Terry's posting of the review of Richard Florida's latest book, plus his
other pointers to articles raise very important issues for all of us
involved in design education.
My views are in agreement with Terry.
First, I compliment Richard Florida. Richard has always been a thoughtful
critic and commentator on trends (and he has even read Design Books he told
me). It is rare for someone to state publicly that they were wrong -- and
Florida has now done this. Hurrah for him.
CAVEAT: I didn't know about this book, so I have only read the review
But I think that what was wrong, both in Florida's work on the Creative
Class and in much recent development around Design (see the IASDR piece
Terry cited -- I have pasted the reference below) is the overinterpretation
of the points: overinterpretation and an extreme simplification.
The creative class is real, but if it is considered superficially as simply
the surface stylistic components, it leads to the ailments pointed out in
the review (and by Florida himself, I presume).
Similarly, if we say "Design is the answer" that is an oversimplification
of many things, not least of which is that because of the art- and
craft-based influence of much of design training and the rather extreme
lack of training and education in other topics (literature, philosophy,
science, math, psychology, political science, economics, business, ... ),
it is naive to believe that designers are equipped to solve many of the
issues that they are expected to address.
I won't say more because I've already said enough to get me into trouble.
Design education is a complex subject. How it can be changed is not
obvious. I have argued that there are two possible paths -- the craft path
and the complex system's path (where craft skills are not as necessary). I
argued that both paths are important and valuable, but that the skills and
training necessary for each are quite different. Few people can master
both. So I can imagine design education having multiple tracks with very
different educational requirements. (This is typical in many large
departments in other disciplines.)
Time for some deep reflection.
Don
On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 7:34 AM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
What follows is a short precis of a review of Richard Florida's book 'The
> New Urban Crisis' by Sam Wetherill titled 'Richard Florida is Sorry'. For
> the full text see
> https://jacobinmag.com/2017/08/new-urban-crisis-review-richard-florida . I
> look forward to reading the book.
> ...
> There have been earlier warning bells. An example is a critique in 2007 at
> IASDR07
> https://www.sd.polyu.edu.hk/iasdr/proceeding/papers/The%
> 20Problems%20with%20
>
> <https://www.sd.polyu.edu.hk/iasdr/proceeding/papers/The%20Problems%20with%20Design%20Education%20in%20the%20UK.pdf>
> Design%20Education%20in%20the%20UK.pdf
> <https://www.sd.polyu.edu.hk/iasdr/proceeding/papers/The%20Problems%20with%20Design%20Education%20in%20the%20UK.pdf> .
> Another example is Talbot's review
> of Don Norman's critique of Design Education in 2011
> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/423552/the-problem-with-
> design-education/
(NOTE: Talbot did NOT review my paper: he interviewed me about the ideas,
which allowed me to expand them.)
--
Don Norman
Prof. and Director, DesignLab, UC San Diego
[log in to unmask] designlab.ucsd.edu/ www.jnd.org <http://www.jnd.org/>
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