Why am I doing a PhD?

Curiosity, questions, feeling useful & bringing design further

For some people it may sound strange that I wanted to do this PhD, and I get that view ;) I'll try to explain why this is interesting to me:

Well - yes, there is a lot of reading of heavy articles, and yes, theoreticizing (is that even a word?) design may sound a bit boring. (Or… the last part really depends on your definition of design - in Norway most people don't talk about designing our society, it's more used in relation to estetic or functional objects or services.)

Most people who know me will describe me as a very curious person who asks tons of questions. I easily get bored of doing repetitive assignments or working on things I don't feel ownership to. But I like to challenge myself and my comfort zone, in order to learn something new. A PhD is about searching and finding new knowledge - and that is exactly what I'd like to do. That doesn't mean that I see myself as a researcher or the professor type. I'm also very interested in social entrepreneurship and business, and I see myself more as the self-employed-kind of type.

I'll probably raise and professionalize the level of how I talk about design, and I believe that is a way of getting design further, though for most designers it's a way of distancing yourself from the actual design. But in order to develop my field, I must look at my design in a meta-perspective. What is a design process, and how do we work? Only by looking at design from a different perspective, can make us able to change it. Though to be able to change anything at all, I need to communicate what I do to others. That's why I'm writing on this blog. I don't want to "hide" my future academic articles in forums where only a very limited number of people can access them easily.

During these three years, I get to read, think, work and develop new ideas on a theme I find very interesting, and at the same time useful to the society (at least that is my ambition). That is actually a very important aspect for me – I need to feel useful in some way. And I want to push our society a bit further, in a direction that I believe in.