First some disclaimers. I'm grateful to Ken for the invitation and the
introduction, but I have to say I demurred at first. I don't have any
special insight into the field of design education and I'm not very close
to issues about academic funding and institution-building. I'll comment as
I'm able -- mostly from the perspective of someone who manages web and user
interface (UI) designers in a corporate context, and as a UI designer (to
some degree) myself both now and in the past (note: as a researcher my
interests overlap with many of those articulated on this list, but are
probably more outside its scope than in, and I don't comment here from my
research perspective). I don't consider myself primarily a designer, nor do
I consider the main work of the group of about 50 people I now manage to be
"design" per se (though there is certainly quite a lot of design going on
in the group -- of user interfaces, of web content, of software, of
web-based training courses, of computing architecture, etc).
With that out of the way, here are some reflections on things that struck
me in Michael Clark's address. As a whole I find the conception of the UCI
SoD to be an admirable and exciting thing, and none of the comments I make
below should be read as criticisms of the proposal as a whole. I have tried
not to trod over the same ground as my fellow commentators, sticking mostly
to a few observations from a professional/corporate/employer standpoint.
=====
Prof. Clark writes: "I have no background in the field of design. I am a
Professor of English and Comparative Literature, with a focus on literary
theory and on the literature of British colonialism in the Americas."
I also don't have an academic background in design. It might be of some
relevance to describe how I arrived at the relatively design-intensive
career I have fallen into. As stated in the intro, I studied film and video
as an undergraduate. At Michigan in the early 80s, the Film/Video Studies
major was a largely interdisciplinary humanities program, so I took many
courses in literature, philosophy, and history of art, as well as film
theory and the like. In fact film/video production itself was only a small
part of the overall program, though I also worked part-time in an
educational TV studio. Graduate school at Wisconsin was a similar mix,
again with not much applied study in production; mostly I studied
telecommunications policy and the sociology of economic change. Yet in both
programs I kept active in some degree of hands-on work that might be
characterized as "design" -- a video course here, hosting shows at the
student radio station there, composing music and playing in various bands,
and so on.
This autobiography is to this point: when I began working professionally in
the mid-80s, developing technical communication materials and designing
user interfaces, somehow my background seemed to prepare me well. Without
making any direct correspondences or drawing in any straightforward way on
my education, I was able to meld in to the world of corporate computing.
Without an engineering or design background, I found the process of
thinking about what made sense and what would work from a design
perspective to be "natural," seeming to be a logical extension of the kind
of thought, analysis, and practice I had learned in film, video, and the
humanities (and, no doubt, picked up from the culture at large -- for
example, I learned how to organize my physical desk on my first post-M. A.
job by studying the way folders and files were organized on the 1984
Macintosh computer "desktop").
I have since found that many in the UI and web design worlds have similar
interdisciplinary backgrounds, sharing usually at least some creative
interest and practice in their past (musicians, writers, filmmakers, etc.),
but without formal design training.
If this seems to be heading toward some sort of argument like "design
schools aren't necessary for a career in design," that's not my intent.
Rather, I wondered when I read the piece if the correspondence between the
UCI SoD and the world of professional design wasn't being made too direct,
too one-to-one -- that is, that the purpose of a design school is to
produce professional designers and design researchers. Is it necessary to
justify the school in this vocational manner? Perhaps so.
I see the same issue where Prof. Clark writes: " a general recognition
by prospective employers/clients/users of the value of that knowledge and
training for professional practice as well as for academic research."
Maybe the culture is heading toward this point. But in the professional
world I've been living in, and as someone who hires designers, whether
prospects have a direct educational background in design is not all that
relevant. What matters is the work that the person is able to show, the way
they are able to talk about what they do and how they approach problems,
the ways they find to be effective in the often turbulent milieu we work
in. How they got there is of less interest. The other aspects that Prof.
Clark describes, of the SoD opening doors to academic (and professional)
collaborations and intersections that wouldn't be there otherwise, seem
much more compelling to me than the fact that the school could produce
professional designers. (Of course, if it does so that is an excellent
thing).
=====
Prof. Clark writes: "Michael Schrage in his book Serious Play claims the
Media Lab at MIT grew out of the inability of existing programs at MIT to
contain the interests and curiosity and work-processes (serious play) of
some faculty and students related to design, and he says that much work in
the Media Lab does in fact exist in the interstices of more conventional
academic programs as embodied at MIT."
This troubled me somewhat, not because of the validity of the point, but
rather the use of the Media Lab as a model. After the wildfire success of
its early years, from news reports (1) it seems to have fallen victim to
over-reaching and some degree of infighting. Certainly the Media Lab arose
from the kinds of energy Schrage described, but this does not seem to have
been a sustainable model. Has there been consideration given to
"sustainability" as a criteria for the SoD? I know there is discussion of
the sustainability of the funding model, but how about for its internal
culture?
=====
Prof. Clark writes: "contrary to its critics, design as an academic field
is not simply a little of this and a little of that ("engineering lite" as
some engineers would
say)." This, of course, is not just an issue in academia; it comes up in
the professional world as well. In the web/IT world, the perceived value
of design goes up and down. There are times when UI design, for example,
is at the forefront of concern, and times when it is regarded as a frill
and fluff. In a large company I know, several years ago there was a
director-level group concerned exclusively with the visual design of the
company's web presence. This group arose, acted, and was disbanded and its
director and members laid off, all in the space of little over a year. At
its zenith it had senior executive attention and made grand presentations
on the urgent and central nature of its work, on how critical brand as
reflected in web design was to the company's mission. When it disappeared,
cost and engineering considerations once again had center stage for the
company's web presence, and the visual design of its many different web
sites did indeed begin to fragment -- but without any discernible impact
on the company's business. I guess what I am wondering about is the
potential for hubris to take over value. Statements about how design will
be the center of the world (of course, I am making a caricature here) seem
to me to lean in this direction.
I like better statements like the "integrative power of design as a
conceptual process" and "the extent to which the field of design has begun
to encourage self-reflection and commentary on process and the
philosophical bases of its practices as a way of integrating the various
disciplines that intersect in many design projects." I hope the
"integration" will include study of how design activities play out in the
social systems of actual workplaces, and how designers must negotiate and
find ways to integrate their contributions with those of engineering,
finance, and other disciplines, in such a way that the value is
self-evident, without recourse to statements about the transcendent value
of design.
Al Selvin
=====
Notes:
(1) "Struggling to Regain Technological Buzz After Bubble's Burst," New
York Times, March 29, 2003
