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Vol.30 No.3, July 1998
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Vol.30 No.3, July 1998 |
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Two years ago, the National Science Foundation sponsored a two-day workshop called Design@2006. The 50 participants came from academia, industry, and government to discuss the impact of emerging technologies on information design and distribution ten years hence. A report was written a year later and published under the title, Design in the Age of Information. It addresses four topics and makes specific recommendations in each: 1) rising technological opportunities, 2) new design principles, 3) design education, and 4) key research issues.
I was a member of the Design Education working group and an author of the group's report, titled "Designing Design Education." I believe the content of our report is relevant to any program that is teaching, or planning to teach, (human-computer) interface/interaction design. If you subscribe to Herbert Simon's definition that "design is concerned with how things should be" (Simon, 1969), then what you do and/or teach is located within the larger design arena. Therefore the following discussion and recommendations pertain to you and your colleagues. Read on!
The report, Design in the Age of Information, was printed and distributed by the Design Research Laboratory, School of Design, North Carolina State University in July 1997. Contact Jay Tomlinson <j_tomlinson@ncsu.edu> for a copy.
In The Sciences of the Artificial, Herbert A. Simon recognized:
Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state. Design, so construed, is the core of all professional training: it is the principal mark that distinguishes the professions from the sciences. Schools of engineering, as well as schools of architecture, business, education, law, and medicine, are all centrally concerned with the process of design. (Simon, 1969)
The design disciplines are currently in a state of flux. As recently as a decade ago, the boundaries of graphic design and industrial design were fairly tightly drawn. Graphic designers were involved primarily in designing printed communications, while industrial designers produced dimensional artifacts.
Designers today are involved in the development and design of new products and their interactions, software, virtual identities, web sites, strategic plans, wearable computers, digital libraries, games, and interactive exhibitions. The old monikers of graphic and industrial design aren't descriptive of the new fields of practice and research that are being explored today. These disciplines in fact have come to realize that they do not own the word `design.' The activity of design, as described by Simon (1969), is being practiced by a host of disciplines that include engineering, computer science, information systems, professional writing, and business. We encounter job titles such as software design, engineering design, human-computer interaction design, and systems design, to name a few. If design is so pervasive, who, then, is a designer and how is s/he educated?
A unique opportunity presents itself to the fields of graphic and industrial design. This opportunity suggests a partnering, not just with each other, but with the technological, humanistic, and business fields in the development of new products -- real and virtual. These products touch the everyday lives of people, young and old, in school and at work, at play and at rest. It will take an attitude of openness, cooperation, and exploration on the part of educators, administrators, students, professional designers, company executives, and funding agencies -- with new and continuing education as the goal. New methods of working together will evolve, as will evaluation and discussion of such practices.
We must consider a change in the way we conceive of design education. While change may not be easy, it is clear that some changes are necessary. Some observers even point to drastic changes. This demands that we review -- literally, re-look at -- what we do in design education from different points of view. Definitive answers are yet to emerge, but over the two days of discussion at the workshop, consensus was reached in describing some of the major issues surrounding design education for the future. The recommendations are not exclusive of each other. In fact, it should be noted that they overlap each other and should be considered together.
While this report addresses design education, some may regard this as pertaining solely to graphic and industrial design programs. Simply substitute your department's name in place of graphic or industrial design, and read on. These issues are germane to all those programs that are concerned with human beings and their interaction with new technological products and environments.(1)
Here are several scenarios describing education in the future: not all learning will take place in schools; courses will be of drastically different lengths; learning will not end with a diploma; there will be less structured and codified ways of delivering education; there will be unique cooperation between academia and industry with new and continuing education as the goal. The design of life-long learning is the issue at hand.
We are currently constrained by an antiquated educational structure, one built on courses offered over semesters or quarters; on autonomous departments; and an emphasis on individual (faculty or student) achievements. As a result, barriers exist to building courses outside of existing structures, to team-teaching across departments, to supporting a range of teaching styles for a range of topics, and to partnering with industry in the pursuit of collaborative projects. This problem is not unique to design programs, but is shared across departments on campuses around the country. Those faculty that have successfully overcome these barriers point to enlightened participants from within academia, design firms, and industry -- enlightened in that they see the value of collaboration and the potential for new ways of teaching. They promote and reward cross-disciplinary efforts.
We can no longer continue to subscribe to outdated boundaries between design disciplines. Instead, we should either cross these boundaries or transcend them. This suggests two concurrent paths for design education:
to explore collaborative methods that enable designers from different disciplines to apply themselves to new information-related problems with new information technologies, and
to build new educational programs for those who do not fit within current programmatic boundaries.
