三位被环境逼出来的成功企业家

艾伦•乔奇诺

    现年50岁的艾伦•乔奇诺是《Core77》杂志主编，多年来一直是设计界的意见领袖。但当纽约视觉艺术学院（School of Visual Arts）邀请他创编一项设计课程时，他发现自己不得不解释，为什么这不一定是个好主意。“我对他们说，‘现在再编一个传统工业设计课程没有意义’。现在这些量产产品已经足够了！”

    乔奇诺转而开始探讨新式的艺术加工品，讨论管理、手工艺、体系和基于设计理念创造出来的东西。让他意外的是，这家学院邀请他写些东西，谈谈如何在研究生项目中教授这些内容。乔奇诺说：“因此，我拿出了一份蓝图——像宣言一样的东西。他们真地信任我。由于这完全是从无到有，做这样的建议多少有些忐忑，但也倍感荣幸。”

    在17年的教师生涯中，乔奇诺表示，他一直告诉学生，“要做只有自己能做的论文，而不是自己能够完成的论文，”乔奇诺说。“为了带好这门课程，我希望加入个人观点——反映现实世界的关注，并加入很多经验......”

    最终，乔奇诺完成了艺术硕士《设计产品》（Products of Design）课程，这是对教育同行、导师、领先设计思想家和业内人士进行了数百小时采访之后的结晶。与这些他信赖的人交谈越多，乔奇诺就越清楚这个课程应当是什么样子。当被问到他是如何做到的，他笑着说：“我从来没有计划，总是嫉妒那些有计划的人。但在某种意义上，似乎是很多机会选择了你。因此，我很感恩有这个机会重新设想未来的设计教学中的某一部分。”

Allan Chochinov

    As editor-in-chief of Core77 magazine, Allan Chochinov, 50, has been a leading voice in the design world for years. But when the School of Visual Arts in New York asked him to create a design program, he found himself in the unexpected position of explaining why it might not necessarily be a good idea. "I said to them, 'it doesn't make sense to make a classic industrial design program now. We don't need more mass produced things!'"

    Instead, Chochinov talked about new kinds of artifacts and about stewardship, craft, systems, and stuff created based on design thinking. And, to his surprise, the school asked him to write up how these things could be taught in a graduate program. "So I put together a roadmap -- a kind of manifesto. And they really trusted me. Since I was able to start completely from scratch, it was a scary but privileged proposition," Chochinov says.

    Over the course of 17 years of teaching, Chochinov says he has always told his thesis students that they "should do the thesis that only they can do, not just what they can pull off," Chochinov says. "So to chair the program, I wanted to bring a personal point of view -- a pedagogy that resonated with real world concerns, but which was also informed by a lot of experience...."

    Ultimately, Chochinov ended up with the MFA Products of Design program, the result of hundreds of hours of interviews with peers, mentors, leading design thinkers, and folks in the industry. The more he had conversations with people he trusted, the more it was obvious to him what the program should look like. When asked how he ended up here, he laughs "I never had a plan, and always envied those who did. But it seems a lot of opportunity chooses you in some sense, so I'm grateful for the chance to re-imagine a slice of what the future of design education can be."