Dear GK,
Just caught a typo in my last note that changes the meaning of a crucial sentence. In the paragraph on debates over medical research, the opening sentence should read:
"The debates between professional physicians AND medical researchers."
When I mentioned the fact that professionals see themselves as the cutting edge while they see researchers as a tedious mop-up crew, I should have added a couple of thoughts. In the case of physicians and surgeons, the cutting edge is where the greatest harm could be done. The mopping up was literally done with blood on the floor while physicians buried their mistakes.
Relatively few design professionals will make life-and-death decisions that affect clients as adversely as physician errors, but as designers begin to work on different scales, they develop the capacity for genuinely major mistakes. In some cases, these can even become life-threatening.
Don Norman's excellent Core77 Blog post, "Why Design Education Must Change" describes the problem of designers undertaking professional work for which they lack the knowledge, training, and skill.
http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/why_design_education_must_change_17993.asp
This describes the problem with designers who " have never set foot in any kind of design school but now see themselves not as learners but rather as definers and teachers."
The problem is not that they have not been to a design school — relatively few design schools offer the skills for the kinds of problems we typically address with organisational design thinking. The problem is that many of the people who now see themselves as definitive thinkers and teachers have none of the training in the kinds of research and research methods that permit proper diagnosis. They generally lack a background in such fields as social science, applied social science, anthropology, applied anthropology, behavioural economics, or the other fields in which one might get a sense of what it means to do this kind of work.
Now that so many people are defining themselves as leaders and practitioners in design thinking, Don's article describes what's wrong with much of their work. The issue is not simply undertaking tasks for which design schools do not offer an education. There are other ways to damage clients. What they have in common is operating from ignorance and a lack of professional skill.
Physicians are at the cutting edge because the have to be there. The difference today is that physicians get a reasonable education before undertaking professional practice, and the best physicians continue to develop and learn as long as they practice. No decent physician takes pride in not being a learner. I would not trust any designer who is not BOTH a learner and a professional.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design> Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman
Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China
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