The limited provision of on-the-job training places the onus for adequate education in computer aided design on the designers' design courses. The knitwear design courses we have studied at De Montfort University do not get students beyond basic keyboard skills and how to enter Jacquards in one old CAD system, in contrast to some textile design courses, which have embraced computer aided design (Devane, 1992). Although the computer education at De Montfort University is not as good or as deep as we think it should be, the major limiting factor is cost: compare the annual equipment budget for the entire Textiles Department, which is 30000, to the prices for CAD systems we quoted above. Colleges without specialist knitwear courses cannot afford up-to-date knitting machines at all, so their students emerge with no experience at all of modern technology.

7. Attitudes to Designers using CAD Systems

These economic and technological factors are the major determinants of computer use in the knitwear industry, and are sufficient to cause the existing situation. But another factor might contribute to the explanation of why computer technology is pervasive in one part of the knitwear design process, done by male technicians, and is almost absent from the creative work done by female designers, in contrast to textile design, where CAD systems used by designers are rapidly becoming important (Devane, 1992; Waddell, 1992). We have frequently met the belief that knitwear designers need not, indeed should not, know anything about the technology of knitwear production (a belief which is rejected by both designers and technicians). While this view is not a major cause of the existing division of computer use, it may serve to restrict any change to that division. Our survey of the knitwear industry is not extensive enough to permit an assessment of how pervasive it is, but we have encountered it often enough to conclude that it is fairly widespread and is held by some people who have significant influence. This view has been expressed explicitly by the Head of School responsible for one knitwear design degree, and it is implicit in the decisions made by the managers of many knitwear companies.

One rationale for the view that designers do not need technical knowledge (sometimes given by managers to justify not sending designers on training courses) is that the design process has always worked perfectly well without designers knowing anything technological (or only what they pick up as they go along). The rationale for the stronger view that technical knowledge can be harmful, is that designing for a particular machine limits the designers' creativity, and leads them to produce stereotyped and repetitive designs. This view seems to have some foundation: we have been told by both an experienced knitwear designer and a design lecturer that thinking too much about the limitations of machines leads designers to develop habits and standard procedures that accelerate the design process but restrict its output, while they stop generating enough new ideas. (Designing for a particular market is even more limiting, which is one reason why designers change jobs relatively frequently.) And Devane (1992) reports that while her textile design students thrive on CAD systems, they become reluctant to attempt anything that is hard to obtain using the available systems.

However we suspect an element of prejudice: the view that "girls aren't technically minded" was certainly prevalent in the knitwear industry before the days of computerisation. The knitwear designers themselves will tend to reinforce this, in that they are a group strongly selected by personality type, and conform to the negative stereotype that "women are intuitive rather than rational" much more strongly than the general female population, though most are quite capable of mastering the CAD systems and understanding the potentials and limitations of knitting machines. But this may be more a prejudice against a personality type than a sex: the belief that people can't be both "technical" and "creative" is very widespread. These views spring from the common but fallacious view that "creativity" is only required for artistic activities and is the opposite of problem solving, so that "being creative" cannot and should not involve problem solving. Psychological studies of creativity (Weisberg, 1988; Greeno, 1980; Perkins, 1981; Weisberg, 1986) and of "convergent" and "divergent" thinking (Hudson, 1966, 1968) show that problem solving ability and fluency of idea generation are orthogonal abilities, and that success in most creative activities requires both creativity and the problem solving ability needed to sift good ideas from bad ones and think them through. A more extreme version of the view that systematic problem solving and creativity are opposites was expressed by a software developer at Minima, who asserted that being trained in logical thinking destroys ones ability to design; he told the first author that her background in mathematics and computer science made her incapable of being a designer.