ken, david and mp ranjan,
i am afraid i can't agree with david and ken regarding the value of test-generated evidence and have to side with mp ranjan regarding valid criteria for design.
i would not refer, as mp ranjan did, to the market as the deciding feature for a design, but talk instead of stakeholder networks. but mp is essentially correct: tests do not provide evidence for successful designs.
let's face it: all tests are conducted under the aegis of designers' or producers' objectives. a test can measure only the conformity of, say, a prototype, to criteria selected by the tester (designers, marketing researchers, even engineers). they cannot possibly capture what the tester did not anticipate (ethnographic methods and focus groups notwithstanding).
design succeeds not by testing well but by being adopted in a network of stakeholders (in the semantic turn, i made the case for including all who have a stake in the realization of and opposition to a proposed design, not just the buyer -- suggested by the reference to markets -- and not just the end user -- suggested by user-centered approaches to design).
test results provide good arguments for designers to convince key players to produce or market a design, but the ultimate test of a design is always whether people see the possibility and do make use of it.
david's examples of drug information and government forms are good. in the case of the latter, he has to convince drug companies and government officials to go along with his proposals. i am sure he measures whatever he imagines is relevant, but he can use only a sample of subjects, cannot possibly anticipate all the difficulties consumers create in using these instructions. regarding drug information, he needs a network of insurance companies, drug stores, doctors, and patients to be on board and avoid being held legally responsible for misuses of the drug.
i am not opposing the testing of prototypes. i am merely suggesting not to celebrate testing which can blind designers for the actual practices of realizing, distributing and using a design, especially in unintended ways. finding out how stakeholders talk among each other, make commitments to a projected design, and put their money and knowhow to where it matters, whether as producers, sales people, users, and recyclers, comes closer to what successful designers pay attention to.
klaus
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From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2014 6:49 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Ulm and Evidence: We Need Both
On 17 May 2014, at 11:28 am, Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> David Sless is correct in arguing that testing and evidence help us to choose among better and worse design solutions before implementing them.
>
> Design thinking is one kind of design process. Evidence-based testing is another.
Ken,
Thank you for elaborating the point. I have little to add but a couple of footnotes.
1. I see testing as part of design thinking not as a separate process. This is clearly spelt out in a number of recent publications.
* http://communication.org.au/product/usable-medicines-information/
* http://communication.org.au/product/information-design-an-overview/.
Another part of this process is what we describe as the scoping stage, in which boundary shifting and redefining of the problem space occur. Again, this is spelt out in the above publications.
2. I welcome your elaboration of our work on medicines information, but would suggest that this work is partially market driven. Less obviously so, and more challenging is the work we have done for government on forms and letter design. Poor forms and letters lead to huge inequities and there is little market incentive to bring about change, particularly in government where citizens' interests take a secondary position to that of the bureaucracy. Here too, some of our published work gives an insight into this.
* SLESS D. 1999. Public forms: designing and evaluating forms in large organisations, in H.Z., T. Boersema & H. C. M. Hoonhout (ed.) Visual Information for Everyday Use: Design and Research Perspectives: 135-153. Taylor & Francis.
* http://communication.org.au/product/forms-of-control/
Finally, my thanks also to Ranjan for making the Ulm material generally available. It provides an opportunity for us all to revisit this work. I will certainly do so and discover whether the younger me was mistaken.
David
--
blog: http://communication.org.au/blog/
web: http://communication.org.au
Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
CEO * Communication Research Institute * * helping people communicate with people *
Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795
Phone: +61 (0)3 9005 5903
Skype: davidsless
60 Park Street * Fitzroy North * Melbourne * Australia * 3068
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