Summer 2009, 18 students completed the master’s mid career programme in design. With their master dissertations, the new graduates contribute to the academic qualification of the design discipline. That was the clear verdict from one of the external examiners at the final oral defence of the dissertations, Professor Halina Dunin-Woyseth. She considered it an essential advantage that the dissertations are based on design practice, and that they draw on academic tools to enrich and clarify the understanding of practice.

By Mads Nygaard Folkmann

During their two years of part time studies for the master’s degree in design, the students have grappled with a wide range of issues concerning the design profession, both in the intensive retreats with lectures and in their work with independent papers, culminating in a 50-page thesis on a topic of the student’s own choice.

Rooted in Practice

Many of the topics for the dissertations lie close to the students’ own practice experience. Among the issues addressed are design processes, sensuous and emotional aspects of design, user involvement, branding, and aesthetics in design. The students’ projects cover a wide field, including industrial design, textile design and graphic design.

The external examiners Halina Dunin-Woyseth, a professor at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway, as well as a professor of design theory at Hogeschool voor Wetenschap & Kunst, Sint-Lucas School of Architecture, Belgium, and Tore Kristensen, a professor at the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, heaped praise on the graduates. In particular, they praised the ambition of qualifying the design discipline based on the discipline’s own practice.
“The crucial strength of this programme is that the students are working from their own design practice,” Halina Dunin-Woyseth explained. “They don’t take an outside perspective of design but work from an understanding based on practice, which is then enriched and clarified through some of the academic tools that the programme offers. I am very impressed. Several of the projects demonstrate that the students have attained a level that qualifies them to embark directly on Ph.D. studies.”

Tacit Knowledge Articulated

A key component of the programme is making designers more aware of what actually happens in the design process. High on the agenda in design research is the effort to bring out the designers’ tacit knowledge – the knowledge that is tied to a particular practice and type of act; the sort of things one normally simply does.

Several of the master dissertations have addressed this issue. They have taken it beyond simply articulating and increasing awareness on a general level and have addressed the issue in relation to specific types of design.

Graphic Designers’ Competencies

Thus, in his dissertation Undersøgelse af den grafiske designers designproces (Examining the Graphic Designer’s Design Process) Hans Christian Asmussen has interviewed graphic designers.
“My motivation for focusing on graphic designers – apart from the fact that I’m a graphic designer myself – was the lack of empirical research describing the graphic designer’s working process,” says Hans Christian Asmussen.
“The studies that exist about designers’ work and methods typically look at architects or product designers.”

Process. In an attempt to describe graphics designers’ working process, Hans Christian Asmussen has devised a model that is goal-oriented but leaves room for ongoing reflection. Hans Christian Asmussen, himself a graphic designer, points out that graphic designers are result-oriented and often work under time pressure. With its spiral shape the model illustrates how the decision space related to a design solution is constantly narrowed. Design: Hans Christian Asmussen

Based on existing theories about design processes, Hans Christian Asmussen has developed a series of models that he has then tested on graphic designers.
“My question was whether they would recognise their own approach to design work in the models,” he explains.
“How do they work? The interesting thing is that I wound up with a fairly clear-cut result. The vast majority picked a model that is an interpretation of the theorist Donald Schön’s concept of ‘reflection-in-action’, that is to say that reflection on one’s work takes place during the working process. The model specifies that one works simultaneously and within the framework of an overall reflection-in-action with many small processes of reflection-in-action,” Hans Christian Asmussen explains.

The model describes a working process that implies directed control as well as latitude for doubt and questions.
“Subsequently, I used my findings to propose a new model that thematises the graphic designer’s working process in a field of tension between goal orientation and constant reflection. The model is spiral-shaped in order to illustrate the constant narrowing of the decision space,” says Hans Christian Asmussen.

