Design Versus Innovation:
The Cranbrook / IIT Debate
Scott Klinker

Cranbrook Academy of Art | sklinker@cranbrook.edu

Jeremy Alexis

IIT Institute of Design | alexis@id.iit.edu

 

Twenty years ago a seminal article appeared in ID magazine that contrasted two approaches to design and design education: the methods-driven and scientific approach described by Chuck Owen of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and the experimental and semantic approach advocated by Mike McCoy of Cranbrook Academy of Art. These two separate methods evolved into what are today simply known as “innovation” (or “design thinking”) and “design,” and each has built its own culture within the design profession. Yet some confusion surrounds these concepts, especially about how these two methods interact to deliver products. By examining the two approaches, we can highlight some of the most critical issues shaping American design. In a debate format, two new voices revisit and update the argument.

January + February 2009

Q: What’s the position of your
school in the original article?
What has changed since then?

In the mid-1980s, computers were becoming more ubiquitous, and suddenly a tremendous amount of processing power was available to designers. Chuck wanted to harness this new power to help draw connections between research insights and design concepts. He did not want the computer to replace the designer, but rather for it to support the design process.

Now we actually rely on computers less than we did when Chuck wrote the article in the 1980s. We still believe in a rational, process-driven approach, but much of our work has shifted to facilitating the transformation of organizations. We do not teach our students how to write computer code. Instead, we teach them how to run workshops, make decisions in large teams, and spread ideas through an organizational culture.

Jeremy Alexis (IIT): Charles L. Owen, who still teaches at IIT, highlighted the rational, computer-supported approach to design he was pioneering at the time. He believed that design could help businesses and government with the planning of large-scale systems.

Scott Klinker (Cranbrook): The 1980s were a pivotal time for design. Post-modernism took a critical look at “form follows function” and asked, “Does this really make sense for our time?” Two major movements responded: Memphis, which embraced the energy of fashion in design, and Product Semantics, which applied poetic

interface metaphors to the new electronic appliances that were entering our lives. Mike McCoy’s Cranbrook students were applying methods from literary theory (deconstruction) to product form, giving sculptural expression to the mysterious functions housed inside the “black box” of electronics. Both movements called for a poetic approach to design.

The result was a new era of “things with attitude.” At first this created a market reserved for the design cognoscenti, but now nearly every consumer market includes “things with attitude.” Designers not only solve functional problems, we also make products “speak” to specific cultural attitudes, and we do it with form, interface, and experience design. Defining and shaping attitude is a whole new discussion requiring new tools, and these tools are not only rational ones. Not all design problems raise questions of attitude, but at Cranbrook we like the ones that do.

Q: What’s the current approach
of your school?

Scott (Cranbrook): If the world is filling with “things with attitude,” then we explore “the attitude of things”—informed by a