Dear Don and List,
I read the article, 'Why design education must change' with mixed feelings. But let me first say thank you for making this available for me before it appears on Core77.
There are more than a handful of ideas that demand slow digestion. But I pick up two points for a start: two points that also recurred repeatedly through the article.
(1) on experimentationsDon, beyond the reasons you cited for more in depth and scientifically rigorous experimentations for design, I cannot help but think that there is a further need to distinguish qualitatively between experimentations done in cognitive science and experimentations (to be) done in design. The basic purpose of the former is to falsify (and hence clarify) and to describe. But the overall purpose of the latter is to create and to prescribe. Insofar as the inquiry process is concerned the structure is similar; but insofar as the teleology is concerned, they are dissimilar. For these reasons, to subject subjects to failure for the 101th experiment in cognitive science may be permissible by the teleology of science. But to subject subjects for the 101th experiment just to see how our designs may fail on these subjects are less permissible by the teleology of design.
Hence if designers must perform rigorous experimentations approaching the level of rigor in cognitive psychology and the social sciences, I imagine that a whole new way of experimental inquiry that commensurates with design must also emerge alongside. To build on your suggestion that design needs experimental designs that are "simple and quick", I suppose these new experimental inquiry must be humanistically sensitive as well.
(2) on ignoranceIt is hard to argue for ignorance. But I am going to try. On this, I think there is a need to make another distinction: to distinguish between heroic ignorance and modest ignorance. I suppose in your article, you were arguing for the former at the expense of the latter, which has merit and also happens to be a significant goal of Socratic teaching. To practice heroic ignorance the designer expresses 'I know best'; but to practice modest ignorance--or self-conscious ignorance of 'I know not'--it is in fact quite compatible with the nature of design, especially participatory design within complex systems. Unless we accept this human condition of ignorance, and strive to attain the virtues of modest ignorance, we cannot learn. If we cannot learn, then we also cannot design as well--because it is impractical to design without accepting that learning is highly probable and desirable within the design process.
I am an architect by training, and so while I dabble in some product design on the side and think I understand the arguments for a science of design, I am not a trained industrial designer. Even so, it seems that the existing curriculums for many design programs (as I observe) still have their merits because they nonetheless avail students to the possibility of (1) and (2) above.
Jeffrey
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