design, such as,
'Making lots of money through psychologically-manipulative visual designs', or;
'Taking control of a country by fact-ignoring media campaign designs', or;
'Building false personal status through social media promotional designs'...
—snip—
Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (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 ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
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