Hello,

A different way to look at the use of ‘evidence in design’ is to look at the practical realities of design activity and design research as undertaken today.

I suggest it is a mistake to focus on the use of evidence by human designers in their design practices, as has been the loci of discussion so far.

Over the last 3 decades there have been huge improvements in the productivity of design and the quality of design outputs and outcomes.

These gains have come from using evidence in the design of software that automates design activity or guides human designers and their design practices and restricts the options available to them.

Evidence-based design research informing the functionality of design software has resulted in these improvements.

The contribution of improvements in skills of human designers and their personal design practices has been marginal, whether they use evidence or not. Worse, it may be design skills have in reality gone backwards and the contribution of  design software is more than compensating for this de-skilling.

A challenge is to rethink  design theory and the underlying assumptions of design research to take into account this dominance of design software in improving design activity. 

It suggests:

1.	Centralising the practical focus of design research on  improving the design of design software and design tools
2.	A reduction in emphasis away from the idea that human designers are the primary target of improving design via design research

In explanation, ne way of seeing humans is as being skilled, in a Swiss army knife sort of way. We are able to address many situations but address each in only a very limited manner - limited by our biology , especially our intuition, cognition and creativity.

However, by using our relatively simple and limited thinking abilities, along with our (very) limited creative abilities we have been able to create tools that produce results and undertake activities better than we can do so by ourselves.

For example we have devices that can wash up better than we can (or at least better than I can), especially when it involves surgical instruments. We have systems that enable us to grow more food in less time than we would as individuals. We can manufacture forks and spoons for cents that would cost us $1000 each if made by hand. We have map analysing systems, based on the knowledge of geologists, which make judgments about geology that are better than human geologists can manage. 

From this perspective, it suggests regarding human intervention and creativity as the last ditch backup if we haven’t got anything better. This applies to design as much as anything else.

In each of the above examples, the advantage has come from research focusing on improving the tools and automating the human processes, rather than research aimed at improving individuals’ skills.

I suggest the same applies to design.

If the above is correct, it implies the focus of evidence focused design and evidence focused research would be better on developing the computer software to undertake or automate design. 

It suggests reducing the design research resources currently being committed to achieving the  current rather poor returns from focusing on applying design research to improving the design practices of human designers.

Best wishes,

Terry


-----------------------------------------------------------------
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
-----------------------------------------------------------------