Design + Management

Last year at CHI Anijo and I organized a panel discussion called "Who Killed Design?". The discussion was intended to be a provocation for people to think about how and why the term 'Design' is used within the CHI community... well actually, within any community. CHI, though, happens to be one of the most diverse I have ever participated in. That discussion had a live blog attached to it, which can be found HERE.

It was that discussion, which got us talking about this Design track event. In a way I see this event as a response to last year's event. There was so much discussion about all of the things that design might and should be, that I think it begs the question; what is a 'CHI' Portfolio? Why would a researcher in computer science, studying cryptography (for example) want to create a portfolio? Personally, I think that any discipline has 'portfolio-relevant' competencies. I believe that if we can draw out these competencies, then the discussion, indeed discourse, around the relevancy of 'design' in CHI will take a distinctly different turn.

How would the notion of peer review change if there were a visual literacy across the various disciplines represented at CHI? Of course, this question need not be limited to the CHI community, but what a great place to ask it?!