Dear Eduardo, thanks for such a refreshing and interesting post! 
Meaningful ideas like these are scarce in these discussions. We need to 
articulate insights and share concrete proposals rather than broadcast  
rant after rant.

Here in Mexico we are working hard to reinvent what design should be, 
specifically given our own context, history and future scenarios. We 
believe that rather than trying to educate a "super-designer", our 
students should learn how to talk to other disciplines. This seems 
simple, but is quite revolutionary when one understands the foreign 
design paradigm that dominated in the last six decades in our country. 
To this end, we are not only working in design education, we are 
increasingly teaching non-designers (engineers, business) as well. The 
underlying assumption here is that design alone, or any other discipline 
is unlikely to have all answers, and that it is our job today to enable 
future conversations.

Any revolution in (design) education is indeed a challenge, it is of 
course hard to re-educate our faculty and deal with other similar 
inertias. Namely, we need to graduate young designers who can get an 
employment or can compete for design projects today.

 From what I read today, I think that a lot of people talk about 
complexity and design, but haven't really yet understood what they are 
saying, or what others have said/done in the past. It is incredible that 
ideas by people like Donella Meadows are unknown to most designers, and 
it is shameful to see how so many so-called experts disregard literature 
beyond their own language/field -something very 'unsystemic' on its own.

There is a lot to be done and the next years will be quite interesting 
not only for design education, but for all education in general. The 
challenges are enormous as are the egos and biases of so many.

cheers,

--Ricardo




Eduardo Corte Real wrote:
> 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
>