Dear Luke and all
Sorry to get a bit overenthusiastic but, here we go again:
Design is not (only) about problem finding and solving. Design is about (surprice) designing, this means shaping the world and eventually it is more about  problem creating than problem solving. Sometimes sad but true. Design is not first of all about finding existing problems and solving them. It is also about this, but in most cases it is about change into new situations not known before. Like: we didnt even know it was a problem before we found the solution. If it is about problems its more about problem fields (intertwined problem clusters), also called problematiques, than singeling out particular singular problems and fixing them. Problematiques are moving targets that easy escape the methods discussed here. All these approaches are based on the assumption that things are fairly stable. They are not. While learning to understand a problematique and finding patterns that we can use as stable starting points for design, the moment we turn our back to the drawing table the problematique has changed. When does this start to sink in? I am just wondering why this does not soon resonate. There are so many examples of designs that turn into fascism because of ignoring this fact.
Comparing to medicine it would be similar to changing the heart to have three chambers and to also be on facebook. This is absurde and it is equally absurde to compare design with medicine. So why on earth should we think that we have much to learn from medicine in the sense that we can copy and paste approaches and research designs found in medicine by replacing terms in their descriptions? We have some to learn from medicine and all other fields but not so much, at least not everything. When do we start to realize the particularity of design and from that starting point design our approaches? It is our darn responcibility to design design research and this means to design the way we produce knowledge within designing. This has been made a point in 40 years soon but for some strange reason it does not change the discussion. When does this realizations and the early design writers who realized these facts long ago become our top canon? (e.g. Rittel) This goes in never ending circles and these circles seem to have a reductionist center of gravitation. I consider these discussions to be fear-driven. We do not have the courage to stand in the  floating and dynamic field of uncertainty that constitutes design. Many of us get seasick and we set our course towards the little islands called e.g. evidence based design in medicine to get some solid ground under our feets, while missing out on the new land ahead. On this little islands we find the cook-book prescriptions of how to do good design research, and we can stop being designers designing design research and become all other types of semi-animals.
I dont mind all different modes of approaches and expertices, they are needed to shed light into the problematiques from many points. But the thing is that these interdisciplinary networks of approaches need to be equally dynamic as the problematique we are investigating and designing is the glue that binds it together. Our role then is to mediate those expertices and to synthesice between them. and that needs a different mode of operation both within practice, practice research and research. First of all we need a pallett of approaches and be able to redesign them and combine them in various ways. I have written about this before and we also have developed a practice for coping with these issues.


Birger Sevaldson (PhD, MNIL) 
Professor at Institute of Design
Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Norway
Phone (0047) 9118 9544
www.birger-sevaldson.no
www.systemsorienteddesign.net
www.ocean-designresearch.net
________________________________________
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Luke Feast <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 01 November 2014 09:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Evidence-Based Practice in a Changing World Economy

Dear Ken and list,

Thank you for making these useful slides available. I am particularly interested in your question regarding whether design will make the shift to evidence based practice in a way the resembles the shift that medicine began to make after 1910. This provoked me to consider a few further questions: What would evidence based design actually be like? Is the "gold standard" of evidence based medicine (e.g. randomized controlled trials) desirable as the "gold standard" in design research? Do the assumptions that underpin randomized controlled trials (e.g. universal biological response to drugs or treatments) easily carry over to the contexts of issues or problems that designers aim to address? Is it meaningful to assume that a universal design response exists?

To consider what evidence based design might be like, I looked into descriptions of evidence based medicine and then transposed that description into the design. (See attachment for two-column version)

1. Description of evidence based medicine (Sackett, 1996, p. 71):

“Evidence based medicine is the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. The practice of evidence based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research. By individual clinical expertise we mean the proficiency and judgment that individual clinicians acquire through clinical experience and clinical practice.”

“Increased expertise is reflected in many ways, but especially in more effective and efficient diagnosis and in the more thoughtful identification and compassionate use of individual patients' predicaments, rights, and preferences in making clinical decisions about their care. By best available external clinical evidence we mean clinically relevant research, often from the basic sciences of medicine, but especially from patient centred clinical research into the accuracy and precision of diagnostic tests (including the clinical examination), the power of prognostic markers, and the efficacy and safety of therapeutic, rehabilitative, and preventive regimens.”

“External clinical evidence both invalidates previously accepted diagnostic tests and treatments and replaces them with new ones that are more powerful, more accurate, more efficacious, and safer.”

2. My transposition of Sackett et al.’s (1996, p. 71) description into the domain of design.

Evidence based design is the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about solving design problems for their stakeholders. The practice of evidence based design means integrating individual design expertise with the best available external evidence from systematic research. By individual design expertise we mean the proficiency and judgment that individual designers acquire through design experience and design practice.

Increased expertise is reflected in many ways, but especially in more effective and efficient problem finding and framing and in the more thoughtful identification and compassionate use of individual stakeholder’s predicaments, rights, and preferences in making design decisions about their design problems. By best available external design evidence we mean design relevant research, often from the basic sciences of design, but especially from stakeholder centred design research into the accuracy and precision of problem finding and framing methods (including design anthropology and participatory design), the power of indicators of design problems, and the efficacy and safety of using design methods for solving, rehabilitating, and preventing design problems.

External design evidence both invalidates previously accepted problem framing tests and solutions and replaces them with new ones that are more powerful, more accurate, more efficacious, and safer.

Best regards
Luke

Sackett, D. L., Rosenberg, W. M. C., Gray, J. A. M., Haynes, R. B., & Richardson, W. S. (1996). Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn't. British Medical Journal, 312(7023), 71-72.

Luke Feast | Lecturer | Early Career Development Fellow | Faculty of Health, Arts and Design, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Ph: +61 3 9214 6165 |



-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list  <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------


-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list  <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------