Here's another highlight from Design Research News (see earlier entry today) that I felt deserved special focus. Book review editor Ken Friedman chose to showcase the University of California at Irvine's Proposal for a School of Design (hefty PDF!) in the books section of DRN. Here is a just a bit of Ken's comments:

When one of the world's great universities plans a major, new design school, the planning process is as interesting - and important - as the result. ...

In the fall of 2000, the University of California at Irvine established a committee to develop a proposal "to create a school of design to foster inquiry into the nature of design and the design process. Its objective would be to advance the techniques of design, to train students in the technical and aesthetic dimensions of design at both the undergraduate and professional levels, and to investigate the deep intellectual and cultural issues associated with design in a rapidly changing world. ...

Because it is purpose-built, the UCI design school will be a model that challenges other design schools to rise to a new level. It will do so for many reasons. First, it will compete with other schools for the best faculty and for the best students. Other schools will have to improve to remain attractive to their staff and students. Second, it will become a rich center of resources, supporting its competitors at the same time that it challenges them. Third, it will be an important center of teaching and learning for those who come to UCI to study or to teach. ...

One factor that makes the UCI proposal so interesting is that the four specializations cover the comprehensive range of issues in the design maturity scale. Interaction design, product design, and spatial design, together with design studies makes a rich approach that brings all levels of research and all areas of inquiry together in one proposal.

My apologies if my editing misleads (see for Ken's full review).

But this was what caught my attention. At the BA level, the UCI program will offer degrees in Design Studies, Interaction Design, Product Design, and Spatial Design. At the MA level, the program will cover Interaction Design, Vehicle Design, Product Design, Spatial Design, Universal Design, and Design Management.

Is it just me, or is it really curious that no flavor of visual design (e.g., graphic design, information design, or communication design etc.) are offered in a project proposal that "has already taken three years from the initial commission to the consultation and consensus process needed for the immense investment required by a new school of design."

I realize that no single school can be all to everyone. And perhaps because I haven't read their entire 188-pg report, I'm missing some context that would explain their focus. But this isn't the first time I've gotten the feeling that visual design (in its non-product, non-interactive sense) is the poor step-child to design in the physical sense.

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