Hugh Dubberly on evolving design practice & the ideal design curriculum
I happened upon this interview with Hugh Dubberly, by Steven Heller. A link to download the whole PDF is below, and I’ve quoted two bits I think are particularly relevant to designers.
Design has moved from a focus on form and meaning to a focus on action and interaction. Increasingly, designers are faced with the need to design integrated systems. Systems of systems. Connected sets of products and services. These systems form ecologies that grow and evolve. Their outcome cannot be pre-determined. Even the full range of use may be difficult to predict.
Dubberly describes his ideal design curriculum for changing design practice below. Sounds like the ideal 21st-century designer is a creative polymath:
What skills should the new media and digital designer learn to
be literate in this field?The main thing for designers is to be curious—and to learn how to
learn. My ideal curriculum might look something like this.Design Theory:
- Design Methods
- Research Methods
- Information Structures and Key Models
- Principles of Interaction
- Philosophy and Ethics of DesignVisual Studies:
- Principles of Visual Perception
- Rapid Visualization Drawing
- Typography (editorial and display)
- Content Management Systems (grid systems)
- Way-finding Systems
- Information Design (visualizing information structures)
- Motion Graphics
- Sound Applied to Motion Graphics
- Film MakingDesign Practice:
- Information Spaces
- Tools and Applications
- Games and Collaborative Authoring Environments
- Interactive Spaces
- Controls and Haptic Interfaces (physical interfaces)
- Integrated Systems of Products and Services
- Tools for Making Tools
- Systems that EvolveHistory:
- of Art
- of Architecture
- of Graphic Design and Product Design
- of the Design Methods Movement
- of Science and Science Fiction
- of Information, Computing, and InteractionComputer Science:
- Procedural Programming
- Data Structures
- Object-oriented Programming
- Web and Network Applications
- Building Sensors, Displays, and Actuators
- Modeling with Fractals, Genetic Algorithms,
and Cellular AutomataCommunications:
- Writing
- Public Speaking
- Rhetoric
- Semiotics
- Epistemology
- Cybernetics (science of feedback)Related Disciplines:
- Biology (natural systems)
- Cognitive Psychology (learning systems)
- Sociology (social systems)
- Cultural Anthropology and Ethnography
- Marketing
- Economics
- Organizational Management
Download it here. The rest of the interview is very interesting and I highly recommend reading the whole thing.
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These are all basically what I want my blog to be about. Like almost to the t. Good find
It’s true though, not only -should- the modern day designer be a polymath, but during many previous times in history has been. A more succinct name for this archetype would probably be the artist-inventor or something like that. This is key because these are the people who can attempt to apply scientific observation to artistic output, or find creative applications for cutting edge technology.
Heron invented the mechanical play, which is a 10 minute marionette theatre/play powered by a slow-releasing rope rapped around a cylinder with pegs. The location of the pegs determined when certain events were triggered. Later this system of time based control systems would be applied to mechanical loom weaving machines to specify the patterns they’d create. Eventually someone invented the punch-card as a replacement, and then charles babbage took the punch-card concept and created the seedlings of the first literal programmatic paradigms, for use in his new mechanical computers. Even at the earliest stages these tenants of “system knowledge”, or systems of systems as this guy put it, have been used for art.
I think since then, this breed of “polymath” has existed in various pockets depending on what was fashionable at the time – movies that balance amazing storylines w/ budgets so large their technical options are limitless, videogames where the process of creation is more in line with that of software production yet often utilizes staffed or outsourced character/level, and the internet…the most recent. I was once in some class about computers where the teacher asked what the major driving factor behind the widespread availability of computers was. With a slyly raised eyebrow I raised my hand and confidently said “The military!!!” He said I was close, but not correct – that the military is the reason we have a lot of technology that we do, but personal gaming/entertainment is the reason things end up in every household. I guess what I’m getting at is why should design have ever been taught anything -but- this kind of “creative polymath” thinking.
I guess at some point the average scientific mind lost permission to be creative, and creative mind scientific. Except for in video games…which have always been a bajillion dollar industry. I guess the money’s always in entertainment – I just think it’s humorous we still call them games.
Jeez…all that text looked so small in my little textbox as I was writing it. Now I feel like I just rambled. Haha.
@Will
I’m glad that you found it useful. Looks like you should blog about it! : )
This is interesting: “I guess at some point the average scientific mind lost permission to be creative, and creative mind scientific.”
I am a classic “arts” person with an arts background— art, literature, classics, etc. But I am hopelessly attracted to and fascinated by technology, and have found myself having to make up the skills needed to work with computers. If anything, the digital industry is peacemaking the gap between art and science. The digital industry needs ‘mutants’ (as John Maeda puts it) who are both creative and technically capable.
I shot some video for a conference about psychedelics last year and two of the guys who made Bjorks 3d video gave a talk about the artist being a shaman and the notion of cross-discipline. That’s kind of where I got that line about people losing permission..haha. I’ll be putting clips up on my blog soon since the site for the event has not yet gotten around to it.