Design Education Today: 2005 Eastman/IDSA National Education Conference
by Stephanie Munson and Bruce M. Tharp



Design and design education fans met in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia from August 21-23 to catch up on the latest from design schools across North America as well as other parts of the world. This conference marked IDSA's 40th anniversary, having started in 1965 back when ID heavyweight, Henry Dreiyfuss reigned as el jefe.

As part of an increasing trend, design practitioners were not only in attendance, but on the speaking roster as well. While distinctive, informal themes often emerge at these conferences, this year seemed to be a bit of an exception. There was a broad range of issues discussed as usual, but no definitive hot topic, such as last year's debate over "whether designers could or should engage in research."

Also notable was the fact that there was no formal discussion about graduate design education. As the world, business, technology, and the concomitant demands made upon design(ers) shift, so too should education at all levels. While these new demands were discussed in relation to interaction design, collaborative learning, and new methods and tools, among others, debate over the role of graduate education fell through the cracks. Certainly the growing calls for deeper research and more innovation beg the question of preparation beyond undergraduate-level basics.

On a somewhat somber note, Prasad Boradkur made a tribute to his friend and fellow faculty member, the late Paul Rothstein of Arizona State. Many knew Paul professionally as a regular at these education conferences and a prominent figure in the field, but Prasad talked about Paul personally - as a friend, husband, joker, and instigator. His presence was missed this year.

All in attendance appreciated the hard work that went into putting on the conference by the staff folks at IDSA, Katherine Bennett (National Education Council VP), and the host students and faculty at Virginia Tech's School of Architecture & Design. And thanks should go out to the generous sponsors, Eastman Chemical and Alias, for seeing the value in supporting design education.

The descriptions below represent the talks/panels that we were fortunate enough to attend. A complete list of speakers can be downloaded here.

Primary Speakers
Keynote Speakers
Proctor and Gamble Collaborative


Primary Speakers

Steve Visser, Purdue University
Positioning Competition-Wining as Scholarly Activity
Of less interest to practitioners (but a huge issue for educators), Steve Visser of Purdue University led a discussion about getting tenure. Specifically, Visser believes that when educators enter design competitions and are recognized, their success should be recognized by tenure committees as scholarly activity. For other academic disciplines writing is often the most common form of evidencing scholarly work, but this does not always make the most sense for design practice. Visser produced an excellent document citing 32 popular design competitions, comparing attributes such as entry fees, prize money, number of entries, and number of nations represented, as well as whether they publish the results and, most interestingly, the percentage of entrants that get recognized. Currently, Purdue seems to be one of the only institutions that formally values competition-winning as scholarly activity.


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Lois Frankl, Carleton University
Cross-Functional Design Practices: Learning from the Future that Was
Lois Frankl of Carleton University presented Cross-Functional Design Practices: Learning from the Future that Was, which outlined past experiences of Nortel Networks' now defunct Design Interpretive group. This was a cross-functional product design team comprised of over 100 designers (in 2001). She highlighted some of the lessons learned and the design methodologies they employed. Her research included interviews with past employees, analysis of historical documents, and web-based surveys. It represented an interesting and somewhat rare historical study of design practice.

Josh Cohen, Ratner & Prestia
Integrated New Product Development: What's Law Got to Do with It?
Josh Cohen, a patent attorney at Ratner & Prestia in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, spoke about the role of legal counsel in new product development. He presented case studies and pointed to the need for early legal input in the product development process. Cohen emphasized that integration of the legal discipline, along with design, engineering, and business allows products to not only be desire-able, make-able, and sell-able, but own-able as well.

Leslie Speer, California College of Arts
Walk a Mile in Their Shoes: Cultural Immersion and the Design Process
Leslie Speer presented Walk a Mile in Their Shoes: Cultural Immersion and the Design Process, which detailed her experiences over the last several years running a study-abroad class in a small Mexican village (in the Nayarit region). Industrial design, graphic design, and architectural students spend three weeks studying the language and working on projects such as the redesign of a home/business destroyed in a hurricane, developing a new family-based business and related products, and working with locals to design and build a bridge using indigenous palm materials and traditional techniques. The underlying motivation for this type of study is that it moves beyond classroom-based learning and toward understanding - "the synthesis of knowledge."





