Don Norman: Design and the University 1 April 10, 2011

Design and the University: An Uneasy Fit

Don Norman
Nielsen Norman group
Palo Alto, California, USA
and
Department of Industrial Design, KAIST
Daejeon, S. Korea
norman@nngroup.com

Abstract—Design has transformed itself from a craft to a
sophisticated discipline that requires knowledge of
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics:
STEM. Unfortunately, the education of designers has not
kept up with the change. But design education within the
traditional university is hampered by the structure of the
university. The top universities of the world pride
themselves on hiring and promoting world-class specialists
(who must necessarily be deep and narrow) rather than
broad generalists who are typical of the best designers.
Design training still focuses upon craft skills, with
insufficient training in science and technology, business,
and economy. Most importantly, designers are more and
more acting like applied social scientists, while lacking
even elementary knowledge of these fields and of the
difficulties of making broad claims. The University and
and design need one another, but the need can be
addressed only if the University changes.1
Keywords-component; STEM, design, social science,
university education, specialist, generalist, craftsperson.
I am concerned about the weaknesses in our
educational system – not the ordinary problems that are
so frequently written about but rather that the emphasis
on specialization of the faculty can be counter to the
needs of society.
Engineers build things for society and people, but
nowhere in their curriculum is there any education about
these topics. No in-depth courses on the relevant
components of psychology, sociology, anthropology,
political science, economics, or the cognitive sciences.
Not even the applied areas of human factors and
ergonomics, human-computer interaction, and design.
The engineering fields are, as a whole, resistant to
learning about society and people.
Today the average citizen is probably most aware of
the role of computer chips, communication, and displays
in our everyday technology, but the interaction of
technology and people hardly is restricted to these
technologies. All the engineering disciplines, whether
civil or mechanical, industrial or electrical, chemical or
aeronautical, nautical or biomedical all impact people.
Where do engineers learn about the social impact of
their work? Within universities, the study of people and
society are usually absent from schools of engineering,
segregated into schools of social or behavioral sciences.
Paper prepared for the conference on Doctoral Education in Design,
Hong Kong, 22-25 May 2011.
The study of governments, politics, economics, and
business are elsewhere as well, yet engineering impacts
all of these areas. Although, students are often urged or
even required to take a few elementary, entry-level
courses in these areas, but they are usually broad survey
courses, ill suited to address the issues faced by
engineers.
Although engineering education usually does not
include fields outside of science or engineering, most
engineering undergraduate degrees in the United States
require approximately two years of general education
that gives students some breadth to their education. But
even this limited general education is usually absent
from design education.
Designers can be even more isolated than are
engineers, for the traditional undergraduate education in
design is of a craftsperson, entirely focused upon the
skills and techniques of the craft. Yes, engineers are
ignorant of non-engineering fields, but in my analyses of
the courses taken by design students, I find the same
pattern. Little science or engineering, little mathematics,
and little technology. Little psychology or other
behavioral and social sciences, little history, little
philosophy, and in fact, little or no courses outside the
narrow domains of design.
Modern design is a mélange of disciplines: art and
science, social sciences and engineering, manufacturing
and marketing. But design started out as a craft and still
maintains this tradition, especially in undergraduate
education. Design ought to be unique among the
professions, requiring the knowledge and expertise of
the physical and social sciences, art, the humanities, and
business. But design faces two major hurdles. The first
hurdle is to overcome its heritage, with many design
teachers actively antagonistic to modern technology, the
attempt to add science to design, and the kind of rigor
that the social sciences require before making claims of
efficacy. The second hurdle is that of the university,
which makes the hiring, and then the training of
generalists both difficult and also ill regarded by the
establishment.
To understand why this is, and more importantly
why this problem is so difficult to solve, it is necessary
to look at the organization of the education system.
Disciplines are deep and narrow. Real problems are
broad. So the practitioners must have broad, general
knowledge, while employing narrow deep specialists,
but the university departmental system hires and
Don Norman: Design and the University
promotes those with expertise in a narrow topic, not
broad general knowledge.
In the university, disciplines are divided into
departments and departments are organized into schools.
