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Hi Ken and Karel, Broadly, I agree with you about these distinctions between clinical and applied research. But there is an important qualification. The analogy with medical practice is useful but limited. In the cases we have been discussing related to typographic design there is an overwhelming preponderance of culturally established conventions, right down to the letterforms and alphabets we use. Once one starts dealing with the letter spacing, line length, leading, justification, paragraph spacing etc etc we move into more areas where cultural practices and social rules prevail. Thus, unlike medicine, the underpinnings are not scientific but rules of practice that we learn to follow, articulate, and share to a greater or lesser degree. Also from time to time we abandon some rules and invent new ones. In science it is useful to distinguish between predictable and unpredictable phenomena. Medical practice continually wrestles at the margin of these two phenomena. Typography and much of what we do in information design takes place in a universe which is NONE-PREDICTABLE. This leads to entirely different modes of thought and action so that the generalisations that emerge from our cumulative instances of ‘clinical practice’ are unlike those of medicine. This means that the guidelines we create from this cumulative practice—the applied research—are of an altogether different type to the guidelines a doctor might follow in his treatment of patients. In my own work, where we do a great deal of before and after testing of material we have designed, we have noticed that the performance of a design—peoples’ ability to use the material to perform tasks that they want to use the material for—deteriorates quite rapidly. Within six months of introducing a new design, the number of errors people make begins to rise. This is because the context in which the material is used changes in NONE-PREDICTABLE ways as do the rules people apply to finding, interpreting and using information. When we produced our guidelines ‘Writing about Medicines for People’, we realised even before it was first published that people following the guidelines would be creating suboptimal designs. It’s now in its third edition and we still feel as if we are chasing our tail, or running just to stand still. Paradoxically, the people who use our guidelines become increasingly averse to changes we suggest, and the highly mutable rules we developed become ossified into immutable law, like laws of nature! David -- blog: http://communication.org.au/blog/ <http://communication.org.au/blog/> web: http://communication.org.au <http://communication.org.au/> Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA CEO • Communication Research Institute • • helping people communicate with people • Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795 Phone: +61 (0)3 9005 5903 Skype: davidsless 60 Park Street • Fitzroy North • Melbourne • Australia • 3068 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------