Tim Antoniuk, University of Alberta
Morphing/Shape-Shifting Artifacts: Alternative Solutions for Promoting Sustainable Consumption and Corporate Social Responsibility
Tim Antoniuk of the University of Alberta discussed the $250,000 grant that he jointly received in his talk, Morphing/Shape-Shifting Artifacts: Alternative Solutions for Promoting Sustainable Consumption and Corporate Social Responsibility. It is a fascinating and ambitious project that combines the academic expertise from ID, sociology, chemical material engineering, and the philosophy of aesthetics with professional designers and researchers. Their aim is to develop and institute a sustainable design, production, supply, consumption, and disposal model that is keenly aware of social realities and business concerns. This is no blue-sky project - it is a realistic re-envisioning that can actually enhance future economic growth for manufacturers and retail chains, but with a smaller environmental footprint (read shift to services that remake - "shape-shift" - existing products). Cool concept with the intellectual and financial resources to make something happen.




Collaboration Panel
Day One Conclusion...
Day one concluded with a panel that discussed the learning that comes out of collaboration with industry. Key questions were:
-What is the process of collaboration?
-Does it (collaboration) detract from disciplinary specialization?
-How do you handle aesthetic decisions on engineering dominated teams
-What defines successful collaborations?

Panel members were Ann Welsh (University of Cincinnati), Eric Anderson (Carnegie Mellon University), and Martin Smith (Art Center). The moderators were Dale Murray and Mary Beth Privitera of the University of Cincinnati. While many issues were raised, the only consensus of the panel seemed to be that "the integration of the team is integral to the success of the project."




Brooke Davis, IDSA, University of Louisiana - Lafayette
A Call for Skilled Workers: The Role of Technology in Education
Questions that Brooke posed in her talk include:
- Can technology overshadow the usefulness of hand skills?
- Can technology hinder a student's ability to think creatively?
- Is 4 years enough?
- How do we incorporate technology into a curriculum?
- Can a program entice students without the lure of technology?
- What is the major influence of technology in current education?
- Are the advantages of building/making versus 3D printing?


Scott Robertson, Design Studio Press
Designer as Publisher
Scott talked about his (successful) businesses Design Studio Press (books) and The Gnomon Workshop (DVD's). He showed examples of his work, including the impressive The Skillful Huntsman, a compilation of student work from Art Center highlighting the design process. His goal is to provide a full range of educational products (books, DVD's) that address foundation drawing and designing. In the end he really won the crowd over, concluding his talk by giving away free instructional DVD's.
Design Studio Press
The Gnomon Workshop




Jim Budd, IDSA, Simon Fraser University
The Integration Project: A New Educational Model for Interactive Product Design
Jim Budd from Simon Fraser discussed The Integration Project at SFU and the implications of new technology for design. He discussed the importance of balancing technical with human concerns; consideration for social, cognitive, and cultural issues in the design process; and designing for human experience. The Integration Project is an initiative designed to address these topics, and includes participation of SFU students from interactive product design, information technologies, business, and performance and media art. During this project, student teams identify a problem to address, and then embark on a yearlong design process to address the problem. The process takes the students through project planning, product definition, design development, feasibility assessment, prototyping, and usability testing.

Kevin Reeder, IDSA Georgia Tech
Visual Storyboarding: A Bridge from Research to Design Finalization
Kevin referred back to Steve Wilcox's presentation on Designers as Envisioners of Information, specifically referencing the use of process mapping, personas, and scenarios in the design process. He discussed visual storyboarding as a useful technique that provides students with the ability to:

- better communicate the big picture
- better enable a user-centered design process
- provide an outside perspective on what a user is thinking about
- visualize research results, which is often difficult
- facilitate the decision-making process
He then showed examples of student work that utilized this technique, including a multi-purposed luggage set, a rehabilitation gate trainer, and a garden tool set.

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Moving Off the Desktop: A Challenging Landscape for Industrial Design Education
Lois Frankel, IDSA
Jim Budd, IDSA
Jasper Speicher
Bill Mak, IDSA
Stephanie Munson, IDSA
Lorraine Justice, FIDSA




Chris Arnold and Bret Smith, Auburn University
Micro-Mass-Production: The Creative Revolution
Chris Arnold and Bret Smith, both of Auburn University, presented Micro-Mass-Production: The Creative Revolution.
Their position is that where industrial mass-production displaced the role of craft and artisanal quality, the new digital technologies can provide respite from the tyranny of serial production. While on-demand publishing shows the possibility in 2D, 3D technologies like stereo-lithography hold promise if employed in ways beyond their typical role as prototyping tools.

