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| ©2001 playn' speak. All rights reserved |
Why Designer? Designers’ roles, and impact on design education - by POONAM BIR KASTURI |
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ABSTRACT This paper articulates a personal position as a design educator. It is the reflection of the past 10 years of wondering, experimentation and learning around the central question “What, how, and why do we teach design in India?” It is the “Why” with which I intend to begin my paper. Two important questions will be raised and discussed – (1) What are possible definitions of the role of the designer in India?, and (2) Would a teacher’s own definition impact the way she teaches design? There are many possible roles that designers currently play. In addition, there are many other roles that they could play. Further, there could be different positions on the desirable roles for designers in a society such as we have in India. I intend to cover all three aspects in my paper, with particular emphasis on the last one. Some design education paradigms in India are based on a vocational definition of the designer’s role – NIFT would perhaps be a good example of this approach. At Sristhti, we have experimented with more organic definitions of the designer’s role; definitions that include concepts like dealing with ambiguity, and co-creating solutions. A section of my paper would discuss the implications of such definitions on the teaching content and styles used by design educators. Several examples will be presented, to help illustrate what happens in reality when educators draw from their definitions of the designer’s role – in terms of curriculum design; teaching methods, styles and structures; and contexting the teaching within the real world of the stakeholders in a design process, such as the customer and society. Based on my personal experience as a design educator, I have suggested some tenets [or basic principles] of design education. To context these tenets, a comparison is made of how education has evolved in India across two disciplines – Design and Engineering. Finally, I will present as a case study a course I have been involved in, initially called ‘Design Lab’. It was an experiment in looking at new ways of teaching design; the course has evolved significantly over the last three years. It is now called ‘Design for Community and Self’, but the experiment still continues. The course – both in name and content – has become more and more focused in terms of my own beliefs of what design education can [and ought to] achieve. By presenting this case study in the paper, I hope to contribute to the always-emerging body of knowledge on why we teach design, and some consequent hows of design education. Keywords: education, designer role, case study 1. Introduction: The role of the designer There are many different definitions of the designer. Whiteley (1993) suggested some years ago that ‘the mood is … right for a reassessment of the role and status of design in society’. He draws from various designers, authors and thinkers to conclude that ‘… far from being the basis of the solution to society’s problems … ‘market-led’ or ‘consumer-led’ design… (is) one of society’s problems’ [italics from the original]. Market-led or consumer-led definitions of design seem to be have high relevance in India’s design scene today. In its 20th December 2004 issue, BusinessWorld magazine has quoted Professors Kumar Vyas of NID and Ravi Hazra of IDC [IIT – B] who both talk of how good design is related to consumer expectations of the product being designed. As Whiteley (1993) put it years ago – ‘To most people involved with design … good design is that which is commercially successful’. A scan of the various finalists in BusinessWorld magazine’s The Hottest Designs of 2004 will demonstrate the significance of this school of thought. Ranging from industrial products to consumer products, the entries all clearly belong to the ‘consumer-led’ definition. Two non-typical entries – a flower vase in the Crafts category and a disposable mug in the Concept Design category – are also described highlighting the consumer [or user] end of the product; there is nothing of how they will fit into society, the links with the community at large and so on. One entry – systems design for a government bus stop – is different in that it is rooted in social relevance [because the customer is the public at large]. The society-led definition of design has been around for a while, although it has perhaps received less attention. Balaram (1998) has suggested that ‘the real challenge to the Indian designer is in making his design relevant to the development needs of India’. Because the needs of ‘development’ and affluence are different, Balaram (1998) has asserted that the ‘Indian designer’s approach should be capital-saving and employment-generative’. And yet, Balaram’s definition of the designer still has embedded in it the primary role of problem-solver. Designers are asked to be relevant, and make their designs ‘suit Indian conditions like excessive heat, lashing rains, poor roads, and rough handling/ mishandling by illiterate users’. In this, Balaram’s argument is an extension – in the specific context of the developing world of India – of Whiteley’s (1993) earlier refocusing of design from style and economic success to need and human relevance. There is a third, and subtly but fundamentally different definition. A little less than fifty years ago, Charles and Ray Eames (1958) recommended to the Government of India that designers from the to-be-created NID ‘should be trained to help others solve their own problems. One of the most valuable functions of a good industrial designer today is to ask the right questions of those concerned so that they become freshly involved and seek a solution themselves’. The Eames’ definition seems more to do with the ‘how’ of design, rather than the ‘what’ of earlier definitions – but in this case, ends and means may not be easily separable. As with