Again I am getting worried when EBD is a theme here at this list. My worries are not caused by the use of evidence in design but by the spreading belief that the use of evidence in design will become main stream, replacing designing with problem solving based on evidence, and becoming the dominating way of designing. 

To me this is like doing a time travel back to the first generation of design methods. It is like nothing has happened in between. It’s like the design research community is in danger of drifting into an unjustified belief that we can solve complex socio-technical issues with hard methods.

Or am I misinterpreting this? There is obviously a chance that I am misunderstanding the promoters of EBD. This misunderstanding must be based on different interpretations of the concept of evidence. I have intensively asked the promoters of EBD to clarify what they mean with evidence. I think it is the least one is obliged to do: to clarify what one is talking about. So far NOBODY has made any effort to clarify what constitutes evidence in design. Ken returned the question and asked me back what I think constitutes evidence and I eventually answered. But honestly I don’t think it is my task to clarify this but it is clearly a task of the promoters of this concept.

I am baffled by the unwillingness or unableness to clarify this. Hence I have stopped taking EBD seriously. But then I see this spreads, promoted by many seniors on this list, and my worry is rising. How can we let this concept spread unchallenged without even clarifying what it is?

I still hope I got it all wrong and that you have some inclusive, slightly fluffy conception of evidence and that that’s why you refuse to clarify it. I would accept that and think that EBD means nothing else than that we need to base all our design decisions on as much knowledge, facts and information, common sense, empathical interpretation, agency and representation, political analyses and hard data as we can, given the available data, the circumstances, the pressure of time and resources. If this is what EBD means with evidence, I would subscribe to this, though I think you have given it a very badly chosen name. Also: this is not what EBD is originally. Originally it is a very narrow, fractionalizing research activity.

But then I read stuff like this from Gjoko Muratovski who just published a book on research for designers. (I haven’t read the book yet so I am only referring to his post): 

"The role that designers play within the business sector and in society is changing. In order to make meaningful contributions to both, designers will need to learn to ask the right questions in order to identify what the real problems are. They will also need to learn how to conduct research in order to resolve these problems."

What????? I though design had passed the age of defining itself as problem solving activity only a long time ago? And I thought that there was a solid shared understanding that design tasks are resolved through designing and that normal research, which is obviously at stake here, can only provide information and data and not solve problems by itself?

And further on:

"While some of the problems that designers try to address are evident, others yet need to be detected. In either case, designers need to demonstrate new levels of understanding of what these problems are before they begin to develop solutions. This is a process that always begins with the question: What is it that we want to resolve?"
And.....
"Once the problem is identified and placed within a given context, the search for gaps in this knowledge and possible resolutions continues."

What????? Does a design process always begin with the question: what is it we want to resolve? This sounds really outdated and archaic.  

Gjoko, sorry for the unfair quoting where I take things out of their context but I don’t think it is entirely unjustified. Where are all the Rittels and wicked problems gone? Where are the realizations of Ranulf Glanville  and many others on how the system changes in the moment you start to work with it? Where are the realizations of problems being not singular but intriguingly interlinked into problem fields or problematiques. Where are the realizations of “thrownness”, being thrown into situations where you cannot have any clear certainty of what the consequences of your actions will be, not acting has also its consequences. And the realizations of the “science of muddling through” by Lindblom (I learned this from Don at the RSD4, thanks) and hundreds of other similar realizations that we are operating in a dynamic flux and while we are planning the “problems” have changed.  I could mention a bunch of other issues including the whole of modern systems thinking. 

Common for all these issues is that they are rendering the problem solving schema from first generation design methodology at least slightly problematic  and it  raises a  slight challenge to the concept of evidence and this, gentlemen, you have to sort out and respond to! 

I will never take EBD seriously before you propagators of it have at least tried to answer these obvious very crucial and serious questions. Since this has not happened I am increasingly suspicious to EBD and I think it will mislead many young designers and researchers into beliefs that are erroneous though comfortable because they will escape the most unpleasant, risky, and uncomfortable activity of being a designer: designing.

A question to make you going: Was the D-day invasion of Normandy an evidence based activity and if yes to what degree and in what way? Maybe answering this question carefully can clarify the issues a bit.

Here is another one: To what degree is Big Data changing the conditions for design and the premises for this discussion?

A happy new year to everybody!  :)

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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