求是设计会

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对于学设计的人来说，要不要去读硕士或博士，大家都各有想法，许多人总是患得患失。记得当年老顾跟我讲过，读博士就象一个圆圈里边的一条小虫，不停的把圆的边缘向外拱出一点点。至今记忆尤新。德国人Andy Polaine既是位设计经验丰富的设计师，又是位在高校的研究学者，刚刚去年拿到了博士学位，他以身说法，博士，读还是不读？请看看他的建议，他们所面临的有些问题与我们国内情况相同，但他们不会去计算他们去读的成本是多少，值不值，读出来之后，能升多少工资。他们更多的是关注他们到底想要什么，有没有兴趣。原文点这里。（译者语）以下文译文由任好好翻译，任好好校对。

In design post-graduation education the PhD is fast becoming the new Masters. This partly reflects the maturing of design research, but is also a response to the need for institutions to beef up their research quota and the attendant external funding. If you want to teach at a design college, the expectations of some institutions are often difficult to fulfill. Many ask for a PhD and several years of commercial practice, preferably current. It’s a tough call – both are extremely time hungry and it’s hard to do both well.

博士学位在设计领域的研究生教育中很快变为新宠。这在一定程度反应了设计研究的渐渐成熟，但这也是对教育研究机构为了增强自身的研究实力及随之而来的外部研究资金而产生的对博士的需求的一种反应。如果你想在高校从事教学工作，许多高校对应聘者的条件要求通常并不容易满足。许多高校要求应聘者有博士学位并有几年的商业实践经历，最好是新鲜出炉的。这是一个所面临的棘手的问题，两项要求都是耗时且难以做好的事情。

A Masters is often the terminating degree for a designer heading off professionally (certainly in the USA). For others it is a return the pleasure of self-determined projects having worked in agency life for a few years. But a PhD is a different beast to a Masters. I know of several designers who “fancy the idea” of doing a PhD and there are plenty of Masters students who are attracted to it, either because they want to expand their MA work or because they’re not really sure what to do next.

对于要进入设计专业实践的设计师来说，读个硕士基本上就到顶了（毫无疑问在美国是这样）。对于其它人来讲，就是为了能在学校里过几年研究生活，研究自定的项目，找回满足感。但是相对于硕士，博士的学习就没那么简单了。我知道的一些设计师都设想着能读个博士学位，还有一大群硕士生也热衷于读博士，不管是他们真的想深入他们的硕士研究课题还是真的不明确他们接下来要做的事情。

Having officially become Dr. Polaine earlier in the year as well as having taught post-graduate students for many years, I thought I would offer some thoughts on the journey. As always, your mileage may vary.

年初我正式成为了Polaine博士，与此同时我已经给研究生上了许多年的课，我想对那些想走读博士这条路的人提供一些想法和建议。还是那句话，你们从我的建议中的收获是不同的。

博士，读还是不读？ To PhD or not to PhD?

There are plenty of reasons for wanting to start a PhD, but they are often not the ones that help you finish it. The problem is that you don’t know this until you have started. Here are some of the common ones:

有一堆理由支持你开始攻读博士学位，但没有一个能让你下定决心去完成它。许多事情在没有开始之前，你是永远也不知道真实情况的，读博士也一样。下面列出的一些是许多人共同面临的问题：

1. I don’t know what I want to do for a career yet. A PhD will give me time to work it out.

Researching and writing a doctoral thesis is as much an act of endurance than anything else. If you don’t have a clear idea in mind and the patience to write many thousands of words, read those words more than you care to remember and edit them ad infinitum, you are likely to drop out. One of the things that keeps you going – alongside simple bloody mindedness to just finish such a long-form project – is the interest in the area you are writing. If you don’t have this up front, you’re asking for trouble. A PhD is a dangerous drug for procrastinators.

1、我对我的职业生涯比较迷茫，不知道自己想要什么。读博士的过程中，或许能找到答案。

做研究和写博士论文是一项比其它任何事情都需要有忍耐力的过程。如果你没有带着明确的想法和耐心去写几万字的论文，阅读那些你都不知道读了多少遍的文字以及无休止地修改论文，你很有可能会放弃。有一样东西能够使你对完成如此长期的项目保持热情并持之以恒，那就是你对你所做的研究及写的论文感兴趣。如果你一开始就没有这份兴趣，那等于自找麻烦。对于懒惰且拖拉的人来讲，读博士就像是一种十分危险的药物。

2. I’m really interested in this subject and want to go deeper into it.

Great, but be prepared to be very bored by it after five years. As mentioned above, having a deep interest in the subject is one of the main motivators, but it’s a mental fuel-depot that you burn through by the end. That’s not to say I’m not still interested in the subject matter of my own PhD, but I felt pretty spent afterwards. It has really taken me about a year to start getting interested in interactivity and play again.