Students who wish to take courses across departments
often face difficulties, and courses that cut across
schools are even more difficult. Similarly, professors
often collaborate with colleagues in the same
department, less so with colleagues in different
departments and infrequently with colleagues in other
schools. What does this mean for design, where art in in
one school, the physical and biological sciences in
another, social science in yet another, engineering in still
another, and marketing of in the business school?
There are many reasons for the difficulties. As with
all complex problems, no single factor is responsible so
the solution requires analyzing education as a complex
system, with multiple factors that can be improved. But
first, let’s talk about the university.
I. THE CULPRIT IS THE UNIVERSITY
If I had to pinpoint one root cause of these complex
difficulties I would point my figure at the University.
The university started in Europe and taught many
practical disciplines. Over time, the search for pure
knowledge and more abstract thinking dominated.
Today, depth of knowledge gains the highest prestige.
Faculty are hired and promoted through rankings against
the world’s authorities in their chosen field. Quantitative
measurement and theories have come to dominate, with
the highest prestige given to disciplines that are the most
rigorous and quantifiable. "If you can't measure it, you
can't improve it," is the standard refrain. The result is the
quantification of everything, quite often losing the
essence of the phenomenon under study.
Depth of understanding leads to such a degree of
specialization that a specialist in one university
department often cannot understand the work of other
specialists in the same department.
What has been missed is real world experience. The
understanding of how political issues, society, culture,
and people's behavior, desires, and wants impact
systems. Business issues are critical for the success of
most practical endeavors, but these considerations are
seldom raised. Engineers tend not to like these issues for
to them, they are distractions from the technical
challenges.
But why are we training engineers who are both
ignorant and disdainful of the societal concerns and the
political and economic impact of their developments?
Shouldn't technology and engineering serve society?
How can it do so without a deeper understanding of the
complexity of modern society?
II. THE AREA RULE OF KNOWLEDGE
Over the years I have come to formulate an informal
hypothesis about knowledge that I call “the area rule of
knowledge.” The rule, which is obviously a great
simplification, states that the total knowledge a person
can have is reasonably constant so that great depth leads
to narrowness while great breadth leads to shallowness.
Let the knowledge in any domain be represented by a
vertical column. Specialists are usually experts in
2 April 10, 2011
limited number of columns, were the modal number is
probably close to one. A specialist is narrow and deep.
Generalists in a domain are wider and shallower: the
Area Rule states that the total area – breadth times width
– is constant. Generalists cut horizontal swatches across
the domains, so their knowledge is represented by
horizontal rectangles, which by the area rule means that
they know a little bit about a lot of topics.
Real problems require both specialists and
generalists. We need people expert in their domain, but
we also need people who know what domains are
required, how to stitch the knowledge from each of them
together, and how to translate the language and thought
patterns of one domain into another.
Ideally, the university ought to have both types of
people. But no, the promotion policies prevent this.
Promotion is usually given by worldwide recognition as
deep specialists and contributors to some topic domain.
Generalists fail the test. Promotion, remember, is
granted after polling the leading specialists about the
quality of the candidate’s contributions. Specialists will
always judge the generalist’s contribution to their
particular area to be shallow. They have no way of
accounting for the broadness of the knowledge.
Promotion committees seek the advice of world
authorities, but then frown at the weak letters. Spreading
one’s work across different disciplines means one is not
well known by any. Doing practical, applied work in the
university is equally damning, for practical results, no
matter how important or beneficial to society, do not
count as fundamental enhancements of knowledge,
which is the goal of the research university. Because
prestige flows to the highest ranked research universities
that ha, all universities try to emulate them, elevating the
desirability of fundamental research, research grants,
and deep, narrow expertise. As a result generalists
seldom get hired and then, seldom get promoted.
Note that this tension between breadth and depth is
known. The professional schools of the university are
quite aware of the need for breadth. Business schools
and designers are fond of talking about T-shaped
individuals who combine broad, general knowledge with
deep understanding of one specialty. I am sympathetic to
the approach, but deep knowledge of one discipline
hardly satisfies the need for knowledge across all
disciplines. The notion of alphabetically shaped
knowledge and people is badly flawed and therefore,
badly misleading. Nonetheless, the emphasis on Ts and
other shapes does indicate growing awareness of the
problem. Alas, it also seems to be yet another example
of solving a deep problem by naming it: saying we are
T-shaped does not solve the problem. My personal
opinion is that the world of specialized knowledge is
essential to progress, but too vast for any individual to
encompass. The broad generalist serves as the integrator,
pulling together the needed specialties and integrating
their knowledge into the common framework of the
product or service. We should reward total amount of
knowledge and total contribution to our understanding
and application of that knowledge. Generalists can have
just as much knowledge as specialists, just differently
distributed.
