Interdisciplinary Design as an Instructional Discipline: Final Report on the NSF Design Workshop Series Fall 2008 – Fall 2009
Panos Papalambros and Richard Gonzalez Design Science Program, University of Michigan 6-7 November 2008
Wei Chen, Ed Colgate, Ann McKenna, and Don Norman Segal Design Institute, Northwestern University 16-17 April 2009
Matt Parkinson, Dave Celento, and Timothy W. Simpson* NSF 2009 CMMI Grantees Conference Workshop 22 June 2009
Bernard Roth and Larry Leifer The Design School, Stanford University 28-29 August 2009
All workshop materials are available online at:
http://www.design.psu.edu/workshops/
This workshop was funded by the National Science Foundation through Collaborative Research Grants CMMI-0847181, CMMI-0847460, CMMI-0847694, and CMMI-0847104. * Please direct all correspondences to this author at
[email protected]
Interdisciplinary Design as an Instructional Discipline: Final Report on the NSF Design Workshop Series Executive Summary Evidence suggests that transformational innovations often occur at the intersection of multiple disciplines rather than isolated within them. Design—being both pervasive and inherently interdisciplinary—has the power to transcend multiple disciplines and help break down the departmental “silos” that hinder many collaborative efforts in industry. Universities are now facing similar challenges, and many are struggling to embrace the curricular innovations that are necessary for interdisciplinary education. Given the already packed undergraduate curricula in engineering, many universities have started to offer design curricula that span several disciplines at the masters and doctoral levels. Following the successful NSF workshop on interdisciplinary graduate design education in May 2008, we launched the Design Workshop Series to capture, codify, share, and propagate instructional experiences and philosophies for teaching interdisciplinary design. Hosting responsibilities rotated between three partner universities (University of Michigan, Northwestern University, and Stanford University) and were coordinated by a faculty team at Penn State University along with a fourth workshop at the 2009 NSF CMMI Grantees Conference. Invitations to apply for participation in the workshops were widely publicized, and NSF funding was used to provide travel support for selected participants with the goal of engaging the larger design community (e.g., engineering, architecture, industrial design, psychology, business). A total of 265 people attended one or more of these five workshops, and there were 172 unique participants, of which 49 people attended two or more workshops. The Design Workshop Series catalyzed an interdisciplinary research community that shares a passion for design. Collectively, we reached a much clearer understanding of the barriers and challenges in creating (and sustaining) interdisciplinary graduate design programs. The five programs offered by the three host universities provide “solutions” to successfully navigate these hurdles as outlined in this report. Despite differences in how these programs emerged, there is a large consensus that interdisciplinary design programs should emphasize: projectbased (active) learning, co-taught lectures and studios, teamwork, interdisciplinarity, and systems thinking to name a few. The workshops led to the establishment of a new online community (DesignWIKI) and posted course materials, and several participants have since initiated proposals for new interdisciplinary graduate design programs at their home institutions. Finally, we all agree that design provides unique opportunities to engage, impassion, and ultimately transform students’ educational experiences. While significant strides have been made in the past year through the Design Workshop Series, considerable work remains. The following recommendations are offered to NSF to continue providing support and serving as a catalyst to: 1. Improve administrative buy-in through future interdisciplinary design workshops 2. Identify lessons learned among a broader set of interdisciplinary graduate design programs 3. Characterize the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of students in these design programs 4. Expand involvement of business and other design-related disciplines (e.g. industrial design, architecture, human computer interaction design, law, journalism) in these discussions 5. Identify best practices among international interdisciplinary design programs 6. Study the role of design in innovation 7. Improve funding opportunities for interdisciplinary design research and educational efforts
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1. Motivation for the Design Workshop Series Innovation has been the key to America’s success for more than a century. Evidence suggests that transformational innovations often occur at the intersection of multiple disciplines rather than isolated within them, and they require input from individuals with varying backgrounds, talents, and expertise [1]. Design—being both pervasive and inherently interdisciplinary—has the power to transcend multiple disciplines and help break down the departmental “silos” that hinder many collaborative efforts in industry. Universities are now facing similar challenges, and many are struggling to embrace the curricular innovations that are necessary for interdisciplinary education, particularly in engineering classrooms that must accommodate numerous requirements to receive ABET Accreditation [2]. In engineering undergraduate curricula, due in large part to ABET requirements, one or more courses with a design “experience” (e.g., a capstone course) are required [2]. In graduate curricula this approach is less successful since structuring design courses to be “instruction in a discipline” rather than a “guided experience” is a major challenge. Issues arise in terms of both course content and instructor training due to the inherent trans-, multi-, or inter-disciplinary nature of most design activities. Nevertheless, many universities have started to offer design curricula that span several disciplines at the masters and doctoral levels. Courses tend to be oriented towards a narrow topic in design, following the instructors’ research interests whereas a successful graduate program in design would naturally follow a deeper appreciation of design as a discipline rather than as a mere collection of disciplines. The recently launched Singapore University of Technology and Design1, a partnership between MIT and the Singapore Government, presents clear evidence of global recognition for the importance of design as a discipline that drives innovation and economic prosperity. Following the success of the NSF workshop on interdisciplinary graduate design education held in May 2008 [3, 4], we initiated the Design Workshop Series seeking to capture, codify, share, and propagate instructional experiences and philosophies for teaching interdisciplinary design. The overarching goals of the workshop were to: (1) strengthen existing and emerging interdisciplinary graduate design programs across the country, thus improving our innovation output at the workforce level and increasing our competitive economic advantage; (2) establish a repository of knowledge that can provide substantive guidance for other design programs to follow; (3) provide a moderated forum for the design community to discuss the challenges, successes, practices, and future directions of these programs, leading to broader exposure at professional society meetings and archival publications. The long-term outcome will be the training of design instructors who approach design—research and teaching—as a discipline. The remainder of this report is organized as follows. Section 2 outlines the overall organization of the Design Workshop Series. Section 3 discusses the most pervasive theme at these workshops, namely, the barriers and challenges in creating (and sustaining) interdisciplinary graduate design programs. Section 4 provides approaches for overcoming these barriers and challenges, using the programs offered by the three partner universities (University of Michigan, Northwestern University, and Stanford University) as exemplary programs that have successfully navigated these hurdles. Interdisciplinary research topics that arose from the workshops are summarized in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 provides closing remarks and a summary of the outcomes of the Design Workshop Series.