The challenge for design education is this: how flexible can our educational structures be in order to support, even nurture, new ways of teaching tomorrow's designers?
Firstly, when sponsoring project courses at universities and colleges, government and industry should specify that the work be carried out by integrated teams representing several disciplines, each relevant to the task at hand and able to address the many issues related to product development, design planning, production and implementation. This requirement will send a strong signal to academia and encourage new structures and new approaches to collaborative design. Secondly, the NSF and NEA should work closely with the national professional design organizations -- such as the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA), and the American Center for Design (ACD) -- and lead the way in exploring new thinking about design education. Their findings should be shared with design and other relevant academic programs around the country in an effort to put into practice what is preached.
While there may be general agreement that our students need to have interdisciplinary design experiences, we need more success stories that one can point to as models. Typical design projects have designers working with other designers, or a designer interacting with a client, but few projects actually involve students from several disciplines working together to solve a problem. An important distinction should be made at this point between the terms multidisciplinary -- a collection of disciplines brought together to solve a problem -- and interdisciplinary -- a collection of disciplines on a team with a shared commitment to solving a problem (Buchanan and Vogel, 1994). It may be relatively easy to assemble a multidisciplinary team, but to ask the participants to work constructively and efficiently together over a period of time demands an interdisciplinary attitude. This suggests integrating approaches from other disciplines, allowing for "multiple sightings" on a problem. It further suggests designing a system that allows for all to design, with some addressing meta-design issues, while others address the details. The challenge before us is to foster interdisciplinary design projects in various departments across a typically diverse campus. It takes a commitment from key faculty in these departments to make it happen. It also takes an attitude of openness and exploration on the part of departmental administrators to see the value in these kinds of projects and to encourage them among their faculty and students. Providing incentives for faculty to find new arenas for collaboration should be the job of department heads, deans, and provosts. It will be in these new arenas that innovative thinking and activities will take place -- innovations that spawn innovations.
Governmental agencies, like the NSF, and industry should play an important role by sponsoring major interdisciplinary projects focused on designing collaborative design environments, with real and virtual aspects. These environments would link researchers -- students, faculty, and industry representatives -- as they work on developing new collaborative technologies. Associated with this work should be research into the processes and methods employed for such collaboration, as well as the environment for collaboration itself. An understanding of the unique and tangible contributions from the various disciplines will go far in promoting efficient and productive collaboration. In short, a fuller understanding and appreciation for what collaboration across disciplines means, and what it takes to achieve this, is at the heart of this project.
Within some design programs around the country, a shift has taken place from a focus on formal issues (form-giving and aesthetics) to a focus on the human beings that are affected by designed artifacts. This attitude -- and it is an attitudinal shift -- takes into account the human factors of cognition, behavior, even social and cultural influences. Krippendorff's new design principles are an articulation of this shift that has relevance for any discipline involved in new product development (section 3 in the final report). It is a shift that recognizes the fact that without primary consideration for the people using the artifacts we design, and the context for their use, -- in short, the entire experience of use -- we relegate design to a marginal and self-serving activity. In fact, this concern for the human use of products and systems is what distinguishes design (graphic and product) from engineering and computer science. Designers add value to interdisciplinary work precisely because of this ability to consider users. Equally important, this shift allows design to share its approach to human-centered design with other disciplines also involved in the search for ways to keep the audience/user/person in mind throughout the development process.
This human-centered approach is undergoing an evolution from user-centered design (considering the audience) in the 80s, to participatory design (involving the audience) in the 90s, to design partnerships (involving the audience and client) in the first decade of the new century.
Courses that inform designers of human behavior (i.e., cognition, social/cultural factors, people and organizations, people and technology, evaluation methodologies) should become part of the design curriculum. These should be taught with the goal of applying this knowledge to integrated product development. Within existing design courses, issues of product semantics, communication and interaction, and data visualization (information design) should be strengthened.
Understanding what we do as designers is a never-ending research topic that should be promoted and explored in every way possible. It suggests that serious reflection on these activities (Schon, 1983) and documenting them is necessary to building a body of literature that is direly needed by the design (and related) disciplines. Such a body of literature can contribute to a healthy discourse that unites the design communities. We should explore various means to document what we do and not be limited to writing formal papers, all the while keeping an eye towards ready dissemination to as wide and diverse an audience as possible.
At the conclusion of a major project, undergraduate design students should be encouraged to provide reports that document their design process. This task of reflection, collection, writing, and editing demands an objective point of view in pulling together a report that is informative to and readable by any interested party. Graduate students should contribute with a written thesis that attempts to broaden the current thinking and knowledge base of the discipline. Finally, each year, faculty should agree to write one paper, give one presentation, or participate in a public discussion that contributes to building this knowledge base about design.
