Thanks,
Terry,
For listening to my post. I am glad you agree and of course it is not just being exposed to noises others make but also having the skills to understand those listed to and demonstrate that by interacting with them.
I remember assigning design students exercises to design an unusual product with an interface that would make its use instantaneously understandable. Students worked hard and had great ideas, but I asked them to show their prototype to potential users. The result was eye opening to them and somewhat shocking to me. In a nutshell,
O students who I would say were unable to listen came back and reported that these potential users were stupid because they wouldn’t understand
O students who could step out of their own conception and listened to what users said came back with inspirations for a very different kind of interface.
What I meant by listening is being reflexive, able to see the world through the eyes of others.
I am not opposed to identify a design with specifications, but I would add they have to acknowledge how others read them and moreover allow these others to make their own contributions to a designer's proposal.
Writing specifications that imply the stakeholders of a design to follow them in all specificity is a model of communication that may have worked in the industrial age and under conditions of scarcity. At that time workers were paid to be the slaves of institutionalized design authorities. In my experiences, not only have products become more complex that any one expert can handle, stakeholders of a design are less and less willing to get involved in the realization of a product unless they can make their own contributions to the design.
This is what speaks for multi-disciplinary development teams, the ability of all participants to listen to each other with respect for if not for admiration of often considerable differences that such collaborations bring forward.
By the way, you are correct that when products have digital components it helps being able to think how a computer works, can be programmed and interfaced with.
Klaus
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Terence Love
Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2019 5:58 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Teaching Product Design subject at PG level through Module system vs Semester system
Dear Klaus,
Thank you for your comments.
Yes, you clearly align with the polymath characteristics I described, as do many on this list 😊
Interestingly, the word 'polymath' comes from early times in human cultural development when the term 'mathematics' referred to '*everything* that was learned'(A).
I understand your comment that listening is important as a design skill. It is important, providing the person doing the listening has the education and skill at a high enough level to understand what they are hearing and to be able to contribute to the design discussion. However, without the designer having the relevant knowledge and expertise at the appropriate level in the disciplines of other speakers, listening is useless.
An example, I was last week at an Amazon Web Services day about advances in Machine Learning; a topic that is increasingly obviously vital in design and design research (B). There were some interesting practice real world product examples presented by managers of companies with such products. Their primary concern was bias in data. A question was asked about bias in the algorithms and stability and sensitivity analysis of algorithms. If the algorithms are biased, unstable or oversensitive in some areas then the output (and subsequent designs)can be deeply flawed. This is basic to the mathematics of writing algorithms for machine learning and the audience comprised 100% of people deeply involved in Machine Learning and all were listening carefully. However, there appeared to be only a very small proportion of the audience who could understand the question. It mattered whether the listener had mathematical expertise to understand the problems of algorithm writing as well as the skill to use machine learning software.
An example given of an unstable algorithm was one developed for a service design to use machine learning on loan datasets automate decisions about bank loans. The algorithm over time preferentially gave loans to poor customers rather than rich customers - not what the bank had intended.
Reflecting on your post, and thinking about multi-disciplinary design teams, what came to mind is that increasingly automated computer involvement in design decisions from algorithms may mean perhaps that designers will also need the mathematical skills to be able to be 'superb listeners, applying ethnographies of unimagined possibilities, and have solid grounds to stand on (claiming neither outstanding aesthetic intuitions nor being a design thinker) when collaborating in [such] multi-disciplinary teams.. [in which] design is always a collaborative accomplishment [with the mathematical algorithms].
When, as you noted, in an earlier post I commented that the role of designers is to develop designs as specifications for products whose outcomes were socio-technically complex, I envisaged just such participation in multidisciplinary teams that also include technical artificial agents involved in design decision-making. This is in much the same way that, historically, human designers have used drawings to help them make design decisions, or used rules of thumb, or design guidelines , or a cheat book (now Pinterest), or followed the styles of previous designers, or did calculations to define front metrics or structural dynamics - all things that in many cases are now automatically done in software by computers as expert artificial design colleagues.