1
http://www.su.edu.sg/
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2. Organization of the Design Workshop Series The Design Workshop Series spanned one year (Fall 2008 – Fall 2009) and focused explicitly on interdisciplinary graduate design education. Hosting and organizing responsibilities rotated between our four partner universities as shown in Table 1, with the faculty team at Penn State providing coordination across the four workshops. Each university hosted a one-and-a-half day workshop. The first half day was typically spent discussing the host’s design program(s) and touring its facilities. The second full day provided an opportunity for open discussion on specific graduate-design instructional topics chosen to match the strengths and experience of the host program (see Table 1). Meanwhile, a fourth half-day workshop that focused specifically on design research was organized in conjunction with the 2009 NSF CMMI Grantees Conference. All of these workshop activities were open to anyone to attend, and NSF funding was used to provide travel support for interested participants with the goal of broadening involvement in the larger design community (e.g., arts, architecture, business, engineering, industrial design, journalism, psychology). Since each workshop had applicants far in excess of available slots, participants were selected to balance the representation of the different disciplines. Table 1. Schedule and Discussion Topics for the Design Workshop Series Program/Meeting Design Science Program Segal Design Institute NSF CMMI Grantees Conference Workshop Design School (d.school)
Host/Organizer Date(s) Discussion Topic University of Michigan 6-7 Nov 2008 The Design Discipline Northwestern University 16-17 April 2009 Spanning Design Boundaries Penn State University
22 June 2009
Design Research
Stanford University
27-28 Aug 2009
Design Instruction
The detailed agendas, list of participants, and presentations for each workshop can be found at: • The Design Science Program, University of Michigan: http://designscience.umich.edu/designworkshop.html • Segal Design Institute, Northwestern University: http://www.segal.northwestern.edu/designworkshop/ • 2009 NSF CMMI Grantees Conference Workshop: http://www.design.psu.edu/workshops/june09.php • Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) at Stanford University http://www.stanford.edu/group/dschool/nsfdesignworkshop/
A total of 265 people attended one or more of the Design Series Workshops, including the initial workshop held at NSF in May 2008 [3, 4]. This total includes 172 unique participants, of which 49 people (28.5%) attended two or more workshops2. A brief overview of the specific objectives for each workshop follow along with a description of how each workshop was organized. 2.1 Design Science Program, University of Michigan The objectives for the Michigan workshop were to (a) explore the paradigms and methods used by the new discipline of Design Science, (b) begin to accumulate the body of knowledge that already exists in Design Science, and (c) discuss the nature of a Ph.D. curriculum for future Design Science researchers and educators. The workshop began with examples of research in Design Science through undergraduate and doctoral student presentations. This provided a common set of research examples, as well as curriculum and training examples from the Design Science Program at the University of Michigan, that facilitated the subsequent discussion on 2
Of these 49 people, 22 attended two of the workshops, 16 attended three workshops, 5 attended four workshops, and 6 people attended all 5 workshops.
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designing the Ph.D. -level curriculum. The second day of the workshop consisted of three panel discussions: (1) “Design Knowledge Creation: What is Design Research?”, (2) “Design Knowledge Dissemination: What Constitutes Design Science Education,” and (3) “What are the Barriers to Formal Design Programs?”. The workshop concluded with a presentation from Moray Callum (see Figure 1), Design Director, Ford Motor Co., entitled “Designer’s View of Product Development.” Participants also attended a presentation by internationally known designer Theo Jansen entitled “The Great Pretender”, which coincided with the workshop and reinforced our workshop’s objectives. The workshop drew 50 participants from academia and industry with representation from the international community and multiple areas of design (e.g., engineering, architecture, industrial design, communications, business, psychology).
Figure 1. Participants Listen to Moray Callum’s Views on Product Development 2.2 Segal Design Institute, Northwestern University The Northwestern workshop was themed around the topic of “Spanning Design Boundaries”, and it was organized to (a) explore different themes of design and their interconnections, (b) provide a forum for the design community to discuss an ideal interdisciplinary graduate design curriculum and therefore to derive some common themes at the heart of design, and (c) provide a forum to discuss how to overcome the real world barriers. The workshop began with a panel session that included four invited speakers representing four major themes of design, namely, Human Factors and Ergonomics, Engineering Design, Industrial Design, and Human Centered Design. Workshop participants were then divided into four breakout groups and tasked with “Rapid Prototyping a Graduate Level Design Program” (see Figure 2a). Since the breakout groups assumed no institutional or financial barriers when devising their programs, their reports back to the workshop participants were aptly followed by a discussion on “Overcoming Real World Barriers”. Participants shared views on the challenges faced in implementing an interdisciplinary graduate design program, needed support, and strategies for overcoming these barriers. They also received an overview of the interdisciplinary graduate design programs at Northwestern along with a tour of the new Ford Engineering Design Center (see Figure 2b). The workshop was timed to coincide with Design:Chicago,3 wherein four design professionals from Bruce Mau Design, Herbst LaZar Bell, Jerome Caruso Design, Northwestern University, and Arc World-wide/Leo Burnett gave invited talks about design in practice. More than 120 3
http://www.designchicago.northwestern.edu/
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people applied for the workshop, of which 71 people were invited to attend based on seating capacity and funding availability. The audience included large contingencies from engineering design, human computer interface, human-centered design, architecture, industrial design, art, social science, education research, as well as industry.
(a) Groups of participants brainstorming the “ideal” interdisciplinary graduate design program
(b) Participants pose for a photo while touring the Ford Engineering Design Center Figure 2. Scenes from the Northwestern Workshop 2.3 NSF CMMI Grantees Conference Workshop Given its co-location with the 2009 NSF CMMI Grantees Conference, the focus in this workshop was primarily on design research rather than design education or pedagogy. The workshop began with a panel of practitioners from four disparate fields of design, namely, aerospace, architecture, consumer products, and information technology (IT). The panelists included: • Rebecca Henn, Celento Henn Architects + Designers • Sree Sundaram, Sr. Director, Enterprise Architecture, Siemens IT Solutions & Services • Kelly Simpson, Product Designer, PetSmart • Keith Zobott, Corporate Director of Engineering Information Technology, Honeywell The panelists described design activities in their design domains and highlighted opportunities for growth and change. Specifically, panelists first introduced themselves and their company. They then discussed a favorite project, including how it was initiated, how the "problem" or "opportunity" was identified, who worked on the project, what the design process was like, why it was a favorite project, the success of the project, and the lessons learned. They then outlined opportunities and research questions that were most pressing or interesting. Participants and panelists were able to identify patterns and similarities and differences across the disciplines.
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This provided rich stimulus to the breakout groups which worked to identify specific research questions. This half-day workshop drew 38 attendees (see Figure 3) from a variety of fields involved with design that spanned industry as well as academia.
Figure 3. Participants Dressed Casually to Help Them Think “Outside the Box” 2.4 Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school), Stanford University The purpose of the Stanford workshop was (a) to give participants a direct experience of the innovative methods developed at the Stanford d.school to bring design thinking to graduate students from all disciplines, (b) to advance the conversation as to how interdisciplinary design programs can be incorporated into research oriented universities and (c) to advance the notion that design thinking is an ideal vehicle to bring empowerment into the lives of students. The workshop began with a reflective presentation by David Kelley, the founder of IDEO, one of the world’s most successful design consultancies. The workshop emphasized the instructional aspects of design education and provided participants with opportunities to experience the interdisciplinary educational methods developed over the last five years at the d.school and in several other design programs at Stanford. Specifically, participants engaged in design thinking exercises (see Figure 4a and Figure 4b) and were exposed to the methodology used in Stanford d.school classes such as Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability, introductory Design Boot Camp, Design for Sustainability, Design for Organizations, and skills involving improvisational exercises used in theater and rapid prototyping studies. Participants engaged in organized discussions on the issues involved in implementing design teaching and design thinking in universities. This was done in small groups and also with the group as a whole. The methods at Stanford were contrasted to local circumstance at the home universities of the participants. The workshop drew 64 attendees (see Figure 4c), mostly from academia. This diverse group represented various aspects of engineering design, architecture, industrial design, business, and the social sciences. The diversity contributed to lively discussions and a productive exchange of viewpoints.
