I was recently exchanging some thoughts with a prominent practice researcher in Norway. When reporting on the increased interest in evidence-based design he replied:
“It’s interesting that the evidence-based paradigm is spreading to design now, more or less at a time when the medical community, which gave birth to the idea, is beginning to react against it.”
I started to only very briefly search a bit on this debate that has been going on in e.g. social work for a while resulting in a split and deep contradictions. I thought this article
http://www.socwork.net/sws/article/view/22/62
would be a good read, because it is not propagating one or the other side, but pointing to the dialectic between the basically positivistic evidence-based tradition and the constructivist, critical and hermeneutic tradition in social sciences, and it points to ways of working within this dialectic.
I generally do not think it is a good idea to transform ideas, notions, practices unchanged from one field to another. This is especially critical when comparing another field, in this case social work, with design. So I suggest when reading this article keep in the back of your head what resonates to design. Social sciences like most others are concerned with what is, (the social system) while design is concerned with what ought to be. Therefore the article lacks yet another dimension that to my mind would shift the balance between the two positions, disfavouring the evidence-based approach.
But the conclusion is worth taking on in our debate:
“The debate about what might be the basis for good professional practice in social work has been part of its history of professionalization from the very beginning. In this sense, the dilemmas emerging from the highly dichotomized debate about evidence-based practice are neither something new for social work, nor a merely theoretical academic debate between different ontological and epistemological views. It is rather the awareness of these inherent dilemmas in social work practice, which constitutes the crucial requirement to recapture the debate about ‘what works’ from the insides of the profession. This means that social work practice must be able to deal with different sources of knowledge as well as with their limitations and it needs to bring to the surface the different interests that lie behind the claims of knowledge and accountability. In this regard the notion of democratic professionalism seems to be a promising concept to reconstitute the question about ‘what works’ as a professional and democratic debate to be conducted in practice. Promoting a dialectic and democratic dialogue between the two spheres social work is rooted in and committed to - socio-political objectives on the one hand and lifeworld processes on the other one - social work practice itself generates a valid source of street level knowledge, which should inform the development of social policies from below.”
It would be a good idea to review the debates and critique on evidence-based practices and evidence-based design especially and move ahead with this in a thoughtful and critical manner to avoid a similar unproductive split in the design research community. There is a special risk connected to the evidence-based approach because of its great selling power and good fit with current public management ideas where responsibility is removed from individual practitioners to rule-based management, and big data in a massive scale. The potential for serious damage should be obvious.
Birger Sevaldson (PhD)
Professor at Institute of Design
Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Norway
Phone (0047) 9118 9544
www.birger-sevaldson.no
www.systemsorienteddesign.net
www.ocean-designresearch.net
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