Dear Doris,
Thank you for your message.
On a different note, in teaching terms, it seems like a possibly important
topic would be consciousness raising amongst students that almost all of
the design methods that they use are used tacitly and unconsciously and
exactly as prescribed (because there is no other possibility) rather than
intentionally or by 'dialogue with the method'. These automated design
methods now comprise almost 100% of the design methods used by designers in
a design project. Very little design is done by the designer themselves.
Over the last three decades, designers have been learning the same small set
of simplistic design methods. Yet, the use of design methods by designers
has increased thousands fold. This is because, rather than teach designers
design methods, it has been enormously more successful to embed the products
of design methods research into the software that designers use.
This has resulted in massive increase in use of design methods by designers
without them either having to learn the methods or to have to learn how to
produce novel creative outcomes using these methods.
In effect, it has become more effective and improved design outputs to
place most of the creativity of design activity in the hands of the computer
and its artificial intelligence rather than have the human designer be
creative.
The improvements in effectiveness and efficiency if design activity can be
seen in the significant reductions in numbers of staff held by design houses
whilst at the same time the organisations are resulting in increased design
output.
In teaching terms about design methods, it may be better for students to be
aware and conscious that most of the design work is being done by the
automated computerised systems drawing on the knowledge gained via design
research and that the main role of designers is increasingly that of
managing automated computerised design processes such as those of Adobe,
SolidWorks, AutoCAD etc.
For design researchers involved in research into design methods, it may be
important for us to realise that the primary benefit and outcome of design
research is as knowledge that result in better performing computerised
designing machines, rather than skills for individual 'craft' designers
(whose work is increasingly computerised).
Some of this is discussed in Love, T. (2006). A Systems Analysis of the
Problem of Professional Practice in Design: "Why Mac Computer Systems Reduce
Creativity and Inhibit Quality Improvement of Novel Innovative Design" -
Plenary. In E. Corte-Real, K. Friedman & T. Love (Eds.), WonderGround,
Designing interdisciplinary discourse, conspiring for Design Leadership,
Design Research Society International Conference 2006 Proceedings Book.
Lisbon, Portugal: IADE - Instituto Artes Visuais Design Marketing. A
pre-print can be found at
http://www.love.com.au/PublicationsTLminisite/2006/prob_profprac.htm
Best wishes
Terry
-----Original Message-----
>>The question is: in the future, methodology, as a teached subject, will be
transformed into a dialogue between students and possible methods? Or it
will be replaced by something else?
Best regards and
Um abraço carioca,
Doris Kosminsky
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