Glen Lewis, North Carolina State
Industrial Design Collaboration with Aid to Artisans Ghana
Glen Lewis of North Carolina State spoke about his experiences over the past four years working with artisans in Ghana. With joint funding from the US Agency for International Development and the Ford Foundation, he was able to tackle several projects after his initial one-semester sabbatical trip. He talked of the difficulties and the successes with four projects: establishing a digital media center, developing educational programs for the media center, product design and development and artisan business training, and working with a Ghanaian university to develop industrial design curricula within their existing rural arts and industry program. Great to see design getting out there in long-term projects that work so closely with the communities to help them help themselves.

Kevin Henry, Columbia College Chicago
Designing a Web-Centric Program: The Ultimate Textbook
We didn't see Kevin Henry's talk, Designing a Web-Centric Program The Ultimate Textbook, but wish that we had. His point is that the amount of content that educators need to teach (and students need to learn) within our generalist, pluralist discipline is continually growing beyond present educational constraints. How can we keep up with the basics but also teach what is new or particularly relevant? His proposal, which shows much promise, is a web-based resource chock full o' content where students and educators can download pdfs and video clips of sketching, model-making, CAD, manufacturing processes, etc. The website could also allow faculty to download course descriptions, photos of past course work, and information on support resources. This "Ultimate Textbook" could perhaps be expanded as a national tool with the necessary resources and ownership.


KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Craig Vogel, University of Cincinnati
Strategic Planning and Design Education
Craig Vogel, Professor and Director of the Center for Design Research and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati, kicked off the second day with a talk on the strategic planning of design education, raising the basic question: "How do we center ourselves in roles of industry and education?" He noted the historical change that has moved design toward "understanding human problems and what innovation can do," and that "innovation has replaced quality" as the key business driver. One central point he made was to propose terminology to help distinguish between different forms of research: action research, basic/fundamental research, and translational research. (It is within the realm of translational research that design would most often operate, taking ideas from theory and the lab and transforming them into product ideas for the marketplace.) For more of Vogel's insight into research and innovation, check out his new book, Design of Things to Come.



C. Martin Smith, Art Center College of Design
The Art Center Leadership Program: An Experience in Collaborative Learning
C. Martin Smith, Chair of the Product Design Department at Art Center College of Design, discussed the value of design thinking to business, and designers as leaders of teams, through a presentation on Art Center's Leadership Program and collaborative strategy.




He began by discussing his thoughts on the qualities of a good leader. They are:
-adaptive to change
-results-oriented
-not reluctant to accept the responsibility of being a leader
-have a genuine desire to work with people
-create confidence and enthusiasm in others

And then he moved into a discussion on some of Art Center's new strategies for leadership through collaboration, including their transdisciplinary studio, funded educational projects, and study-away program.

Steve Wilcox, Founder of Design Science
Making Research Findings Usable: A New Role for Design
Steve Wilcox, founder of Design Science, presented Making Research Findings Usable: A New Role for Design. He outlined some of the major issues affecting design: the outsourcing of design, design decision-making at meetings, design as the user expert (caretaker of the user), and designer as the last renaissance person. He also posited an alternative role for the designer as "envisioner of information" and discussed what tools and different ways of working might help interdisciplinary groups in meetings. Wilcox emphasized that this is often where big decisions are made, but where important research insights fail to make an impact because they are often buried in thick research reports. This model extends from his contention that "design research without design is not usable. And design without design research is not valid."




Bill Mak, Senior Interaction Designer at Microsoft
Caught in the Headlights: Design Education and the Fate of a Digital Planet
The instigative Bill Mak, Senior Interaction Designer at Microsoft, began his talk with the declaration, "You suck!" His talk was entitled, Caught in the Headlights: Design Education and the Fate of a Digital Planet. He discussed trends in digital evolution including everywhere-connectivity, a global digital grid, software-as-service, and ubiquitous computing. He then discussed the various disciplinary players within this arena - a long list that included interaction design, graphic design, human factors, ethnography, psychology, product planning, marketing, program management, and software engineering. Interestingly, industrial design was left off the list. Although unsure of his definition of human factors in relation to ID, it is interesting to note the role that form plays in the minds of the developers of the fate of our (increasingly) digital planet. He also emphasized the need for students to learn to "live in the future" in order to help shape our future world.




