Dear Ken and all,
> On 6 Nov 2014, at 3:11 pm, Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> You have put evidence-based design to use on many occasions, and you describe an evidence-based approach in several works and projects. One valuable resource you have developed using this approach is the book Writing About Medicines for People: Usability Guidelines for Consumer Medicine Information. May I ask you to share your thoughts on the book — How did you developed it? How did you gather the evidence that informs the content? How can others put this approach to work?
>
> Admittedly, this is a specific kind of issue, but once you get into the details of evidence-based design, it is the specifics that count for specific kinds of situations. Evidence-based design choices are a function of the specific situations within which a designer must practice.
Happy to do so. And this is a timely moment to do so because I have just completed a chapter for a forthcoming book which gives an account of the history of the work within which Writing About Medicines for People (WAMFP) took place, and the publisher has given us permission to make it available to our Subscribers, Members and Fellows. Also we are at a moment when many of our achievements in this area could be lost. I’ll place some of the URL’s at the end of this post.
To cast this work in it’s larger framework (for us), it’s useful to see it as part of a program of institutionalising good EBD in a variety of government, and industrial contexts. By the time we got to working on WAMFP, we had already demonstrated through published case histories (e.g Fisher and Sless 1990) and through a number of high profile public sector projects (eg. Australian Bureau of Statistic Guidelines for designing data collection forms and publications) that were not published but widely known about and used, that it was possible to institutionalise good EBD practices. Moreover, because these were EBD projects there was a lot of data to demonstrate that these led within administrations to massive (90%+) improvements in productivity and when they were applied in commercial contexts they led to increases in profitability through increased sales and market share—all of which came as a bit of surprise to us because the principle motivation for us to undertake the work then and now was to improve equity: to make the relationship between organisations and the people they served fairer. It’s also important to note that much of this work preceded the now popular fashion for so called “User Centred Design” (UCD) and prior to the WWW and internet.
WAMFP came about specifically because of a major development in public policy in Australia. The Federal Government introduced a Quality Use of Medicines (QUM) policy, We were alerted to this by one of our Board Members who was a senior medic and ergonomics advocate—Michael Patkin—who asked us to take an active interest in this area. So I began positioning CRI as an interested organisation by attending some of the conferences on the subject and meeting many of key stakeholders from the professions, industry, consumer groups and regulators who were jokeying for position in relation to QUM. I mention this because one of the key lessons we had learnt by then was the need to engage with the key stakeholders in a sophisticated way
there are a large and growing number of publications on our website for sale. I would love them all to be free, but we have to cover their publication costs.
David
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blog: http://communication.org.au/blog/ <http://communication.org.au/blog/>
web: http://communication.org.au <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
> On 6 Nov 2014, at 3:11 pm, Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> You have put evidence-based design to use on many occasions, and you describe an evidence-based approach in several works and projects. One valuable resource you have developed using this approach is the book Writing About Medicines for People: Usability Guidelines for Consumer Medicine Information. May I ask you to share your thoughts on the book — How did you developed it? How did you gather the evidence that informs the content? How can other put this approach to work?
>
> Admittedly, this is a specific kind of issue, but once you get into the details of evidence-based design, it is the specifics that count for specific kinds of situations. Evidence-based design choices are a function of the specific situations within which a designer must practice.
>
> One great thing about the PhD-Design list is that fact that it is possible to transform the conversation in the time that it takes to write a post. Might I request that you do so with a few words on your experience with evidence-based design at the Communications Research Institute of Australia?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ken
>
> Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University Press | Launching in 2015
>
> Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
>
> Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
>
>
>
>
>
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