Don Norman: Design and the University
III. DESIGN AND STEM: NATURAL ALLIES
I am continuously impressed by the power of great
design. Pleasurable, exciting, effective. Great designers
transform the mundane, practical world of science and
technology into exciting, powerful components of life.
Design plays an essential role in the products and
services that we use, whether for business or pleasure,
home or factory, school or sport. But it is a role that is
not fully appreciated.
The STEM disciplines of science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics add to our knowledge and
understanding. But these are academic areas, not
practical ones. Although technology and engineering
have roots in practice, in the world of today's academia,
they are more about theory than practice. Although
knowledge and understanding of STEM topics is
essential, we also need the knowledge of how to
transform them into practical applications. To do that,
we need more disciplines. Two major missing
components are the social sciences and business: Social
sciences because technology exists to serve people and
society, so we must have experts in the impact of
technology and society involved; Business because the
practical realization requires an understanding of market
forces, costs, supply chains, and distribution.
The discipline that can serve as the appropriate
bridge between the knowledge of STEM and the
realization of practical results is design. Modern design
is actually modern applied social sciences, coupled with
a general knowledge of the many disciplines in the
STEM arena. Who else should be better prepared to
transform STEM knowledge into practice than design?
On top of this, through design's attention to real human
behavior through its field observational techniques and
other design research methods, design ensures that the
results will add value and depth to lives. The modern
designer is also sensitive to environmental
considerations.
IV. WHY DESIGN IS PART OF THE PROBLEM
I wish I could say that the discipline of design
represents the broad, general education so needed to
produce quality systems. Alas, the education received by
most designers is just as narrow, just as specialized as
that of the typical engineer. Indeed, there is virtually no
overlap in their training, despite the fact that in their
career they will often end up as collaborating partners.
Moreover, neither side incorporates the social sciences.
Design training is remarkable narrow. Designers
tend to be craftspeople or artists, often deliberately
ignorant of difficult, technical subjects involving
mathematics or science. Yes, I know: this broad
generalization is unfair to many. Nonetheless, I believe
it holds for the typical design student. Even at KAIST, a
technical university that only accepts students who rank
high in science and mathematics in high school, students
tell me they switched to design because they discovered
they did not enjoy mathematics or science.
Designers are ill equipped to handle the difficult
topics of society, but because they are unaware of their
ignorance, they launch bold new proposals to solve the
ailments of the world: often unoriginal, usually naïve,
and although often clever, doomed to fail. Why
3 April 10, 2011
unoriginal? Because the designers are unfamiliar with
the literature. Why naïve? Because they do not take into
account the complexities of the interlocked systems of
ecologies, technologies, economies, cultures, and
political realities. Why clever? Because at first sight,
they are indeed clever. Why doomed to fail? Because as
the American journalist H. L. Mencken once said, “For
every complex problem there is a simple solution. And it
is wrong.” Designers are proud of the simple solutions
they find.
V. WHY DESIGN IS PART OF THE SOLUTION
Real projects require broad, generalized thinking.
Universities train deep specialists, and so in the world of
practical accomplishments, graduates are often ill trained
to work with other disciplines, or even to know what
knowledge they need from these disciplines. In the
world of education problems are well formed, with well-
defined solutions. In the real world, problems are fuzzy,
ill-defined, where it is often not even apparent that there
is a problem, or even when it is agreed that a problem
exists, neither the approach nor the solution is known,
nor recognizable at first. Designers and economists call
these "wicked" problems. Wicked problems require
creative, right brain thinking, not the logical, systematic
left-brain thinking so prized by academics.
Much of what engineers develop goes into systems
meant to be used by people. Yet the scientific study of
people takes place in the social sciences, not the
engineering sciences. To many engineers, people are a
nuisance ("if it weren't for people," I have heard
engineers complain, "our systems would work much
better"). Designers are sensitive to the needs and
capabilities of people. That is one of the components of
modern design training.