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(a) Participants engaged in design thinking exercises and group activities that the d.school uses
(b) Groups reporting their solutions
(c) Participants pose for a photo
Figure 4. Scenes from the Stanford Workshop 3. Challenges and Barriers to Interdisciplinary Graduate Design Programs Regardless of the workshop location or the participants involved, one pervasive theme was evident in every discussion: the barriers and challenges in creating (and sustaining) graduate interdisciplinary design programs. To help synthesize the discussions that occurred at the workshops, we have grouped these challenges around four central issues: (1) resources, (2) faculty, (3) students, and (4) curriculum/pedagogy. Each of these is discussed in the remainder of this section. Key topics are highlighted in bold italics and consolidated at the start of Section 4 to facilitate a discussion of ways to overcome these barriers and challenges as demonstrated by the three host universities. 3.1 Resource Issues Obtaining the resources to initiate—and ultimately sustain—a new interdisciplinary graduate design program was the first and foremost topic on everyone’s mind. The timing of the workshops could not have made this issue more apparent, as they coincided with one of the worst economic downturns of the century forcing many universities to tighten their budgets. Finding program funding (e.g., the faculty involved, classroom space, labs) as well as student support had stifled many participants’ attempts at their home institutions, and they were anxious to hear how existing programs had succeeded. Secondary to funding was the issue of space. Participants had a litany of question related to space, e.g.: Are faculty in the program co-located? Are the students? Where are classes taught? Where do students meet for labs and to conduct research? While these questions may seem intuitively obvious, how they are
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addressed will have serious implications on the culture of the resulting program, on the crossfertilization among students, on the collaboration among the faculty, etc. The issues surrounding resources were exacerbated by the fact that design (in the broadest sense) does not fit well into the rigid structure that currently defines most University—it spans many disciplines and cuts across departmental “silos”. There were many different perspectives on design’s place within the university, and each view manifested different challenges with getting administrative “buy in” for interdisciplinary graduate design programs. Participants were encouraged by the support shown from the senior administrators at the host institutions, especially the Dean of Engineering, Dr. Julio Ottino, at Northwestern University, an accomplished artist and engineer who was recently characterized in Forbes as the “prima facie example” of the “new leader America needs more of” [5]. All agreed that design must gain the blessings of administrators in leadership positions to navigate around the red tape and establish design education as a recognized and highly regarded program. To help gain the attention of senior administrators, the consensus was that exemplary programs need to be identified, compiled, and displayed to strengthen the case for design’s place in academia. The Design Workshop Series is our first attempt, leveraging the findings from our initial workshop [4], which are complemented by a recent review of interdisciplinary programs in product development [6]. 3.2 Faculty Issues Assuming resources have been provided or obtained to initiate a new graduate interdisciplinary design program, the next question is: who are the faculty involved? Design (in the broad sense) is not its own discipline and does not fit in a single department; therefore, where is the home department for faculty involved with such programs? Adjunct, affiliate, and joint appointments provide some means to accommodate faculty interests across a wide range of disciplines; however, this can be very dangerous to new, untenured faculty as many warned. Therefore, what are the realities for “tenure-ability” of faculty involved with such programs? For instance, where do they publish given the trans-, multi-, and inter-disciplinary nature of their work? How is publishing outside of one’s discipline perceived by colleagues in that faculty’s department? Many raised the question of whether these faculty should even be tenured versus be clinical appointments of industrial practitioners. The idea that faculty working in design were “misfits” received a good deal of attention (as a positive attribute) even though it was offered rather jokingly at the start of one dialogue. The ensuing discussion among the participants felt that they had no true home in one field or another and had struggled to find a place within the confines of the system. The consensus was that it was important for faculty to work within their own academic institution to resolve challenges surrounding interdisciplinary research and corresponding graduate program. Although it did not receive as much attention, many agreed that faculty’s roles in such design programs differ as well. These workshops reinforced the notion of the power of interdisciplinary teaching teams, which echoed many comments in the original NSF Workshop [4]. Participants were exposed to this notion at the Michigan and Northwestern workshops, and the Stanford workshop put added weight and additional precision as to what this means in actual practice. The Stanford workshops also brought to the fore the importance of including skilled industrial practitioners as both teachers and resources for student guidance and inspiration. Finally, participants agreed the nature of the training in this type of program requires a lot of coaching and mentoring, and individualized project work. Therefore, the faculty would serve as “champions” for students in supporting their individual endeavors. Also, many felt that this mentoring should occur at several levels, not just among the faculty. For instance, Ph.D. students could help mentor master’s students, and masters’ students could serve as mentors to undergraduates or students in K-12 settings.
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3.3 Student Issues Once the program is established, where do the students come from and what will they leave with when they graduate? Also, it was not clear if the goal of such programs was to produce the next big name in design or a larger number of competent students. Consequently, there were many discussions regarding the types of students to attract and skills to teach, where design might best fit into the current arrangement of higher learning, and the type of graduates to produce. Identifying the target audience and determining the corresponding degree(s) granted would be important considerations when developing such a program. Many agreed that the type of degree offered (e.g., M.Des. vs. M.S. vs. MBA vs. Ph.D.) will heavily influence the employment opportunities available for graduates, particularly when it comes to design [4]. Another significant challenge is how to attract diverse graduate students considering large funding disparities between arts and engineering in graduate education. Pertinent to the type of degree being granted is the issue involving breath versus depth. The concept of the T-shaped student arose on several occasions, particularly at Stanford’s d.school. This concept represents students’ abilities in the form of the letter T. The vertical shaft represents the students’ depth areas. These could be in any area, including the design of objects; however, we usually think of these in terms of disciplines such as engineering, architecture, law, medicine, business or any subspecialty thereof. The vertical leg is what traditional university education purveys. The horizontal bar represents the ability to work in groups with people outside one’s discipline and to think in a more holistic way than the traditional specialist. It is the horizontal bar that a good interdisciplinary design program can bring into a student’s development while enabling them to gain a healthy respect for other disciplines involved with design. For instance, courses in Michigan’s Design Science Program are structured so that students build the horizontal bar upon the vertical shaft they acquired in their undergraduate and master’s studies. Many participants felt this gave them a broader perspective on their roles and the possibilities of supporting students to make strong social important contributions by directly using the empowerment afforded by student participation in interdisciplinary design teams. Finally, for Ph.D. programs in particular, the advisor structure was cited as an important issue, making sure to represent the individual disciplines involved in the students’ research (e.g., engineering and psychology and business). Candidacy (qualifying) exams for such projects also present unique challenges of their own given the interdisciplinary nature of the work. This was particularly relevant to the discussions at Michigan and its Ph.D. in Design Science, which requires two co-advisors from two different disciplines (schools) for each PhD student. The consensus was that there is no single way to guide the discipline, neither in research direction nor in doctoral-level training, except for very broad strokes that entail any scientific discipline. Design Science draws from multiple disciplines, but ultimately, it should also develop its own paradigms, its own body of knowledge, and its own training mechanisms to produce successful researchers and future (design) faculty. As different Ph.D. programs in design emerge, there will be different research and training models. This was seen as a positive direction by most participants regardless of whether they agreed with the notion of “design as a science” (vs. an art vs. some combination thereof). 3.4 Curriculum/Pedagogy Issues In all of the workshops, it was apparent that interdisciplinary design is a very broad subject area, and it includes many different perspectives. As a result, the curriculum architecture and core course areas vary significantly by program, depending on the disciplines involved within the university. Many argued the tradeoffs between training in formal quantitative models, qualitative approaches, and other less-formal aspects of design such as sketching and prototyping.