And yes, I agree, it is important to be able to listen to them and to real world colleagues, but its also necessary to have the high-level expertise in all the necessary disciplines of social science, politics, management, mathematics, IT, psychology and the like to understand the meaning of what one is listening and to be able to contribute to the conversation. That requires high-level polymath skills in addition to good listening skills.
Best wishes,
Terry
==
Dr Terence Love,
School of Design and Built Environment, Curtin University, Western Australia CEO, Design Out Crime and CPTED Centre PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks, Western Australia 6030 [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]
+61 (0)4 3497 5848
ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
==
(A) Oxford English Dictionary Third Edition, 2001)
"Etymology: < Middle French mathematique (adjective) mathematical (French mathématique ), (feminine noun) mathematics (both 13th cent. in Old French; also matematique ), (masculine noun) astrologer (14th cent.), mathematician (15th cent.) and its etymon classical Latin mathēmaticus (adjective) mathematical, astrological, (noun) mathematician, astrologer, also mathēmatica (noun, short for ars mathēmatica ) mathematics < ancient Greek μαθηματικός (adjective) mathematical, (noun) mathematician (the senses ‘astronomical, astronomer’ are Hellenistic Greek), also τὰ μαθηματικά (use as noun of neuter plural of the adjective: for spec. use see note s.v. mathematical adj. and n.), ἡ μαθηματική (noun, short for ἡ μαθηματικὴ ἐπιστήμη ) mathematics < μαθηματ- , μάθημα something learned, knowledge, the mathematical sciences (the sense ‘astrology’ is Hellenistic Greek; < *the base of μανθάνειν (aorist μαθεῖν ) to learn + -ηματ- , -ημα , suffix forming nouns) + -ικός -ic suffix.*
(B) https://www.autodesk.com/redshift/future-of-design-big-data-changes-everything/
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Krippendorff, Klaus
Sent: Thursday, 28 March 2019 11:09 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Teaching Product Design subject at PG level through Module system vs Semester system
Dear Terry,
Your conception of a polymath is interesting. I guess your definition applies to me. I have graduate degrees in design and communication sciences. I contributed to Cybernetics, information theory, and statistics. I am teaching a social science methodology and work on issues of social construction of reality.
However, while I agree that it is helpful to be competent in a variety of areas, I recall your conception of a designer as someone who develops specifications for complex products. A recent book by Sloman and Fernbach has the subtitle (paraphrased:) we cannot think alone.
To me it is far more important for designers to be superb listeners, applying ethnographies of unimagined possibilities, and have solid grounds to stand on (claiming neither outstanding aesthetic intuitions nor being a design thinker) when collaborating in multi-disciplinary teams. I my world, design is always a collaborative accomplishment.
Klaus
Sent from my iPhone
> On Mar 27, 2019, at 8:40 PM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Dear Santosh,
>
> Thank you for your message.
>
> You claimed that according to your experience '"Design" as the sector
> (academia > Exploration
>> Profession) itself is Polymathic in its nature.'
>
> Perhaps I had better clarify that my use of the term polymath in my earlier post is to refer to someone who has higher than degree-level expertise across multiple disciplines.
>
> From this perspective, a polymath in design is someone who has at least degree-level expertise in an area of design, plus degree-level or above expertise in several other disciplines (e.g. psychology, social science, management, economics, mathematics, physics, biology, engineering, computer science....).
>
> Over the last 40 or so years, many professional disciplines have been increasingly heading in this direction both within degree-programs and the provision of joint degrees from different fields. This latter can be seen in double major degree such as Engineering and German, Mathematics and Psychology etc.
>
> I understand that to competently create designs, designers often need skills in different fields and this is touched on in design education programs.
>
> However, I'd suggest that how this is done currently is rarely at the standard of third-year degree-level knowledge or higher in the different fields that are needed.
>
> I'm sure there are some design programs that include final year and higher degree-level content from other disciplines. it would be good to know about them.
>
> Best wishes,
> Terence
>
>
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