Karel,

I'm not certain that your post went to the entire list so I am
leaving it in full at the end of this.

My assumption about the probable value of design Ph.Ds/design
researchers* runs parallel to your:

>The blunt answer is therefore: PhD-programs do not benefit graphic design
>practice or graphic design education directly. However, if we need to
>undertake the following activities, it might be necessary to do substantial
>research.
>a - providing reviews of existing knowledge (if there is a need to base
>design decisions on a solid basis.)
>b - developing new transferable knowledge. (process measures, performance
>measures)
>c - developing approaches and views how graphic design fits into
>organizations and society.

and to Jacques'
>At ASU the presence of designers with PhDs has provided what I call
>a demystifying quality to our professional education. Students
>become as concerned with 'how' to design as they are with 'why' we
>design. For example, professors in interior design with PhDs in
>human behavior tend explore the sociological dimension of space as
>well as its physical exploration.

[*If anyone has any comments on the dependence of research for the
Ph.D degree and vice versa, I'd be very interested.]

Please pardon my rambling inquiries:
I wonder if anyone has any comments on the convergences and
divergences of different experience, education, aptitudes, and
skills. For instance, a designer who is accomplished and skilled in
practice, has a strong sense of form and an intuitive grasp of deep
communication, is analytical, well-rounded and broadly-educated,
experienced in research, and has an MFA and a Ph.D and, by the way,
is a great teacher--that would be the person we'd love to see
teaching design. I suspect that there may not be not enough of those
to go around.

There are several things that one would want in different doses in
people involved in design and design education. In no particular
order, some of them are:

-Intuitive sense of form/formal talent (or however you want to
describe that sort of thing) and the ability to articulate aspects of
form

-Ability to manipulate communicative/social functions, the
understanding of that manipulation, and the ability to articulate how
the manipulation works

-The ability to make broad connections between subjects and
understand contexts for designing and designed things and the ability
to articulate those connections in some widely-useful manner

-The ability to build bridges between design and other
activities/fields and the ability to understand the limitations of
design and of other activities/fields

-The ability to understand what our knowledge of our field(s) is
(are), what is known, and what is thought to be known but is not
known.

-The ability to increase the knowledge of our field(s)

-The ability to assess the importance and/or the important context of
that old and new knowledge

-The various abilities needed to thrive in different
situations/organizations (including, of course, universities)

-A broad understanding of professional/practice activity and the
ability to prepare new designers to deal with practice and the career
of design


I'm sure there are quite a few I'm not thinking of right now. If we
can't assume that we will have a lot of people who represent the
highest degrees of all of these traits (I certainly don't and I can
think of damned few people who even begin to) then what different
sets of these are needed? How does the design Ph.D degree interact
with each? Is it positive in its support for the best in only some
sets of categories? Is it counterproductive in any?

One of the arguments I have made in the past in favor of design as an
academic field is that many of those studying design have fundamental
misunderstandings that get in the way of their producing work that is
of real use to designers. (The stupidity of most type legibility
studies comes to mind as a prime example.) Does anyone have comments
on the role of design researchers who are not designers? Are design
research and design likely to become as separate as art and art
history or business and economics? Would non-designer design
researchers really improve the present situation (except by focusing
slightly more energy and attention on design)?

Jacques--I would think that a person with down-and-dirty professional
accomplishments and a Ph.D would greatly increase respect among
undergraduates for various ways of thinking and lines of inquiry that
might otherwise seem "beside the point" to them. Do you have any
faculty who are great researchers and thinkers but who have minimal
accomplishments as practicing designers? How do they do in getting
through to the students who are predisposed to think only in terms of
practice and professional recognition?