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Striking an appropriate balance between science and art in design was also discussed extensively, as were the connotations of Design Science and Design Thinking [7]. As indicated in Table 1, the Stanford workshop was an opportunity to look at instruction as an activity in its own right outside of the usual association with research, and many attendees were very positive about the opportunity to participate in actual Design Thinking exercises. These provided valuable experiences, in terms of learning new instructional techniques and also as a point of departure to reflect on one’s own methodologies, points of view, and course objectives. The experiences invoked heated but friendly and open discussion among the many participants with their different viewpoints about design. On the positive side, there was overwhelming agreement among the participants that an interdisciplinary graduate design program should emphasize project-based (active) learning, teamwork, collaboration, creativity, interdisciplinarity, and systems thinking. The experience of learning-by-doing is also proving to be much more powerful than traditional learning by passive listening and artificial problem sets. In learning-by-doing a student not only learns problem solving skills, teamwork, prototyping and presentations skills, but, most importantly, the students learn how to use the world as a place to learn from, and realize that what goes on in the classroom is just the tip of the iceberg as far as learning is concerned. Design students should be taught less and mentored more, either by their teachers, senior students, or both. This fostering of individual growth was regarded to be extremely important without exception. Consequently, there was consensus that the design of such programs should take a usercentered approach and allow for customization depending on the individual. The programs should be structured to enable students to explore interests through individualized studio work or independent studies in order to develop skills particular to their areas of interest. Finally, the “Rapid Prototyping a Graduate Level Design Program” exercise at the Northwestern Workshop provided participants with first-hand experience in navigating the challenges inherent in creating interdisciplinary graduate design programs. Each breakout group had to address three main components of student training and development: 1) target knowledge and skills, 2) structure of the program, and 3) characteristics of faculty and appropriate teaching approaches. While each group developed a very unique program and curricular structure, there was consensus that programs do need to cater to many different career paths. For example, a multitiered structure such as that shown in Figure 5 provides a means to support students preparing for a career in industry as well as those pursing an academic or research-oriented career. The idea of leveraging core courses and discipline-specific courses (for depth) and applying these in a project-based course (for breadth) would serve the needs of the T-shaped student (see Figure 6). Another challenge was including opportunities for customization of the program by providing on-line courses to accommodate various demographics such as working parents—some noted that on-line courses had the benefit of generating additional revenue to help fund the program. Design “doers” ( Industry + Practitioners) M.S. B.S. B.A. etc.
M.Design (1 year)
M.S. in X (2 years)
Design “thinkers” ( Academia + R&D)
Ph.D. in X (4-5 years)
Doctoral research informs program practice
Figure 5. A Possible Multi-Tiered Structure for an Interdisciplinary Grad Design Program
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Cross-cutting Core Courses
Discipline-specific Courses (Skills)
1 year (semesters/terms)
Project (Applied)
Figure 6. Combining Depth and Breadth in an Interdisciplinary Grad Design Program 4. Overcoming Interdisciplinary Barriers and Challenges While the preceding discussions may appear pessimistic, they are the reality, and for many, an excuse not to proceed. Fortunately, we have examples of programs that have managed to navigate their institutional barriers and overcome the challenges of obtaining resources and administrative buy-in, finding and hiring suitable faculty, meeting the needs of students, and developing a suitable interdisciplinary curriculum. The three host universities are leading the way, in fact, and provide robust examples for others to follow as we illustrate in this section. To facilitate the discussion and enable cross-program comparisons, we offer the “morphological matrix” [8] shown in Table 2 to help design interdisciplinary graduate design programs. As shown in the table, each row begins with one “issue” highlighted in Section 3, and the remaining columns summarize the “solutions” that successful programs have used (e.g., RA/TA support for Funding students). We assert that each new interdisciplinary graduate design program will employ one (or more) of the solutions listed in the table in order to overcome the barriers and challenges that are commonly associated with their launch (and sustainment). While this list is not meant to be exhaustive, it captures the wide range of solutions that were offered by the host universities and the 172 participants that were involved with the Design Workshop Series.
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Barriers/Challenges:
Solution 1
Getting admin buy-in
Industry letters
Funding program
Lump sum allocation
Solution 2 Other univ. letters/models On-line courses
Funding students
RA/TA
Company supported
Space
Departmental space
Home department for faculty
Curriculum
Stude nts
Faculty
Resources
Table 2. Morphological Matrix for Designing Interdisciplinary Graduate Design Programs Solution 3
Solution 4
Admin mandate
Faculty advocacy Masters program NSF Fellowships/IGERT
Self-funded
Co-located space
Exec Ed University/Dept fellowships New building
Rent building
Buy building
No space
Affiliated faculty from other depts
Dedicated lines
Adjunct faculty
Joint appointments
Tenure-ability of faculty
Tenure in home dept.
Tenure in design dept.
No tenure track
Prof. of the Practice
Clinical Faculty
Other
Advisor structure
Individual advisor from a design department
Co-advisor design & other dept
Non-Design dept advisor
Two co-advisors from different depts
Degree(s) granted
PhD
MFA
MBA
Other
Media
Other
Curriculum architecture
Use existing courses
Core course areas
Engineering (ME, IE, etc.)
Instructional delivery
Studios
MEng
MS
Cross-list design course Business (Finance, Mktg, Mngmt)
Dedicated design courses Industrial Design
Psychology
Lectures
Case studies
Problem-based
Solution 5 Solution 6 Student Prior advocacy activity Angel funding Industry
Project-based Co-taught
The following sections provide a brief overview of the five programs offered by the three host universities. Websites have been included for more detailed information on each program. Following each overview, we instantiate Table 2 to illustrate how each program “solved” its own barriers/challenges. These tables were developed by faculty involved with the creation and current administration of each program at the host universities. 4.1 Design Science Program, University of Michigan (http://designscience.umich.edu/) Approved in 2006, the interdisciplinary graduate design program at the University of Michigan offers a Ph.D. in Design Science with 8 students enrolled for the fall semester of 2009. The program graduated its first Ph.D. (an African-American woman) in December 2009. Described as the study of “the creation of artifacts and their embedding in our physical, psychological, economic, and social environment” by Dr. Papalambros, the program is housed within the University of Michigan’s Rackham Graduate School and is supported by faculty from several different departments in the Schools of Art and Design, Business Administration, Psychology, and Engineering. Since faculty are not hired directly as Design Science professors, this program exhibits many of the challenges described in Section 3.2 in that faculty interest drives any affiliation with the Design Science program and time spent with the program must be delicately balanced with the promotion and tenure requirements of a faculty’s home department. However, some of the interdisciplinary barriers are mitigated by the unique structure of the university, where the Rackham Graduate School—not a
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department—houses the graduate degrees offered by the university. The program, now in its third year, requires a student to have a Master’s degree prior to becoming a Ph.D. candidate and to have two dissertation advisors from two distinctly different disciplines (i.e., advisors from two different engineering departments would not be acceptable). Funding graduate students is another common challenge, and students are required to have secured funding for two years prior to being admitted into the Design Science program. The corresponding morphological matrix for the Design Science Program is given in Table 3.
