The 'Call for Participation in an International Survey on Design Expertise' attracted my attention because I have a fairly long-standing academic interest in understanding the nature of expertise in design. (As Ken Friedman mentioned, I have recently published an invited chapter on Expertise in Professional Design in the new second edition of the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance.) So, with positive intentions, I thought I would have a look at the survey. I was hoping there might be a preamble that would say something about the research project behind it, and what research questions were being addressed. There wasn't, so I began to go through the survey questions, hoping there might be some explanation at the end. I could discern no research hypotheses or plan behind the questions, so I filled them all in (they were all obligatory) very quickly and unreliably. I cannot remember the questions, and the survey has now been taken down, but they were of the type: 'How many hours a week do you spend thinking about design problems?' There was no explanation of the research project at the end, but there was a box for comments, so I commented that the exercise was a waste of time for everyone. There was also a linked site presenting the results and comments as they accumulated. A few hours after I submitted my comments, they had been deleted, along with my responses to the questions. So someone was monitoring the returns and filtering 'real' from 'fake' submissions and perhaps 'positive' from 'negative' comments. 
My criticisms of the survey raised a few comments. 

Comment 1: "This might be put together by a PhD student trying to learn . . "
But the call was posted by two professors with PhDs, representing "a team of academics and researchers". Even it had been a PhD student, they needed to be told fairly directly that their 'survey' was useless as research work; they should have been better tutored and their supervisors should never allow such a 'survey' to be sent out. Students: if your PhD tutors and supervisors cannot give you informed advice and adequate research instruction, then complain to your university higher authorities.

Comment 2: "we should find out more and hear them out . . .  What have they come across? What has been shown? . . . "
But the whole premise and execution of the survey was fatally flawed and it could not produce reliable results. The call for participation claimed that "The study is intended to enhance the understanding about what expertise in design means" and "Your answers to the questionnaire constitute a valuable contribution to design science." To gain understanding of expertise you need to study experts, their education and experience and their work, as well as the underlying concept of 'what expertise means', not solicit responses from 200 self-selected subscribers to PhD Design and several other similar lists. Responses to vapid questions vaguely related to design activity from a random group of participants cannot constitute a valuable contribution to design science, nor to a science of design. Researchers: if we cannot do better than this, and we even seek to defend it, then we are in a very sorry state.

Nigel Cross
Emeritus Professor of Design Studies


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