Dear Scholars...

As a designer who balances their time in both academic and practice fields, I have made several observations over the years working with PhD degree holders in a variety of fields.  I've grown to understand that the premiere function of the PhD degree across many fields is to discover, catalog and report on new knowledge for their benefactors/sponsors/supporters.  In order to access areas of existing codified knowledge, it is the PhD that allows this access to begin inquiry into a new problem area that has been agreed upon to open.

I have observed that there are many metrics that Universities must continue to pursue in order to survive, and it is the cultivation of its PhD level academics through a variety of incentive programs that provide the fruit that a university must bear in order to stay relevant and open. Some universities find this much easier than others.  In both the academic and practice fields, there are similar pressures to discover new knowledge.  The funding of research whether it is in the public or private sector comes with many demands and is often referred to as 'restricted grants' among other labels.  This can stifle researchers as well as expose them to moral hazard I have observed.  In government, new knowledge from research is used more for the creating of reports that can be used to by bureaucrats and elected officials to bolster their policy arguments.  Academics is this area of research are usually defined by their security clearance.

What concerns me most about new knowledge especially in the design field is not the way is is created, discovered or generated, but the way it is coded, structured, sequestered, sometimes hidden and made inaccessible.  I was exposed to the benefits of PhD level design research in the written form well into my career as a designer and educator rather than during my undergraduate education.  I am happy to learn that many academics here on this list have pushed for the exposure of new knowledge in its written form to their students as they pursue their design educations.  I myself have made the necessary changes to my approach to teaching design that now not only include the understanding of how research is created in the design process, but also include how to extract and connect insights that are the fruits of research with that of their design solutions.  This is the sweet spot.  This area of applied research is woefully under reported on I have found.  We need more studies that make clear how new knowledge was discovered and then applied to solve a problem over time.  This will evolve the dynamic of the practice field and open up new avenues for PostDocs to ply their trade.  

The other aspect of this concern is language and communication.  Writing concisely in your native language is akin to maintaining the fidelity of your design during its development.  Many of the subtle insights that are discovered during the research process are lost in translation when it is written down or read in a specific language that is non-native.  Google has made tremendous progress in the area of translation of language, but we are just at the beginning of using new technologies to share information among us.  We are living in an age of wonderful communication technologies and I hope that they make their way into the process of helping us understand one and others research better and more comprehensively.  The written word causes too many roadblocks to understanding and learning I have found, as well puts a burden on senior academics who must read all the time with increasingly failing eyesight that comes with age.  Design is uniquely suited to utilize the many new forms of communication technology to document and share research. 

I recently accepted a new position as a Product Design Lecturer at one of the land grant research universities in the United States.  After 10 years of teaching and practice in Asia, I am curious to see how things have changed for better or worse in the west.  The program is young and has a definitive new approach to product design that I am interested to be a part of.  I will be expanding further the inclusion of more published research along side my teaching methods, skills building exercises and research of my own. This will be especially beneficial as students include more of foreign culture in the scope of their design learning.  In time I will come to know the programs approach to design research as it develops and I am able to contribute.  Of particular interest to me is the close relationships the design college has with local industry and government.

Cheers from Seoul...

Stephen B Allard


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