02 | The First Uneasiness
My first reflection on Design Education
The First Uneasiness has been developed from the experience of studying design in Brazil. Being amongst other students from different social and economic strata has provoked reflection on how the formal education defines the professional profiles. Although the same educational opportunities(e.g.: the same educational path — curriculum, colleagues and environment) are available for all, the observed reality has shown that the personal interest succeeds in being a stronger driver on defining the professional profile.
However obvious, it is interesting to perceive how the traditional activities (lecture,workshops and projects) are overwhelmed by self-initiated projects and personals interests that creates a range of completely diverse professionals. In the end, the students only share a few skills skills at the certificate of the completion of the course.
The educational experience resembles a kludge. A mix of different hunches and information, that assemble themselves in a non-linear narrative that does not conform to the straight consecutive idea in formal learning environments. The University activities seems like a background noise which disturbs the “real learning” (i.e.: what is meaningful). Because of its institutional rights, the university forces the students into a system of punishment and rewards. Which causes frustration or in better scenarios, a “hacking” of the system.
In this context, a glimpse of the scenario asserted by Ivan Illich can be perceived. An emergent parallel system is generate by the students, without any organisation or management. The establishment of peer-to-peer networks where the “official” activities take place.
All this together has inspired a question on the role of the university (and its stakeholders) on the education of a designer. It is not a “Progressive against Traditional Education” debate, instead it borrows John Dewey’s proposal, questioning the Traditional (institutional) education and the Progressive Education models, in order to (maybe) introduce new order of conceptions that could lead to new modes of practice.
The main ground
remarks about the history of design education in Brazil
Looking at the current Design Educational system in Brazil, it is possible to identify a huge diversity in terms of the curricula, specialisation and definitions regarding the role and skills of a designer.
However, even with this diversity, there is no course that breaks away from the minimum curriculum and the pedagogic basic guidelines provided by the government. It emphasises how politics influences professional education, then in a certain context, the professional activity.
It is worthless to look for the precise point where design activity in Brazil began. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to question whether it started with formal education, which be could considered as the opening of the first design school. It seems plausible, however, the first design school in Brazil, created by Lina Bo Bardi, has now ceased its activities in prior of a so called “Progressive model” that would promote progress and development. So, actually the second design school in Brazil -ESDI — has defined the bases of how design would be learnt in Brazil on the next decades since “the proposed curriculum to the ESDI has became the paradigm for the design education in Brazil”.
The Superior School of Industrial Design — ESDI was founded in 1963. The pedagogy and teaching methods were influenced by the Ulm Hoschule für Gestaltung due the presence of German Professors and ex-students from HfG during the creation and first years of the course. The adopted model was far ahead of the needs of the local industry and market.
Nevertheless, the school did not push the industry, instead the school closed itself on discussions of Europeans theories and theses without any factual relationship with the surrounding reality. This lack of connection made the dictatorial government establish another direction to the school.
While the social and artistic courses (history, social sciences, fine arts, etc.) were under financial constrains, the investments were all narrowed to technological areas. In order to make a profit on the policy, the school changed its curriculum in 1976 (albeit keeping its main spine). Also another sixteen fine arts courses in Brazil changed their curricula to become design courses, aiming to gain investments from the Government.
These courses then followed the minimum curriculum defined by the Government; a set of criteria that should be part of the course in order to categorise it as a design course.
However, the listed criteria were not precisely defined, which has allowed different interpretations by the universities. The courses have simply re-arranged criteria from the old curricula (which makes their pedagogic concern questionable). Then in 1987 the government organised a commission of professionals and specialists to define a new minimum curriculum.
The new minimum curriculum from 1987 has established most of the current paradigms of the Brazilian Design Education. The top down approach has suppressed the possibilities of the courses attending to local demand or generating local manifestations; the definition of the specialised curriculum (visual and industrial design); the specific role of the designers related to industrial production (serial production), user needs (ergonomics) and production feasibility. The striking contradiction on this model is the curriculum’s division into isolated disciplines . There was even a course named “Project,” which implies that there is an absence of such practice in the other courses.
The other courses were related to the so called “foundation courses” and were in majority related to well established knowledge areas (mathematics, physics, etc). Nevertheless the lack of connection and understanding of Design alienate the students to those subjects. Albeit any narrative can mislead and force a personal perspective about a certain topic, the events hereof (laconic) described are important to have a critical understanding of the next parts.
