Dear Francois,

Thanks for your thoughtful post. This is an issue that is deep and
challenging. I’m still going to argue that the Tao is not an
appropriate model: any tao  requires current mastery in its teachers. We
have too few such masters in our design schools. In this, we have too
few masters of the Tao, and we have too few masters of design in the
sense that relatively few design teachers have a high enough skills
level to manage front-line industry projects or even industry-based
research. 

Kun-Pyo Lee from KAIST and Don Norman from University of California and
later from Northwestern University are among the few examples of  people
who moved from academic positions to high level industry positions, or
-- in Don’s case -- have the capacity to move back and forth. Larry 
Leifert at Stanford Mechanical Engineering, Kalevi Ekman at Aalto Design
 Factory, or Paul Hekkert at Delft are among the few examples of
academic  leaders who run the kinds of living lab situations that bring
industry to  universities for cutting-edge research. Cees de Bont at
Delft, or Per Mollerup  and Dori Tunstall at Swinburne, or Lorraine
Justice at Hong Kong Polytechnic are among the relatively few people
moving from industry to academic life  while retaining skills and
capacities at a level that allows them to continue  to work in the
industrial setting. None of these people is unique -- they  are examples
that come to mind among people I work with for different  reasons, and
they are rare. Most design teachers are now teachers, and they are not
masters of the design profession. Some never were. 

As to masters of the Tao, they are fewer still. Most of the designers
whose books focus on the Tao are simply silly. There is one fellow who
perpetually promotes books and papers on the Tao of design  that are
empty of content -- this is not the emptiness that gives use to a cup,
but the emptiness of one who speaks without thought. 

For this reason the paradigm just doesn’t work. While I understand
your view on this, I am going to disagree. You practice a “do,” and 
you understand therefore the relation between those that study the way
and the need for a master. We do not have among us enough  masters to
permit this as a viable paradigm.

On the second issue, though, this is not a choice between “
‘fast’  training manpower in ‘design’ “ and something
else. University- level degree programs are not fast training for
manpower: they are intended as education rather than training. It is
education to which Don Norman speaks in “Why Design Education Must
Change.”

Bringing science and critical inquiry into design education is a way
forward that we can manage in the three to ten years in which we  have
design students at university. Mastery takes a lifetime. Our work
involves helping students to  develop the basic skills and habits of
mind that will equip them to succeed in the design professions as they
move from their student years to become journeymen or journeywomen, and 
then develop the possibility of mastery.

The choice is not a choice between the impossible paradigm of a  Tao of
design as against the shabby paradigm of manpower training.  The choice
is between the obsolete paradigm of the design education  that served us
reasonably well from the 1800s through the 1970s,  as against a paradigm
of research-based design education suited  to our needs today.

Warm wishes,

Ken

Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Distinguished University
Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology
| Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Ph: +61 3
9214 6078 | www.swinburne.edu.au/design


Francois Nsenga wrote:

--snip--

I disagree with your statement, on two grounds. The first ground is
that of the old adage saying that any long voyage start with one single
step. Starting right now, as we are doing in the present exchange of
views, each of us reflecting on one’s Design practice, those with
teaching assignment revising their curricula or even just re-orienting
or modifying a little bit their Design course method/content (for
instance anchoring it in a scientific/experimental framework as Don
suggests and as I illustrated in an experiment reported earlier this
year in Design Issues: Volume 26, Number 4 Autumn 2010, pp. 57-70.), in
my view all that is how the Tao of design would start and gradually take
hold. And as ‘things’ unfold, the ‘aim’, whatever it may be, may
eventually be reached. Keeping in mind, for that matter of fact, that in
all traditional non-market oriented ways of life, reaching the ‘aim’
is not that much important as just engaging in the Way (le
cheminement*), i.e. practicing in the best manner - meaning here the
most satisfactory - whatever one has to do: in our case, Design
practice/Design teaching of artifacts conception.

The second ground to my disagreement is the distinction I make between
mere training in skills, and educating (e-ducere = to lead out or from
to...) individuals (pedagogy and andragogy). As I hinted at in my
previous post, training in “tricks” both new and old ‘dogs’,
that is relatively fast and easy. Leading individuals of any age towards
and throughout a ‘way’ of conducting - not earning - one’s life,
that is more difficult, it requires constant care and dedication, I
would say of the entire lifetime, both from the learner and the
‘leader’.

Our current concern comes down then to being a matter of a crucial
choice between either ‘fast’ training manpower in ‘design’...,
or leading individuals to take care of the community artifacts domain,
now and in future. I personally believe a paradigm underpinned along
this latter choice - by the way not at all viewed as a religion nor any
other kind of esoteric, meditative practice -  would, on the long run,
serve better both the individual and our globalized community of humans
on earth, including business persons and financiers!

--snip--