Remote Design Education
Many things can be taught via distance learning: accounting, literature, programming, some of the sciences. But design isn’t one of them.
Why? Because the best design programs are studio programs. They rely on a deep interplay between student (apprentice), teacher (master), and other students. This interplay is, I feel, impossible to replicate remotely with our current level of technology.
Design cannot be taught by books or lectures alone. You can learn about design through lectures and books, but you won’t learn design. And I say this as the author of two design books. Design can only be learned by doing, by making. And in an academic setting, that means studio work, studio work that is critiqued by professors. Critiques are best when the participants are in the same physical space, communicating freely, often working directly with or on the artifact being discussed to improve it.
This, of course, leads to a dilemma for those who don’t live near a design school, especially for specialized disciplines like interaction design. Do you do what I and some of my classmates did when we went to Carnegie Mellon and move your family to where the school is? Or commute from a distant city? These are hard choices.
University training, by the way, does not guarantee that you will be a good designer. Only that you are university trained, which makes the probability of your being a good designer higher. Some very successful designers have had no formal training whatsoever.
How then, does one become better trained without formal education? One way is to engage in projects with oversight/critique from a mentor. These can be professional projects or they can be personal projects. This works especially well if the project is public. The market, users, and outside observers will all offer critiques that will improve your design, as will (hopefully) your mentor. (Finding a mentor is, of course, another challenge.)
The second way is via conferences. A good conference like Interaction09, UX Week, UX Intensive, Web Directions, or UX London (i.e. conferences with hands-on workshops) can teach you a lot in a short amount of time.
Are either of these things a replacement for a formal design education? No. But they’re better than distance design schooling, which is a little like learning Guitar Hero instead of learning the guitar.
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13 Comments
Couldn’t disagree more!
There are some excellent distance learning courses in design, and research-based courses that don’t involve any studio-based learning or teaching (the UK’s Open University, for example, runs some very good design courses and is a world leader in design research). And there are some dreadful courses that are studio based.
The studio has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the learning or the teaching. The teaching does. And the application of the learner. And what they do with that knowledge. And where they take it, to create new knowledge.
I’ve taught design via instant messaging, I’ve taught it in a cafe, in a portakabin, and in a bar. I’ve even taught it on a bus. I’ve seen design teaching and learning take place across continents via video conferencing, and I’ve seen it happen through podcasts and through books.
It can happen anywhere. And it doesn’t necessarily require making. In fact, I think the best lessons I’ve ever been involved with, as a participant or as an observer, have been entirely discussion-based.
And being a self-taught designer myself, who gained a degree and a masters in entirely “unrelated” disciplines via distance learning, both of which made me an infinitely better designer and thinker, it’s going to be difficult to convince me that there is only one way to learn design. Indeed I think the biggest threat to design education is the insistence that it can only happen in a studio at the hands of a master. Maybe in the 19th century, but not in the 21st.
Design teaching is about creativity, among other things – so we have to be creative about how we teach, and understand that learners learn in many, many different ways. And that means being open to new possibilities, new potential and the fact that the world is changing. We can’t teach, for example, user centred design without thinking about learner centred teaching. And that means being prepared to give up the “stage” of the studio and the crit (which, incidentally, is possibly the single worst way of teaching design, as much research has shown).
Forcing someone to sit in a studio, listening to an ‘expert’, and thinking that somehow that inherently equals a better learning experience than being in a library reading about the latest research in to, say, how design has moved healthcare forwards, or having a conversation down the pub with friends about how an experience at the bank that day made them mad, or Twittering with someone to share a link (which is how I came here – I’m @jbaldwin), makes little sense. To me it’s not a very “designerly” way of thinking about design education!
Being a designer is not about learning to make or sitting behind a desk. Design can be learned outwith a workshop or a studio, the key is learning to think.
I recently spent the summer working for DesignThinkers in Amsterdam. They don’t believe in designers sitting behind desks in an office or a studio, because this doesn’t reflect reality.
John Thackara also echoed this opinion when I met him a few months ago, claiming
design schools should be closed down. Students should not be in a confined space learning design, they need to get out more. Acquire skills and get into the world and practice it!
The ‘critique’ you have described would be ideal. But realistically this is rarely the way critiques happen. Infact, in undergraduate design courses be assured it is most probably the opposite. Critiques are subjective and rarely offer valuable feedback!
Design can be taught remotely for some courses & topics, but it takes much time and effort on both the Professor and the students. With use of video, digital cameras, online chats, video conferencing or video chat, blogging, conference calls, and a decent group site for hosting the education modules, lessons, and materials. I short, by keeping the human-connection combined with technology it can be done. A remote online-only course without talking, sharing, collaborating and ideating will not be as successful for learning. Teaching remotely is very different from teaching in a classroom and therefore the Professor and Institution need to adapt and supply the necessary tools and materials to make it work.
