Article Title: Design’s Inherent Interdisciplinarity
Link to pdf: Davis_interdisciplinary
- Design can increase problem solving and cognitive ability
- High-skill jobs require “knowing how to learn,” a skill that traverses boundaries
- Students need to communicate in verbal, visual and computational languages (1)
- Attempts toward integration in grade schools are usually shallow and do not take “visual thinking” as a tool, but rather as a “gift” that cannot be taught. Usually, artistic “process” is equated with technique, not thought.
- In such cases, collaboration is limited to subject matter, skill or vehicle for presentation, and excludes utilizing “visual thinking”.
- Students who are discipline-schooled usually need to be “retrained” by their employers to consider multiple angles of the professional problem and become resourceful in an interdisciplinary kind of way.
- The goal is to focus on cognitive skill, and not on fact-learning.
Why is design (so well suited to) interdisciplinary (study)?
- Design problems are “situated”; they have clear contexts that can be used as springboards for research.
- Design problems relate to the “real-world”. They’re not totally artificial.
- Design problems are not just about the problem at hand. They are also about “ways of knowing”.
- Design mockups are very close to the real thing, and can be easily tested.
- Design is analytical and synthetical
- Architect Christopher Alexander says: Design is the goodness of fit between form and context.
- Design is systems-based; It needs to exist in a relationship of users and stakeholders. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
- Design often requires interdisciplinary teams, and as such teaches us about planning and collaborating and building a common vision.
- Gives example of elementary students (Hawthorne Elementary) improving a piece of land by engaging all kinds of disciplines in a multi-year process. Interdisciplinary approach allows students to model real-world problem solving in a respectful and productive way.
- Design experiences as tools for integration
- Art teachers need to be educated about design more, while still in school. That way they can use it as a cross-disciplinary tool.