Hi Ken,
I see your point. However, in order to help different disciplines, (my own version of a design profession included), to fully exploit the wealth of theory and different ways of doing design activities, we need to make this knowledge as accessible and usable as possible and not dwell on the background or training of someone who is getting paid to do a design activity.
Competency in a specific design (or any other activity) activity will involve someone who has had appropriate training. Whilst the individuals you've mentioned who head up a business and Schools may have an appreciation of design, they were and are very likely to have qualified graphic designers, industrial designers, electrical and mechanical engineers, business managers and other qualified professionals within their team to realise their products and services. Without evidence of competency, businesses leave themselves open to litigation and reduction in profit/yield.
I realise we're now moving into the discussion that has been had a number of times on the forum over the years: "who is qualified to do design?"
I would rather focus on helping commercial designers stay in business and keep that debate separate.
Best wishes
George
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: 18 March 2021 17:56
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Designers
Dear David,
While I tend to agree with and appreciate your note, there are a couple questions I’d like to raise.
Several kinds of designers might or might not be called designers … I’m curious about your thoughts and the thoughts of others on the list.
1) Some people with no design background and no design education have opened successful design firms, working actively with design for many years. Per Mollerup is an excellent example. His firm — Mollerup DesignLab — won the Danish Design Prize more often than any other design firm up to the point when he retired and closed the firm to become a professor. Tibor Kalman of M&Co. is another example. I’m sure with a little work, people can find more good examples.
2) What about people who have multiple backgrounds outside design. Don Norman is an example here. Nearly no one on this list has been directly involved in the hands-on design of as many products as Don has done. He’s not an industrial designer, a product designer, or an automative designer, but he has been active in many companies that design and produce products. These range from Apple devices and Hewlett-Packard products to automobiles and medical equipment. Of course, Don is an outlier. He was an engineer before he became a psychologist, and he has kept up his engineering credentials ... He has been a professor of engineering, and member of the national academy in two fields: engineering and psychology. While a psychologist might not design products, an engineer well might.
But other psychologists have followed a similar path. Consider Cees de Bont, now the dean of design at Loughborough University. Cees was a psychologist who headed product development at Phillips before becoming dean at Technological University of Delft.
3) Many people with specialised backgrounds in design expand their portfolios. These are people whom others might call mechanical engineers, software programmers, chemical engineers and chemists. They designed things in those areas before moving into larger kinds of design.
4) What about people with specialist expert backgrounds outside design who became designers without changing their primary field? One interesting example whom I knew personally is the late thoracic surgeon, Marvin Sackner. Marvin started by studying pharmacology. Then he moved into medicine. He was chief of medicine at a large hospital for many years while doing a great deal of surgery. Observing the problems the arose from many instruments, he began to invent surgical instruments and medical devices, winning over three dozen scientific patents for his inventions. He founded and headed three companies: Non-Invasive Monitoring Systems, Acceleration Therapeutics, and Sackner Wellness. He did not call himself a designer. Even so, he designed more successful products than most folks that I know, moving them from basic idea to patent to successful product.
5) Some people come from outside design to work successfully in specific design specialties. Several design fields are mostly populated with such people. I’ve been reading work by people in the military design movement. Most are military officers in the armed forces of different nations. They take a design approach to military operations. Unlike many design consultancies, however, they do not consult and walk away. They work on problems that they sometimes test on the battlefield. Most of them have direct military experience at ranks from field officer to general, and they approach design problems with the understanding that mistakes cost lives. To learn more about these people, see Cara Wrigley’s article in the next issue of She Ji. (Cara has moved from a professorship in design at University of Sydney to a special chair at University of Queensland, where she is also director of a project for the defence services.)
6) Some of design fields engage with such disciplines as behavioural economics or governmental design. Lucy Kimball is a widely recognised example here. Other exemplars are Mitchell Sipus, Marco Steinberg, and all the people who worked with Marco at Helsinki Design Lab. So, too, Christian Bason and the people who worked with Christian at MindLab. All these folks designed systems, processes, and sometimes even artefacts working directly in the field. Marco was an architect, but none of the rest studied design and I don’t think that they worked with design studios or design firms before pioneering the new design fields where they have made a mark.
7) Service design is a specific and significant design field. The majority of people in service design come from educations in business school or the social sciences. All of these people design, even though none of them designs physical products.
8) There are also emerging design fields that are difficult to place. Design anthropology is an example here. Many people in design anthropology take part in teams and projects where they engage in the hands-on design work of the systems and services on which they work. Others, like the people in design anthropology at Intel, don’t design chips, but they advice and information that leads to the design briefs and specifications that the hands-on chip designers use.
The variety of design practices is so large today that I’d be inclined to acknowledge many people as designers.
I recognise and agree with Elio Caccavale’s point. But the examples I give here aren’t people who only read and write about design. I’ve given examples of people in active forms of design practice. They’ve built design firms and worked in design firms creating products and services, or they work in the design departments of large companies. Some practice design from unusual situations — for example, a Navy SEAL officer who holds a chair in military design at the Naval Postgraduate School. Some held special roles — for example, Mitch Sipus worked in design for the Obama administration as a White House Fellow. The people work as designers.
And they are definitely not people who moved from studying design to teaching design.
But some of them do answer Fil Salustri’s point. They are engineers who work as designers.
And there are also people who began as designers before expanding their range. You wouldn’t know they are designers because they use the language of different research disciplines when they post here. Ali Ilhan at Oyezgin University is a designer who wanted to learn social science research methods. He took a PhD at Washington State University, and he often does work on the sociology of professions. If you did not know that Ali is a designer, you might not realise it. Luke Feast at Auckland University of Technology is and has been a working designer. He does a lot of work in social science and social science theory. Again, you might not think of Luke as a designer, but he is.
Danielle Wilde is a designer and researcher in several fields with expertise in textiles and in food, as well as in art. Again, you might not think of Danielle as a designer from the issues on which she posts. Another example is Lily Diaz — she is an artist and an anthropologist as well as a designer.
It may be that folks can argue that some of these people don’t qualify as designers. I know that Cara Wrigley has had a lot of pushback against her work in military design on political grounds. But I’m not sure that political issues should disqualify military designers from the designation of designer, especially not in nations where elected politicians set overall policy and working officers implement the decisions of elected civilian leaders.
One modest secondary point. I gather that some people thought I was being rude to designers by writing that people don’t watch what happens in a studio. To me, that isn’t a matter of disrespect to designers. It explains the fact that appropriate approximation shouldn’t lessen respect for the design field.
While I know many people who read the journals from fields outside their own, few people outside anthropology or sociology watch what people in fields outside their own do in the professional work place. That’s not just true of designers. It’s true of surgeons, lawyers, police officers, soldiers, and so on. I read law journals from time to time because I like the argumentation and the broad frame of inquiry. I only spent extended time in a courtroom when I was visiting with a friend who worked as a judge. I’ve known lawyers and had lawyers, but I’ve never spent time watching what people in a law firm do.
In the same way, few people want to spend time in design studios. I’m sorry if anyone took that as rude. What happens in a design studio is interesting and exciting — for designers, and for a few people who study the working design profession.
Yours,
Ken
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 ||| Visiting Professor | Faculty of Engineering | Lund University ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia https://tongji.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