There are a few things I don’t think learning design remotely can accomplish. First, it cannot replicate group work in the same way: being face to face. Second, it cannot instill within you the culture of an environment. Third, it cannot simultaneously expose you to multiple disciplines.
There’s something to the saying: “I guess you had to be there.”
Rachel and Jamin – the problem is that the evidence shows otherwise.
Group work can actually be enhanced by working remotely. It happens in industry all the time!
And teaching design remotely often takes *less* time because as research has shown a lot of the time spent teaching “face to face” is actually redundant. Look up Cal Swann’s classic paper on “Sitting with Nellie” for a good examination of why the one-to-one teaching so many people think is excellent is actually quite the opposite.
Remote teaching of design doesn’t actually need expensive equipment. A lot of teaching and learning in UK colleges is remote by default – the students work at home, or in each other’s homes, and not in a studio…
I don’t believe the research or its findings. And apparently neither do any first tier design schools, because none of them to my knowledge teach design classes remotely. Not RCA, RISD, Cranbrook, ID, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, etc etc.
We’ll have to agree to disagree here Dan. I agree that design is something that requires learning through doing, but online doesn’t preclude that. In fact most learning in most subjects requires learning through doing at some point.
By the way Omnium worked with the RCA to set up an online environment for them to work in, so they have been doing this. But it’s also a loaded argument in any case – those institutions have a vested financial interest in getting “bums on seats”. Don’t underestimate the influence that the financials and personal/departmental politics have on the direction of education. The pressure of those usually outweighs any principles, sadly.
Dan – I mentioned the Open University to you – a leading university in the design field in the UK. It delivers several design courses successfully via distance learning and annually comes no. 1 for student satisfaction and the quality of its teaching.
The RCA does, to my knowledge, operate a distance learning option (it only teaches postgraduate courses, so it would have to), as do Goldsmiths and the University of the Arts, London… so there’s three for you!
As for not believing the research or its findings – erm, do you think we just make it up?
I said top tier schools. None of those with the exception of RCA would I put in that category. You can find all kinds of schools doing all kinds of shoddy nonsense.
As for lying with research, please see my talk Lying with Design Research. In short: yes, research can be made up. Should I trust soft academic research on a challenging topic on which they have a vested interest or decades of design instruction? Show me just one top designer who was taught studio courses online.
In closing (because I’ve said everything I feel I need to say on this topic), I’m not an educator (anymore), only a designer. My knowledge is drawn from what I know firsthand from my own teaching and as a student in studio classes combined with what I know about the limitations of existing technology. Disagree with me all you want, but I’m 100% certain that what I learned and taught in design school could not have been as effectively taught online, or with the students not co-located with the professors. And I think a majority of people who had good design educations would agree with me.
I think the disconnect here is that one side believes design involves thinking + doing + making, while the other side believes that thinking is enough. We’re talking about two different things.
If you take the position that design is only about thinking (design thinking!), I can see how design might be taught remotely. With enough technology it’s possible to replicate a lecture in virtual space, and a lecture or conversation is sufficient to teach thinking.
But if design also involves making– well that’s a tougher nut to crack. I don’t believe thinking and making (and doing) can be divorced quite as easily as Jonathan and Lauren assert. The resulting design is impoverished. You’re left with fantastic ideas but an inability to communicate them with authority.
If we include making in our conception of design (as I and anyone from Carnegie Mellon will demand) then studio instruction is necessary. I don’t believe that technology can mediate studio sessions that live up to their physical counterparts. Even if the formal aspects could be replicated I’m not convinced that the serendipity or cross-pollination of a studio environment could be translated to a virtual space.
A good example of the kind of formal interaction permitted by design studios is included in Daniel Schon’s book The Reflective Practitioner.
Interesting points all, a great discussion! My twopenneth: I’ve always been a big fan of IDEO’s mantra, ‘build to think’. Hands, eyes, brains and experiences in the physical world are, in my experience, intimately connected, and that’s as true for designers of tables as it is for UX/Service practitioners. The idea of ‘prototyping’, or learning through the experience of trying to make something work good enough, is integral to the idea of design, and I just don’t see how you can learn that without getting your hands dirty in a workshop/studio together with other more experienced designers/tutors.
On top of the kinaestheic value of a hands on education, I’m also a firm believer that great design (generally) happens in teams, and remote working just doesn’t work for highly collaborative phases of projects – I need to have conversations surrounded by the ‘stuff’ I’m working on. Sure, for detailed delivery stuff you can work over the internet.
Thus, because prototyping and team work (two of the core ingredients of design practice) can’t really happen without getting hands on in a group (!) I really don’t see how you can teach it (well) over the web.
