Professor’s Pro Tips — Prof. Housefield
This week we sat down with Professor Housefield to understand the benefits of taking design classes, and how to succeed as a student.
James Housefield is an Associate Professor of Design History, Theory, and Criticism, whose research and teaching analyze art and design since the late eighteenth century.
Housefield has taught courses integrating the history of art and design history since 2000. He was formerly a curator at the Austin Museum of Art, and Associate Professor of the History of Art and Design at Texas State University, where he held the title of the National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities. You can find out more about Housefield’s projects and classes here.
What’s your favorite course to teach?
Gosh, that’s like asking a parent who’s your favorite child; so, if you have siblings, you know that’s a freighted question. I like them all, each one’s different.
I just came from 40C and that engages with the most current part of my research, so in some ways, that makes it special. But DES 144 is the one class that I teach where we get to look at a big history. And DES 1 is its own unique beast. It’s always special depending on who the students are.
What’s your best tip for succeeding in design classes?
My best tip for any student to succeed is in 2 parts.
1. Disconnect from the external world, meaning disconnect from all of your devices, and just focus on the material.
2. Repetition is the key to learning. Reading it once or reviewing it once may indicate that you know it, but it doesn’t indicate mastery. So, review it until you’re doing it your sleep.
What’s the biggest takeaway from your classes?
From my classes, I want people to recognize that there are reasons the world is the way it is and there’s a history behind that. If we’re going to choose to accept or reject that history, we’re going to have to know that history.
Otherwise, as designers, we waste our time redoing things that have been done in the past and not being critical enough with what we’re doing in the present. So, that kind of criticality is really essential. I would like designers to be critical meaning that they have historical and conceptual backgrounds and frameworks for the iterations that they make.
Do you think it’s better to concentrate and develop one craft or be a well-rounded designer?
I think that university is a great time for experimentation. So, it’s a really important part of our curriculum at UC Davis that designers can try other things to see what they can learn from those fields. As I say in DES 1, work to assemble your own toolbox. I think that it’s a mistake to try to pursue a path as only a graphic designer or a UI/UX designer, etc. You can still have those career goals in mind, but use your education in a different way.
In DES 1, we talk about T-shaped people where we’ve got breadth and that gives you empathy with lots of different people in lots of different situations. Then you’ve got depth of experience. For years, I’ve been repeating what designers say about how they want to hire T-shaped people, but I actually think that’s an old model.
In the last couple of years, you might have heard me in DES 1 say, I think we need to go to the mathematical symbol of pi instead. You’re not only broadly based with breadth that gives you empathy, rather it’s a wide ranging breadth, in which you’ve got shallow knowledge in some places and deep knowledge in other places. In addition, you’ve now got 2 areas of depth.
I think if you complete UC Davis as a pi shaped person that will really prepare you for the current situation of design in which people are looking to hire multifaceted creators.
How important is it to get experience outside of the classroom?
It depends what you expect from your education. If you can balance your classroom experience with your outside experience, that’s the best.
I think you ought to be doing something other than going to class, if you can afford that. Some people have to work 2 jobs full-time and have to take care of their family and come to class full-time and they can’t do that; I recognize that, but the more you can do, the better. Ultimately, the best answer to your question is that each person should design his/her own career. Designing your education includes recognizing that your classroom experience is a narrow band of what you need to know before you find your niche in the working world.
So getting out there, making a start-up, going to a hackathon, being a leader in someway, having an internship; those are essential, really, for a well-rounded education. Be brave. Push yourself to design your own education.
Why should non-design majors take a design class?
There are 2 good reasons that non-design majors should take a design class.
1. Design is everywhere in our world today. It is the single most prevalent aspect of our 21st century experience. To not be aware of that is to miss out on an incredible wealth of the world, and to miss out on the tools with which to analyze and understand that experience.
2. Designers always work with diverse teams of people. That’s the reality of design, as a career, today. If you’re in a class working with someone in Engineering, Studio Art, Computer Science, French or Italian, each person brings a different set of skills and experiences. That’s the reality of the design world today. If you take a job in design, you might be sitting across the table from an Italian major on your design team, who has a breadth of humanities and communication skills without necessarily having design skills. So, to have that diversity of students in the classroom benefits the students and makes the professor’s job more interesting.
A big thank you to Prof. Housefield for taking the time to talk with us! Do you have a professor we should interview? Let us know!
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