Dear colleagues:
As a quasi-lurker on this list, I have read niumerous comments, blog posts to which I have been referred, and statements from other sources that seek to state with some authority what design is or isn't, what designers are or aren't, etc. Sometimes these statements ring true. Sometimes they do not. What is missing in the way that much design discourse unfolds, at least outside the few academic journals that exist, is that writers do not always feel obliged to make reference to what others have written or said before them. Hence, we get a steady stream of ever new statements. This, I must say, is in sharp contrast, to most academic fields where intertextuality, that is, reference to and citation of - other authors is mandatory for any new contribution. I would venture to say that many writers on this list could not list the major thinkers in the field of design since the end of World War II. Nor do I imagine that PhD students are exposed to this literature in their doctoral programs. That, I would submit, is not the mark of a mature or maturing field. Should we keep on simply inserting our opinions about design, its character, or its future, into the listosphere and blogosphere without any obligation to locate such writings within a trajectory of what others have written, we will never get off the merry go round nor will design research or design discourse move forward in a broad way so as to characterize the collective knowledge of a field rather than the isolated accomplishments of a lesser number of authors and journals. I am heartened that specialized fields such as HCI and some others do rely on intertextuality but that occurs within the particular community of HCI or other specialty researchers rather than in the larger design research arena.
Victor Margolin
Professsor Emeritus of Design History
University of Illinois, Chicago
Department of Art History
|