Gunnar,
The project you mention is a perfect example of the kind of practice/research that we have been excluding from the many critical literature reviews that we have conducted over the last twenty years or so in areas of information design.
We frequently get asked to conduct such reviews and, after the initial scouring of the published research, we generally find we have a small pile of really useful work, and a large pile of stuff we cannot use. Over the years we have tried to articulate the criteria that get something into one pile or another. But we have never published an overview of this outside of the specific contexts in which we have done the reviews.
Fo those of you interested in these criteria and how we apply them, there is an example of such a review on our web site at:
http://communication.org.au/publications/reviews/usable-medicines-information/85,32.html
There is an underlying issue in what you allude to when you say:
> Some sorts of research require a functional understanding of designing to be successful
Judging from this list, and our own reviews of the research literature, there is a long way to go before this issue is taken account of by most researchers.
Today, there is also a major problem with the university administrative category of 'research'. A great deal of so called 'research' in universities is not really research at all. It's simply the application of routine investigative procedures, much like the routine pathology testing done by the medical profession. Unlike many pathology tests, much of this routine investigation is of dubious validity.
However, there is an economic and status benefit in calling it research and this applies to so called 'design research'. But shush, don't say a word to the bureaucrats who decide what is or what is not research. Someone could lose their 'research' project funding.
David
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blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog
web: http://www.communication.org.au
Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
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