The solution is to rethink education. Yes, we need
logical, deep-thinking specialists, but we also need
broad, creative thinking generalists. We need people
who can solve the "wicked" problems of real life, who
can work in broadly based, multidisciplinary teams with
engineers, social scientists, economists, and business
people.
VI. DESIGN NEEDS TO CHANGE
Design, the discipline, is ideally suited to help solve
these problems. Modern designers are problem solvers,
relishing complex, wicked problems, developing
creative, original solutions. They are broadly trained,
experienced in a wide variety of disciplines. But these
virtues come at a price: designers lack the necessary
depth in each area. Combine designers and engineers,
engineering training and design training, and we can
create the teams of people needed to solve the problems
of the 21st century. Systems problems, integrating
across disciplines, constrained by cost and existing
solutions, psychology, sociology, and culture, political
differences, and business needs. This is the real world:
we need to rethink education to address it.
VII. ENGINEERING NEEDS TO CHANGE
Engineers tend not to think of the societal
consequences of their designs: that is left to the business
people and politicians, often thought of as the enemy.
Don Norman: Design and the University
They seldom consider the difficulty of installation,
maintenance or usage, and they attribute accidents and
injuries to human error: a failure to follow procedure, or
to read the instructions. Engineers are ill equipped to
know if their procedures are usable, if they make
economic sense, or if the equipment is so poorly
designed from a human point of view that complex
instructions are required.
Is it any wonder that we have trouble with our
technology? That our infrastructure is difficult to
maintain? That the environmental impact is large? That
there are many accidents, destruction of property,
injuries and deaths in the installation, maintenance, and
use of our technologies? That huge amounts of time,
resources, and money are lost each year to the
confusions that result from poorly conceived interactions
with people, at all stages of the technology? These
deficiencies are invariably blamed on human error
whereas the in fact are due to poor design that does not
take into account how people actually operate and
behave. Engineers design for the benefit of people
without understanding people: engineers need to learn
about and cooperate with the professions that do
understand these issues.
In the design of equipment, the human factors and
ergonomics communities along with the human-
computer interaction community has helped refine the
operation of complex equipment such as aircraft, mining
equipment, and heavy machinery. In the arena of
computers, the field of Human-Computer Interaction
(HCI) flourishes in industry, making great strides in the
development of usable, effective, and enjoyable
technology. But in academia, HCI has withered away.
Once prevalent in Psychology and Computer Science
departments, it is now almost entirely absent from
psychology and enjoys only a token presence in most
computer science departments, although the computer
science professional society, ACM, has Computer
Human Interaction (CHI) as one of its largest and most
popular special interest groups.
Mechanical engineering has a section on user-
centered design in their professional society ASME, but
their presence within departments is rare.
While Computer Science, Industrial Engineering,
and Mechanical Engineering are at least aware of the
human side of their profession, they tend to deny it full
academic status because it represents the soft, mushy
side of engineering, where formal mathematical models
are rare. But the other areas within engineering are not
even aware of any need to consider the role of humans
in the design of their systems. Civil and electrical
engineering, to take two examples, are responsible for
much of the infrastructure of the world, but these fields
pride themselves on mathematical rigor, on optimization
algorithms, and on the engineering sophistication of
their works. People, if considered at all, are mainly
thought to be a nuisance.
VIII. WHY THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
NEED TO CHANGE
Modern design is often applied social sciences.
Designers are manipulating and deliberately inducing
change in human, group, and societal behavior. But they
4 April 10, 2011
are woefully ignorant of these fields. They know neither
of the extensive analyses that have been done nor of the
methodological issues that these workers face in being
able to make valid inferences and statements about
complex human and social behavior in real, complex
environments. As a result, the design community boldly
goes forth, makes a few observations, proclaims some
clever deduction, invokes a novel principle, and then
designs something that they proclaim will change
behavior or solve some long-existing problem. They
have little idea of the nature of evidence required to
make such a case and little patience for those who try to
explain it to them.
