Fellow Listmates;

I am sorry that I have just stumbled upon the current debate, as I have been busy pounding out the text of my dissertation “Human emotion response to typographic design” and I probably have missed a significant portion of this discussion.  However, I have much I’d like to contribute and I can't stay quiet about it much longer.

If I may say, there is sufficient fear about the PhD supplanting the MFA but there is little being offered by design researchers themselves to differentiate the two. I see a marked difference, with both points of view being equally essential to design's future--the MFA as the master practitioner degree and the PhD being a degree that develops in-depth researcher skills (of students who have previously earned the distinction of master practitioner).

To situate my contribution, you should know these things about me: I teach undergraduate and graduate students in the graphic design program at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where my Design Studio and Seminar class explores the meaning of ‘design’, tries to identify design’s unique knowledge, and surveys literature about design research (its structure, methodologies, and purpose). I have practiced design for 28 years, 11 of those as an Assistant Professor of Design. I have studied psychology and interactive design as well. I defend my PhD dissertation at the University of Minnesota (St. Paul campus) on December 9th [truthfully, I should be working rather than debating]. After these past five years of PhD studies, I have my own analogy to explain how design knowledge is situated in the world: Psychology is to Science as Design is to Literacy.

I define ‘design’ and its competencies like this: Design is an iterative process, it is a professional practice, it is a methodology for thinking and for solving problems, design shapes social aesthetics, design organizes information, design visualizes complex concepts and processes (for example illustrating how rain forms), design is the product of organizing, designed works are human-centered, and design communicates using socially-understood tenets of visual language.

One of the art history texts I have used says that artists (and designers) help us see the world in new ways. In my opinion, the difference between man and other creatures on earth can be summarized in one word: creativity. Yet for artists or designers to verbalize what they do or describe how they do it is difficult at best. I think the word ‘intuition’ is used by designers to describe  internal processes—there is a reason that visual language exists alongside verbal language: visual language has its own meaning and cannot easily be verbalized. 

Practitioners and Researchers have a different understanding of what they mean when they say 'research': 

Practitioners understand research in terms of a designed ‘thing’—that is, how it affects people. They investigate design process, designed products, design methods, and the effects of design on people (am I missing any?). Two examples--(1) Design helps ensure public safety by making signs easy for us to read as we speed by on the freeway, design is involved in public safety and public policy. (2) Remember the breakthrough design idea of color coded prescription bottles to help families quickly identify who’s medication is whose?; 

Design researchers have different reasons for research: some examples--(1) maintaining historical records, (2) establishing theories that ground practice, (3) to examine how design affects individuals, society, and culture, (4) to uncover patterns to explain relationships, (5) to reveal why designs work or don't work, (6) to improve processes or services using design thinking and the methods of human-centered research, (7) to protect the public from manipulation, (8) to improve the human condition, environment, learning, etc. [There are probably many more.]

The reason we need a PhD is to make sure that the processes and products and knowledge domains of design continue to evolve because commerce is not interested in the kinds of things that academics explore--The world needs both.  

Like others, I believe that technology tools are allowing many non-designers to participate in lower levels of design and adopting problem solving strategies that originated in the design disciplines. But just as there are language experts, I believe that professional designers and design researchers will continue to have an important role, albeit a changing and advancing role, in communicating and translating visual language. Yes, the technology and mediums for design have changed along with the media and technologies—and they should, they have forever been changing. Design has always been situated in ‘context’.

I must take issue with the idea that ‘we no longer need creativity or intuition because we now have sufficient information’. Information is the product of design; creativity is the primary approach; intuition, I believe, is a misnomer -- where designers say intuition when they describe what they do, what designers really do is express and translate communication through ‘visual language’.

For many years cognitive science denied the relevance of emotion research. Today, fMRI imaging of the brain has revealed that emotion processes vision a full half-second before other parts of the brain even begin to attend to the visual stimulus! This finding brings a lot of things into sharper focus and reinforces why designers have such difficulty explaining their methods and practice--designing is visceral visual language, difficult to express in words. At its core, I think the basic knowledge domain of design is 'command of visual literacy'.

I'd be quite interested to hear what others think.

Beth E. Koch, MFA, ABD
Assistant Professor of Design
University of Minnesota Duluth