As mentioned at the beginning of this section, there are many activities and disciplines that are considered design disciplines, in light of Simon's broad definition of design. In the foreseeable future, there will continue to be formal design education for tomorrow's designers. Undergraduate programs will still focus on professional preparation. Master's programs will also be involved in professional preparation, but with a research component that distinguishes it from undergraduate work. Graduate programs may be the critical programs for the future, as the task of redesigning design is at the core of graduate work. Excellence in scholarship and innovation should be the twin goals we aim for.
Disseminate current literature about design education to those within and beyond design programs. Then, convene an annual Design Education symposium devoted solely to the issue of educating the new designer, initially as defined by Simon. Content will focus on new thinking, new courses, research projects, and other activities that inform the education of this new breed of designer. This symposium, funded by government and industry, may move from campus to campus, but be guided by the same set of goals and objectives.
Two other educational needs must be mentioned: 1) learning design thinking as a basic skill on the elementary and secondary levels; and 2) continuing education for a population that may be growing older in years, but not waning in energy, curiosity, and the desire to keep learning. In both cases, we must start with an understanding of learning -- not just teaching; this is critical before we get too caught up with new technologies. Certainly, we need to explore augmented and distance learning, but we should do so with wisdom and care for those we are teaching. These explorations should take place in relevant departments across campus, and not only the Education department.
NSF should fund projects that explore distance learning coupled with interactive technologies. The implications for content development, organization, and visualization, as well as technical delivery -- divergent applications on convergent technologies as a goal -- are aspects that need serious consideration. Equally important are implications of distance learning on learning itself, the quality of the experience, the resulting work, and student mentorship. Clearly, this is multi- and inter-disciplinary work with representation needed from the fields of psychology, education, writing, design, film, and computer science, to name but a few key areas.
New participants, new initiatives, and new thinking are needed if the design disciplines are going to be contributors to the larger picture of design in the Information Age. Change is imperative on three fronts. First, change is necessary in academia, not only within design education, but with programs that are potential partners in collaborative projects and research. Second, change in thinking is needed with companies and institutions that may stand to gain from partnerships with academia in the form of sponsored projects or research. Third, change is imperative with funding agencies that fail to consider design programs at universities and colleges as recipients of major grants. There is serious ongoing work in various design programs around the country that can contribute to the general theme of product development in the areas of smart products, software design, and information design. Put another way, the fruits of design's labor can be found in everyday products, for all kinds of people, doing a variety of tasks.
The discipline of design has much to offer -- principles, theory, methodology, and a unique way of seeing the world and approaching problems. In collaboration with other disciplines, much more can happen to inform the future of this highly technological age, sorely in need of humanizing and clarifying.
Each of the areas mentioned in this report lists the need for further study, reflection, and documentation. These activities are dependent on strong support from government agencies, like NSF, from industry, and from academic administrators. The recommendations that follow each section all cluster around a few key themes: human-centered design, collaborative environments (real and virtual), interdisciplinary team work, reflection on and documentation of the design process, and the new boundaries of design. What is common to the recommendations is the need for support, in the form of equipment, electronic/digital links, and financial support for faculty and students. Visionary leaders within our schools, the government, design firms, and companies can make an enormous difference. Are we all ready to take the next step?
Buchanan, Richard and Vogel, Craig. Design in the Learning Organization: Educating for the New Culture of Product Development. Design Management Journal, Fall 1994.
Schon, Donald. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
Simon, Herbert A. The Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969.
Curricula for Human-Computer Interaction. ACM SIGCHI, 1992.
Also available at http://www.acm.org/sigchi/cdg/
GDEA (Graphic Design Education Association) Conference on Design Education, summer 1995: white papers are currently in preparation.
Strong, Gary, et al. New Directions in Human-Computer Interaction Education, Research, and Practice. NSF and ARPA, 1994.
Also available at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/community/hci/directions/
Dan Boyarski is a graphic designer with 26 years in education and the profession. He is Professor of Design at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design, where he has been for sixteen years. As Director of Graduate Studies, he coordinates two master's programs: one in Interaction Design, the other in Communication Planning and Design, a joint program with the English Department. He teaches courses at both the graduate and undergraduate levels in typography, information design, and human-computer interaction design. Dan is interested in how words, images, sound, and motion may be combined to produce effective communication. His research interests include visualizing information spaces and time-based information design. He received an MFA in Graphic Design from Indiana University and later spent two years at the School for Design in Basel, Switzerland.
Daniel Boyarski, Professor
School of Design
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh PA, USA
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Vol.30 No.3, July 1998 |
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