> Will Stahl-Timmins sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 12:17 PM
>> wondering if anyone has any more experiences of the
>> idea that testing or evaluation leads to a sacrifice in
>> terms of creative control of a project?
It depends in part what you mean by testing and evaluation as as this is
a research forum...
In a recent research project the design produced was intended to have a
particular effect on its audience, enabling them to do something.
So we had a look at what the audience had done and used some relevant
experts to assess whether the audience members had been able to do what
we had hoped. This was a kind of final evaluation to confirm the
principles built up in the research but it is the kind of evaluation
that any designer might do well to emulate. Otherwise they might just
repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
Some distinguished members of this discussion list have used a variety
of evaluation in both research and practice - the boundary is sometimes
extremely blurred when expert researchers are also expert designers.
Owain Pedgley recruited two experts, a guitarist and guitar maker, to
provide a means of qualitative review of his developing work on polymer
guitars. How else could he ensure that the guitar was an excellent
guitar? (before you come up with some proposition about technical
testing think hard about how you would do it)
Karel Van der Waarde has made use of small groups of users to provide
continuing feedback on his developing work on pharmaceutical packaging
where the ability of users to recognise and understand the information
is a crucial factor in the success of the design. I expect David Sless
uses similar methods. I have visited a company who design inhalers and
similar drug dispensing products, they describe their approach as a
rolling programme of user testing of lashups and prototypes, not to
provide quantitative measure of performance but to use quite small
numbers of users to help identify problems and opportunities in the
design as it develops.
So we have two questions. What do we mean by evaluation? and what do we
mean by creative control. If evaluation involves some kind of reductive
third party testing, like a lot of work with eye tracking, then I'm with
Gunnar as it almost always misses the point. If it is a tool that helps
the designer to see their work in its context I suggest it's
increasingly necessary. Similarly with "creative control" if that's
shorthand for "nobody interferes with my work, I'm the creative genius
round here" then I am deeply suspicious. If it means allowing respect
and a proper role for the judgement and experience of the designer I'm
with you all the way.
best wishes from Sheffield
Chris
...............................................................o^o
Professor Chris Rust FDRS
Head of Art and Design Research Centre (nearly finished that)
Head of Art and Design (real soon now)
Sheffield Hallam University, S1 2NU, UK
+44 114 225 6772
http://chrisrust.wordpress.com/
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Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the
future of the human race. - H. G. Wells
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