This is an announcement for a conference on design education, sponsored by
the National Science Foundation, division of Engineering. The conference
should be of interest to those of you who struggle to get design graduate
education established within a traditional university that expects the
faculty to have PhDs and to publish research. This is a special problem for
programs of design within technical universities and engineering schools.

 

This will be the second event (Spanning Design Boundaries) in the NSF
Interdisciplinary Graduate Design Workshop Series. It will take place at
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, April 16-17, 2009.  For workshop
information and application, please visit
http://www.segal.northwestern.edu/designworkshop/ 

 

At Northwestern, the workshop will explore different themes of design.  We
assume a restriction of the otherwise overly broad area of design to
situations that involve interaction with people. We identify four major
themes: Human Factors and Ergonomics, Engineering Design, Industrial Design,
and Human Centered Design (HCD: although this could be easily thought of as
a subset of any or all of the other three).  This by no means exhausts the
demarcation of relevant design themes for, among others, it fails to list
Interaction and Experience Design, Human-Computer Interaction , the
distinction between products and services, and the design of organizations
and processes. However, we believe a broad approach to these four themes
covers everything, including these topics: in the resulting discussion, you
might prove us to be wrong.

 

Design also has at least three viewpoints: Design as art, as a practical
discipline, and as a research endeavor.  It is important to distinguish
these approaches because many an argument results from failure to recognize
that the underlying premises are different.

 

The meeting will start by attempting to characterize these four approaches
and three viewpoints. We then ask what an ideal curriculum would be for
each, assuming zero institutional or cost constraints. The goal is to derive
some common themes that as many possible can agree are at the heart of
design, plus the variants that would lead us to distinguish among the
emphases and skills of the specialties.  It is too much to hope for uniform
agreement. But perhaps we can reach a deeper understanding of the issues.
Discussion of the four approaches will be led by:

.         Human Factors and Ergonomics: Alex Kirlik. Head, Human Factors
Division, UIUC

.         Engineering Design: Jonathan Cagan.  Integrated Design Innovation
Group, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, CMU

.         Industrial Design: David Weightman. Professor  Industrial design,
School of Art and Design, UIUC

.         Human Centered Design: Don Norman. Co-Director Segal Design
Institute, Northwestern.

 

Funded by NSF with matching from the partner institutions (University of
Michigan, Northwestern University, Penn State, and Stanford University),
this series of workshops will explore trends and recent developments in
interdisciplinary graduate design education.  The workshop series is a
continuation of the NSF Interdisciplinary Design Workshop held in
Washington, DC, in May 2008 (http://www.design.psu.edu/NSF/workshop_May08/
).  The first event of the workshop series was hosted by University of
Michigan/Design Science Program in November 2008 on the topic of "The Design
Discipline" ( http://designscience.umich.edu/designworkshop.html ). 

 

Participation in the workshop will be limited to 50 attendees and will
require submission of the online application and commitment to attending the
entire workshop. Selection will be based on having a broad, diverse group
that best addresses the theme of this workshop and that provides also
cohesion over the conduct of the entire workshop series. The selected
attendees will be eligible for travel support, which covers up to $600 cost
of hotel accommodation and flight (or other means of transportation). 

 

Priority for attendance will be given to applications received prior to
February 8th, 2009. Selected attendees will be informed prior to February
27th 2009.   

 

The other events scheduled for the series are as follows:

 

November 6-7, 2008: University of Michigan/Design Science Program,  

Ann Arbor, MI

      Hosts: Panos Y. Papalambros, Rich Gonzalez, Shanna Daily

 

June 22, 2009: NSF CMMI Grantees Conference, Honolulu, HI

      Hosts: Tim Simpson, Matt Parkinson, Dave Celento, Sam Hunter

 

August 29, 2009: Stanford University/d.school & Center for Design  

Research, Palo Alto, CA

      Hosts: Larry Leifer, Bernard Roth

 

We are looking forwarding to seeing you at Northwestern University!

 

Wei Chen, Department of Mechanical Engineering,  < [log in to unmask]
>

Ed Colgate, Co-Director, Segal Design Institute, <[log in to unmask]>

Don Norman, Co-Director, Segal Design Institute, <[log in to unmask]>  

Ann McKenna, Department of Mechanical Engineering and School of Education
and Social Policy , < [log in to unmask] >

____________________________________________________________

 

Don Norman
Breed Professor of Design, Northwestern University

Co-Director MMM Program. MBA + MEM: Operations+Design
Co-Director Segal Design Institute
[log in to unmask]

 <http://mmm.northwestern.edu/> mmm.northwestern.edu
 <http://www.jnd.org/> jnd.org

 

(Visiting Distinguished Prof. of Industrial Design, KAIST. Daejon, Korea.
March and October, 2009)