Studying Design: Exploring the drivers of design theory and practice (original) (raw)

In Time for Change: Building a Design Discipline, design educator Sharon Poggenpohl argues “that design practice and education are changing, particularly in relation to…research and collaboration. If design is to develop as a discipline, it must necessarily develop further based on these themes.”(1) At the center of this development, Poggenpohl continues, is the transformation of the tacit knowledge that designers traditionally employ, to explicit knowledge that is a core asset to cross-disciplinary communication and collaboration. “This is the shortcoming that makes design appear elusive, special, inarticulate, and even unknowable. As long as designers consider themselves to be first and foremost aesthetic finishers of ideas that are well advanced in the development process, they will be trapped by the tacit and unable to provide a clear explanation.”(5) Since Poggenpohl’s call, design discourse has been increasingly focused on this building of explicit, critical knowledge. Designers are no longer comfortable or willing to be the “aesthetic finishers” that Poggenpohl aptly names. But as Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin have argued, much of the evaluation of design has been dictated by those outside of design practice—and in doing so, the focus has leaned to the artifacts that are a result of design practice, rather than the practice itself. In The Idea of Design, Margolin and Buchanan call for an integration of the liberal arts into the evaluation of design — to both broaden the discussion of design evaluation to include that which is focused on the human experience, but also to connect design philosophy and practice (x). This call is in part a response to designs focus on “wicked” problems, and a necessary shift in motivation from what we (as designers) can do, to what we should do. As architectural practice dips into urbanism and visual communication; and as graphic design expands into strategies that involve spaces, places and environments, the ability for students to see across disciplines to find patterns and commonalities as well as differences is increasingly critical. This paper will look at how a cross-disciplinary design studies course for sophomore students at NC State University evaluates design artifacts, environments, experiences and impacts through a series of common, contemporary and critical themes that sit above any specific discipline. By looking at design through its technology, usability, morality, economy, sustainability, and cultural context and impacts, students focus on how design shapes, and is shaped by, the human experience. As a course for non-studio majors, the work in this course can provide insight for studio instructors into how the language and evaluation of design might evolve to include more cross-disciplinary, systems-based perspectives, to help young designers see the work that they do as part of a larger design theory and practice.