Ken,
> For me, the hopeful aspect of design research is to do a better job
> knowing when we have evidence for our decisions, choices, and
> practices, so that we can make better use of experience.
Ken,
It may be worthwhile to note a distinction between your two examples. Hand washing in hospitals would not seem to bump against the (reasonable) fear of practitioners that "evidence based" means "deskilling" or "remove my judgment." I doubt any doctor says that it is her belief that too-frequent hand washing is to the patient's detriment. Personal comfort, time crunch, laziness, or just forgetting might be explanations for not washing but independent thought about how to deliver the best patient care is unlikely to be. (I suppose someone could argue for the relative benefit of seeing an additional 0.38 patients in a day by saving wash-up time but I doubt anyone would deliver that with a straight face.) Any physician would acknowledge that germs, although unseen, clearly exist and are important and the ignorance of the 19C medical community isn't particularly relevant.
I didn't see the particular red type on blue that you mentioned so I can't offer any opinion on its readability. I might very well agree with you. But unlike germs, its readability is not unseen. A reader with normal vision can directly experience the type. One doesn't need statistics about type legibility as influenced by low value contrast, high chroma color combined with somewhat complementary hues, or the effects of traumatic flag experiences to understand the specific instance of legibility.
Research, in fact, would likely be of relatively little use in the designer's decision-making unless it were very specific and provided some sort of numerical standards that could be combined to compare factors in a manner that existing (and potential) typographic research does not:
How would expanding the size of the type 20% compare to lightening the value of the blue background by 20%? How about darkening the value of the red type? How about keeping the values the same but lowering the saturation of one or both colors? How would another typeface change the legibility and/or the readability? Would the factors above have the same effects with another typeface?
As you stated, the designer saw "eye catching" as an important factor in the design decision. How does saturated color affect eye catchingness and how does that compare with the effects on legibility and the effects on readability? What would the project lose in value by negatively affecting eye catchingness?
How important is legibility in this particular case and what is the threshold of sufficient legibility for this message, this environment, and this set of potential readers? How about readability, the likely motivation of the readers, and the effect of eye catchingness on reader motivation?
If more people can't read something, how does that compare in overall value to fewer people noticing the opportunity to read it in the first place?
How does the presumptive excitement engendered by the color compare to the potential erosion of good will caused by reading frustration?
Design research might inform this but, unlike the hand washing example, will not provide a simple answer (and perhaps not any answer at all.)
Gunnar
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