Dear Eduardo and all,
My post will be short.
Some of you know my interest for semantics details.
Yesterday, I was in a large gathering of in house designers (mostly
product, but not only...).
One of the discussion topics was the career path. Believe it or not,
the progression of positions (and prestige) goes like this (apologies
for turning the pyramid bottom up):
designer (junior)
designer (senior)
design manager
artistic director
In nuclear physics, isn't this called quantum leap ?
I see it as a wonderful joke !
Best regards,
Jean
Le 24 nov. 10 à 17:27, Eduardo Corte Real a écrit :
> Dear Ken,
>
> I'm addressing you because Don Norman said that you were to blame
> for his long post, and that he didn't want to get in this discussion.
>
> I read attentively Don's post on design education, plus the first
> chapter of "Living with Complexity".
>
> I read the post attentively because I also think that Design
> education must change and because I also think that designers must
> know "some science".
>
> Why do I think that Design education must change?
>
> Because it has always changed. So it would very odd to stop now.
>
> But, must designers be more like Engineers? Or designers should be
> more like cognitive scientists?
>
> Or should designers work better with -- better - engineers? Or
> designers should work better with cognitive scientists -- or, if
> cognitive science is nothing but a well marketed stuff, work better
> with phsyco-anthropologists? (Hi Pedro, what a refreshing entrance
> from old Coimbra)
>
> (How could design education change and still produce designers and
> not another thing?)
>
> Don's view of Design and Design Higher Education is mostly based in
> the idea that Design means Industrial Design. And this is correct.
> I guess that most of the times you say: Design! People will think
> about industrial design. It is the only Design field that you can
> use the word alone. All others need another qualification. A new
> industrialization will need new designers, that's for sure and it
> has been so since the National Academy of Design was founded in the
> US and the Government School of Design was founded in the UK both
> in the third decade of the 19^th century.
>
> What is embedded in the birth certificate of the early -- and
> please, don't get back to me with Sumerian schools of design --
> Design Schools was that Art should be present in the manufacturing
> of goods. Is this call over now? Are technological requirements so
> powerful that artistic culture is the atrophied limb that restrains
> Design Education from moving along with/l'air du temps/? Are the
> uninformed in what a PhD means for science unable, forbidden of
> developing their kind of doctoral education based on what they
> consider to be the relevant knowledge and the ways to conjure it?
>
> What troubles me is if designers loose their identity by loosing
> their ability of producing things out of "uninformed knowledge". Or
> putting it in another way: by loosing their ability of producing
> things in a way that look uninformed to those who know nothing
> about the type of information they use.
>
> Let me now tell you something about the Boeing cockpit in Don's
> book. My first reaction looking at it was: Wow! What a slick simple
> solution, look at all those beautiful calming curves gluing so
> smoothly all the elements, and yes the symmetry -- from the hills
> of Greece, through Brunelleschi's eye, here it stands after so many
> years, and I confess, in the end, what a good photograph! We could
> almost anticipate Cindy Sherman showing up as a stewardess.
>
> This view, which includes the fact that I see that cockpit as
> simple compared to other possibilities and not as an example of
> complexity, is the result of my Artistic education (don't start
> jumping; I was trained as an architect). That education - far from
> ignoring complexity as being the rightful description of the world
> - was designed less to develop skills than to develop a culture.
>
> And that's a big difference. If I look at the skills required to
> put all commands in the Boeing in order and to operated them I will
> come out with a vision of complicated complexity. If I look at it
> from the point of view of a Design culture I will look at it as
> beautiful complexity. Don's revolution of Design Education is
> targeted to develop skills adapted to a new world but it lacks the
> building of a culture. A culture allows you to act transforming the
> world knowing what you are doing, a skill just allows you to do a
> thing.
>
> (I think that Clive's position on Ethics a few days ago represents
> this path towards culture and Terry's position the path towards
> skills)
>
> I think that a culture that reunites Art and Science, or should I
> say, some art and some science is the /identitary/ characteristic
> of Design. And I say 'some' art because neither a design student
> nor any design professor would say straight forward that design IS
> art. However, Design emerged from that side (the art side) of the
> social fabric of professional education and "you can't take that
> away from me". This means that regardless of how may technology or
> science is involved, design education should keep its position as
> artistic.
>
> As Keith as put it. I don't find any controversy in Don's plea. (At
> least in my country, I think that we are trying to do it and in my
> school we even gather business to that) What I'm concerned with is
> what must be kept, having in mind that messing with the DNA of
> something could end up with other thing.
> So my simple plea for changing design education would be:
>
> Design students should know enough about science, engineering,
> marketing, economics, management, in order to be able to tell
> people what to do and not being told what to do
>
> Design Professors and researchers should fight for the dignity and
> value of art as the utmost characteristic of human culture and
> claim the position of design in that realm.
>
> Thanks Ken for bringing Don to this forum.
>
> Sorry for my clumsy English,
>
> Best regards,
>
> Eduardo Côrte-Real
>
> Lisboa
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