Dear Luke, Carlos, and Birger,
Thanks for your notes. I think all of these comments raise interesting issues. These are deeper than I can deal with as I respond — I am packing my suitcase to leave Shanghai for my home in Kalmar. So I’m writing to acknowledge these posts with an apology that I can’t give this the time it deserves.
Luke Feast’s questions and comments seem reasonable to me. It is not possible in most situations of design practice to undertake clinical trials of the kinds that create evidence for medical practice. It seems to me that it is nevertheless possible to speak of evidence-based practice. This is an issue I must consider when I transform the PowerPoints for a spoken lecture into a written paper.
Over the years, I have had many useful conversations on evidence-based practice. Current conversations involve a document that isn’t yet ready for publication, so I won’t discuss it. In the past, however, I have had very useful conversations on the concept of evidence-based practice in design with several people who subscribe to PhD-Design. David Durling often raised this issue in conversation, in seminars, and at the DART program. If he’s reading, I’d welcome his thoughts.
The issue of the phenomena we describe using the word “problem” requires a conversation in its own right. I’m not bothered by the word “problem” as some people are, and I recognise that the nature of a problem depends in great part on the perspectives from which we consider or address problems. I can say “yes,” “no,” and “maybe” to many of the issues that Carlos Pires and Birger Sevaldsen raise. One of my favourite books on design is the late Jens Bernsen’s > The Problem Comes First <, a title Jens borrowed from Per Mollerup. The point of the book is that a deep understanding of the nature of the problem or situation we address is the beginning of a solution: but nearly every design problem is also a human problem or a situation of some kind that a human being wants to change. A great deal of what Carlos and Birger wrote involve philosophical issues. I wrote about some of these issues, and about Bernsen’s book, in the book chapter “Design Science and Design Education.” You’ll find a copy of this on my Academia.edu page at:
https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
For those of you who don’t know what we’re discussing, it started when I posted the PowerPoint notes to a lecture I gave in Shanghai this week. The title was Evidence-Based Practice in a Changing World Economy. Like medicine, law, engineering, and management, design is a professional practice that requires skilled diagnosis. This is related to the issue of what Herbert Simon called “design science,” and Simon believed that design was at the core skill of all professions. I believe that evidence-based practice is a valuable concept.
The time has come for us to consider what evidence-based practice is in relation to design, and how we can develop an evidence-based practice. You’ll find the lecture PowerPoints on the top of the page at:
https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
These comments require deeper thought, and I will think on them as I transform the spoken talk into a written paper.
Warm wishes,
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
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|