Nick said: “None of those [Goldsmiths, University of the Arts, London, Open University] with the exception of RCA would I put in that category. You can find all kinds of schools doing all kinds of shoddy nonsense.”
Ooookaay I think it’s time to step away from this discussion if you think Goldsmiths is “shoddy”. I’m glad I didn’t mention my own institution as I’d have had to challenge you to a duel.
Jeff said:
“I think the disconnect here is that one side believes design involves thinking + doing + making, while the other side believes that thinking is enough. We’re talking about two different things.”
No I don’t think it’s right to characterise it in that way. I teach design *making* as well as thinking (I don’t see the two as separate – true craftsmanship derives from thinking and reflecting).
And you definitely can teach the “making* side of things remotely, because it is being done. Does teaching in a studio guarantee good learning? Of course not.
You say Lauren and I assert that design that thinking and doing can be divorced. Actually we don’t. Thinking is doing.
But you also, in turn, assert that the resulting design is in some way impoverished. Please visit Lauren’s web site and you’ll see that her design work is far from impoverished. It is, in fact, rather exciting.
What I have attempted to do is say simply that design education is not easy. It isn’t a matter of one way of teaching and, considering that we claim to be a discipline that is innovative, forward thinking and creative, it is rather odd that when it comes to our own discipline we are anything but. There are examples of creative, innovative teaching in design worldwide. But this blog post seems either dismissive of those, or refuses to even investigate them before passing judgement. That, to me, is rather insulting. And blinkered.
There’s a simple answer to this problem: are there any examples of design being taught successfully without using traditional apprentice/master techniques? The answer is yes. I’ve mentioned some places that do it but apparently they’re “shoddy” so there you go. I bow to the expertise on display in that comment which clearly demonstrates that you don’t need to think before typing.
Nick: you’re absolutely right about prototyping – but why does it have to be taught or done in a studio at the hands of a master? The best learning is experiential – that, I think, is what you’re saying. But if you’re developing a service then surely the prototyping would be happening in the community/hospital/business? If you’re developing an understanding of how a client sees their brand, why would you be in a studio instead of in among their staff?
A colleague of mine gave a lecture to my first year students and simply *mentioned* prototyping as an aside in a talk about her practice as a jeweller. Suddenly students of all disciplines were doing it. They weren’t taught it, they were exposed to the concept and explored it further. The “teaching” (the lecture) took place in a traditional lecture theatre. But the “learning” (the experiential stuff you’re talking about, quite rightly) which happened in lots of places including the studio, sure, but also the canteen, the corridor, their shared homes, their workplaces, in conversations, in sketch books and note books…
Design schools and courses need to acknowledge that learning requires stimulus and opportunity. Insisting that creativity can only occur in a studio is simply wrong.
This article isn’t about doing/making, but a method of teaching and a place. Again I go back to the Open University model. Students on their courses do not attend lectures, or sit in a studio. But they prototype, they make, they sketch. They do it at home, or at work, in a shed, or at the kitchen table… and the results are good. They do collaborate with other students. They do work in teams. Often, indeed, they are working with teams in their jobs as they are studying part time.
The issue here is maybe one that is common, and I’ve seen it in many universities and colleges: we think that what worked for us must work for everyone. If the conversation is dominated by people who loved being in the studio, that’s what they think it should be like for everyone. Or if people are taking part who love being the teacher who wanders the aisles looking for a student to impress with their knowledge, then they will defend that way of teaching till the cows come home because it’s their “stage”. There’s a certain romance of the atelier.
But the reality is, many students hate the studio. They find it an oppressive place to work, or a noisy place. They find themselves being overlooked by tutors who hover around their favourites, or simply find that “studio hours” don’t suit the reality of modern students’ lives. They need more flexibility in the way design is taught and learned and we, as supposedly creative people, should be able to provide that.
If you’ve got a group of five students, then why can’t the teaching happen on a few sofas over coffee? If a student has an idea at home, why can’t they email me or Skype me in the hope I have time to help? (I helped a student work out a conceptual model for a service via email last month. No studio was harmed in the making of that) Why force students to sit at a desk and wait for the teacher to come and sit next to them and tell them what they should be doing?
Good teaching and good learning can happen anywhere, and not (looking at Dan here), just in “top tier” schools.
The thing that isn’t being addressed in this conversation is what are the factors, other than the location, that contribute to those two things?
“I’m 100% certain that what I learned and taught in design school could not have been as effectively taught online” – that’s a circular argument though.
What you learned in design school studio was developed to be taught in a design studio.
That’s very different from saying design can’t be taught online. The corollary of what you are saying is also that what people learn in online courses can’t be learned in the studio (collaboration with people 10,000km away in a different culture, for example). I just don’t think the points you are making in your arguments stack up – you’re doing the apple and oranges switch.
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