She Ji-The Journal of Design Economics and Innovation最新文献

The Future of Design Education working group on doctoral education included doctoral supervisors from nine programs around the world and addressed the indeterminacy of standards for the PhD in Design. Internationally, “contributions to knowledge” under the PhD degree title range from evidence-based investigations documented in a dissertation to personal reflections on making artifacts. In some programs, quantitative and qualitative research methods are taught; in others, there is no instruction in methods. The working group suggested that reflection on one’s own creative production is the role of the professional master’s degree and recommended standards for two doctoral programs—the PhD and the Doctor of Design (DDes). The group defined the PhD as addressing unresolved problems with the goal of generalizable knowledge or theory for the field. It described the DDes as a professional practice degree in which research is done in a practice setting to frame a specific opportunity space, guide in-process design decisions, or evaluate outcomes. DDes findings do not claim generalizability and result in “cases.” The working group discussed methods, sampling, standards of evidence and claims, ethics, research writing, and program management.

The Future of Design Education working group on product-service systems addressed growing college-level interest in the design of product-service systems. It recognized that the existence and maturity of service design programs varies widely, as do faculty expertise and the disciplinary affiliations of programs within institutions, all of which present opportunities to expand the scale and scope of its teaching. The working group defined designers’ core contributions to the interdisciplinary practice as human-centered, systems-oriented approaches. It also acknowledged that organizational knowledge—in governance and policy, infrastructure, strategy, and operational processes—is integral to designing effective products, services, and experiences, as well as the policies, processes, and mechanisms that deliver them. Likewise, an understanding of technology and data is critical to the design of contemporary product-service systems. Framing product-service relationships as ecologies, the working group described services as being more than one-time consumer transactions with effects in larger environmental, social, and technical systems. The group clustered its curricular recommendations under three themes: 1) defining the contours of the field, 2) designing for living systems that evolve with a changing environment and opportunities, and 3) building visions of the future.

The Future of Design Education working group on sustainability developed recommendations for integrating sustainability into higher education design curricula. The recommendations provide a foundation for design instruction, using well-established evidence-based tools, methods, and mindsets that apply to professional practice and support designers as advocates for environmental and social responsibility. The document identifies core ideas for sustainable design, organized under a set of topics. These topics include sustainability fundamentals; circular economy; whole systems thinking; sustainable innovation strategies; impact assessment, and laws and standards; and communication, collaboration, and leadership. A summary table captures each idea, along with corresponding discussion and learning outcomes (things students should know and do). Recommendations are tailored to three levels of study: for all design students, students expecting to practice in sustainable design, and students in elective or advanced study. Resources for such study are also included.

The Future of Design Education working group on technical systems argues that the approach to handling data—the methods used, and the expectations for outcomes—can transform design practice. In contrast to design’s past defined by a lack of accessible data, today’s rapidly evolving age of data abundance informs the choices available—the decision space—with far-reaching consequences for organizational, social, and environmental well-being. The shifting design landscape requires new tools and techniques to navigate this data age effectively. This paper proposes a new curricular approach that intersects data, technology, and design to create an environment where students can evaluate their roles and impact, and interact effectively through data with humans and computational collaborators. This data-oriented curriculum includes foundational technical skills proficiency, data analytical skills, rhetorical skills for arguing with data, interdisciplinary design studies, and a focus on designing for society. It embraces the complexities and opportunities of the data age, and acknowledges the inherent uncertainty in this new landscape. The aim is to prepare the next generation of designers to create data-informed, human-centered, ethical, and sustainable designs, thereby fostering an inclusive, equitable, and sustainable future.

This opening article for the special issue on the Future of Design Education traces paradigmatic shifts in design, from the twentieth-century mass production of artifacts to the twenty-first-century stewardship of evolving product-service ecologies. These shifts argue for a systems approach appropriate to the complex problems brought on by the industrial and information revolutions. Setting the stage for the following topical articles, the authors describe connections among human activities and technologies that are life-centered in their long-term impact on and by humankind. These changes are not simply in the things designers make but in the “why” of design practice under a paradigm that no longer focuses on the production of tangible goods. The article also addresses corresponding shifts in where designers now take action (for example, influencing organizational purpose, governance, infrastructure, and strategy, not just consumer-facing messages, objects, and spaces) and the lengthening of time horizons for evaluating design effects in natural, social, and technical systems. Ten principles for today’s designers offer guideposts for practice and inform a critique of the industrial-era traditions still present in much of contemporary design education.

The Future of Design Education working group on representation addressed the roles of data, maps, models, and interfaces as a continuum from representation to action. The article traces historical ideas of representation grounded by a linguistic paradigm to more recent approaches based on performance, embodiment, and sensory modalities other than vision. Discussions include the use of representations in the design process. Designers are able to use traditional forms of representation in the design of artifacts, such as sketches. These forms of representation are not sufficient for the design of systems. System design requires models that allow stakeholders to negotiate their view of a situation and design teams to iterate how things might work. Core ideas in the working group recommendations address issues of, substitution, formal rules, motivation, context dependency, materiality, provisionality, latency, performance, externalization, facilitation and negotiation, mediation, and measurement and evaluation. Discussions address the socio-political implications of representation and the expanding role of computing and data that call for a systems view.

The Future of Design Education working group on Community Engagement describes the active involvement of students and faculty with community groups as important co-design and participatory research opportunities that shift the designer’s role from expert to facilitator. The working group offers overarching principles for designer behavior when working in communities and recommendations for the management of community-based student projects. The goal of engagement is to share knowledge and power, building toward autonomous decision-making about the community’s future. A matrix "A Spectrum of Community Engagement in Design Education" illustrates a continuum of participation to explain the types of work in which students, faculty, and researchers might engage. A discussion of assessment both acknowledges challenges that are different from the typical individual studio projects and offers insights from other service sectors for a broader review of engagement program success. Short descriptions of cases illustrate key concepts.

This article conceptualizes the relation between design, economics, and innovation. Rather than connecting design to economics through the notion of value, it explores how economics construes negative side-effects of market activities. Aligning itself with recent She Ji contributions that tie design to the economic sociology of Michel Callon, this article argues that markets assume a constant process of managing such side-effects. The invention of car safety and the development of safety design features in 1950s Sweden illustrate this. Automotive design through safety innovations can be seen as a design process that transcended the clear separation between business and politics assumed by neoclassical economics. This article argues that this phenomenon is a concern for design scholars as well as social scientists. I assert that it is important to explore this line of inquiry by investigating design processes in different economic settings.