The adoption of a foreign curriculum and the minimum curriculum stand as the main conditional facts that promotes the “counter-actions” and “hacking-actions” that characterize the learning experience.
The “unofficial KISD”
remarks about the personal experiences on learning design
By reading the documents that describe the courses and the disciplines (syllabus) of the Industrial Design course of the Federal University of Bahia, it was astonishing how far it is from the classroom reality. In technological based courses the gap is even more impressive.
The minimum curriculum defines precisely the syllabus of each course in order to avoid any misinterpretation (and opportunist adaptations). Therefore on the process of adopting and structuring the courses, the curriculum ignores possible changes that could occur regarding technological and market development. For instance, a course called “Techniques and Tools for Graphic Production” has in it syllabus activities regarding processes that are not used anymore in the real industry and without any reference (or possibility referee) to new processes and technologies.
The way found to tackle the outdated curriculum was the adaptation in a contextual agreement between professors and students. Nevertheless, this agreement often does not satisfy the students expectations/interests. The students have to seek for alternatives to both attend the bureaucratic demands from the courses and his or her learning expectations.
Thus the students uses the courses as a platform to attend personal interests. Usually, the main flow is: the tasks proposed by the course are understood as project tasks or theme. The minimal requirements are listed down and the missing points are filled with the personal interests, for instance, in a “Basic Physics for Designers” course the task was prove awareness in a set of formulas, instead of proving it by solving them in a exam (as proposed in the course programme/ syllabus), the students have created a game to teach those formulas to high-school pupils.
Another common strategy is the leading of parallel projects using the university infrastructure and resources. As an example, the Junior Company, is a project in which the students create, open and manage an entire company using the university facilities and professors expertise. Even if this project does not conceive credits, in some universities it has so important role that the administration offers special conditions and resource to the students that are members.
The last remarkable activity (inside of the university) is the actions through the student council. The student councils are the political representation of the students in the administrative assemblies of the university. Besides its political duties, the student members uses it rights to promote events and special projects with the other students. By noticing the absence of certain important topics (e.g.: Typography) or in order to promote a special discussion amongst their peers, they organise conferences, exhibitions and summits.
These strategies are not considered part of the official curriculum of the course. There is no need to be part of any one of the organisations or do self-initiated projects in order to obtain the final certificate. It is a complete unofficial parallel system adopted in a non-centralised network. The knowledge is shared in peer-to-peer or peer-to-many actions (but only amongst students) based on common interests and challenges. By analysing the described scenario, it is possible to highlight some important characteristics of these strategies concerning the educational aspect:
(a) project oriented activities;
(b) cross-generational interaction;
(c) cluster by interests;
(d) interdisciplinary projects; and
(e) integrated approach.
The practice is the main aspect of the strategies. The need for a real outcome (since the interaction occurs amongst real stakeholders) drives part of the motivation and demands a higher engagement than it would be in a hypothetical exercise, in which the only one to determine the results is the professor. The project oriented aspect also promotes the immersion on the dynamic that the future professional might experience on his/her professional life.
These “hacking strategies” may attend the educational criteria proposed by Peters (1972):
a) The knowledge must be worthwhile — the students just engage themselves when they can see a sense and meaning for their actions. There is no need to propose an external reward as payment for their work. The work is the means and the end.
b) The awareness of what and why he is learning — the students have a clear understand of what they are learn with the activity (at least it, what is part of the motivation, but of course they are learn much more, or maybe something else that they can not grasp right now). The way in which the “what” is learnt fits (otherwise they would just change it, once they are responsible for it).
c) The knowledge of “what” and “how” — It does not consist only in a training, but also a comprehension of the “what”. Of course there is no sureness if all the criteria would be attended in all situations. This laconic overview will be deep developed in the next essay.
Since those projects are not part of the regular curriculum and the main criteria for joining is being interested. Therefore the young students can work together with the experienced ones.
They learn from each other basics and can play different roles in the projects due their expertise and previous experience. Thus they can work in all aspect of the project, since the management and the design of the experience (Service design) till the design, producing and assembly of the needed products.