Barriers/Challenges:
Solution 1
Getting admin buy-in
Industry letters
Funding program
Lump sum allocation
Solution 2 Other univ. letters/models On-line courses
Funding students
RA/TA
Company supported
Space
Departmental space
Home department for faculty
Curriculum
Stude nts
Faculty
Resources
Table 3. Morphological Matrix for University of Michigan’s Design Science Program Solution 3
Solution 4
Admin mandate
Faculty advocacy Masters program NSF Fellowships/IGERT
Self-funded
Co-located space
Exec Ed University/Dept fellowships New building
Rent building
Buy building
No space
Affiliated faculty from other depts
Dedicated lines
Adjunct faculty
Joint appointments
Tenure-ability of faculty
Tenure in home dept.
Tenure in design dept.
No tenure track
Prof. of the Practice
Clinical Faculty
Other
Advisor structure
Individual advisor from a design department
Co-advisor design & other dept
Non-Design dept advisor
Two co-advisors from different depts
Degree(s) granted
PhD
MFA
MBA
Other
Curriculum architecture
Use existing courses
Core course areas
Engineering (ME, IE, etc.)
Instructional delivery
Studios
Solution 5 Solution 6 Student Prior advocacy activity Angel funding Industry
MEng
MS
Cross-list design course Business (Finance, Mktg)
Dedicated design courses Industrial Design
Psychology
Media
Other
Lectures
Case studies
Problem-based
Projectbased
Co-taught
4.2 Segal Design Institute, Northwestern University (http://www.segal.northwestern.edu/) The Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University offers undergraduate courses and certificates in engineering design but does not grant undergraduate degrees. The institute is affiliated with three full-time graduate-level degree programs: (1) a management program in design and operations (MMM) that offers a combined Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree with a Master of Engineering Management (MEM) degree, (2) a Masters of Product Development (MPD) for professionals still working in industry, and (3) a Master of Science in Engineering Design & Innovation (EDI), a one-year program focusing on a human-centered approach to engineering design. Housed within the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, the institute, supported by a $5 million private donation and stands independent of all engineering departments. Classroom, meeting, and studio space for these programs is available in the new Ford Engineering Design Center where the center resides. Dr. Don Norman discussed some practical issues that limit the effectiveness of the institute’s mission to train students in the process of design from conception through
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production, largely focusing on issues stemming from the dependency on faculty affiliations with the institute to support teaching and research related to design. Since all faculty affiliated with the institute must first be hired within a traditional engineering department, exceptional candidates for the institute are often dismissed because their proposed research is viewed as too “soft” to match the goals of the department. If a new professor with a design focus is hired, there is often concern that the goals outlined for the tenure process do not reward the new faculty for the time commitment required to also support the institute’s goals. The inability to hire faculty directly and the reliance on affiliations mostly from tenured faculty again emphasizes a theme from the workshop that success in these programs is often fueled solely by the dedication and energy of the faculty supporting them. Dr. Norman stated, “What we are trying to do as practical designers does not fit within a university,” and later highlighted the need to better recognize work in design. Other challenges raised include problems faced with balancing the teaching expectations of engineering and business students and the necessity of developing quantitative views of the general principles being applied in order to create the academic depth required for a new discipline and to receive greater funding. The corresponding morphological matrices for the MMM, MPD, and EDI graduate programs at Northwestern are shown in Table 4, Table 5, Table 6, respectively.
Solution 4
Admin mandate
Faculty advocacy Masters program NSF Fellowships/IGERT
Self-funded
Co-located space
Exec Ed University/Dept fellowships New building
Rent building
Buy building
Faculty
Home department for faculty
Affiliated faculty from other depts
Dedicated lines
Adjunct faculty
Joint appointments
Tenure-ability of faculty
Tenure in home dept.
Tenure in design dept.
No tenure track
Prof. of the Practice
Advisor structure
Individual advisor from a design department
Co-advisor design & other dept
Non-Design dept advisor
Two co-advisors from different depts
Degree(s) granted
Ph.D.
MEng
MS
MFA
Curriculum architecture
Use existing courses
Cross-list design course
Dedicated design courses
Core course areas
Engineering (ME, IE, etc.)
Business (Finance, Mktg, Mngmt)
Industrial Design
Instructional delivery
Studios
Lectures
Case studies
Curriculum
Resources
Solution 3
Students
Table 4. Morphological Matrix for Northwestern University’s MMM Program Barriers/Challenges:
Solution 1
Getting admin buy-in
Industry letters
Funding program
Tuition recovery/allocation
Solution 2 Other univ. letters/models On-line courses
Funding students
RA/TA
Company supported
Space
Departmental space
15
Solution 5 Solution 6 Student Prior advocacy activity Angel funding Industry
Clinical Faculty
Other
MBA
Other (MEngrMgmt)
Psychology
Media
Other (HumanCentered Design)
Problem-based
Projectbased
Co-taught
Curriculum
Students
Faculty
Resources
Table 5. Morphological Matrix for Northwestern University’s MPD Program Barriers/Challenges:
Solution 1
Getting admin buy-in
Industry letters
Funding program
Tuition recovery/allocation
Solution 2 Other univ. letters/models On-line courses
Solution 3
Solution 4
Funding students
RA/TA
Company supported
Space
Departmental space
Home department for faculty
Admin mandate
Faculty advocacy Masters program NSF Fellowships/IGERT
Self-funded
Co-located space
Exec Ed University/Dept fellowships New building
Rent building
Buy building
No needed
Affiliated faculty from other depts
Dedicated lines
Adjunct faculty
Joint appointments
Tenure-ability of faculty
Tenure in home dept.
Tenure in design dept.
No tenure track
Prof. of the Practice
Clinical Faculty
Other
Advisor structure
Individual advisor from a design department
Co-advisor design & other dept
Non-Design dept advisor
Two co-advisors from different depts
Degree(s) granted
Ph.D.
MEng
MS
MFA
MBA
Other (MPD)
Curriculum architecture
Use existing courses
Cross-list design course
Dedicated design courses
Core course areas
Engineering (ME, IE, etc.)
