Hi Charles and everyone, 
 
I've been watching this discussion with interest and was wondering when someone would move the debate into the realms of engineering and environmental evidence or information.  
 
I agree with Charles, information and evidence provision for designers remains underdeveloped (Yorick Benjamin's work is the best example I've come across) and I would add that this is particularly challenging when the evidence relates to something that is out of the designer's sightline... i.e.. not one of theirs or their client's main priorities.
 
Sarah's examples of clinical EBP appear fairly straightforward in that the indisputable priority of the practitioner is to make the patient better, and the 'unintended consequences' of their practice would therefore (I imagine) directly impede that primary goal. They are therefore open to any evidence that they can easily access which would aid this goal.   
 
With Ken's example it gets a bit woollier as we have seen... the graphic designer must first have 'legibility' as one of their main priorities in order to be positioned in such a way that 'evidence of legibility or illegibility' be of interest to him/her.  You'd hope that this would be the case, but perhaps not always...?
 
With environmental considerations and particularly in engineering and product design it becomes particularly problematic... yes there needs to be a better system for accessing evidence and information, this is half the battle.  The other half is positioning the designer to access the evidence in the first place, to regard the 'unintended consequences' of their designs (environmental, social, resource / energy etc) to be both a priority for them, their client and within their power. Perhaps the EBP that Terry speaks of in engineering is geared to conventional priorities... safety, functional failure etc...?  
 
In short if the evidence is within easy reach, does the designer's priorities or position in relation to this evidence severely limit its use, and are there any parallels in clinical (medical) EBP along these lines?
 
Comments?
 
Rosie
PhD candidate
 
 

________________________________

From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design on behalf of Charles Burnette
Sent: Wed 29/10/2008 21:26
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Evidence and Case Based Design



Sabine, Ken, David, Terry  and others

The problem with comparing evidence based designing with evidence 
based medicine is that there are no searchable databases that parse 
design research enough to make it relevant and useful in the 
situations confronted by most designers. Some guidance may be had from 
statistics if one knows what to access and how to interpret the 
findings but, generally speaking, research findings do not map easily 
into the complexity of design problems.

At the heart of the issue are the needs, desires and circumstances - 
the "problematic situations"- that designers address. Understanding 
how needs and desires arise in the circumstances of a situation and 
the potentials through which they might be satisfied is usually where 
the experience of the practitioner weighs in. That experience is often 
under-informed and in need of relevant knowledge.  There are very few 
people dealing with how information systems  to support design could 
be implemented.

Some early efforts are worth noting. In 1976 the US National Science 
Foundation (1) found a need for information services to support the 
application of Environmental Design Research. It stated that 
"Research ... will have to concentrate on developing a comprehensive 
understanding both of the nature of design related information and the 
nature, dimensions, and dynamics of the design task." Subsequently  
the American Institute of Architects Research Corporation launched a 
program of post occupancy evaluation of buildings to determine their 
success in meeting the needs of occupants. Although textbooks were 
published,  professional offices began to offer POE services to their 
clients, and government agencies incorporated the services into 
facilities management practice no searchable databases reached the 
architectural profession as a whole.  Like POEs, case histories have 
sought to capture information and model experience to inform designers 
and other decision makers. An entire discipline of Case Based 
Reasoning using artificial intelligence to map case data to new 
situations emerged in the '90s .  ( See (2)  for a thorough 
introduction and some applications to architectural design.) But 
useful documentation of design cases did not become integrated  with  
methodologies that might make them useful. Similarly, The Design 
Management Institute began to compile and publish case histories of 
design projects  using a systematic approach to documentation. 
Although primarily conceived as a tool for teaching and sharing design 
management information, it is the only systematic institutionally 
sponsored  approach to case histories that I can recall. In (3)  I 
suggested how the DMI format might be strengthened and implemented in 
a searchable database to serve as a research tool  able to inform  
design thinking.  However no searchable database of case based 
information was developed.   Despite several other efforts the 
matching of information to the needs of designers has never built the 
institutional support necessary to establish informational tools that 
can be used to capture and search for design information tailored to a 
designers need.  It remains as noted in 1976 (1) that "The design 
professions have been able to get by in the past due to lack of hard 
research data and a dependence on experience and intuition to fill in 
the gaps where information was not available. This approach is no 
longer tenable..."

Chuck

(1) Environmental Design Research, NSF Program Options, Final Report 
National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C. December 1, 1976

(2) Kalodner, Janet (1993) Case Based Reasoning, San Mateo, CA, Morgan 
Kaufman Publishers

(3) Burnette, C.H.: 1994, Structuring Case Histories to Support Design 
Management Education and Practice, Sixth International Forum on Design 
Management Education and Research, Paris School of Management, 
Education Department, 1-3 June, Paris, France , See also DMI journal.

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