The projects have a level of complexity that requires an integrated approach. The tasks are not limited to areas of expertise (e.g.: graphic, product, interior, etc.). The students then have to deal and to solve all the “non-design” related tasks and also to perceive the project as a complete system. Curiously, the listed characteristics are also claimed by the Köln International School of Design in its so called “Kölner Model”.
On the project “20 Jahre KISD: Ein Film” that has involved interview with professors and a short desk research using the yearbooks have provided an interesting picture of the school.
In addition, from a perspective of a student whom has experienced both, it is empirically possible to affirm that the parallel learning system in the Brazilian universities could be claimed as an “unofficial KISD”.
The relevance of this analysis is merely to stress that KISD can be an example of how:
[1] a non-centralised networked system can be supported and institutionalised in a formal learning structure(apart from specific features);
[2] the formal learning (and its stakeholders) can work as an enabling platform for individual and diverse learning process; and
[3] non-centralised and networked system are dependent on a specific student profile in order to not crash and keep its characteristics.
The same name | remarks about the different curricula for the same profession
The individual paths plus the different schools and methods have as a result thousand of different professionals, with different and specific profiles, experts in different areas and with different skills and competences, however with the same title: Designer.
Even in specialised areas (such “Graphic Design”) the diversity of curricula is enormous. Therefore is it still possible to infer that the curriculum (formal education) is the main responsible for a professional identity?
There is no intention to tackle here definition of what Design is. Neither to identify what a designer is capable of. One of the main reasons to avoid such discussion is the fact that the designer role (both economic and social) is changing constantly over the past decades.
Don Norman reports one of this changes:
“In the early days of industrial design, the work was primarily focused upon physical products. Today, however, designers work on organisational structure and social problems, on interaction, service, and experience design. Many problems involve complex social and political issues. As a result, designers have become applied behavioural scientists, but they are woefully undereducated for the task.”
It is just an example of how design has diverged from its industrial understanding and had to aggregate different competences in order to fulfill the requirements of economical/social roles that did not exist previously (for instance due technological shifts). Designers can assume another roles due the different set of social and political issues of each context (for instance the professional recognition and regulation).
Since the curriculum intends to define skills and competences owned by a designer, it implies that it could define the professional identity as well (e.g.: what a professional is capable to do and which kind of social role he could assume in a organisation) however it is possible to observe the presence of designers in different fields (such as education) playing different roles than the usual listed on the school descriptions (e.g.: graphic, communication, interior, etc.)
In summary, both the different curricula and experience promote the profile divergence. Even if they hold the same title, the personal interests, the developed skills and the economical opportunity are hypothetically the main definers of the professional profile of a designer.
Therefore the come up question could be if there is a possible “common ground” or fundamental elements that would connect those professionals, clustering them in a unique identity.
As result | remarks about all above mentioned remarks
Although it can be refutable, one of the driven ideas of this work is that “designer” is defined by the social/economical role rather than by his educational background. This assertion aims to question the possible role of the courses (formal education) in the designer’s education, since the Traditional Education is funded on the transmission of the cultural heritage (knowledge, skills, behaviour, rituals, etc) and there is a noticeable shift between the skills needed in the past and the required nowadays.
This argument does not intend to refuse the Traditional Education or the current role of the university as whole. Instead the idea here is to propose a discussion on what are the role of its elements and how it, combined with the observed parallel system could come up with different scenarios of learning design.
The history of the Design education in Brazil gives a glimpse of how the courses are built and its heritage has direct influence on the design practice. Although it would sound contradictory, the curriculum and formal learning in Brazil has defined the professional identity for long time. The critical point is it has created a gap between the academic reality (highly connected to the industrialised Europe) and the Brazilian market. Therefore there is the need for the hacking actions in order to eliminate such gap.
The “hacking actions” may be considered as part of the “Progressive-children-centered ideology”perspective of education. Nevertheless it is not set or established as part of any pedagogical line. It occurs randomly based mainly on factors not previewed in the syllabus, for instance the quality of the social network (colleagues) and the events that work as enabling platforms (e.g.: design contests). In other words, those strategies rely mainly in elements that are external to the planned course.
This text is part of the Self Initiated Project called “How we Learn Design” presented at the MA Integrated Design at KISD. If you would like to have access to the original text and the references, please shot me an e-mail. :-)