2、我对我的课题真的感兴趣并希望在课题做更深入的研究。

有了兴趣最好，但也要做好五年之后面临无聊的准备。正如我前面说的，对课题的浓厚兴趣是读博士的主要动力，但兴趣就像油箱里的油一样也会渐渐烧完。这并不是说我不再对我的博士课题感兴趣，只是到最后，我感到十分的疲惫。我大约用了一年的时间重新开始对交互提起兴趣并再次振作起来。

3. Nobody has researched/written about this area yet and I have a breakthrough idea.

Yes they have, you just don’t know of it.

Although one of the main premises behind a PhD is that you contribute original knowledge to the field, as soon as you start researching more deeply you will find many texts and ideas almost identical to your own. Initially, this can be deeply depressing and I know several people who give up around this point (the drop-out rate of doctoral students is high). If you can persevere, you will not only find the cracks in the existing knowledge, but also work out how to re-configure it and build upon it. This re-thinking is your original contribution to the field. As Stephen Johnson explains, innovative ideas are usually incremental and take time, effort and luck.

3、没有人研究过这个领域也没有相关的论文，并且我有了突破性的想法。

其实应该有人已经做过，只是你没有发现而已。对研究领域的了解不充分也是想读博的人存在的问题。

然而，攻读博士学位的一个主要前提是你要为你研究的领域做出原创性的知识，博士研究一经开始之后，你将会发现许多文献和想法几乎与你的相同。一开始就遇到这种情况，非常打击人的信心，我了解的一些人也因此而放弃了（博士研究生的淘汰率是非常高的）。如果你能坚持，你不仅能从现有知识中找到突破点，也能找到重新配置这些资源并在此基础上建立新的知识结构。这种再思考的结果就是你贡献给这个领域的原创的知识。就象Stephen Johnson 的解释，创新的想法通常是慢慢增加，需要花费时间、付出努力和得到运气。

4. I want to do a PhD, but I don’t like writing much – I’m a designer after all.

Even a practice-based PhD requires writing and I can highly recommend writing as a creative process that’s quite different from any other I know, especially in the digital age that designers work in. I expect activities like carpentry and sculpture are similar, but my skills in those areas are sub-kindergarten, so I can only speak from the crafts I know. I know many designers sketch a great deal, but it’s different to writing.

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. Writing a PhD is like writing a book and you need to find a way to enjoy the act of writing in order to make it through the other side. Without this, the word count will seem like running a marathon wearing concrete boots.

Some people do their PhDs in teams or groups, but even in those cases the bulk of the writing (and often data-wrangling) is a lonely process. Like any writing, you just have to sit down and do your pages every day until you finish. Presenting papers and forming discussion groups all help ease the loneliness.

I think designers are sometimes scared of writing because their school education has ruined it for them. Think of writing as an act of design, except your tools are words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters. It will set you free to hack your text around just like you would any other material. Preciousness is the enemy of good writing – as William Faulkner said, “kill your darlings”. (Actually Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch came up with “murder your darlings” first, which just proves the point that nobody is 100% original, eh?).

4、我想去读博士，但我不太喜欢写太多文字的东西，毕竟我是一个设计师。

即使实践型的博士也需要写作，我极力推崇把写作作为一种与其它方式不同的创新过程，尤其是设计们现在所处的数字时代。我期望这种创新过程就象木工制作或雕塑创作一样，但我个人在这些领域的技能还不如幼儿园水平，所以我只能从我所了解的手工艺来谈谈。我了解许多设计师创作过许多作品，但这毕竟不同于写作。

相比通过设计，我从通过写作所学习到更多的创新过程，把你的想法变成有组织的文字其实是构造并组织你的想法。写博士论文就像写一本书，你需要找到一种方式来享受这种写作，目的是让自己能坚持到底取得最终胜利。如果没有这份享受，论文的字数就会让你感觉像穿了双靴子在跑马拉松。

有些人是在团队或小组中做博士研究的，即使如此，大量的写作过程也是孤独的。像其它任何的写作一样，你不得不安静地坐下来一页页得写，直至完成。报告论文进度和组织小组进行讨论都有助于感少你的孤独感。

我想设计师有些时候害怕写论文是因为他们在学校受的教育已经使他们的写作能力退化了。如果把写论文看作设计，文字、句子、段落和章节就是设计的工具。这样的话，你将能自由发挥地组织文字进行写作，就像你在设计中摆弄各种各样的材料一样。

攻读博士过程的积极的一面 The plus side of the PhD process

If the above sounds rather negative, it’s only because I want to spare you any illusions. There are many good things about taking on and, preferably, completing a PhD.

