Lubomir (and others)
I agree with you that we "should study design not because of its
everyday phenomenality, but as a specialized and enhanced activity".
But, this has to be done at a level where design is given its due
respect as a such a specialized activity. Design is special by means of
its very fundamental preconditions and internal characteristics. To me
a foundational understanding of design must be created by a careful
examination of how these fundamental preconditions and internal
characteristics play out in advanced professional situations, by the
very best designers we can find. So, there is a need to (both) create
a broader understanding of design as the most general approach of world
creation (in contrast to other approaches, such as science, art and
religion), and a need to develop general design knowledge possible to
be used by advanced design professionals in their respective field. (Of
course, there are besides this, distinct skills and knowledges that
goes with each field of practice, related to the intended outcome,
material, etc.)
So, I agree that professionalization is needed, but not as a way to
define what design is or what it is not, but as a way to foster good
designers.
Erik
tisdagen den 15 juli 2003 kl 14.16 skrev Lubomir S. Popov:
>
> Eric,
>
> I appreciate your remarks and agree with them in a particular aspect.
> However, my concern is that with such approach we are going towards
> the study of everyday behavior. In addition, we dilute the term to
> such a degree that it looses its analytical power.
>
> At our level, we should study design not because of its everyday
> phenomenality, but as a specialized and enhanced activity. We should
> be interested in the advanced methods rather than the universal logic
> structures of projective (design) thinking. I haven't heard about
> someone professionally involved in soccer to go and learn soccer the
> way it is played at the local school ground. I know that experts go to
> Manchester or Madrid to study how the pros from United and Real do it.
> (Sorry I forgot the names of the Brazilian an Argentinean clubs.) We
> are interested in design benchmarking. We need the best examples. And
> it is natural that we can find them in the professionalized
> situations. That's why we talk about professionalization.
>
> There might be some differences in our professions and professional
> experiences. You recently implied that Industrial Design is still in
> process of academic definition and that in that area education is not
> a predictor of performance. I come from Architectural background and
> strongly believe that education is important. I mean not doctoral or
> research degree, but high level design training in a focused teaching
> environment. It is the most accessible way of disseminating the
> expertise of good designers. Studying at the workplace is possible,
> but it depends on serendipity -- availability of good designers, their
> desire to share expertise, etc. Lets not forget that in practice only
> a small number of designers are good. You a probably among them. But
> you can actually guess the number of incompetent designers by looking
> at all mass culture trinkets on the market.
>
> So, there is some sense in professionalization. And, it is not
> invented by Ph.D.'s -- it had emerged spontaneously as a result of
> social influences Mr. Capitalism. I see that at this time there is a
> big gap in the degree of professionalization in different domains. At
> the one end of the spectrum are engineers and architects, at the other
> end I see interior designers who still think like homemakers. There
> are might be more like them.
>
> Regards,
>
> Lubomir
>
> At 12:18 PM 7/15/2003 +0200, Erik Stolterman wrote:
>> This remark is not necessarily in opposition to anything already
>> written, since I believe some of it is already said ;-)
>>
>> To me, it is not interesting to understand design as a "profession"
>> or "field", but as one of several basic ways humans can approach
>> their world. And as such, design is more or less counsiously part of
>> all professions and fields. To design means to approach the world in
>> a specific way, different from other basic approaches, such as
>> science, art, religion etc. But we all know that we usually need more
>> than one of these words to describe the actual activity within a
>> specific profession or field, since the complexity demands for
>> knowledge from more than one approach. For instance, (hopefully) any
>> scientist know that there are design aspects, and also artistic, in
>> her work, not to mention how other approaches, such as philosophical,
>> ideological, economical play a role in the field of science. The same
>> is probably true for any human enterprise.
>>
>> This leads me to belive that there is no point in trying to define
>> design by single out professions or fields. Instead different fields
>> and professions (or organizations, teams, or individuals) might be
>> described as to what degree they usually work in a designerly way, or
>> are design competent. Understood in this way, design is given its
>> rightful place and importance in relation to the other approaches
>> (science, religion, art, etc). This also means that we can find
>> excellent examples of good design work almost anywhere, but also of
>> terrible designs.
>>
>> Summer greetings
>> Erik
>>
>>
>> --------------------
>> Erik Stolterman
>> Informatics
>> Umeå University
>> S-901 87 Umeå
>> Sweden
>>
>> Phone: +46 (0)90-7865531
>> Email: [log in to unmask]
>> Homepage: http://www.informatik.umu.se/~erik
>> Advanced Design Institute: http://www.advanceddesign.org
>
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