Dear all,
Any field needs to have this debate from time to time, and should always end up with more questions, and with multiple answers to questions treated. Realising that we know too little, but that we end up understanding more. A cliche? Evolution? Emergence? As was said in the thread about science/research, by Don and others, in my interpretation, the point is to allow for multiple positions and perspectives, and to allow for both old truths proved wrong, and new thoughts in exploration. That pluralism makes us richer.
I would based on that, like to add a perspective. The design (practice/s) that we today yet don’t know will be called design; and the incremental, radical, repurposive, or confirmatory perspectives, insights, challenges and knowledge they will bring to whatever we believe to be ”design” today.
Myself, growing up through highschool in the early eighties, I knew I wanted to become an ”interaction designer” when I saw the first Lisa computer. I know, that was a late awakening in 1983. Heading to uni in the late 80’s the only option to pursue that (at least from what you could see from the information material) was to move to Linköping and study computer science (a program that today could have been called cognitive science). Even in the early 90’s in Sweden there were no design school that invited or admitted students that were articulating specifically this area of interest; there were collaborations between engineering schools and design schools in specific projects but that was it.
In the 90’s interaction design exploded, and with the growth of the web (and other developments), competence from graphic design, market communication, hci, cognitive sciences, media studies, etc, competed and created new mixes and also subdivisions of interaction design from pixel pushing to user studies. But, in labs and early GUI development many of those things were already present. It just took 15-20 years, and a lot of work, to reach the point where it became an established part of design (on which you don’t have to agree).
So, there are these long noses of _conservation_ (as a necessary condition for Bill Buxtons innovation noses, I would argue) between fields and areas. Do they inhibit development? Are those long noses beneficial for ideas and aspects to simmer and mature? I don’t believe we have one answer to that.
Now, there are things happening around us in other fields that will be part of design, it’s just that we are not seeing them yet. And, there are things happening within design, that will be part of other fields, but they are not seen yet. And of course things happening in design that we don’t yet understand is design. This should open up for curiosity, both within and outside. Not in one direction, but in multiple directions.
A good example of this is service design. People come from multiple backgrounds into this field, as Ken said. From design and non-design. From UX and non-UX. From political science and non-political science. From media studies and non-media studies. Some of them took the normative route through the education system available to them. Some are taking on their second, and even third career. Many of them could have been in design schools. They are all part of forming not one practice, but multiple practices in the space where service and design meet (that’s what I’ve been researching for some time now). Not all of what is happening there would have been called design 20 years ago, even though some of it was already present in labs and e.g. research. Not all of what is happening there will ever be called design. And some of what is happening there is now not called design, but will be. (The interaction between fields is an interesting subject when it comes to service design)
That is, the concept of long noses has a role to play in how our concept of design has developed and will develop, long noses that act to conserve as well as those that act to revise.
/Stefan Holmlid
Professor in design, especially service
/...a mix of earlier texts left out .../
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