Business (Finance, Mkt, Mngt)
Industrial Design
Psychology
Media
Other (Product Management)
Instructional delivery
Studios
Lectures
Case studies
Problem-based
Projectbased
Co-taught
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Solution 5 Solution 6 Student Prior activity advocacy Angel funding Industry
Curriculum
Students
Faculty
Resources
Table 6. Morphological Matrix for Northwestern University’s EDI Program Barriers/Challenges:
Solution 1
Getting admin buy-in
Industry letters
Funding program
Tuition recovery/allocation
Solution 2 Other univ. letters/models On-line courses
Solution 3
Solution 4
Funding students
RA/TA
Company supported
Space
Departmental space
Home department for faculty
Solution 5 Solution 6 Student Prior advocacy activity Angel funding Industry
Admin mandate
Faculty advocacy Masters program NSF Fellowships/IGERT
Self-funded
Co-located space
Exec Ed University/Dept fellowships New building
Rent building
Buy building
Affiliated faculty from other depts
Dedicated lines
Adjunct faculty
Joint appointments
Tenure-ability of faculty
Tenure in home dept.
Tenure in design dept.
No tenure track
Prof. of the Practice
Advisor structure
Individual advisor from a design department
Co-advisor design & other dept
Non-Design dept advisor
Two co-advisors from different depts
Degree(s) granted
Ph.D.
MEng
MS
MFA
Curriculum architecture
Use existing courses
Cross-list design course
Dedicated design courses
Core course areas
Engineering (ME, IE, etc.)
Business (Finance, Mktg, Mngmt)
Industrial Design
Instructional delivery
Studios
Lectures
Case studies
Clinical Faculty
Other (Lecturers) Sole advisor from the program
MBA
Other
Psychology
Media
Other (HumanCentered Design)
Seminar
Projectbased
Co-taught
4.3 Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (http://www.stanford.edu/group/dschool/) The Stanford d.school, officially The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, was created five years ago by an interdisciplinary group of faculty. The hallmark of the d.school is interdisciplinary collaboration by both faculty and students. It uses project-based education in order to actively engage students in the process of learning and creating. The main strength of the program is the dedication of the entire community (students, faculty and staff) to the development of a culture that thrives on defining and solving meaningful design problems, and to producing working solutions to real problems using a group of processes known as “Design Thinking”. The concepts that define design thinking are different from the usual thrusts of engineering education. The greatest emphasis is on interdisciplinary teaching teams and student teams learning by doing. The courses use little formal lecturing or textbook learning; instead, students are encouraged to move to a state of complete immersion in a problem, with the goal of quickly creating empathy for the user and moving rapidly into the ideation phase by use of sketches, lists, and prototypes. The d.school offers course that are taken by mainly graduate students. Students come from all of Stanford’s schools (Business, Earth Sciences,
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Engineering, Humanities and Science, Law and Medicine). The d.school courses are taken as electives in students’ normal degree programs. Consequently, the d.school does not offer a degree; students obtain their degrees from their home departments.
Curriculum
Students
Faculty
Resources
Table 7. Morphological Matrix for Stanford University’s d.school Barriers/Challenges:
Solution 1
Solution 2 Other univ. letters/models
Solution 3
Solution 4
Solution 5 Student advocacy Angel funding
Solution 6 Prior activity
Getting admin buy-in
Industry letters
Admin mandate
Faculty advocacy
Funding program
Tuition recovery/allocation
On-line courses
Exec Ed
Masters program
Funding students
RA/TA
Company supported
Space
Departmental space
Co-located space
University/Dept fellowships New building
NSF Fellowships/IGERT
Self-funded
Angel
Rent building
Buy building
Home department for faculty
Affiliated faculty from other depts
Dedicated lines
Adjunct faculty
Joint appointments
Tenure-ability of faculty
Tenure in home dept.
Tenure in design dept.
No tenure track
Prof. of the Practice
Advisor structure
Individual advisor from a design department
Co-advisor design & other dept
Non-Design dept advisor
Two co-advisors from different depts
Degree(s) granted
Ph.D.
MEng
MS
MFA
Curriculum architecture
Use existing courses
Cross-list design course
Dedicated design courses
Industry
Clinical Faculty
MBA
Other (None)
Core course areas
Engineering (ME, IE, etc.)
Business (Finance, Marketing, Management)
Industrial Design
Psychology
Media
Other (Journalism, Medicine, Comp Sci, Poli Sci, Performing Arts)
Instructional delivery
Studios
Lectures
Case studies
Problem-based
Projectbased
Co-taught
The d.school’s courses often turn out to be the transformative experience of a student’s life at Stanford—it is not uncommon for students to change their career trajectory after a d.school experience, and there have been many successful project outcomes. For example, the Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability student teams have designed products that have improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Myanmar, India, Nepal, and Ethiopia. The student teams in the Creating Infectious Action course have influenced policy at Walmart, Disney, Jet Blue and several financial institutions. Teams from the Boot Camp class and the Media class have changed programming at New York Public Radio. There are also ongoing projects (called labs) that are not tied to courses. The two largest ones are the K-12 Lab and the Space Lab. The teams in the K-12 Lab have designed classroom spaces and curricula for teaching design thinking and creative problem solving to students in elementary schools. The d.school has a strong 18
presence in three elementary schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn Michigan, and in some elementary schools in Bhutan and in India. The Space Lab devises ways to use physical spaces to run multiple design classes, and designs and builds special furniture to support d.school unique teaching and project activities. The d.school’s web page (http://d.school.stanford.edu) is a good source for more complete information. 4.4 Similarities and Differences across Programs As we can see from these tables, there is clearly no single solution that suits everyone—the launch (and sustainment) of interdisciplinary graduate design programs depends on a variety of factors, many of which are specific to the university and its surrounding environment. The degrees offered by these five programs range from a Ph.D. (in Design Science) to M.S. and professional Master’s degrees (MBA, MPD) to no degree (in the d.school). Programs have been successfully driven from the top down (administrative mandates at Northwestern) as well as from the bottom up (faculty advocacy resulting from previous collaboration at Michigan). It is no surprise that alumni and Angel investors can play a key role in program formation (Plattner’s contributions formalized the d.school at Stanford, Segal’s contributions formalized the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern); however, other programs (e.g., Design Science) have found ways to accomplish their goals with some university support. Faculty affiliations and tenure concerns exist across all these programs, and the best solution depends heavily on the university structure (e.g., department vs. institute affiliation). Despite these differences, there is a large consensus that interdisciplinary design programs should emphasize: project-based (active) learning, co-taught lectures and studios, teamwork, interdisciplinarity, and systems thinking to name a few. Finally, while the monikers we use may differ (Interdisciplinary Design vs. Design Science vs. Design Thinking), we all agree that design—in the broadest sense—provides unique opportunities to engage, impassion, and ultimately transform students’ educational experiences. 5. Interdisciplinary Research Once these obstacles are overcome, then faculty and students can focus on the reason we all attended the workshops, i.e., the wide array of interdisciplinary research topics in design. Compelling research topics emerged at all of the workshops, and the University of Michigan specifically showcased several examples of interdisciplinary work that their Design Science students are doing [9, 10, 11]. Meanwhile, at the 2009 NSF CMMI Grantees Conference Workshop, the panelists and participants specifically identified a list of important research questions in the field of design. From a list of nearly a hundred questions, a subset that represented the breadth of issues, from assessment to instruction and practice, were identified. The following summarize these research questions. • How is knowledge captured and reused across disciplines involved with design? Successful design, whether a painting or consumer product, informs future work. Different disciplines participate in this process in different ways. Some methods might include pattern recognition, design language, abstraction, education, and numbers/words/pictures. This question considers the value of this exercise and the methods by which it is achieved. • What is the relationship between the product and service design? A successful integration of product/artifact and the experience of owning it are becoming hallmarks of successful designs. This might include topics such as sustainability, interaction, and re-use. This interface provides an exciting opportunity for innovation.
