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 |
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