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Dear Sanjoy, Kari-Hans, Carma, Michael (Hohl) and others thank you for your posts. i would like to take the approach Kari-Hans has recommended for our discussion on who 'should' be teaching design practice and design reflection+articulation. in brief, it is an idealized discourse, in which we momentarily suspend all the practical constraints we all most face in real life. and use it as a guide to make decisions when it comes to real hiring for which many compromises will be made. thus i comment on the first half of Sanjoy's comments and leave the second half for another occasion for which i love to return. as far as i can see, the second half is a problem that requires some creative solutions. (the first half) > Questions have been raised about what kind of people would be > doing the teaching (Christena). This is a hard question to answer, though > there is a pat answer: good people. There are many questions: What are we > asking about? Qualifications & training? Experience? Past > record? Innovativeness in idea generation? What they will teach? Who > they will teach? Will they be doers, thinkers, researchers, > motivators? How will they teach (Rosan, Carma and Michael's points)? The > answer is that we would like all of these, and have made provision for them > in the SoD proposal. (the second half) > But there still remains the question of how to find > such people, and how to ensure that they will continue to do what they > promise. Some things will have to work out later, but the selection of the > people is without doubt a crucial component of the implementation. as individuals, we all know that we cannot have everything. thus we set priorities. so please allow me to reframe Sanjoy's comments: what are the most important qualities in people who teach design practice and design reflection/articulation, given the state of design practice, design education and the world in general? (it is assumed on my part that these qualities will be passed on to the future generations of design students/designers. so it is a matter that carries serious implications). this question carries us to slippery ground, to the matter of character, ideology (thanks MP Ranyan), and ethics (thanks Jan, Lorraine) which i don't think we can all agree. in this light, i would like to put the concept of kindness on the table for yet another consideration. i have, in a paper presented at the 5th EAD conference this year, attempted to bring 'kindness' into our design discourse and hopefully eventually makes its way into practice. In this essay, I reflect on some neglected aspects in the discourse on design for needs (DfN). Based on Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs and Erik Erikson’s notion of identity crisis, I claim that people in need include designers ourselves. We have a need for a coherent identity and design for people in need can address our own need. Having pointed out that, I stress that satisfying our own need is a consequence not a purpose for DfN. Using William Hamrick’s philosophy of kindness, instead of following the current discourse driven by an ethics of duty, I suggest that kindness can be a purpose. Given the complexity of the subject matter and the concepts involved, my attempt to bring up the notion of kindness as a purpose for DfN is a very crude one. Knowing that, why do I dare? I feel strongly that kindness is a key to genuine changes in the practice of design. I must rely on my own intuition to direct my inquiry. everything being equal, if i had to choose between a very creative/innovative but less kind design teacher and a very kind design teacher but less creative/innovative, i would choose the latter. my humble opinions. rosan Chow, Rosan. "Kindness. A Purpose of Design." 5th European Academy of Design Conference : Techné, Design Wisdom (Barcelona, 28 Apr-30 Apr). Hamrick, William S. 2002. Kindness and the Good Society - Connections of the Hearts. Albany: State University of New York Press. -- Rosan Chow Female Doctoral Student University of Arts Braunschweig, Germany