Space and ambience. Textile designer Helle Graabæk set out to demonstrate how the use of materials, colours, ornamentation and the relationship between soft and hard surfaces can create a particular ambience in a room or space. In an extensive analysis of Tietgen Student Hall in Copenhagen she demonstrates how the textile designer’s professional competences provide a good basis for shaping ambience – for example, it has a surprising effect when a super-graphic (super-size graphic) element is used on a bathroom door. Design: Aggebo & Henriksen Photo: Helle Graabæk

Subjective Sensations

In her dissertation Atmosfæren, Tietgenkollegiet og tekstildesigneren (Ambience, Tietgen Student Hall and the textile designer), textile designer Helle Graabæk also addresses the designer’s particular competencies.
“I am essentially interested in space and in the way a space affects the people in it,” she says.
“Often, the effects of a space or a room are not examined from a bodily perspective. By applying a set of concepts about body space and ambience articulated by the German aesthetics theorist Gernot Böhme I am able to take a perspective of space that revolves around sensory perceptions and the body.”

Helle Graabæk associates the bodily perspective with a textile designer’s ability to use the relationship between soft and hard surfaces, materials and colours to create a certain ambience and effect in relation to the person experiencing a room.
“Textile designers display a particular professional competence in their choices, processing and awareness of the use of textile materials as well as in their in-depth work with texture, ornamentation, colours and the sensuous encounter between a user and a surface,” Helle Graabæk explains.
“Based on an analysis of the textile designers Aggebo & Henriksen’s contributions to the Tietgen Student Hall on the island of Amager by Copenhagen, Denmark I argue that the textile designer’s professional competence is a suitable basis for the efforts to shape ambience in space and architecture,” she concludes.

User-Centred Design

In her dissertation Patienten som emotionel forbruger (The Patient as an Emotional Consumer) industrial designer Lisbeth Kamstrup-Holm looks at the design of medical equipment and a set of contemporary design theories in order to understand and include the user in the design process.

Design method . In her studies of the emotional consumer in relation to the design of medical equipment industrial designer Lisbeth Kamstrup-Holm has developed a set of conversation cards. The respondents were asked to state their initial reaction and talk about the associations sparked by the card. For example, there was a card with the text “The day I received my diagnosis”. The respondent might also be asked to discuss his or her values in the context of a picture of a baby. Photo: Lisbeth Kamstrup-Holm.

It is Lisbeth Kamstrup-Holm’s point that today’s consumers rely heavily on emotional values in choosing products, but that this is rarely the focal point in the design of medical equipment.
“In the design of medical equipment, functionality and user-friendliness are essential, but the emotional relationship to the products is overlooked,” says Lisbeth Kamstrup-Holm.

Therefore, Lisbeth Kamstrup-Holm has applied design tools to expand her understanding of the user.
“With design theorists Patrick Jordan and Donald A. Norman as my point of departure I have developed a method with a number of conversation cards and a thing-finder exercise to map the role and value of the emotional aspect for the user. With these tools I am able to capture the emotions that are so essential for the patient and make sure they are incorporated into the products.”

The dissertation points to a development potential in the medical equipment industry that Lisbeth Kamstrup-Holm is going to bring back to her job at Novo Nordisk.
“Through meetings with an ostomy patient and a person with diabetes and analyses of the products they use I have discovered what I consider shortcomings in the products’ emotional qualities,” she says.
“We can get better at designing products that are functionally and emotionally appealing to the patients, and which thus help represent them as whole persons. This is an area where I see a development potential,” says Lisbeth Kamstrup-Holm.

Master of Design is a two-year supplementary education programme aimed especially at designers, architects and others in design-related professions who want additional qualifications. The purpose of the programme is to match the changed conditions for the design profession and to expand and enhance designers’ and design managers’ experience-based methods and skill repertoire with new theoretical knowledge and methods targeted for contemporary practice (Master of Design – PDF brochure). The programme is offered by the Danish Centre for Design Research in cooperation with the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture. The programme is offered every two years. The first students graduated in 2007, and in June 2009 another class took their final exams. In September 2009, a new class embarked on their studies. Read the article in Mind Design #16, 2009:  “Master’s Programme Gives Designers a New Language.”

Cover: Exterior facade at Tietgen Student Hall, Copenhagen. Photo: Helle Graabæk.

Mind Design #21, 2009