Dear Johann,
As with any tool, the effectiveness of it is only as good as the skill and knowledge of the person using it and the quality of material to which is applied. That's what we, as design professionals, get paid to do.
In terms of advancement of my specialism within professional design, tools and toolkits are useful for:
-cost-effectively gaining situational awareness of a new field;
-avoiding the generation of ineffective propositions (avoid solving problems and offer solutions that are not important to the client or target market);
- enabling evidence-based decision-making;
- providing the constraints within which a value proposition and design concept can challenge and potentially change the perception and conventional wisdom of the boundaries (high quality and difficult challenges for a creative thinker);
-deliver evidence for a reference point around which changes can be debated through dialogue with target users and clients; but also,
-provide an audit trail of evidence to minimise litigation and enhance efficacy of a design process.
Risk adverse clients want to be reassured you, (as a professional designer), can produce a successful design outcome that will keep them in business and keep their employees in a job. There is a separate debate about the ethics and moral standpoint of the current consumer-based societal structure. This is where we are now.
If we are to advance older specialist design professions, such as graphic, industrial and interior design, we need to have evidence-based decision-making and validation. Providing potential clients and other professions who already use evidence-based practice and theory, such as engineers and healthcare professionals, with a clear structure and logic for focused value propositions and validated design outcome. I am aware this does not fit well with the short turn-a-round timescales of commercial graphic designers. Each profession needs to address their specific needs and balance when using toolkits.
I hope this provides a further reference point for this debate: how to help designers fully exploit their capabilities.
Best wishes
George
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Johann van der Merwe
Sent: 20 March 2021 08:29
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Designers
Jose et al
I strongly agree ... I was a design professional (Graphic Design, Medical Illustration, miniature set builder, Information Design, short-film
producer) for about 14 years before becoming a lecturer. I vividly recall the "mistakes" and personal "insights" that my lecturers tried to hammer into my head ... all based on methods they had been taught, and on "sitting with Nelly" ideas - iow, watch me and do likewise, but ask no questions.
Toolkits and worksheets are not worth the paper they are printed on, unless they are merely the spark that ignites a free-from-formulae discussion of what-ifs ...
Take just this sentence: "the Design academic world can lack creative input for problem-solving" ... where does creativity come from, and how do students learn to identify and master the very intricate processes that lead to "problem-solving" - by following textbooks, aka do what teacher tells you? No wonder that jcj (John Chris Jones) was so furious with the academic world for (wilfully?) hi-jacking his "design methods" (design
thinking!) and basterdising his work down to the level of formulae / recipes .... and in that light I offer the following, from my thesis:
"I have to agree but also disagree with Kimbell‟s (c.2011) statement that “The resulting uncomfortable fluidity and hybridity means this M(B)A may not ever be able to come into existence” because the right requirements are assumed to be knowable by administrators and degree awarding boards at the start of the educational process, in opposition to John Chris Jones‟s
(1988: 224) injunction: “the „right‟ requirements are in principle unknowable by users, customers, or designers at the start”. A curriculum for the 21st century that these new Millennium Students will find accessible cannot, then, adhere to the strict rule of a fully described discipline, and on these same grounds I have to agree with Kimbell that this new approach to education will quite likely not find favour with administrators in the new managerialist style, and yet, as a thought-experiment about-face, one might venture to also disagree with Kimbell‟s view, in the sense that we may ask if it is the content structure of the curriculum and/or the discipline that should be highlighted, or simply the learning process itself."
Regards
Johann
On Thu, 18 Mar 2021 at 19:15, José Rodrigo de la O Campos < [log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Elio,
>
> I do agree with your point of view.
>
> As a design professional for more than ten years and recently joining
> the academic world, I found that, sometimes, colleges forget about the
> creative process and rely entirely on methodology.
> I don't want to generalize, but I found that the Design academic world
> can lack creative input for problem-solving. Design Academics tend to
> overuse worksheets and toolkits as they are, disregarding creative
> intuition, perhaps as a way to pull away uncertainty.
>
> José de la O
>
>
>
>
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