Don
I have always felt that, despite the obvious difficulty in describing
"design" to, say, your grandmother, the situation needed another approach
(I used to put this question to my 1st year students: explain to your
gandmother what it is you do, and experience at first hand the
difficulties).
That other approach began when I started to change the course I inherited
("Advertising Design"), because I was very uncomfortable with simply
teaching students to become ad agency fodder ... the term "advertising" was
dropped, and I was left with explaining what the single word/term "design"
meant ...
Obvious answer: design thinking. However ...
This from www.interaction-design.org:
*Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based
approach to solving problems. It’s extremely useful in tackling complex
problems that are ill-defined or unknown, by understanding the human needs
<https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/human-needs> involved,
by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, by creating many ideas
in brainstorming
<https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/brainstorming> sessions,
and by adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing. *
With all due respect to this approach, and however necessary it is to the
practical side of things, this is not real "design" thinking, simply
because "thinking" cannot ever be a methodology, for the basic reason that
too many people think methodology and method are one and the same. Method
acting / method design??
No, design thinking had to be more "primitive" than that, more "basic to
being human", if you will. My course began to resemble the list you
posted: - Fashion design - Automobile styling (or design) - Interaction
design - Industrial Design - Typography - Graphic design - Communication
design - service design ... since the Foundation Course students (my 1st
year "...." design students) would go on to become GD, FD, PhotogrD,
Sculpture, Fine Art, and Ceramic Design students = PS: some of the future
FA students were also some of the best "designers").
The design thinking course asked of the students to design "products" (a
working vacuum cleaner for the Devil: engineering & SD & visual comm.);
"fashion" ("Whose coat is it anyway": sans text - guess the owner);
I gave then a phrase from Camille Paglia "An orgasm is a domination, a
surrender, or a breaking through." The whole sentence/phrase up to "...
forces ungoverned and ungovernable." and asked them to illustrate the
meaning of the words with a 1/2 door sized poster. One of the best results
came from one of a pair of twins (from the deep "platteland" - small town
area, no background of sophistication, purely Nationalistic education at
school), and the result not only shook me, but provided the evidence of the
power of allowing someone to think for themselves, without fear of ridicule
or reprisal ("bad marks").
Design, whatever that is or can be described as, is rather to be seen as a
way of seeing (and "grasping") the world around you. Students can
understand this, because you are asking them: what do YOU think ...? One
1st year student can be (not "taught" but) "guided" to a place where they
can act as a ... GD / FD / PD etc.
One mind, many results, but they do realise that the "one mind" is
operating as a type of collating engine that provides a mutually beneficial
"result".
Johann
On 27 June 2018 at 20:33, Don Norman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> It is so much fun to start a thread on this list and then see how it
> wanders hither and thither.
>
> ---
> I am NOT (and am not) interested in defining design or deciding what is or
> is not a part of Design.
>
> I was simply concerned with the fact that many people (Lay folks and
> professional designers alike), believe that Design is one thing, and so
> they make pronouncements about "design" that are false for many of the
> legitimate areas of design.
>
> I was wondering if there was some other word (or phrases) we could use to
> describe what we do that would avoid this false over-simplifications.
>
> --
> the best suggestion I have heard is always to use adjectives to specify the
> area of concern.
>
>
> - Fashion design
> - Automobile styling (or design)
> - Interaction design
> - Industrial Design
> - Typography
> - Graphic design
> - Communication design
> - service design
> - x design ( chose your own adjective. X = hair, clothing, interior,
> landscape, traffic signals, automation, machines for killing people,
> clothing, ice cream, ... )
>
>
> Eh?
>
> Don
>
>
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--
Dr. Johann van der Merwe
Independent Design Researcher
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