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