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Dear DK You appear to be confusing the fundamental human capacity to design with the established and thriving design professions whose members/practitioners quite rightly call themselves ‘designers’. This discussion does not warrant the citation of academic definitions of design and designing but, instead, the more pragmatic application of good old common sense. If anyone and everyone is a designer from birth, the term is devalued and does disservice to the students and practitioners who have spent endless hours (6 years of study?) perfecting their art. If one looks at short-courses in design-type thinking, these do not a designer make. My association is with the visually creative design disciplines and professions, with specific and in-depth links to industrial design and the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). Your statement that, “the everyone-is-a designer wave is now deeply entrenched across many fields of practice” does not match my experience of the world of industrial design which, if your position has credence, is surprising. As such, I feel far from alone in my position as you suggest. Maybe the “everyone-is-a designer wave” is entrenched across new non-visually creative fields which are still in their infancy and to which it does not belong. As a point of clarification, I am not now a practitioner who has just invested 6 years at design school. That was a long long time go after which I designed stuff for companies, taught undergraduate/masters students, supervised PhD students and undertook academic research. It saddens me that ‘designer’, like ‘architect’, is not a professional title protected by legislation (in the UK Under Section 20 of the Architects Act 1997). But, come the revolution for which I have just become its self-styled leader, one day, it may well be. Viva la revolution; viva le designeur!!! Thanks Mark Designer/designeur/revolutionary Dr Mark Evans Reader in Industrial Design Design Practice Research Group Leader Loughborough Design School ________________________________________ From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of GK VanPatter | NextD [[log in to unmask]] Sent: 22 August 2013 17:30 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Design Thinking Unique to Design? Mark: You said: “…I didn't spend 6 years at design school for a sociologist or historian to come along and call themselves a designer.” Here you are touching on important and not new issues of the open marketplace more so than of this closed list. I would certainly encourage you to join those of us who do engage in the many, many open marketplace discussions in addition to those taking place internally here. I am sure you must be aware that many open marketplace discussion groups now exist and what goes on there often has important ramifications for your statement. The future of practice depends much more so on those external conversations, some might call them necessary battles, than anything going on internally here. Someone should be honest with you….The argument that is implied by your statement has already been lost over the course of the last ten years. I certainly encourage educators to be more up front and honest with students about that loss. You might personally revisit it but you would be fighting an uphill battle at this point. The everyone-is-a designer wave is now deeply entrenched across many fields of practice. There has been little coherent defense mounted and or presented externally in the open marketplace by the design education community. Missing-in-action is an often-used description of what went down. As a practitioner who just invested 6 years at a design school you will now find yourself to be on your on when it comes to engaging outside this list on such issues. The design education leadership community has mounted no unified strategy for addressing the very issue that you raise in your comments and that has been the case for at least ten years. I would be happy to talk with you more off list. ... GK VanPatter Co-Founder Humantific SenseMaking for ChangeMaking NEW YORK / MADRID ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------