> The course at Stanford is an interesting one for this discussion. There
> they teach product design within an engineering department. I have
> worked with many of the Graduates. Companies like Apple I think favor
> their graduates over some other schools. Some well known designers
> teach
> there like Bill Moggerige one of the founders of Ideo. I think the RCA
> has a stream that combines engineering and design at graduate level bur
> I am not familiar with the content.
I'm afraid the "RCA" is a new acronym for me, and a google for "RCA
stanford" didn't turn up anything that looked appropriate. If you
could clarify the acronym that would be great.
I did a quick look at the Stanford initiatives and was impressed by a
couple, especially the "design observatory". However when I looked at
the courses and at what is required to obtain a PhD I started to feel a
little concern. From what I can see there are no formal courses
offered in areas such as research methodologies, research design,
researching design, etc.
There does appear to be a lot of good courses covering particular
technical aspects of engineering design, but in terms of research into
design the coursework seems to stop at "Design Seminar" and "Design
Processes". In both cases the focus appears to be on enumerating
existing design approaches, not on examining design.
I would *love* to be proven wrong, and maybe the reason that I am not
seeing what I was hoping for is that I am looking for that which is
tacit.
A question for the list:
Do you feel that a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford would
satisfy your vision of a PhD in Design? If not, why?
Thanks for the pointer!
Jason
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