Dear Terry,
You end your recent post by saying:
The real challenge is for design educations [sic] as design
programs need in knowledge terms to be at least 5 years
ahead in terms of teaching the new skills designers will
need to use - just because of the lag of education systems.
This all seems to me to be plainly wrong.
Is designing well understood, and thus well taught as a skill
set? I don't think so. To me, designing is a way of being in
the world. This can be taught. There is plenty of evidence
for this in the many good and great designers to come out of
the many good and great Design Schools around the world over
the past many years.
Designers have always had to deal with changing conditions.
Indeed it is the designers who often provoke some of these
changes, and push them along. Designers are always looking to
use new materials, new fabrication and construction methods
and techniques, new tools and systems--which they often steal
from others, engineers, scientists, and artists. This is an
important part of being in the world as a designer.
So, good design schools can't know what designing will be
doing in five years time. They will be forming the designers
who will go out and make what the world is in five years time.
Any mistaken attempt to foresee the future like this will
result in failed designers.
Design Schools do need to teach the good use of techniques and
tools, but this is so that student designers can do designing
like it is really done today, and so learn by doing. This
skill teaching should also show them that, as designers, they
will need to spend the rest of their designing lives learning
to use new tools and techniques, of being a part of developing
these, and of pioneering them.
A nice illustration of all this is, I think, the film "How
much does your building weigh Mr Foster?", directed by
Norberto Lopez Amado and Carlos Carcas [1]. I know Foster is
a Big Name architect, so his life and times and achievements
are not what all designers can expect to have, but the kinds
of changes that have been a part of his career, the ups and
downs, and the way he has been an instrumental part of all
this, are not fundamentally different from how they are, and
need to be for all designers.
No, the real challenge for design education is to keep
attracting and launching people like Norman Foster and the
many many other great designers the world has and has had.
This requires the teachers to be continuously looking to be
ever more demanding of their students, and this requires
teachers to keep learning how to do this from their students
and what they go on to do in the world.
Best regards,
Tim
Donostia / San Sebastián
The Basque Country
[1] How much does your building weigh Mr Foster?
An Art Commissioners production (UK)
In association with Aiete Ariane Films (Spain)
<http://www.mrfostermovie.com/credits.php>
==================================================
On Aug 9, 2012, at 07:29 , Terence Love wrote:
> Hi James,
>
> I remember the keynote and, if I remember right, Don was referring to cutting-edge innovation and the use by designers of design research in their thinking, rather than simply ' design research has a limited impact on design practice'. I seem to remember Don was suggesting science and engineering comes first to get innovations and design activity comes later.
>
> Design research over the last 5 decades HAS had significant effects on design practice and design outcomes - but through a different route.
>
> Instead, the outcomes of design research have been mainly embodied in computer-aided-design software such as Photoshop and Illustrator or on the more technical side, Autocad, Solidworks and Revit.
>
> The outcome has been very significant increases in the quality of design outcomes, significant shortening of design cycles, improvements in the reliability of designs, reduction in design failures, and, significant for designers themselves, reductions in numbers of designers needed.
>
> Developments over the last two decades have now reached the point of computerised automation of creative design activity in areas such as such as Graphic Design.
>
> An example of an outcome of design research in this area is 'Gaudii' (C. Glez-Morcillo et al (2010). Gaudii: An Automated Graphic Design Expert System, Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference (IAAI-10), pp. 1775-1780. Available https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/IAAI/IAAI10/paper/view/1550/2354 ) There are many other similar initiatives across the fields of design.
>
> This suggests two significant challenges:
>
> 1. What should designers be learning to stay ahead of this radical change?
> 2. What should design schools be teaching to keep even further ahead of these radical game changing outcomes?
>
> The real challenge is for design educations as design programs need in knowledge terms to be at least 5 years ahead in terms of teaching the new skills designers will need to use - just because of the lag of education systems.
>
> Best wishes,
> Terence
> ==
> Dr Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
> PhD, B.A. (Hons) Eng, P.G.C.E
> PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks, Western Australia 6030
> [log in to unmask] +61 (0)4 3497 5848
> ==
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of James Self
> Sent: Thursday, 9 August 2012 10:28 AM
> To: Dr Terence Love
> Subject: Relationship Between Design Research & Practice
>
> Dear All,
>
> Building upon Friedman et al's (2011) study - exploring quality perception of design journals - I'm interested in looking at the perceptions practicing designers hold of academic design journals.
>
> Back in 2009 (iasdr09, Seoul) Don Norman stood up and claimed design research has a limited impact on design practice. Could anyone share any references they have which relate to the relationship between design research and practice (generally) and industrial design research and practice specifically?
>
> Many Thanks,
>
> James.
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