Hi all,
I'd like to underline Karel's important contribution by drawing
attention to the absence of evidence in most of the discussions on
this list and in many design forums.
If we are to be concerned with the social consequences of design, we
need to collect appropriate evidence. This is NOT what is done
necessarily in criticisms of art, architecture or literature.
Criticism in these areas may be informed by research and evidence,
but it it not a necessary requirement.
Perhaps the book mentioned by Cameron -- The Design of Everyday Life
-- is part of what we need, but I have not read it yet so I am
speculating. Cultural studies rarely resorts to evidence, and when it
does the evidence is poor, but there are notable exceptions and this
may be one of them.
For many reasons—getting a better understanding of social
consequences being one—its time that design practitioners and
researchers adopted an evidence based approach to what they do. In
saying this, I'm pointing the finger very much at my colleagues in
graphic design. I think it is less of an issue in engineering and
some others areas of design, but I leave others to make that call.
Without appropriate evidence, we are all just speculating.
Perhaps, though, we need an approach to evidence which is more akin
to health where social consequences are examined through
epidemiological research. Mapping out the design health of a
community might be possible. What do you think?
In such an epidemiology one would have to take account of 'good
health' as well as poor. Here lies a difficult challenge. Some design
is so good, it's invisible. We have a long tradition of 'designing
problems out', that is eliminating something that causes problems by
redesigning the underlying process. Delivery of gases to patients in
hospitals comes to mind as an example of a problem that was solved by
using different valve systems for oxygen, nitros oxide, so that they
could not be mistakenly interchanged. In my own field of information
design, some of our best work is invisible; the phones stop ringing
in the call centres, people don't get lost, people don't have a
problem completing a form etc. How does one do an analysis of the
social consequences of non-problems?
Just a few more thoughts.
David
--
blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog
web: http://www.communication.org.au
|