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•
•
•
•
•
• •
•
•
What are effective methods to enhance interdisciplinary communication and collaboration? “Interdisciplinary” does not mean “two fields of engineering” or “graphical and artistic design”. Truly interdisciplinary projects often require broad teams with diverse skills—and aesthetics and values. Even broad-minded teammates with similar goals can encounter communication difficulties rooted in the very attributes that makes interdisciplinary teams valuable. How can collaboration in these situations be improved? Is there a meta-structure of design process (if so, what is it and how do we teach it)? Different design disciplines teach design in different ways, rooted in the culture of that field. While there is value in recognizing these distinctions, it is possible that teaching a specific way of doing design creates some of the barriers to successful interdisciplinary design. Research into different successful processes across disciplines might identify similarities, differences, and perhaps even taxonomies that could be used to contextualize different approaches to design, which could facilitate collaboration across disciplines. How do we balance quantitative and qualitative methods in design? Different disciplines might emphasize or deemphasize qualitative and quantitative approaches to design. A better understanding of the different techniques and their strengths and weaknesses might lead to improved acceptance and use. How do we evaluate (grade) design? In practice, a design might be assessed by its commercial success, by the imitations it inspires, or by the notice of critics. While some of these responses could be immediate, the full value of some design achievements is not recognized for years or longer. As design is increasingly embedded in the curricula, what are helpful and moral methods for assessing design? How to measure innovation (particularly in academia)? “Innovation” is increasingly discussed, but even its definition is disputed. Academia feels a need or obligation or recognizes an opportunity to play a role in teaching innovation, but how? Are the design processes taught in our different disciplines effective for innovation? Just as the merits of an individual design are difficult to quantify or assess, so is its “innovativeness”. This further complicates the issues facing academia in this area. How do we balance coherence and dissonance during design? Creative tension is generally considered necessary to produce good design, but how do we teach this? Dissonance provides opportunities for innovation, but can distract designers or projects. How do we change the culture of engineering schools so that technology is perceived as a tool? It is possible that undergraduate engineers could be distracted by technology and feel that it is the end, rather than the means, to their education. Some have suggested that interdisciplinary training would provide the necessary opportunities to help students to learn this on their own. Does early introduction of hardware/physical designs increase engineering interest? Research and practice have shown that the early and systematic use of prototypes can improve design outcomes. Similarly, hands-on activities have been shown to be particularly effective in some teaching scenarios and appeal to non-traditional learners. Integrating these two efforts might both improve design education and the diversity of the student population. A related question is: Do creative projects lead to higher quality education and more interest in science/math? How to develop an appreciation of the intangible (subjective) aspect of designs? In addition to balancing the quantitative and qualitative aspects of design, it is likely that individuals traditionally inclined towards one of these approaches would benefit from an understanding of and appreciation for the other. This research question looks at how this can best be achieved in an academic setting.
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Given the breadth and depth of these topics, few are concerned whether or not interdisciplinary design research could sustain critical inquiry—there are plenty of questions to keep researchers occupied. Instead, the more important question is: how will this work be funded? While some existing programs and solicitations at NSF lend themselves well to this type of interdisciplinary research (e.g., Engineering Design and Innovation Program, CreativeIT, IGERT), we need to be more cognizant of new opportunities at NSF such as the Directorate for Engineering’s new panel review procedure for interdisciplinary research4 while also targeting solicitations for new topics for NSF’s Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) program. In fact, as an outcome of the Design Workshop Series, we submitted a topic on design innovation in response to the NSF Dear Colleague Letter, requesting ideas for the 2010 EFRI Solicitation.5 5. Closing Remarks, Outcomes, and Recommendations In an often-cited quote, The Economist claimed that “Innovation is now recognized as the single most important ingredient in any modern economy” [15]. Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke declared that our nation’s innovation system is “broken” and stated that “the United States has not adjusted to a new global marketplace where foreign countries and foreign companies have the ability to outpace their American counterparts. It's not tenable for the United States to continue with the status quo. In a world where innovation is critical to U.S. competitiveness, we must do everything in our power to optimize commercialization that stems from our nation's vast research investment”6. There has never been a clearer imperative to improve the creativity and innovative mindset of U.S. graduates from all disciplines. We assert that design lies at the heart of innovation, and interdisciplinary graduate design programs such as those involved with these workshops are uniquely positioned to provide the educational opportunities to revitalize the nation’s innovation ecosystem. The Design Workshop Series sought to arrive at a clearer understanding of who these new graduate programs should serve and what they should entail. Participants were very positive about the friendly and open discussions at the workshops among a well-balanced group representing many different disciplines involved in design. They found the talks from both the “thinkers” (academic leaders representing different design themes in the panels) as well as the “doers” (award-winning design practitioners who spoke in, for example, “Design:Chicago”) were stimulating. The barriers and challenges to creating (and sustaining) these programs were discussed at length, and many feel that now is the time for action. The Design Workshop Series catalyzed an interdisciplinary research community that shares a passion for design. An online design community, DesignWIKI7, was recently established by participants to share and disseminate work, and descriptions of innovative design courses have been posted by workshop participants and are available online along with additional teaching material developed by the d.school8. Several participants reported that their involvement in the Design Workshop Series led to the development of new interdisciplinary graduate design programs at Iowa State, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Sheffield Hallam University in the UK, which created a new Design Leadership programming that united Engineering, Computing, Art and Design and Media Arts. Faculty at the University of Michigan are also considering a M.S. in Design Science now, and faculty at Penn State have started to offer cross-disciplinary design courses in preparation for establishing a new interdisciplinary 4
http://nsf.gov/eng/general/IDR/index.jsp http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08071/nsf08071.jsp?org=NSF 6 Secretary Locke's speech is online at: http://www.commerce.gov/NewsRoom/SecretarySpeeches/PROD01_008812 7 http://designnetwork.wetpaint.com/ 8 http://www.stanford.edu/group/dschool/nsfdesignworkshop/ 5
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graduate design program modeled after Figure 5. Finally, one participant shared his workshop experiences with Vanessa Wong at BusinessWeek and was subsequently included as one of the panelists9 in their assessment of the “World’s Best Design Schools”.10 While significant strides have been made in the past year through the Design Workshop Series, considerable work remains. The following recommendations are offered to NSF to continue providing support and serving as a catalyst to: 1. Improve administrative buy-in through future interdisciplinary design workshops – in order to capitalize on this new-found momentum and interest in design, we need to get department heads, deans, and senior-level administrators involved with these workshops in order to share our passion and help us identify ways to overcome the barriers and challenges outlined in Section 3. Having them participate in Design Thinking activities like we did at the Stanford workshop would also be a valuable experience for many of them. 2. Identify lessons learned among a broader set of interdisciplinary graduate design programs – the morphological matrix introduced in Table 2 provides a clear and concise way to compare and contrast how different interdisciplinary graduate design programs “solved” the barriers and challenges at their respective universities; as such, this matrix should be used to characterize a broader set of interdisciplinary graduate design programs that exist and identify “lessons learned”, which can be shared with other faculty and universities to help them avoid the same pitfalls. 3. Characterize the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of students in these design programs – while there is some consensus on how courses in these interdisciplinary design programs should be taught (e.g., project-based learning, teamwork, co-taught, etc.), there is little agreement on what should be taught; programmatic content will vary, but more work is needed to understand the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that T-shaped students need when they graduate from these programs. 4. Expand involvement of business and other design-related disciplines (e.g. industrial design, architecture, human computer interaction design, law, journalism) in these discussions – while each workshop had representation from a variety of disciplines involved with design, we should continue to grow and expand the community to identify best practices in other fields and find synergies with other disciplines. For instance, significant benefits would be gained if core participants were able to benefit from discussions with a variety of innovative business leaders to both assess their needs and to better understand novel approaches used to facilitate proven innovation. 5. Identify best practices among international interdisciplinary design programs – several international programs were represented and discussed at our workshops; several schools in Europe (particularly in the UK, Netherlands, and France) have created strong design programs, some with Ph.D. programs; in Asia, there is a very strong coordinated effort to build design research and education as a cornerstone of their economic engine, with efforts in China, Korea, Taiwan, and Malaysia—the recently launched Singapore University of Technology and Design (joint effort by MIT and the Singapore Government) has a very ambitious agenda, closely attending to the issues presented in this report, and it plans to enroll several thousand students. We need to work more with these schools and understand their modes of operation better, as they seem more eager to hire our students as design faculty than many of our U.S.-based institutions.