doctors, who are supposed to heal people, the way in which they approach the healing process could vary significantly, and in that could differentiate the excellent and holistic healer from the mere scientist/ problem-solver. The holistic designer There are three predominant definitions described till now – the ‘commercially-led’ definition of design, the ‘socially relevant’ definition, and the ‘help-people-find-own-solutions’ definition. Rather than argue for one or the other definition, this paper suggests that it is necessary for the designer [and design educators] to accept all three as useful and necessary perspectives on what designers do, and how they should approach their work. Rather than get locked into debates of ‘either-or’, the design community should focus itself on cohesively integrating all three definitions. Manzini (2003) has noted this evolution in the definition of a designer. ‘In the new scenario, the designer tends to be an operator who acts within a more complex network of actors (that may certainly include firms but not exclusively) where his main interlocutor … may be an institution, a local authority or any other social actor … he becomes a process facilitator who acts with design tools by generating ideas on possible solutions, visualising them, arguing them through, placing them in wide, multi-faceted scenarios …’. Many Indian design practices today hold organisations like IDEO as their role models. Young design students in India look up to people like Philippe Starck and Karim Rashid as the archetypes. However, they have to reconcile themselves to working within a societal and market context that is very different from the worlds that IDEO, Starck and Rashid inhabit. Their customers are different, the materials they use are different, the context within which their products are used are different – and all of these act to increase the gap between what Indian designers think they should be doing and what they actually end up doing. To resolve this problem, it is clear that the Indian designer has to stop trying to be one or the other – what is needed in our country is for designers to encompass all the different definitions. They should focus on design that is creative and innovative, and which is relevant to our society and people, and which involves the community at large right through the research, design, testing and use phases. Designers and money One of the often-heard woes of the Indian industrial designer is that there is no money in design in India. Viswanathan and Singh (2001) reported that ‘… Indian companies will need to change their mindsets – specifically, learn to pay for ideas’. This mindset change has not fully happened even now. At a recently concluded workshop [ID Catalyst, held at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, December 2004], one of the world’s largest design firms [from Boston, USA] presented their best practices and methodologies to an audience of Indian practicing designers. The designers voiced their unanimous frustration that their services are not valued [read ‘paid for’] as much as they were in other parts of the world. The American designers assured them that they faced the same situation many years ago; they had to educate their customers and thus facilitate the change in mind-set. The bus-stop system design quoted earlier is a good example of this problem. The designer – Sandeep Mukherjee – has said that he made no money on the job, although he enjoyed it tremendously. Making a difference to people’s lives was personally meaningful for him, but obviously there are limits as to how many such projects a businessman-designer can take up. Even within the commercially-led definition, designers can become the ‘tool of the marketing profession – a clown, prostitute or stylist’ [Whiteley (1993)]. To avoid this, it seems that the designer needs to be more than just a product-creator; she should be an educator, an evangelist, and a facilitator – to extend the understanding of design positively. An additional factor to be considered in the Indian context is the small number of designers graduating each year. Between them, the primary design schools of India – NID and the IDCs at the IITs – churn out less than 250 designers a year. Compare this with the fact that 120,000 software engineers and 20,000 doctors graduate every year from Indian educational institutions. The miniscule number of designers means that the ‘evangelist’ role of Indian designers is of critical importance. 2. Educating designers Postman (1995) has talked of two problems to be solved in considering education. One is ‘an engineering problem … (that of) where and when things will be done, and how learning is supposed to occur’. This problem, although complex, is, in Postman’s reasoning, easier to resolve than the second problem – the ‘metaphysical’ one. This second problem is the need for a reason, the why of learning and teaching. ‘… at the core of …schools (which have a clear reason why), there is a transcendent … idea that gives purpose and clarity to learning.’ The vocational why There are many possible whys that educational institutions can have. The ‘vocational’ logic is a powerful one for all educators across the globe; India is no exception. Of late, more and more educational institutions based on a vocational logic are emerging in India. In the design space, NIFT is arguably the more visible one. NIFT’s ideology seems to be to focus on creating a pool of vocationally skilled people [in the area of fashion/ textile design] who can feed the needs of industry. ‘National Institute of Fashion Technology was set up in 1986 under the aegis of the Ministry of Textiles, Government of India. It has emerged as the premier Institute of Design, Management and Technology, developing professionals for taking up leadership positions in fashion business in the emerging global scenario. The Institute is a pioneer in envisioning and evolving fashion business education in the country…’ This is from their website; their leaning towards the ‘commercially-led’ definition of designer is crystal clear. There are many arguments that support such a philosophy of design education. For one, it feeds the growing needs of an industry that directly contributes to the economy of the country, and for a developing nation like India such a contribution should not be undervalued. It boosts employment, since the vocationally skilled people who emerge from NIFT’s portals quickly find jobs. On the other hand, however, we must realise that ‘the god of Economic Utility is impotent to create satisfactory reasons for schooling’ [Postman (1995)]. Postman does not believe that ‘one who learns how to be useful economically will have learned how to be an educated person’. In the long term, ‘the making of adaptable, curious, open, questioning people has nothing to do with vocational training and everything to do with humanistic and scientific studies’. Buchanan (1992) quotes Herbert Simon – ‘the proper study of mankind is the study of design, not only as the professional component of a technical education but as a core discipline for every liberally educated man’ – clearly, design education has to be far bigger than vocational training to be really meaningful. It is debatable whether NIFT’s students ‘taking up leadership positions in fashion business’ will have the inclination or skills to be socially relevant, or involve communities in co-creating wealth. That is usually not the way of the ‘corporate warrior’. The professional why As a counter-example, let us consider the Indian Institutes of Technology [IITs]. With the recent boom in Information Technology, and the number of Indians involved in this boom across the globe, the IITs have received much positive hype. In contrast with an NIFT, the IITs are not explicitly concerned with the business side of engineering – their focus is pure and strong, on the discipline of engineering itself. They take pride in being best-in-class engineering teaching institutions, many of them having been ranked among the top five in Asia. The following educational goals are taken from the website of IIT Madras, to illustrate the point: The purpose of educational programmes in the IITs should be
Although these goals say all ‘the right things’, a criticism of the IITs is that they create specialised, narrowly-focused engineering professionals – who are not entirely capable of working in areas that require people orientation and community involvement. The Indian Institutes of Management [IIMs] face similar problems. The following words are from an unpublished paper titled ‘IIM B – A New Vision’ written by a reflective student as he left the institution: ‘The education at IIM should help us evolve intellectually, emotionally, physically and spiritually. The more fundamental aspects of management training are “character” or “attitude” building, developing a mind-set for holistic, systemic thinking and recognizing skills for administration. However the current structure supports the development of only the professional dimension rather than the human dimension. It needs to address both these dimensions. Only then can we build a unique identity of an IIMB graduate’. In all these examples, the schools concerned demonstrate their commitment to the vocational or professional theme in everything they do. The various stakeholders – like students, parents, and industry – understand this, and also align themselves and their expectations to the theme. This becomes a self-reinforcing system and there is little opportunity for critique and reflection, and little space for challenging one’s own positions over time. The why of design education So, why should design be taught? Buchanan (1992) argues that design has grown ‘from a trade activity to a segmented profession to a field for technical research … to .. a new liberal art and technological culture. More recently, Manzini and Jegou (2003) have said that ‘design activity … is a complex social learning process, a vast intertwining of initiatives in which we proceed through partial successes, errors and unforeseen effects, learning by experience. This learning process is also the result of … diffuse design activity …’. Life has become complex. For example, even a small farmer in India is impacted by various forces from around the world – like global warming, global trade arrangements, the technology of genetically modified crops and seeds, global consumer patterns, shipping and storage systems and so on. Human activity now involves a multitude of disciplines; people who seek to work with this kind of complex activity as described above need to have an approach of integration across different skill sets, disciplines, sciences and so on. As Buchanan (1992) puts it, ‘the search for new integrative disciplines to complement the arts and sciences has become one of the central themes of intellectual and practical life in the twentieth century. Without integrative disciplines of understanding, communication and action, there is little hope of sensibly extending knowledge beyond the library or laboratory in order to serve the purpose of enriching human life’. This paper supports Buchanan’s suggestion that design is one such ‘integrative discipline’ – and argues that this should be the underlying why of design education. Such a why leads to the emergence of design students who have an outlook that includes the practical, the creative, the social and the human elements so essential to the ‘holistic’ definition of the designer outlined earlier. The how of design education Design education, even in India, has historically taken very different forms from engineering education, or medical education. There is a genuine attempt by most institutions and individual teachers to build some level of integration, some multi-disciplining into the process. For example, the NID website has the following to say about its courses: ‘In the foundation programme, basic design courses are augmented by related studies of science and liberal arts, to help and develop an understanding of the Indian milieu and the relevance of design. The foundation programme is geared to inculcate the development of values, attitudes and sensorial skills; necessary for any design specialisation. It aspires to create an awareness of the changing environment by constantly relating the students’ learning to real life situations. The programme provides the necessary direction, stimuli, facilities and experience to foster creativity and thereby help each individual discover their own identity, ability and potential … It also makes students appreciate the multidisciplinary nature of design’. This is clearly the ‘right’ direction to take [and the difference is perceptible between this statement and that of IIT Madras cited earlier]. Practically, however, the ground reality of design education in India is plagued by