Lorraine Justice, Head of the School of Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University
From School Projects to Manufactured Products: Asian Design
Lorraine Justice, head of the School of Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, provided an interesting discussion regarding the work that Chinese students are producing at her university. They have 100 design faculty (equal distribution of Chinese, North American, and European) and 1000 design students. She showed samples of their work, which were comparable in quality to other student design work from around the globe, but work that also reflected Asian culture. Of interest is the development and recognition of an Asian (or Chinese) visual design language. Also of interest was her mention of the great demand for graduates by industry. (She stated that 100% gained employment.) This is an interesting contrast from our (limited) experience with mainland Chinese design graduates.




Jasper Speicher, Tellart
Sketchtools (NADA): Sketching and Prototyping Physical Interfaces
Jasper Speicher of Tellart began his talk, Sketchtools (NADA): Sketching and Prototyping Physical Interfaces, with a video showing the 1968 Doug Engelbart demo the first-ever public demonstration of how to use a mouse and keyboard. He then discussed physical interfaces, and showed examples of student work from an interaction design course at RISD where students were instructed to create "connections between things." Various tools were discussed for prototyping behavior and physical interfaces, including teleo, phidgets, keyboard hacking, and nada. Nada is a tool his company developed to facilitate the prototype of interactive products and gain feedback on interactive designs - an increasingly important skill for industrial designers as more and more products become interactive.




Gaylon White, Eastman
Making a Difference








PROCTOR AND GAMBLE COLLABORATIVE

Last fall, Proctor & Gamble sent out a call to schools for participation in their Collaborative Project, an initiative that would allow significant funding to investigate problems in under served markets. After the conference kick-off, the three winners of this competition spilled the beans on their winning entries and the trials and tribulations of transdisciplinary design. As a qualifier in order to receive the grant, participation was required of students in both industrial and graphic design, and participation was desirable from other disciplines (engineering, anthropology, and environmental science, to name a few). As educators, we found this project inspiring in that it was a call that provided significant funding and resources for teams of educators, students and designers to work together on interesting problems -- a noble example for other corporate design initiatives to follow.

Arunus Oslapas, Western Washington University
"The highest highs and lowest lows were experienced during team interaction." --Arunas

The first presentation was from the Western Washington team, led by professors Arunas Oslapas from industrial design, and Nick Zaferatos from planning and sustainable development. Their proposal centered on water, inspired by their campus location. It was clear that this team struggled with product-based solutions versus alternative solutions to problems within this arena. As an industrial designer, every solution seems to be a product, or system of products. For Nick, as a sustainable development and planner, the emphasis was a little different.

The first portion of the project led to the creation of The Water Book, a text that summarized various information about water sources, collection systems, delivery systems, storage, purification, distillation, and materials used in fabricating these systems. In the end, the team created a product solution - a modular filtration unit based on the book.







Leslie Speer (and Alice Agogino from UC Berkeley), California College of the Arts
Leslie Speer's team was comprised of students from CCA and UC Berkeley, and focused on designing for the migrant farm workers in the central valley of California. They included a user-centered research approach, an interdisciplinary approach, and a holistic design approach.

The emphasis of this project was on the migrant farm worker's constant exposure to pesticides. The current product "solution" to this chronic exposure is the bandana - a fairly lame response to a serious problem. This project looked at designing better protection for this problem, with the end result taking the form of a suit (the Seguro) for this community.




Prasad Boradkar, Arizona State University
The third team selected to receive the P+G monies was a team based out of Innovation Space at ASU. Their mission was creating a brand experience for people who are visually impaired or blind. This is a highly underserved market of people who are "simultaneously ignored and stared at," and who, despite people's perceptions, care a great deal about how they look. Some of the difficulties of people who are blind include:
- Looking good and fitting in
- Identifying objects
- Experiencing hostile public environments

The project was divided into three teams that worked on three different product categories: makeup products, hair care, and hair color. Final solutions included applicator products for makeup, a hair color applicator brush, and a series of shampoo/conditioner/gel containers.

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Bruce M. Tharp teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in their new graduate program in Designed Objects. He is also a designer and consultant with interests in design research and innovation. In addition to a doctoral education in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Chicago, he holds a degree in mechanical engineering from Bucknell University and a master's degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute.

Stephanie Munson is an Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she teaches industrial design and interactive product design studios. She holds an MID from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan.