Hi Ken,
We do live in different worlds! The first thing to say is that my remarks about JN were not intended to contrast CRI's work with that of NJ or his group, far from it!
I was speaking as a member of a community of designers in the field of information design. From that position I don't think I am saying anything new or particularly controversial. Many in this community have been saying similar things for a long time. Probably not publicly or as bluntly as I have, but nonetheless to much the same end. But, let me speak for myself, rather than a community of practice.
The basic question I ask myself when I read JNs many contributions is: do they add to our stock of knowledge on how to design information? The answer is no. His work sometimes confirms what has been known for some time, but that is all. This may seem a harsh even arrogant judgement. But to anyone who has been following debates within information design about the contributions of human factors/ergonomic/cognitive science's to our field, this will come as no surprise. I have mentioned them many times before on this list, so I will not elaborate further on this occasion.
None of this should be construed as a dismissal of JNs work, just a comment on its relevance to a particular area of practice. Indeed, the issues around p and N are about a particular view of scientific method and practice not design methods or practice. Do they contribute to our routine diagnostic/usability testing of designs? I think not. But I suspect that this is where Ken and I would disagree, and the disagreement is probably philosophical rather than empirical.
Just as an aside, JN cites one of our major early case histories in his own work. He describes it as a 'usability project'. I describe it as an 'information design project'. I have always found that difference in description telling. It points to why I thought then, and why I think today that JN has lot of catching up to do, if he wants to make an original contribution to design research, and BTW, I don't know if he does. His contribution to usability research is not in doubt.
I'm pleased that Ken thinks so highly of Writing About Medicines For People. From my perspective it is a product of an R&D project for which most of the research was done by others long before I started work on it. Even the R&D work that we did specifically towards it was highly derivative of earlier work. So I would not see it as a contribution to research knowledge, just a useful set of guidelines based on research.
By contrast, our work cited by JN was one case history from a research project that is still ongoing 25 years later. The findings it reports are about information design methods (Fisher & Sless 1990) and our research on that subject, as I said, continues.
David
--
Fisher, P, and Sless, D 1990
Information design methods and productivity in the insurance industry. Information Design Journal 6(2) 103-129
It is also available to our Members, along with many other case histories at:
https://communication.org.au/modules/publisher/index.php/item.58/information-design-improving-productivity.html
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