Gunnar

>Rosan, Gunnar,
>
>Just a reply to both of you: this week is too short to write a 'proper
>considered text' for the list. The message below is just a start: I'm away
>from my desk again Thursday and Friday, and hope to reconsider the message
>below over the weekend. I might post some bits to the PhD list.
>
>You asked:
>"will graphic design Ph.D programs really benefit, graphic design and how?"
>and "How can the design Ph.D. programs benefit graphic design education and
>practice?"
>
>Rosan sighed:
>>I am a little bit disappointed that nobody has responded to this
>>particular question that you raised more than once:
>       I guess that this is an indication of the difficulty of answering,
>not so much of the quality of the question.
>       I'll bite briefly. Having both a graphic design training and a PhD
>in design, I've been asked the same question a few times. [In my commercial
>practice, I tend to earn more through my graphic design training than
>through my PhD ...]
>
>Let's divide this into several sub-questions:
>- Do PhD-programs develop students in such a way that they make a larger
>improvement on graphic design practice than they would have done without a
>PhD?
>       The number is against this. (A dozen programs worldwide?; between
>50 and 80 PhD-graduates in graphic design? Please correct me if I'm wrong
>here.) These numbers are still insignificant if compared with the number of
>undergraduate graphic design courses, or practising graphic designers. Also
>the time spend on a PhD is spend on acquiring skills and knowledge that are
>different from practical skills. The years are used to read about design,
>in stead of exercizing practical skills on commercial projects thereby
>gaining more experience in executing these projects. A PhD is therefore
>likely to have less graphic design skills than is required in practice.
>
>- Which aspects/criteria of graphic design practice would benefit from a
>PhD-study? [This requires a thourough analysis of graphic design practice
>in different activities. Each of these activities need to be analysed,
>described and validated. Examples are: negotiating skills, writing skills,
>software, hardware, visual memory, 'gut-feeling', some sense of commercial
>value, ... a long list if all specialisms are included.)
>
>- Do PhD-programs develop students in such a way that they make a larger
>improvement on graphic design education than they would have done without a
>PhD?
>       This depends on how we describe practice. The easiest way to learn
>practical skills is through doing: following examples, discussing these,
>improving. Whether there are better methods to teach graphic design
>(faster, more demanding, achieving higher levels) can be investigated.
>[Compare for example the amount of research that is invested in second
>language acquisition, especially English. The developments in this area are
>large and fast. A majority of the graphic design education seems to still
>follow the 'project-based crit'. Other options are rare.
>
>The blunt answer is therefore: PhD-programs do not benefit graphic design
>practice or graphic design education directly. However, if we need to
>undertake the following activities, it might be necessary to do substantial
>research.
>a - providing reviews of existing knowledge (if there is a need to base
>design decisions on a solid basis.)
>b - developing new transferable knowledge. (process measures, performance
>measures)
>c - developing approaches and views how graphic design fits into
>organizations and society.
>
>These are not 'common graphic design projects', but I can give examples of
>some of my own projects in which these 3 approaches were necessary:
>a - A university in the Netherlands wants to apply its corporate identity
>typeface (a sans-serif) to its teaching-books (currently a serif). What
>would be the issues (based on literature), how can we test this, and who
>can conduct these tests? (Without falling in the traditional
>'readability-research' traps as they are discussed in Ole Lund's
>PhD-thesis.) [Of course, there was a large political battle involved as
>well. The academic staff did not believe the statements of the graphic
>designers.]
>b - An international electronics firm has about 800 products which it sells
>in countries that speak 40 languages. All products need separate
>user-instructions in all languages. One of the requirements is that these
>instructions are usable, according to the corporate guidelines and visually
>attractive. The question was to make sure that the graphic design component
>would be incorporated in this project through providing evidence of the
>necessity.
>c - A multinational company with over 150 graphic designers needs to be
>re-organized to make co-operation between graphic designers and other
>disciplins, such as 'interaction designers', 'web-designers', 'interface
>designers' and 'product designers' easier. The question was which specific
>competences of graphic designers within this company was, and how this
>could be integrated into more effective collaborations. [This ran parallel
>with the introduction of the ISO 9001 certification process.]
>
>For these cases, a PhD might be a requirement.
>
>It is a bit like cooking. If you want to improve your daily enjoyment of
>food, eat healthy, and spend some good time in a kitchen, just get into the
>kitchen and practice every day. Both the preparation and the eating are
>part of the experience. Reading about cooking does not really help.
>       However, if you are asked to cook for a complete hospital (with a
>few hundred patients and staff with different dietary requirements), it
>might be worth studying chefs, find patterns and ask people whether the
>results were both enjoyable and tastful. Based on the results of these
>studies, the food/cooking process/kitchen layout can be improved.
>       Graphic designers, in general, only cook. In most cases for
>themselves and their colleagues, sometimes for groups of interested people,
>but rarely for hospitals, elderly homes, or student halls. To state the
>obvious: we need both types of cooks: those who cook because they enjoy it
>and make beautiful and tasty meals. And others who enjoy providing
>beautiful and tasty meals for groups with varied requirements.
>
>I'm sorry for these loose 'notes' as a response to your questions. I need
>time to edit and make it consise. However, I would like the discussion.
>
>Kind regards,
>Karel.
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