David:
Excellent, thoughtful article. I had not seen it I am ashamed to say.
The long story of our curricular change and name changes are being revealed here, probably badly, in the discussion list equivalent of sound bites: a bit at a time. I'm sorry it must be confusing.
One new piece of the story relevant to your concerns is that we were deeply engaged with our curriculum change before we addressed the name. This is indicative perhaps of a pattern of many gradual, often small evolutionary changes that occur in a discipline that suddenly bring into question the current view, or name, of the whole enterprise. This was true of our name change. Our curriculum had been pretty stable for 40 years but was under stress and had over time had a patchwork of additions tacked-on little-by-little so that is was no longer as coherent as we wanted. So we change the curriculum and THEN the name, and now the name again. I think this may be symbolic of what happens more broadly in a discipline: at some point changes already happening reach a tipping point and the name changes. I don't know that there is much evidence for name change causing change, more the other way around. Some brands wish a name change would improve the reality!
Your points about the % and lacking items in curricula are spot on (or were in 2011). The answer to your question, "Where is the remaining 90% going to come from" is, in our curriculum, through integration.
Again, back to our recent history as an illustration.
Our first new curriculum version had a core Research Methods course for all design majors in semester 7 or 8 semesters (don't ask why semester 7, there were a variety of compromise reasons). After a couple of tries, we decided this was ineffective and are instead spreading research methods instruction across studio courses. We have integrated it into existing studio projects. At lower levels the research methods are simpler versions of the more sophisticated research done in the graduate program, but the overall form is the same. For example, this term I am teaching an undergraduate (semester 3 of 8) "Design Ideation" course that traditionally takes students from methods of academic drawing (which they have had for 2 semesters already) then takes them into methods for line drawing, illustration, graphic translation and icon design. They began the 15 week semester with a Draw-It design research assignment (discovering the 'brain-icon' that people hold in their head, a research method we have been developing for a few years) and they will later this semester subject their proposed icons to a Comprehension Estimation survey and their final icons to a Comprehension Survey following ISO/ANSI and an IRB approved research protocol. Their grade for the final icon will be based in part of the comprehension number. Thus we are beginning the integration of user centered discovery and evaluation into existing studio courses. We have taken a similar integrative approach to integrating writing and design history into studio courses. Whereas we used to (for example) make the topic/content of a typographic exercise a poster for a concert series or a recipe for making a meal, we now have them do a simple literature review of an historic designer and use that content for the typographic lesson, thus integrating research method, writing, and historic study into a studio course. We have found that you can't add all the needed new things to design education as separate courses, and separate course 'silos' are often an impediment to education anyway, so we are integrating new methods into the design process you so well illustrated. In effect, we're teaching the WHOLE design process, not just part of it.
I must misunderstand your concern with prototypes. Perhaps we are using the word prototype differently, but in the Design Ideation course noted above the students print out several prototype iterations of their work during each class over the wireless network and we review them. In graphic design for some years the difference between prototype and final product has been mostly a matter of which printer you send the file to or the reality of the database you drawn upon. Prototyping is easier and faster and more accurate than ever. It's one thing that has gotten easier.
I started in this thread by describing our name change, and throughout I have done so not to 'toot our own horn' but more in the sense of 'running naked - streaking' through the discussion group exposing our messy and sometimes tortuous process. We are far from through.
Thanks again for the very thoughtful article. I've shared it with my colleagues. And thanks for mentioning Visible Language in it! We are striving to support the evolution of graphic design, visual communication design, communication design, scholarship.
Best…
Mike Zender
University of Cincinnati
Editor, Visible Language
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