Greetings everyone, from Chicago!

I am just delighted to have been asked to join in this dialog, Ken.  And I’ll be sure to put a check in the mail for that far too generous introduction.  You make me want to meet myself!

I have very much enjoyed a great deal of the dialog to date.  It is especially lovely to hear from so many new voices, as well as some treasured past acquaintances.  

And now we turn to Alladi.  

Well, if analogies to exquisite cuisines, fundamental skill sets, knowledge cores, purposive practice and systems thinking aren’t enough, here we have Professor Venkatesh presenting us with yet another way of thinking about design – and a school that should be prepared to embrace it:  “design as a state of mind…viewed more as a collective attitude and a way of thinking that contains a potential for constantly generating new ideas which cannot be reduced merely to the notion of style.”

As a cognitive sociologist, of course I love this.  Design as a mentality is a very juicy notion indeed if we think of it as a mentality ready to manifest in countless more visible behaviors and artifacts.  It fits nicely with a favorite analogy of my own:  good design is not unlike coming up with the perfect gift for someone.  You take your knowledge about 1) the recipient, 2) the resources you possess, 3) what might be made, acquired, and/or imagined with them, and 4) the cultural norms and expectations regarding exchange and value.  One then produces with all of this (and by the appointed deadline) something special.  Something so special, in fact, that will delight, fulfill, and perhaps even inspire the focus of your affection.  (It may even have a plethora of secondary gifting effects, of course, largely unnoticed except by the future inhabitants of the earth, say, or the individuals who produced some of the ideas or materials or the item, itself, that you chose.)

The thing about a gift is that there are gifts and then there are gifts.  A purchased tie, a scarf, a pair of gloves, or slippers – these are good, generic gifts, likely even to be used.  But, as a grown up, try giving such a thing to your lover, your father, your mother, even your child.  What does this say about your state of mind?  What is it likely to induce in the recipient’s?  There better be something very special about such a thing indeed (e.g., handmade, a joking reference to a shared experience, battery-heated for geriatric feminine feet) – or else.  This gifting thing is a process with an acute awareness of the past, present and future built into it and one that reveals at least as much about the social relationships and priorities of our lives as anything else.

More to the point, then, is the question of how one creates an educational experience designed to support and encourage a profession that is essentially about the mentality, the art (and craft and science and philosophy) of making and giving wonderful gifts to people you may have never met.  How does one, in fact, foster a certain designerly state of mind in a couple of hundred undergraduate and graduate students each year? 

Alladi’s discussion of the feminization of computing within domestic environments and “The Family Portal” intimate just how important it is to get this right, and the rich possibilities of invention and satisfaction that await those who apply themselves to the task.  In particular, he asks, “what design ideologies are appropriate and how
does design as a state-of-mind converge with design as user experience?”  This certainly seems to summarize a great deal of the dialog we’ve had in this conference so far.  And, fortunately, it draws us back to the focus of the conference:  the UCI Design School proposal.

I am picky but wildly eclectic in my own research and teaching, finding inspiration and discovery in the most unexpected places.  I hate censorship of any kind, too.  This leaves me interested in but less concerned with defining Design and The One Best Way to teach it, for instance, or the proper relationship between philosophy and practice.  

I am more interested in elements of this proposal that are in fact, very much about a designer’s state of mind – or, better, a designer’s dynamic of mind.  Mentalities uniformly depend on the cultural, categorical systems that one uses to make sense of the world.  Such conceptual, classificatory schemas inform everything we see and experience.  To see the world through one set of categorical boundaries is to see it differently from someone who uses a different schema.  Becoming “disciplined” is very much about learning and living through the classification schema that defines membership in a particular social group.  

Political conflict is frequently manifested in not only the definitions of categories, but which classes of things will be added, subtracted, and modified within an existing classificatory framework.  It may sometimes emerge in conflict over which framework, itself, will be assumed.  Creativity, on the other hand, may well be stimulated by the same activity.  (e.g., Sanjoy’s most enticing and entirely alien list – to me -- of space-concepts.) 