如果前面的内容听起来或多或少有些消极，那是因为我想让大家丢掉幻想。接下来呈现给大家的都是些好事情，帮助大家更好地完成博士研究。

If you are planning to work in academia or research, it is now often a formal requirement for the job. The process also gives you a sense of rigor and deeper understanding of your area on an intellectual level that can be hard to make space for in the commercial world. Most commercial projects quite rightly don’t have that kind of timescale and you have to drop parts of the process in order to get the deliverables our the door and within budget. They also tend to have much shorter timescales. A PhD is one of the few chances to set up your own project, finish it “the right way”, and to a depth that a Masters doesn’t offer. Despite the loneliness of the writing, it is a luxury.

如果你打算投身学术界从事研究工作，通常要知道这份工作的一些基本的要求。从事研究的过程也会给你一种严谨的感觉并且需要对研究领域有深入的理解从而在智力深度上达到一定的水平，这就导致你很难再为其它的商业活动挤出空间来。绝大部分的商业项目基本上不会有像博士研究这样的时间跨度，而且你不得不为了及时交付产品和节省预算而砍掉部分的流程。他们在时间跨度上趋向于更短时间。博士研究在时间上基本不会有机会允许你安排个人项目，用正确的方法去完成它，达到硕士不能企及的研究深度。虽然在写作的过程中会有孤独，同时这也是一种奢侈。

It’s important not to underestimate the value of becoming an expert, whether you work in academia or not. About two-thirds of the way through my PhD, I wasn’t sure if I was going to carry on working in academia and couldn’t see the point of doing a PhD otherwise. Somewhat swayed by Tom Coates’ post-rationalism of why he gave up doing his PhD, I was ready to throw in the towel.

很重要的一点是不要低估成为一个专家的价值，不管你是不是从事学术研究工作。在我的博士研究过程中的大约有三分之二的可能，我不能确定我将来是否会继续从事学术研究工作并且除此之外也不能只看着读博士这个事情。

I am very thankful that my supervisor, Professor Ross Gibson, gave me some excellent advice and encouragement that saw me through to the end. He pointed out that the feeling of accomplishment that comes with finishing such a project as well as the sense of becoming the expert had great personal value. It almost sounds a little trivial, egotistical even, but it kept me going through the editing and re-structuring of the many, many drafts.

我非常感谢我的导师Ross Gibson教授，给了我一些很好的建议和鼓励，一路看我走到最后。他指出，随着完成一个如此大的项目所带来的成就感与渐渐成为一个有着巨大个人价值的专家的感觉是一样的。这似乎听起来有点微不足道，甚至有点自负的，但这句话一直激励着我不停地修改和重新整理许多许多手稿，从而取得进步，走到最后。

My examiners gave me very useful critique and feedback and I’m very thankful for it. Although they had experience and insights to offer, I realised that I knew more than them about my chosen subject. This is as it should be. A PhD topic is usual quite narrowly defined, but you go very deep into it. 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.

我的论文的那些评阅人给了非常有用的评论和反馈意见，我对此表示感谢。尽管他们可以提供经验和独到的见解，但我知道我比他们更了解我选择的课题。这确实是正常的事。博士课题通常是定义的非常窄的，但必须非常地深入。作为学习者的我们要在一个课题上成为更高级的权威，必须慎之又慎，当你意识到你是这个课题的权威人士的时候，就相当的了不起了。

De-coupling the reason for doing a PhD from its increasing necessity in academia was useful for me. This meant doing the PhD for its own sake, not for the qualification. I am a great starter of projects, but often lose interest once I have worked it all out in my head and understand the patterns and connections. But understanding those things in your own head is different from explaining them carefully to others. Quite apart from the intellectual stimulation and rigour that writing my PhD entailed, completing it was a valuable life experience.

切断我去读博士和学术界对博士需求量的增加的因果关系，对我来讲是有帮助的。这就意味着做博士研究是出于自己的个人原因而非仅仅为了取得一个学位。我是一个很好的项目参与者，但是一旦我的脑中有了所有的答案并理解了其中的模式和它们之间的关系，我便对这些项目失去了兴趣。但是自己明白道理和能把这些东西清楚地解释给别人听是完全不同的两件事。实际上除了智力上得到启发和遇到的艰苦之外，能完成博士论文也是一段有价值的人生体验。

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[译]博士，读还是不读？