Session Organizer: Al Wasco, Cuyahoga Community College.
Give a student a computer and he will design for a day...
De Angela L. Duff, University of the Arts
Teaching Design, Teaching Technology
Laura Franz, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Software ≠ Interaction Design
Jason A. Tselentis, University of North Carolina Charlotte | | Paper
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As a fulltime faculty member teaching Visual Communication & Design at a community college, I often hear my colleagues at the university level say “we teach design, not software.” This is often followed by “… if students want to learn software they can go to a community college.” I’ll admit that this gets my hackles up, since it seems to imply that what we do is less significant. But defensiveness aside, let’s think about the difference between these two approaches.
Teaching “design, not software” made perfect sense when designers used tools like Rapidograph pens, markers, and rub-down letters. Tools are dumb. They are extensions of our hands. They do only what we make them do: a pen makes a line when and where you move it. Back then design education included a class or two in “studio skills” which more than satisfied the need to learn about tools.
Today’s “tools” are hugely different. The combination of computer + software that’s now virtually indispensable to designers offers a wider range of possibilities with far more nuanced variations than older tools. Photoshop, for example, provides a staggering choice of brush sizes and effects, far more than any illustrator could fit in their jar of brushes. In the area of digital media, Flash and FinalCut offer even a beginner a huge range of options and effects to explore that would be difficult to even consider with older versions of the technology, let alone traditional film. While that doesn’t necessarily make for better design, it does mean it’s time we rethink our view of the relationship between computer + software and designer.
One possibility is to consider the relationship as similar to performer + instrument. Without the instrument there is no music. Learning to play is an integral part of learning music. Musicians learn music theory, but they spend much of their time learning how to play their instrument. Perhaps design educators should look to music education as a source of inspiration for adapting to teaching digital media.
A second possibility is that computer + software has created a new relationship that’s even more intertwined than performer + instrument. Interactive media, most notably on the web, has moved further into what the AIGA calls “experience design” where the goal is to create an environment for people to work/play in. Evidence of this is much more extensive use of scripting (Flash Actionscript, Javascript) and dynamic websites using PHP, Ajax, etc. to create possibilities for much richer user involvement than previously possible. The goal is no longer to simply present information as one does in print, but to create information spaces for people to explore.
If this relationship in fact is the new reality, to talk about teaching “design, not software” is not only outdated but impossible. We do students a great disservice by attempting to separate the two. We should be exploring ways to integrate learning technology with exploring the design possibilities it presents, not continuing to deny the need for such integration.
Of course this question is very much open to debate. I hope that this panel can stimulate such a debate.