If we were to consider typical design curricula – for example, from NIFT and NID – we would find a set of courses, subjects. Geometry, Environmental Exposure, and Type, for example, are discrete blocks that are supposed to tie in together, and it is then assumed that the student is a better designer. Skill-building is usually the focus in the first year, and application through projects the focus in the later years. As Buchanan (1992) has put it, ‘… although these subjects contribute to the advance of knowledge, they also contribute to its fragmentation, as they have become progressively narrow in scope … and have lost connection with each other and with the common problems and matters of daily life from which they select aspects for precise methodological analysis’. In order for any institution to make real the idealistic picture of truly liberal design education, it must find and/ or develop teachers who are passionate about the holistic why of design. It must also design curricula that foster learning through wide inquiry, not through narrowly-defined subjects. And finally, it must network with a wide range of ‘social actors’ – business organisations, educational institutions from other disciplines, social organisations and perhaps even communities of people. Postman (1971) clearly pointed out the importance of the teacher in the entire process - ‘let us consider here the teachers, and especially the attitudes. We take it as axiomatic that the attitudes of teachers are the most important characteristic of the inquiry environment. This point is frequently passed over even by those who advocate the use of inquiry methods, but especially by those innovators who are in constant quest of ‘teacher-proof’ programmes and methodologies. There can be no significant innovation in education that does not have at its centre the attitudes of teachers and it is an illusion to think otherwise’. The passion and philosophy and personal meaning that a teacher has are an integral part of the education process. This implies that design schools must, instead of advertising their courses, talk about the teachers, their philosophies, passions and interests. Some principles of design education Because design needs to be taught as an integrated discipline, a design institute must consider the following principles both for implementation internally, as well as for communication to the external world:
With all of these issues as part of the background, a programme was launched at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology three years ago. This programme was titled ‘Design Lab’, for want of a better name, and the first batch had five students. The author herself was the primary faculty; her beliefs, values and philosophies underpinned the entire programme. As a designer, the author had to first verify whether it was possible for design skills to be learnt by students without recourse to structure. Whether truly a statement like ‘his lessons develop from the responses of students and not from a previously determined logical structure’ [Postman (1971)] is possible in a design classroom. With the five Design Lab students, it was only partly true. Perhaps if the students were exposed to this style of education from their schooling onwards, it would be possible to follow a similar methodology with design education. However, as de Bono has once said, ‘our children enter schools as question marks and come out as full stops’. There is too much focus on structure from junior school onwards, and it was difficult to get the students to abandon their past patterns of learning entirely. A balance was required between structure and a thematic approach based on student interest. While a student of the same year [but not in the Design Lab] was doing a course on Type in Visual Communication, and a Furniture Design student was doing a course on Storage Design, Design Lab students were working on a strategy for engaging crafts communities in developing new designs. The Design Lab students had to create visual material that was structured to teach craftspeople design principles and then had to engage with the craft community and actually help co-create new products for them to produce and market. Both the process and the end-product of this exercise were not pre-determined. There was a lot of ambiguity; the students experienced frustration and challenge but the learning was authentic, significant and ‘their own’. Usually design students are sent out for an internship in their third year of study. The Design Lab students were placed at different locations of their interest in the first year itself. This helped them get a first-hand understanding of the real world early in their education; as their teacher, one had to get over the fear that they would mess up their internship as they were too young and inexperienced. Of course, the people they worked with had to be briefed that the students were in their first year, and therefore adapt their expectations suitably. It worked. To help create multi-disciplinary learning environments, we did two things: The Design Lab students attended a course at the Centre for Society and Cultural Studies [CSCS]. This course gave them inputs on liberal arts, and because it was not a part of Srishti’s structure, they