The obvious solution is to enlist the social scientists
into the fray, asking for their help in teaching the
designers and in participating in design exercises. The
literature of the social and behavioral sciences is rich
with useful information, but packed into a dense,
relatively unintelligible format that makes it difficult to
extract useful information. Moreover, the scientific bias
toward extreme accuracy prevents the information from
being distilled into “good enough” principles that could
be applied.
Social scientists are in love with the word “science.”
On the whole (with some notable exceptions), they are
uninterested in practical applications. They believe the
real world is too uncontrolled to be studied. They dislike
the simplification of their work that is required to make
it applicable, even though the simplification can still be
immensely valuable. Finally, if they start doing applied
work, they rightly fear they will not be promoted.
Social science needs to change. Psychology and the
cognitive sciences have come the closest to
understanding this, especially in the field of human-
computer interaction, but this still remains an exception,
even within the field of psychology. We need a
discipline of applied social science, one that works
closely with engineering and design, combining their
knowledge and developing tools, models, and
procedures for integration across the disciplines.
IX. WE ALL NEED TO CHANGE
Universities need to change. Not only are they too
narrow, but they safeguard the disciplinary walls that
inhibit cross-fertilization. Professors lack practical
experience and usually feel that such experience is
inferior in value to theoretical and research skills. So
practice is not rewarded. Only publications in refereed,
research-based journals are recognized for promotion.
In industry, almost all work is done cooperatively, in
teams that cut across disciplines. In the university,
students study alone, with courses that are primarily
focused upon a single discipline. This needs to change.
Students and faculty should work more in groups. We
need to teach cooperation, not competition. This would
require changes to the way students are judged. When
students are judged for their individual work and
penalized for joint work (or for asking for help), it
encourages competition and discourages cooperation.
Similarly, when grades are given “on the curve,” so that
there is a fixed percentage of students at each grade
level, it turns grading into a zero-sum game, where one
student’s gain is at another’s expense, once again
Don Norman: Design and the University 5 April 10, 2011

encouraging competition and discouraging cooperation. XI. ACKNOWLEDGMENT

But real, practical problems cut across disciplines, so no
one person can solve them. Real problems require Earlier drafts of my thoughts on these issues have
cooperation and collaboration. This is where design has been distributed in several different venues, including an
its strengths, but this mode of work is discouraged by essay for my column in the online design journal,
university practices. core77.com.
The separation of the social and behavioral sciences
from engineering is most unfortunate: they need one
another. But the social and behavioral sciences shun
applications except to proclaim in incredible naiveté the
fanciful applications of their work, without actually
trying to implement the applications. And the
engineering disciplines ignore the human factor, even
though, in theory, engineering builds and designs for
human use and benefit.
What role do the Arts play in this? Today, education
in the arts is thought to be an interesting sideline for
scientists and engineers. Many Deans have told me how
impressed they are with the musical, artistic, or acting
abilities of their students, but they assume that these
activities are sidelines to the technical domain. Of
course, we get the other reaction as well. Designers who
are trained in art departments might also have good
technical knowledge, but this too is often treated as an
interesting sideline.
What would it take to cause the educational system
to realize that an equal, substantive mix of knowledge
across schools and disciplines is fundamental to creative
and professional success?
Design can be the bridge that ties these disciplines
together. In this modern world of technically enabled
products that use novel materials, electronic sensors and
electromechanical actuators, microprocessors and
ubiquitous networking, designers are applied social
scientists, applied scientists, and applied artists. In fact,
given the movements of the engineering disciplines
toward an emphasis upon the underlying science base
rather than practical applications, designers are also
applied engineers, applied social scientists, and applied
artists.
Designers need to understand more about technology
more about human and social systems, and as a result,
more about the subtle biases that pervade their attempts
to form conclusions and the need for well-designed
studies with attention to statistical analyses. They need
to understand business well enough to work closely with
managers and marketing divisions, along with engineers.
X. WHY THE SOLUTION WILL BE DIFFICULT
Today, to become a skilled designer, engineer,
scientist, or artist takes may years: years of schooling
followed by years of practical experience. How could
one possibly become knowledgeable in the multiple
disciplines required for the practice of modern
engineering or design? And given the existing state of
education, who would teach such courses?
The university and design need one another, but the
need can be addressed only if both design and the
University change together.