Dear Berger,
I agree with a lot of your comments about EBD and its limitations.
What caught my eye in what you wrote, however, was your comment:
'Design is an adaptive profession built on adaptive expertise. Just think of
the dramatic changes in the last ten to twenty years in the design
profession. Who could foresee it accurately? I believe that this change and
constant redefinition of design is a core feature of design.'
In fact the developments of the design professions have been very easy to
predict. From here, I suggest we can probably predict the next decade or
more also.
Design fields all follow very similar development trajectories, but they do
so at different paces and starting at different times. Currently, all design
fields seem to be following the same shape of design development trajectory
as the disciplines and fields of engineering design. About a decade ago,
from observation of design theories and practices, engineering design was up
to 50 years ahead. As time goes by that lead is reducing. The shape of the
trajectories of all design fields appear however to be much the same. This
gives reasonable predictability on most things and enables a reasonable
guess on the futures of the current design fields.
Incidentally, and perhaps relevant to the larger discussion, engineering
design hasn't exactly followed the line of 'evidence-based design'.
Rather, the hundreds of engineering design fields have followed the line of
what for want of a better phrase might be called 'Reasoning-based Design' in
which reasoning is foregrounded and evidence is viewed as secondary. Design
practices are based primarily on reasoning and the role of evidence is to
provide some of the reference touch-points and testing points to ensure the
reasoning remains on track.
This also points to a fundamental difference between design and medicine as
professional practices. Design in general works at its best through
reasoning backed by evidence. In contrast, medicine as a practice works
best the opposite: by foregrounding evidence and backing it with reasoning.
One of the primary reasons for the adoption of evidence-based medicine was
the levels of failures due to medical practitioners depending on reasoning
and professional experience and intuition. Evidence of this is the
publishing this year in Australia of a list of 100 current medical practices
that are contra-indicated because on balance their outcomes consistently
result in iatrogenic ill-health (in spite of medical practitioners reasoning
and experienced intuitions otherwise).
Best wishes,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
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