Dear friends,
IMHO, a bit of a meta critique is called for:
1. There are extremely lengthy replies in this thread, and some look like they were mostly copy&paste from a previous thread about EBD. Please make it short and sweet.
2. IMHO, the most useful comment in this thread is Don's. Second best is Luke Feast's clearly positioning of evidence quality and evidence relevance (thanks! I was going to say something similar but sloppy). Other than that, I think the blog posts by David Sless are absolute must-read material for any designer (the image that comes to mind is that of a stiff finger pressing a bloody wound — it hurts but it stops the bleeding).
3. I have noticed that whenever someone comes up with any enquiry or comment to this list that remotely smells of quantitative method, it is met with dismissive (sometimes demeaning) replies. I have whined about this before, and will continue to do so (sorry about that, but I just can't help it). Fear of positivist ghosts still abounds, and it can be as dangerous as pure positivism. As for me, I shiver whenever platonists stir inside their little caves. The rattling of their shackles creeps me out.
It is refreshing to see that David Sless has already (and at least as far back as 2009) written about some of the concerns I have always felt (at least for 20 years now) regarding not enough quantitative methods in design and/or stretching qualitative methods so that they cover for the absence of quantitative methods.
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Bottom line is, I just find epistemological ambivalence dangerous. I can deal with up-front contradiction (I know I practice contradiction abundantly myself) but I can't deal with covert ambivalence. Right now, I miss the contribution of Dr. Terry Love (though I have experienced quite some friction with his arguments myself): he also poked some wounds. And I think some are still fresh and in need of a stiff little finger (sorry... I just watched a Zombie movie).
4. I really don't see the point of all this fuss about EBD. To my (possibly short-sighted) mind, "Evidence Based Design" is either a contradiction in terms, for there is no way you can possibly have evidence about something which doesn't yet exist ("what ought to be"), or an overstatement, because every design needs some sort of "evidence."
I see no need to elevate evidence to such stature. Look at Don's list. Look at Luke's "taxonomy" of evidence. What more do you need to do design? Are there designers who practice design against evidence? Do those designers need an EBD framework, or do they need to simply do their job?
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Our primary concern as designers should be to do our job. That is our main professional responsibility. Part and parcel of that job is to find and use relevant evidence. If a designer disregards relevant evidence, is that designer doing her job? And if so, does she need EBD to know that she is screwing things up? I think not. I think when a designer eschews relevant evidence the only way to describe that is with a single word: "malpractice."
Best regards,
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Carlos Pires
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Design & New Media MFA // Communication Design PhD Student @ FBA-UL
Check the project blog:
http://thegolemproject.com
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