Dear David,
In the applied social sciences, it is possible to accumulate rigorous evidence that may not be repeatable.
But the value of a robust literature review is very much to the point here.
It may not be entirely correct that a ¡§review of the literature will not help outside the academy.¡¨ In professions such as medicine, engineering, nursing, and law, practitioners read and use the literature. In calling for a more rigorous use of evidence, you are also asking for a better literature that we use more effectively than we have done in the past.
For the most part, researchers write literature review articles and researchers read them. People who work in research universities to examine and test claims, and literature review articles help. So it is true that literature review articles help the work of those who engage in research.
Since this is a list for such people, it is also a reasonable place to consider and debate these issues.
It seems to me that Noah Raford¡¦s 2009 blog post is already a bit dated. While design thinking had both its boom and its bust, people seem to have taken a more resilient view of the matter. The consensus among many is that design thinking is a bad designation for some possibly useful ways of working, and they¡¦re using the term until someone comes up with a better designation.
How useful is design thinking? Groups like IDEO, the Sitra design group, MindLab and more have demonstrated a long run of successful projects. What they do seems to work. While the way they work is not replicable as experimental science may be, they achieve good projects on a regular basis.
More to the point, medicine in 2013 is not what it was in 1890, and physics in 2013 is not what it was in 1810. The progress these fields made ¡V and that in every other field ¡V was built on a carefully developed literature that people continually reviewed, debated, challenged, and surpassed with each new generation.
In my view, our field won¡¦t begin to make serious progress in universities or in practice until people in our field begin to write serious literature review articles.
In the absence of a literature assembled and examined through the genre of literature review, we will continue to shoot the breeze. To do better requires a way of working that has long been typical of other fields.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design> Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman
Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China
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David Sless wrote:
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¡K in the absence of rigorous and repeatable before and after evidence, we are all just shooting the breeze. ¡K
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A review of the literature will not help outside the academy. Nor will D 1. 2. 3. 4. 5......¡Û
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