9
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/sep2009/id20090930_821020.htm?chan= innovation_special+report+--+design+thinking_special+report+--+design+thinking 10 http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/09/0930_worlds_best_design_schools/index.htm?chan= innovation_special+report+--+design+thinking_special+report+--+design+thinking
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6. Study the role of design in innovation – while there are many definitions for innovation (e.g., reduction of creativity to practice), design plays a key role in all of them; therefore, it is in our community’s best interest to understand the role that design plays in innovation so that we can respond to the challenges facing our nation and help “fix” our innovation ecosystem. 7. Improve funding opportunities for interdisciplinary design research and educational efforts – while NSF programs like Engineering Design and Innovation and CreativeIT and IGERT solicitations are supportive, the community could leverage large grant support through programs such as EFRI and creating ERCs to strengthen connections with non-engineering disciplines that are involved with design; expanding CCLI-type grants to support graduate course development and dissemination would also advance these efforts. While any interdisciplinary graduate program will face many of the obstacles outlined in Section 3, programs centered around design may be the best suited to navigate these hurdles since design pervades every discipline, and therefore, everyone is a stakeholder. Until there is a Whitaker Foundation11 for interdisciplinary design, we must rely on NSF and the generosity of the Plattners, the Segals, and the Fords of the world to help us establish such novel programs and infrastructures. In the meantime, we need to use design to help us make this happen—if design can transform companies and organizations around the world, then so too can it help us transform the university environment wherein we are educating the workforce of tomorrow. Acknowledgments We would like to thank NSF’s Program Directors Judy Vance, Sally Wood, and Christina Bloebaum for their support of the Design Workshop Series, which was funded by NSF Collaborative Research Grants CMMI-0847181, CMMI-0847460, CMMI-0847694, and CMMI0847104. We would like to thank Professor Kemper Lewis (University at Buffalo-SUNY) for his assistance with the morphological matrix offered in this report. Finally, we would like to thank Shanna Daly (University of Michigan), Liz Gerber (Northwestern University), and Micah Lande (Stanford University) for their help organizing the workshops and activities at their institutions. References [1] [2] [3] [4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
Council on Competitiveness, 2004, Innovate America – Thriving in a World of Challenge and Change: National Innovation Initiative Report, Washington, D.C. Engineering Accreditation Commission, 1999, Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs, Baltimore, MD, ABET, http://www.abet.org/. Simpson, T. W., Barton, R. R. and Celento, D., 2008, "Interdisciplinary by Design," ASME Magazine - Special Design Issue, 130(9), 30-33. Simpson, T. W., Hunter, S. T., Bryant-Arnold, C., Parkinson, M., Barton, R. R., Celento, D. and Messner, J., 2009, "Interdisciplinary Graduate Design Programs: Results and Recommendations from a NSF Workshop", 2009 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, San Diego, CA, ASME, DETC2009/DEC-86699. Mills, M. P., 2009, "C.P. Snow Was Wrong", Forbes, 6 November 2009, http://www. forbes.com/2009/11/06/cp-snow-cultures-personal-finance-investing-ideas-thomasedison.html. Fixson, S. K., 2009, "Teaching Innovation through Interdisciplinary Courses and Programmes in Product Design and Development: An Analysis at 16 US Schools," Creativity and Innovation Management, 18(3), 199-208. Brown, T., 2008, "Design Thinking," Harvard Business Review, 86(6), 84-92.
11
In the 1990’s, the Whitaker Foundation granted millions of dollars to help universities institutionalize biomedical engineering programs, see: http://bmes.seas.wustl.edu/WhitakerArchives/glance/history.html
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[8] [9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
Pahl, G. and Beitz, W., 1996, Engineering Design: A Systematic Approach, New York, Springer-Verlag. Frischknecht, B., Gonzalez, R., Papalambros, P. and Reid, T., 2009, "A Design Science Approach to Analytic Product Design", International Conference on Engineering Design, Stanford, CA, Paper No. 148. Yilmaz, S., Seifert, C. and Gonzalez, R., 2009, "Cognitive Heuristics in Design: Instructional Strategies to Increase Creativity in Idea Generation," Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing, in press. Daly, S., Yilmaz, S., Seifert, C. and Gonzalez, R., 2010, "Cognitive Heuristics Use in Engineering Design Ideation", Proceedings for the American Society of Engineering Education Conference, Louisville, KY, ASEE, under review. Frischknecht, B., Whitefoot, K., and Papalambros, P. Y., 2009, "Methods for Evaluating Suitability of Econometric Demand Models in Design for Market Systems", 2009 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences, San Diego, CA, ASME, Paper No. DETC2009-87165. Reid, T., Gonzalez, R., and Papalambros, P. Y., 2009, "A Methodology for Quantifying the Perceived Environmental Friendliness of Vehicle Silhouettes in Engineering Design", 2009 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences, San Diego, CA, ASME, Paper No. DETC2009-87095. MacDonald, E., Gonzalez, R., and Papalambros, P. Y., 2009, "Preference Inconsistency in Multidisciplinary Design Decision Making", ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, 131(3), 031009 (13pgs). Kelley, T., and Littman, J., 2005, The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Beating the Devil's Advocate & Driving Creativity throughout Your Organization, New York, Currency/Doubleday.
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