Stephen,
This post is to try and respond and give a viewpoint and and example in
response to your questions.
Having completed two years of a Ph.D relating to the design of virtual
environments at Salford, I moved to the US to take up an offer of design
employment. Some of this study resulted in a paper on design in relation to
VR (link below).
During the time at Salford, I was trying to execute the first case study
for a local SME (Street Crane) and progress the academic work, as well as
support a pretty substantial teaching load. This will comes as no surprise
to current Ph.D students undergoing the same kind of pressure. Having moved
from design practice into the academic environment at Salford - I was still
getting acclimatised to the world of modules, exam boards and 'meetings'.
Your prediction of difficulty in combining design practice and academic
study became very apparent during this time - as mixing the industrial
world with academic world became a real issue.
The real world of design has little time for research that does not
directly benefit itself.
With this in mind, the case study became skewed towards helping Street
Crane in the design of their control interface via VR techniques. This
means that contact with the real world probably affects the experiment in
some manner. This example, might even illustrate how the study of design
becomes invalidated, when in contact with real world participants
Later moving back into industry, it is personally impossible finding time
to research at the level required for post graduate study.
My sad conclusion is that bringing the two areas of research and practice
within academic study is difficult at best.
From an industry stand point it is even harder.
Do others with practice based research have such problems?
Glenn Johnson
ID Manager
B/E Aerospace Inc.
(http://www.svid.se/ead/ead-Johnson.htm).
I predict that if we cannot find ways of integrating practice and
research, then practice will become an increasingly small part of the
doctoral design lecture's life and research will become an increasingly
small part of the the doctoral practitioners life. I can't see that this
is desirable.
Precedents exist for this view. For example, the professions rather than
academia appear to be the main force driving the development of
professional doctorates. In the UK the teaching company scheme was
introduced by the Engineering and Physical Research Council to
accelerate transfer of advanced knowledge into small companies and to
refresh academics' industrial experience.
Finally, I'm interested in understanding the nature of Wendy's
'struggle', and yes, it would be very interesting to hear about the
post-doctoral experience of recent design PhDs.
Steve
Wendy Siuyi Wong wrote:
> With one article published in
> Journal of Design History and severals on
> communication journals, I found myself have been
> struggling between practice-led design
> community/academic, and non-design intellectual
> community.
>
> I don't know how any people with a relatively new
> Ph.D.-Design out there, but I certainly interested to
> know about their life after "Ph.D.-Design".
>
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