dear gjoko,







design certainly has evolved and as technology progresses faces new challenges but it is not as young as you are alleging.



the word comes from the latin and was introduced into the english language in the 15th-16th century.



the first school of design was founded in 1837 in london to educate "manufacturing artisans." the parallel arts and crafts movement had a social mission, so had the bauhaus 75 years later, and the ulm school of design after wwii.







sadly, industry, with its intention to expand its market, and the so-called technologically advanced countries in the west with its effort to expand its hegemony over other cultures coopted designers into their ideal of mass production, being served best by making all consumers alike, and declaring cultures that insisted on their own cultures "underdeveloped" and worthy of extinction by the name of "development." In the service of industrialized societies, to succeed, designers had to justify their work in terms of the limited interests of their industrial clients. the evidence they had to provide was surely different than what it is now.







the rise of ethnography, ethnomethodology, and the semantic turn had the effect of encouraging designers to listen and to be sensitive to cultural differences inside and outside the industrial west. i consider myself part of a movement to direct design away from production orientations to taking on larger social/cultural challenges and responsibilities. here designers need to argue in terms of the stakeholder networks that make or break a design. in any context designers have to argue for their designs, but with a larger social perspective in mind evidence is very different from calculating production costs, marketability, and usability by many if not all.







design can never be based on objective "evidence" but on what is acceptable to those who matter.







you, gjoko, might not see yourself as chasing fashionable propositions, but from a larger perspective, this is simple the latest slogan trying to beat previous slogans, taking little account of the social/cultural dynamics that a design must set in motion or be mere reproduction of existing patterns. from that larger perspective, design is the engine of social/cultural innovation. it must changes the context in which it arises.







i do not want to create a new slogan, but it might be worth pursuing not evidence to particular clients, which usually is conservative as it makes use of data that already exist.  but pursue "consequential design," which needs to be justified by compelling arguments that inspire stakeholder networks to come on board.







klaus



















-----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 Gjoko Muratovski

Sent: Monday, January 04, 2016 7:40 PM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: What is *not* evidence?







Hi Klaus,







Design is a relatively new discipline and it is a field that constantly evolves. As the field evolves we do need new terms in order to mark out the changes that are taking place. We can't pretend that its 'business as usual'. Just look at the contemporary history of our filed.







The design work that was carried out in Europe and in the US from the middle of nineteenth century during the first half of the twentieth century begun as a trade activity. The demands of the industry were introduced into art and craft studios, and early designs began to be treated as applied or commercial art. In time, design programs were introduced in art schools, and as a result many principles of art became embedded in the design process. Another big change in the field of design occurred during the WWII years when the military started commissioning the corporate sector to help them produce more efficient war machines. As the industries changed their focus, designers followed suit and began to investigate ergonomics, mass production techniques, performance, and efficiency. When the war ended, all these new ways of working continued to be used by the corporate sector and this continued to influence the way designers work.







As the field of design grew in size and artistic expressions were increasingly combined with social and business acumen, design was no longer seen merely as a craft but as an emerging profession. As any other profession, design was also characterised with a tradition of practice and conscious recognition of a distinct type of working and thinking. With time, things in the field of design have begun to change and the field continued to evolve. Even thought the original purpose of design was to follow the needs of the industrial economy, certain design schools and some design professionals continued to challenge industry practices and to introduce new currents of thinking and working. For example, in the 1960s, the design focus shifted from developments in technology and form to consideration of human needs and behaviour. This was also a time when designers increasingly became interested in defining their role in society. In other words, the world of design evolved from studying things, to studying humanity.







The ever-evolving nature of the field has helped design to go beyond the definition of a trade and to be recognized as a rigorous area of study—from a technical profession, design evolved to become an academic discipline in its own right. In the US, between the 1980s and the 1990s, with encouragement and by demand of the industry, the American government funded the development of new academic research units in a range of design schools across the country. In the 1990s, design research began to gain momentum and this resulted in increase of doctoral programs in design in the US and across the world. In the field of design, the need for research that can produce evidence that could in return inform design decisions is coming to us from industry and the public sector. We are not venturing in these areas because we have nothing better to do. We, as a discipline, are finally treated as professionals and we are expected to behave as such. We are expected to make informed decisions and to take accountability for what we do. In other words, we are expected to do what other more established disciplines have been doing already.







Today we operate in a very different context to what we used to in the past. We deal with new forms of media and technology, we are given much more responsibilities than even before, and we live in a globalized world faced with incredible challenges - many of which were simply ignored in the past. Our education, as designers has expanded trifold. We now have masters degrees and PhD's in design. We are better educated and trained to use research in order to advance our own work and our discipline further. All of these things have changed the way we see the world around us and how we see our own role in the world. Not to mention that there are also many ideological platforms from which we approach design.







So, when I refer to the term evidence-based design, I don't do that in order to be fashionable. I do that in order to explain the difference between approaching a particular design work in a more rigorous way than what I used to do 20 years ago, when all design decisions I was making were based around principles of aesthetics and form. This is not applicable to all design jobs, but I find this way of working necessary for some of the work I do now. I still do other design projects that require no evidence whatsoever - such as poster design, lets say. (Even though I have less and less time to work on such projects nowadays).







All the best,



Gjoko











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