were interacting with students of a completely different background, which in turn significantly helped their thinking quality. Even within Srishti, they took courses but with students of other years – both junior and senior to them in vintage. They also worked with a post-graduate design school [NTTF] and the Indian Institute of Science [IISc] on designing products that were of social relevance, like a solar water purifier, an energy-efficient stove, a composter and so on. This was a logistical nightmare for the teachers – matching timetables, transportation, classrooms, assessment and other elements of teaching were very difficult. The experience, however, was extremely beneficial to the students because they had to learn to work across disciplines, with unfamiliar team members, and yet co-create knowledge. In the second year, Design Lab students were asked to evolve their own [individual] lines of inquiry, and set up their own timetables and their own deliverables. Although this is not traditionally seen as a viable undergraduate teaching practice, but with the Design Lab students the results were very positive. They took complete responsibility for their own learning, did not whine about the system, the institution, lack of resources and so on that are so often heard in the cafeterias of undergraduate schools. These students were hugely passionate about the area they would like to immerse themselves in further. We introduced film-making as a discipline simply because three of these students had identified this as an area of passionate interest. A final point about the Design Lab was that students assessed their own work, in addition to the conventional jury processes of design teaching. This resulted in the students acquiring an ability to be self-critical with integrity and no loss of confidence – an ability that will be essential for them as practitioners later on. We achieved certain breakthroughs with the Design Lab, but we also realised that we could not completely abandon structure. More importantly, we realised that because we had not articulated our position on the role of the designer and the philosophy of this course with total clarity, students were unable to give up their notions of designer-as-product-creator, or designer-as-stylist. They felt safer and more comfortable with more traditional notions of learning skills and mastering techniques although within this relatively more ‘open space’ of Design Lab. So, the next year a modified version of Design Lab called Design for Community and Self [DCS] was introduced by the author. The big difference now was that process, context and sustainability were emphasised over traditional notions of skills and techniques. The attitudes and values related to dealing with ambiguity, inquiry, and engagement with multiple dimensions of design and community and the individual student. DCS students – allowed to join this programme from different disciplines – worked on a project called the Tamarind Tree Project. This project needed them to research, create content and visualise a website that would help people build eco-friendly homes in Bangalore. Skills on web design and layout were provided through courses but the project was the contextual anchor. Students worked with NGOs, architects and home-makers to discover the real stories behind decision-making in this process. They interviewed people, collected samples of materials, researched eco-friendly practices especially related to buildings, and then designed the website. They contrasted this process with a sub-project in which the content was clearly defined and easy to deliver, again with the same web medium. This gave them a feel of the traditional perspective of design and the role of designer, and helped them clarify for themselves where their individual preferences lay. As Handy (1997) has said, ‘it is inadequate to borrow beliefs… we have to work them out for ourselves’. Some of them, as a result, chose to take the conventional path by opting for the Visual Communication course the following year, while others wanted to continue with the inquiry method of constructing their own timetables, their own projects. Some of these students were part of a project to create an ‘Eco Directory’ for Bangalore, along with four new entrants from the first year. 4. Conclusion Clearly, students come in all shapes and sizes. Their abilities, expectations, beliefs and values must be taken into account by any responsible educational institution. While an institution may seek to challenge the educational status quo, it must also provide space for people who are not yet ready to make that change. At Srishti, although we offer the risk-averse students a more traditional approach to design education, we would like to believe that we are engaging with new ways of teaching design, to a breed of designers whose role we believe will be very different from that of the past. Our approach to design is that it should not be fossilised, and that design education should not be a mono-culture. By exploring new ways to teach design, we are learning better ways to help students, teachers, practitioners and the community at large balance and integrate the various interpretations of design – whether market-led, society-based or to help people find their own solutions. References Balaram, S, Thinking Design, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India, 1998 Buchanan, Richard, Wicked Problems in Design Thinking, Design Issues, Spring 1992, V8 N2, pp. 5-21 Eames, Charles and Ray, The India Report, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India, 1958 Handy, Charles, The Hungry Spirit, Hutchinson, London, UK, 1997 Manzini, Ezio, and Jegou, Francois, Sustainable Everyday, Edizioni Ambiente, Milan, Italy, 2003 Manzini, Ezio, Strategic Design for Sustainability, in ibid Postman, Neil, Teaching as a Subversive Activity, Delta, Los Alamitos, USA, 1971 Postman, Neil, The End of Education, Alfred A Knopf, NY, USA, 1995 Whiteley, Nigel, Design for Society, Reaktion Books, London, UK, 1993 |
