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| Thoughts on Design with a Capital D. Posted on 07/07/2002. |
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A few weekends ago I attended a retreat for UC I'm interested in BID for a number of reasons. Most obviously, its attempt to provide a home for the research and practice of Design with a capital D definitely resonates. Also, I live about 5 miles south of campus. Particularly, though, I'm curious as to how Cal will deal with a program dedicated to making things. See, I went to Cal (B.A., anthropology), and was often frustrated by the university's promotion of theory over practice. A school of design, by necessity, requires practice, and I suspect there's a bit of an uphill battle to get the rest of the institution to buy in. The retreat itself was pretty interesting. I finally met "interaction design guru" Alan Cooper, who was extremely friendly and convivial. I got to heckle world-renowned interface designer Aaron Marcus (by encouraging dilletantism... hey, it's worked for me!). I read a bunch of student posters presenting various projects at the Group for User Interface Research. Most interesting to me were The Designers' Outpost, a tool that uses normal Post-It Notes to interact with the computer; and DENIM, a web-site prototyping tool that looks like it ought to support the way I work. Initially, John Canny, the main force behind BID, put forth that the idea for BID was to exist at an intersection of three disciplines:  Though purposefully chosen to represent the departments that will be funding BID, it also was a decent attempt at putting a finger on what's going on here. Simplistically: architecture is concerned with people and how they interact with their environment; engineering with the physical construction of things that people interact with; and information technology can imbue and extend these interactions with software. A discussion arose around these three circles, because it was felt that a key component was lacking. These circles are concerned with the act of designing the product. But, a key element of product design, often the most difficult (probably because it's formally overlooked), is communicating the value and functionality of the product to others. Designers don't simply take requirements and turn them into products. They must make it clear to others what they are doing and why they are doing it, whether its to materials engineers or investors or marketers or whomever. So, the circles were thusly amended:  Venn diagrams always leave me feel wanting. And what was lacking here was that it still didn't capture the complete picture. Sure, these four disciplines need to be integrated as we think about the future of design. But we can't expect every designer to be an expert in each. So, what do we do? Well, it got me thinking that we need to break these down further into constituent "core" practices for design. These practices would be the loam from which design grows. Here's my initial list, in no order: - Visual Design Again, not that people need to be experts in each, but they must be well-read in each in order to be optimally effective as designers. They must be effective communicators, of anything from specs to value propositions -- thus visual design and writing. They must understand the basics of computer science, of programming, of databases, of interactivity. They must understand the materials with which they are working (which can be a very abstract concept when dealing with purely screen-based software design). And they must be aware of methods for understanding humans, how to suss out their needs and desires, and the basics of cognitive science, perception, attention, information processing. Anyway. Something to think about. I'd love to hear from "the community" on thoughts like these, other necessary disciplines, other ways of presenting the four circles (I hate that the overlap is so teeny... I tried other visualizations, like a table with each discipline being a "leg", and the table-top being "Design", but, well, it looked terrible). 10 comments so far. Add a comment. Previous entry: "Care about a Caravan." COMMENT #1 COMMENT #2 It's a harder question - how broad, and how deep? Where's the balance?
COMMENT #3 Was there any contrast with established design programs, like Cranbrook or IIT? I'd like to think they've combine design+tech+social science.
COMMENT #4 COMMENT #5 "Multidisciplinary" is the current hot buzzword at many Universities, including Stanford - at least as far as the University administration is concerned. Bio-X is one of those multidisciplinary programs. It sounds like BID is similarly multidisciplinary. My point in bringing this up is that, clearly, the next big thing coming from Universities is not going to come from the traditional departments, but rather, from where the work of two or more departments intersect. While I agree that even with the addition of communication design, the diagram is still lacking, I don't think your list goes far enough either. Your list is good, but still seems to be based on the existing organization of the University. Considering the involvement that both Robert and Alan from Cooper have had with the conceptualization of BID thus far, I'm surprised to see "Interaction Design" absent from the list. I agree that your list contains essential core competences, but I just don't see how teaching within those disciplines is necessarily going to teach students the stuff that lies in between. I think Interaction Design is one of those in-betweens. I guess I don't know enough about the goals of the program to speculate further...maybe this information is on the BID website. I'll wait until it's up and then perhaps continue my rambling. Thanks again, Peter. This was good food for thought.
COMMENT #6 I think a key point of difference between the good stuff Jess and Lou did, and what BID is going at, is the inclusion of physical products and environments. BID is very concerned with a Post-PC design future. Also, I don't think it's about co-opting. It's simply a recognition that the processes of design are currently kinda broken, particularly when dealing with products that have computer intelligence and are networked. Entities like BID are attempts at responding to what is a very real need.
COMMENT #7 COMMENT #8 COMMENT #9 COMMENT #10 The Bauhaus considered design as a whole thing devoted to BUILD (or "design"). For that matter the designer had to be a craftsman as well as an engineer, and also had to learn from many sources: architecture, industrial design, sculpture, writing... to be able to understand the foundations of creation serving the people.
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