Article Notes: Trust me, I'm a doctor.

http://www.core77.com/posts/18204/Thinking-of-doing-a-design-PhD-Trust-me-Im-a-doctor

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Master’s still considered the terminal degree in design

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4 Common Reasons suggested

1. I don’t know what I want to do for a career yet. 
2. I’m really interested in this subject and want to go deeper with it 
3. Nobody has researched/written about this area yet
4. I want to do a PhD, but I don’t like writing much

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"A PhD is a dangerous drug for procrastinators."

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be prepared to be very bored by it after five years.

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you will find many texts and ideas almost identical to your own.

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"I have learned more about the creative process through writing than I have through designing and the act of putting your thoughts down in a structured text does a lot to structure your thinking."

This fits perfectly with my hypothesis that english majors are amongst the most interesting and compelling designers. They learn how to think through language and can bring that into design. The two are very related.

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"As learners we are so used to deferring to a higher authority on a subject it is rather eerie when you realise you are the authority on the subject."

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"understanding those things in your own head is different from explaining them carefully to others.” 

I can absolutely relate to that...

Article Notes: What is a PhD in HCI?

Craig Johnson, Glasgow University

http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~johnson/papers/phd.html

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Many people challenge the idea that there is a 'theory of HCI' (Dowell and Long, 1989)

This view argues that we are part of a craft discipline.

I should learn about this concept of  a “craft discipline” and challenge this idea back if possible (or agree with it!)

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For instance, an academic interpretation of this criteria might centre upon the strengths and weaknesses of the Seeheim model. A commercial view might focus instead upon the cost-effectiveness of VisualBasicTM compared to other implementation platforms.

There’s a lot in that I did not understand. I should know what those things are and how this difference is germane…

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The toy problems and limited case studies that are used to analyse user interface toolkits and design methodologies bear little relationship to the ill-defined and poorly structured problems that frustrate the commercial development of real-world interfaces. Again, such applications cannot easily be written up for presentation during PhD vivas.

Maybe this is a valid argument for why PhD’s should be in relationship to a company when possible?? Google, ProQuest, Tableau, Microsoft, Adobe?

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References to follow

Jean Gasen, Support for HCI Educators: A View from the Trenches. In M. Kirby, A.Dix and J. Finlay (eds.), People and Computers X, pages 15-20. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995.

J. Dowell and J. Long, Towards A Conception For An Engineering Discipline Of Human Factors, Ergonomics,(32)11:1513-1535, 1989. 

A Survey of Design Research

Yesterday I initiated a research initiative on my quest to understand the world of the PhD. My goal for the initiative is to identify the gamut of research currently taking place in the design field. This is easier said than done. Design is as formal of a discipline as English or chemistry. Instead, it's a disparate discipline that find itself scattered into other programs. Part of my research involves creating a working definition of design, finding the programs that are offering PhD programs in it, and investigating the research that's happening. It's a literature review of sorts, more like a scavenger hunt for correlating programs.

My initial strategy is to find all the PhD programs that exist, evaluate their offerings for design research, and then dive deeply into the research currently taking place, as well as discover any research that has been published in the past. In terms of planning, I've allotted 2 weeks to decide on questions, embark on information gathering, and structure out the literature review. That's not a lot of time, however, the goal is not to get a perfectly prepared list, but instead to identify what places to look and define methods to prioritize my investigation. I am time boxing the event to keep it from becoming a nebulous question that never progresses. I established 20 initial questions to find answers to.

My goal is to define the best programs for researching design in context to social impact. There are other types degrees outside of the PhD, but my interest is in seeing the ways a PhD actually fits within the practice of design currently. I hope to investigate MA,MFA, and even MBA programs with similar intents, but my first pass will be on PhD programs.