On 22/09/2009, at 12:37 PM, Terence Love wrote:
>
> An appropriate strategy to explore this further would be to develop
> a design
> research subfield researching whether designers outputs align with
> what
> designers intended. Initially, it would offer the opportunity for a
> special
> edition in a design research journal.
Terry,
I couldn't agree more. But this is not a new field, at least for me.
This was the substance of my MSc Thesis at Durham University. The work
was undertaken in the early 1970s under the title 'The Application of
Behavioural Science to Symbol Design' and accepted in 1975. One of my
earliest research papers I wrote on this was given at a DRS conference
in Birmingham:
Sless, D. 1972. Towards a theory of behaviour of individual designers.
Design Research Society Conference.
Probably the best summary of the results and their implications for
teaching and practice was in:
Sless, D. 1979. Image design and modification: an experimental project
in transforming. Information Design Journal. 1, 2, 74-80.
The basics of my findings, which have been confirmed by many later
studies, is that it takes three iterations of testing followed by
refinement based on the test results for (to use your phrase)
'designers outputs [to] align with what designers intended' This seems
to be a constant across number of information design domains.
My more recent work (the last 20 years) shows that with Benchmarking
the number of iterations needed for a new prototype can be as low as
two, but three following the Benchmarking is more likely, particularly
in complex systems.
Uptake of these findings by graphic design teachers and practitioners
has been minimal. Clive Richards used some of the methods in his own
teaching, and I believe Falmouth College of Art did so for a while.
There are a few Information Design Agencies that have picked it up,
but the uptake is quite limited. The biggest uptake would be in
certain types of product design, and in some areas of internet design,
but most of this is quite crude and not properly integrated into the
design process. Most notable is the absence of Benchmarking, hence my
post on the subject.
I agree that this is a fertile area for more research. But as I said
before, without Benchmarking it is impossible to know whether the post
design 'aligning' is any better than the current state of affairs.
David
blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog
web: http://www.communication.org.au
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