One of the places this notion of design as a mentality takes us, then, is to the importance of which categories, classification systems and boundaries are embedded in the working assumptions of the Irvine proposal.  The extent to which these enable new, frontier, on-the-edges design is quite important.  

The decision to begin the school already firmly embedded in others’ traditional categories and classifications of design, i.e., the four tracks, has some fairly predictable consequences for how students will learn to think about design.  Sometimes, the most creative stuff happens when you ignore pre-existing pigeonholes – or at least pick different ones.  The categories we think with not only shape how we think, but their job is often to preclude more from our thoughts than to include within them.  This 4-track choice clearly constrains the designerly states-of-mind and practices that may emerge within the school and community.  A more amorphous, bacteria- and radiation-friendly kind of ooze might have a very different outcome than what is proposed here.

The proposal’s focus on hiring and inviting visits from faculty who are “prominent” has interesting potential consequences, too.  A mix between such folks and people who are just good to think with -- in new ways, no matter how well-known they are yet -- may be more important.  “Prominent” people sometimes get that way because their success may be predicated on a very narrow focus and the relentless pursuit of it.  (At least in the Academy and within my realm of experience this has proven true.)  One wonders if prominence is either sufficient or even necessary for the success of this particular kind of endeavor.

In fact, if we really want to think about the kinds of individuals who would be absolutely necessary to make such a school really succeed, what should our list of adjectives/categories/classifications look like?  What kind of a designerly mentality should underlie the hiring decisions for this school?

Well, number one, this school will not be well served by people who are stuck on transmit.  It’s not for the faint of heart, either.  It’s not for those whose lack of experience and maturity in life makes them defensive and territorial (as a general rule/on most days.)  It would not succeed if it were staffed by people who make decisions based on fear, I believe.  Rather, the faculty for this hypothetical school must have a mentality based in (dare I say it?) love, respect, service, and making the circle ever wider – with regard to their and others’ disciplines, the school, the work, and all the people one would be working with and for.  They need a generosity of the heart that leaves them respecting what has come before and what might be yet to come.   They need a heart that seeks and supports the synergistic possibilities that lay at the intersection of biography and discipline – the joyful center of the spirit of learning that lies within all of us.

In short, this place will need to be staffed by real designers, with a real designer’s mentality, as I have come to know it.  It will demand people whose love of imagining what might be takes them into places where others would never dare to go.  I don’t really care who currently pays them, either, nor the route they took to get here.  I just know that if Irvine is going to be what it wants to be, these are the folks who need to end up there, so that they can teach others to be like this, too.

I love the Irvine proposal.  To me, it is a wonderful step in the direction of creating, in Tuan’s sense, both a space (unlimited possibilities, freedom) AND a place (the comfortable, the known, the taken-for-granted) for amazing work.  Jay Melican, whose research is featured prominently in the doctoral program section of the proposal, is currently working with me as my post-doctoral fellow.  It is difficult to describe the joy of finding someone like this to work with and the really amazing things that we convince ourselves we have discovered each day at the office.  That’s what the Irvine thing should be about, I think.  At least, this is how I have envisioned its possibilities ever since I first heard about it at Nirmal Sethia’s NSF symposium on leadership in design and innovation that I attended, and where Chuck Pelly presented the plan.  

This proposal is a labor of love and it would produce more of it.  Alladi, Sanjoy, Dick, Chuck, all the advisors – this is a HUGE amount of work and vision.  We can only nit-pick at it now because they were brave enough to put the prototype out there for us.  And now, I wonder if there is anyone else out there who wants to talk about the kinds of people it make take to make this thing really happen – create the kind of mentality you would like to see in the future designers of the world?

Christena Nippert-Eng, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Sociology
Illinois Institute of Technology
312-567-6812 (office)