Rob Curedale wrote:

" To ignor craft skills in design education would be dangerous at
present for your students. The large employers of undergarduate
students such as Nike and Ideo still value the ability to draw and
build form to a higher level of skill than most Design schools are
able to train students. They tend to focus their job offers on a
small collection of Schools where these skills are intensely taught
by master practitioners. Our school in Detroit claimes to have
trained more designers working in the car industry than any other
school globally. Research, engineering and design science are
becoming more important but still only part of the tool kit of a
working product designer."


I addressed the topic of sketching in my reply to McAuley, but I'd
like to add a little bit more here as it relates to the issue of
craft skills.

As with sketching we discussed this idea several times.  The
conclusion we reached was while some skills would inevitably be
taught in the School's classes (or more accurately, the associated
labs), there were probably some skills that students would find
useful but for which we could not justify their being made a part of
curriculum.  Accordingly the students would be responsible for
picking them up on their own, perhaps though "extension classes" or
other means.

Let me illustrate this, once again, from my own field.  The world is
full of different programming languages, which are a form of design
representation.  Depending on what company an individual works for,
some particular language or languages will be required.  Should we in
the university provide classes in all these languages?  Or similarly
there are many different types of database software;  one company may
use Oracle's and another may use Microsoft's.  Should we in the
university teach both (or all)?  The conclusion is clearly "no".
Instead the focus of our instruction is the principles underlying all
programming languages and the essential qualities of all database
systems.  When a student goes to work for a company they will have
some work to do to pick up the local tools, but they come equipped
with the essential knowledge.    In contrast the 2-year technical
schools, trade schools, community colleges, and whatnot teach very
specific techniques.... but we believe students so trained will not
be able to navigate their way to a second or third language without
returning to school, and in any case will be reasoning about the use
of the tools at a much, much shallower level.

Rob also commented:
"Looking at your estimates of student numbers. They seem high to me.
Art Center and CCS each with 100 year histories have roughly half
those numbers. Assuming that you will be teaching both craft hand
skills and design science/research skills to a high level in the
program, are your students going to be new students or drawn from
other institutions. As Art Center has such a good record for
employment for graduates how are you going to attract the numbers of
students which you intend? I would say that you would have trouble
teaching craft skills to a higher level than Art Center due to the
unique and rare nature of their instructors; and employers of
designers are looking for these skills.

The issue of China is an important question. Do you intend to draw
students mainly from Asia? How do you see the major changes in global
centers of manufacturing which are likey to happen over the coming
decade affecting your program's emphasis.?"


Art Center has a very different view of its "product" than does the
University of California, so a direct comparison isn't quite
appropriate. The U of California is a classical major American
research university.  The four year undergraduate programs yields
students (we hope) who know how to learn and have a broad training in
the sciences, humanities, and arts.   The graduate programs yield
individuals trained very deeply in their specialities, with the Ph.D
graduates going on to populate the faculty ranks of other
universities.   Students will emerge from Art Center and UCI with
different training and abilities;  our analysis of the job market and
various career paths, including management, showed there's plenty of
room for both types of individuals.

With regard to Asian students, the answer is no:  almost all of our
undergraduates, current and projected, come from the State of
California or elsewhere in the U.S.  (Incidentally though, a large
fraction of our undergraduate population is ethnically Asian, but
almost all of whom are California residents).

Dick
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Richard N. Taylor                        +1-949-824-6429
Professor and Director                   +1-949-824-1715 (fax)
Institute for Software Research          [log in to unmask]
University of California, Irvine         http://www.ics.uci.edu/~taylor
Irvine, CA 92697-3425