Dear Terry,
Now I can agree with your statement: "...there are methods of prediction usable in design that don't give perfect answers (no method ever does) but are way better than design methods involving people sitting around talking..." I believe that we all work to this end. We realize the limitations of our fields and try to stretch the boundaries to a higher level.
Best wishes,
Lubo
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Terence Love
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2014 11:50 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Clinical Research and Clinical Guidelines
Hi Gunnar,
Thanks for a really clear post.
My apologies for your confusion. I wrote in shorthand in my reply to you.
You correctly divined my meaning (prediction of social behaviour is possible to some extent).
Without explaining it as well as Don did, I've been arguing for a long time for a much more nuanced and detailed understanding on these issues. Mostly I've been arguing that there are methods of prediction usable in design that don't give perfect answers (no method ever does) but are way better than design methods involving people sitting around talking (participatory design/ stakeholder groups etc) and are well established in other design fields and can be used without too much training.
At this point, in testing out that idea one way or another, it becomes useful to move to meta-theoretical thinking and look at the characteristics of theories rather than the theories themselves.
If you do this, you can ask questions like:
1. What does this theory look like at its boundary conditions. Don's comment was about one of the boundaries (whether one can predict *all* human behaviour). It's a bit of a straw man, because we know that we can't predict
*all* about anything, but we can often predict enough to be useful enough.
Don's comment though suggests a useful point that perfect prediction of human behaviour is not on the cards and claiming otherwise is a sign of lack of understanding.
2. Another question is 'Can we predict anything about human behaviour by any method'? This was sort of your second question. Without doing any fancy maths, I know enough about the general behaviours on this list to predict that if I posed a relevant and extreme contradictory statement it would likely result in a detailed response. This is what I did and what happened.
I didn't predict it would be Don that would reply and I was delighted that he did in such a careful manner and introducing the idea of making things more nuanced which is useful because too little of the discourse is nuanced enough. The effect of that prediction is in process still.
3. . Another question is 'How limited are our predictive methods based on evidence in terms of addressing multi-variable situations involving people with time-based feedback loops?' I suggest many design theories and predictive methods can't address these kinds of situations. It's a weakness of the field that we haven't yet drawn on better methods and theories.
Instead those problems that the current theories don't work on have been lumped into the impossible box and called 'wicked problems' (It's an attitude a bit like the one that led to drowning witches)
4. . Another question is 'What would be the characteristics of theories and methods that could predict outcomes of multi-variable situations involving people with time-based feedback loops?' Followed by 'Do such methods exist?'
'Are they usable by designers?' 'Are the predictions of sufficient precision to be beneficial to designers?' Etc.
The reality is there exist in other disciplines methods to predict people's behaviours that are not yet used in design. Do these methods perfectly predict all human behaviour? No. Do they predict human behaviours for those complex design situations I described above well enough to be useful by designers and better than what designers currently use? From experience, I suggest yes.
The approach that I'm most comfortable and experienced with is systems modelling, especially system dynamics. Ken has asked me to show the working of models via this email list. This sort of indicates a problem of transferring these approaches into design. The nature of *dynamic* modelling is its role is to show changes over time - like a predictive movie. And to do this in a fixed time email??
For behaviourally predictive system dynamics modelling I use Vensim software. Its free for academic use (http://vensim.com/download/ ) but the professional paid versions make better dashboards. It needs a bit of maths (but not too much) to model situations that change as a result of feedback.
And it really holds the user's hand. AnyLogic and PowerSim are even more user friendly - but expensive. An alternative is agent-based modelling (e.g.
Logo) but gaining statistical reliability requires multiple runs and is hard to calculate.
A problem is that these models run on one's own computer and then are hard to transfer onto an email or onto the web.
An alternative is InsightMaker, which enables designers to create predictive social behavioural models on the web. There are disadvantages: you lose ownership of your model; its hard to protect data anonymity..... However, there are lots of useful predictive social behaviour models there ready to be used - see https://insightmaker.com/
A short PowerPoint showing some of the ideas is at http://www.powershow.com/view/263152-M2MyN/Advances_in_System_Dynamics_Group
_Model_Building_powerpoint_ppt_presentation
Much of the best of research on this kind of work has been done at MIT under Forrester and Sterman (https://sdm.mit.edu/education/systems-thinking.html
) For a less technical more local picture, there is www.anzsys.org (disclosure - I manage content on that website in my spare(!) time)
Best wishes,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI 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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-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gunnar Swanson
Sent: Saturday, 6 December 2014 9:31 PM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design
Subject: Re: Clinical Research and Clinical Guidelines
Terry,
I was going to contact you off list but I think that I am, perhaps, not
uniquely stupid so maybe others share my confusion.
I asked:
> Are you saying that (1) human behavior can be predicted (i.e., it is
possible even though it is not being done) or that (2) human behavior can be
predicted (i.e., that someone is currently able to do it)?
>
> If (2), will you give us some examples of this being done?
and you replied:
On Dec 5, 2014, at 8:07 PM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> What I did is an example as you requested.
First an assurance: This is me being confused. This is not a rhetorical ploy
where I feign ignorance to maneuver you into some position of disadvantage.
(I confess. I've been known to do that. I am most certainly not doing that
right now.) It's me actually trying to figure out what you are saying.
I'm not sure what you are saying that you did that was an example of what I
requested. These conversations get fairly lengthy and I'm two days from the
end of the semester so my mental acuity is not what it might be at other
times. But I'm also not sure that my clarifying question helped us toward
clarity.
In re-reading my question, I see that it is vague. I'm inferring from your
reply that you were choosing #2 and asserting that someone is currently able
to predict human behavior. Well, duh, Gunnar; of course someone is able to
predict [some] human behavior. Sorry. Stupid question. We can predict that a
person subjected to intense pain will show various signs of stress, that it
is probable that (at least under most circumstances) starving people will
respond to offers of (non-objectionable) food by taking the food and eating
it. . .
What I'm trying to understand is the extent of your claim. If you've done
this already, I apologize but can I get you to give an example of current
predictive abilities? I'm not looking for general principles at this point.
I'm a concrete/pragmatic guy so I'd like to get a feel for the extent of
your claim. It would be stupid to think that human response is completely
random and unpredictable and I assume you are not claiming that we could
write history books fifty years in advance if we'd only open our eyes and do
a little math.
So what I'm hoping for is "By looking at x, you can predict that
(all/most/more than usual number of) people will do/feel/believe y if x
happens." Something that is at all representative of the current state of
the path you are advocating.
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
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Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA
http://www.gunnarswanson.com
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+1 252 258-7006
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