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Dear Don and colleagues Yes indeed: «Design has multiple components. I need my products to work properly, to be robust and effective as well as economical, reliable, and ecologically sensitive. For these traits, I look to science and engineering, to rigor, and formal methods. Here is where engineering design plays a critical role. But I also want to love my products, to find them enjoyable, exciting, and desirable. Here is where emotion, intuition, and art play essential roles.» Few among us, especially those trained or training to be experts in this (Arts) or that (Hard Science/Engineering) discipline, may wonder how can all the knowledge required as above be developed and located in one single head of a designer? With your permission, I’ll add further to your post that, contrary to some myopic and ill-advised requirements by industry and the (job) market place, designers ought not train to be experts in either or in all of the knowedge that is needed to foster «rich, and satisfying lives». A little elaborated in the following chapter: «*Design Studies: A Transdisciplinary Perspective.» *A chapter in ‘Transdisciplinarity. Theory and Practice.’ Edited by Basarab Nicolescu. Creskill, NJ. (USA): Hampton Press, Inc., 2008, pp. 237-244. my view of designers is that of these being trained as transdisciplinary individuals, calling upon and managing appropriate expert inputs as respectively required by each artefact being conceived. Alongside needed artists, engineers, and all other disciplinary experts, society does also (badly) need a third category of professionals that Terry didn’t know how and where to categorize. These have been labelled as ‘ignorant generalists’, deriving their artefactual propositions neither out of ‘crative’ blue, nor from mere and exclusive mathematical assumptions; rather, from both incisive ‘emotions’ and factual ‘rigor’. To me, that is a category of 'expert' individuals that our teaching institutions must train still. Francois, with best wishes from Kigali! ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------