Ken,
Thanks for your message to the PhD-Design list. Yep, you're right: we need more hybrid practice/research people in education. As well as good practitioners, and good researchers.
The funny thing is that some fairly remote areas of commercial practice do value a PhD too. And it is specifically those areas that seem to need design imput most.
Examples are 'visual justice', 'visual economics', 'visual education', 'visual democracy', and 'visual science' and 'visual health'. Both the design of information in these areas as well as the systems themselves need to be reconsidered and redesigned. Most legal paperwork, financial statements, educational materials, ballot forms and instructions, scientific information, and medicines/care information as well as the underlying systems ('service design'?) could use some design help.
These professions are mainly governed by highly specialized and highly educated professionals - most of them have and value PhDs. They are unlikely to accept suggestions - or at least be very sceptical about suggestions - made by a non-PhD.
So, yes, we need hybrid practitioners/researchers in education. But we fairly desperately need the same people outside universities as well.
Kind regards,
Karel.
[log in to unmask]
On 21 Nov 2011, at 23:38, Ken Friedman wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Reading my way forward through the thread, I read Stefanie di Russo’s
> comments on universities where a student DOES get good practical
> training based on professional experience.
>
> While this is less common than it should be, there are schools where
> students have the benefit of strong practical experience and skilled
> practitioners. I wrote earlier, “The case seems to be that too few
> design schools teach the kinds of skills and wisdom students get on the
> job,” and I’d argue that this is the case. In visits to many design
> schools over the past four decades and studies on several hundred more,
> my experience is that fewer than ten or fifteen percent of all schools
> emphasize regular teaching based on significant professional experience.
> Far more offer good guest lecture programs, but that’s a few hours of
> one-way communication a year, as contrasted with the regular contact,
> interaction, and coaching that leads to skills development.
>
> When we prepared our report on the Victorian Design Research
> Infrastructure, we made a point of listing the clients, companies,
> organizations, and projects with which our professional design staff
> have worked over the years. When we hire new staff, we seek people who
> are “bilingual,” people who speak the language of professional
> design practice and the language of serious research.
>
> In reviewing my reply to Don, it may be that I was not clear enough on
> an issue of agreement: we need this kind of education in design schools.
>
>
> My mild disagreement involved the question of having too many
> researchers. I’d argue that we have too few solid researchers with a
> serious PhD. While the numbers are growing, the growing number of
> researchers is not somehow crowding out a vast and neglected population
> of strong design professionals with up-to-date skills and outstanding
> experience. There are also too few of those, and we need more of both.
>
> It’s a lucky student who finds a school where both are available –
> and the students who benefit from teacher with a dual foundation in
> strong professional practice and strong research are particularly
> fortunate.
>
> Yours,
>
> Ken
