Dear Terry,
 
My earlier note describes the distinction between evidence and testimony.
 
Evidence is something we can see and judge for ourselves.
 
Testimony occurs when people offer an account of what they have seen.
 
We can determine the meaning and value of evidence for ourselves.
 
Testimony relies on memory, interpretation, and judgment. We must therefore decide on the credibility of the witness as well as the credibility, meaning, and value of the testimony.
 
You provided no evidence. You offered testimony – an account of what you believe and what you remember.
 
While it is generally true that no evidence is complete, this is not entirely true. It is sometimes possible to answer questions with complete evidence. This is the case for proofs in mathematics and logic. It is also the case for the issue of an earliest known published citation. While there is always the possibility that an example of earlier usage may turn up, there is an earliest known citation at any time. That citation constitutes evidence.
 
Stephane Vial and others opened a thread on the term “design thinking.” They described a process made visible to the public by IDEO. You claim that engineers used the term “design thinking” in the sense of this current usage before people from other design fields did. Stefanie di Russo asked for evidence supporting this claim.
 
The question has two parts. 1) When did engineers first use the term “design thinking”? 2) Did engineers use the term “design thinking” in the sense that Stephane used the term – usage that indicates a specific kind of practice exemplified by the firm IDEO. You answered neither of these questions.
 
In responding to Stephane and Stefanie, you made explicit historical claims. You softened your tone in responding to David and to me. Nevertheless, your original claims went beyond “pathways for reasoning and analysis that seem to offer improved understanding and better sense-making on the basis of evidence I have seen or read.”
 
Along with your historical claims, you offered Stefanie a lecture on evidence and an account of your memories. You claimed in your post [2, below] that your account was a form of direct evidence.
 
In law, witnesses give testimony in evidence. A jury decides whether the testimony is credible. Since you answered neither of Stefanie’s questions, I did not find your testimony useful. While your memories of hearing engineers use the words “design thinking” many years ago are probably reasonable, this does not answer Stefanie’s two questions.
 
Your reply to me [1, below] suggested that you provided incomplete evidence. I do not believe you provided incomplete evidence.
 
I argue that you provided no evidence at all.
 
Instead, you offered anecdotes based on memory. You bolstered these with a flawed account of the difference between direct and indirect evidence, effectively claiming that your anecdotes constitute direct evidence.
 
Memories and anecdotes do not constitute evidence on the issues in question. They are testimony.
 
Yours,
 
Ken
 
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University | Launching in 2015 
 
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook University | Townsville, Australia ||| Visiting Professor | UTS Business School | University of Technology Sydney University | Sydney, Australia
 
Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn 
 
Telephone: International +46 727 003 218 — In Sweden (0) 727 003 218
 
—
 
[1]
 
Terry Love wrote:
 
—snip—
 
Evidence, in whatever its form, is always incomplete. Understanding history requires discussion and identifying pathways of reasoning that can be used to develop better understanding. These can later be tested against evidence. In my posts, I’m mainly proposing pathways for reasoning and analysis that seem to offer improved understanding and better sense-making on the basis of evidence I have seen or read. As I have said before, I am not trying to prove them as true to you or anyone else. They are intended to be helpful insights. If you want to test them against evidence, then please identify the evidence and go ahead.
 
—snip—
 
[2]
 
—snip—
 
Hi Stephanie,
 
Thank you for your message. We’ve been here before.
 
The approach needed to delve backwards into understanding these issues is a bit like archaeology.
 
At this point its perhaps good to distinguish between direct and indirect evidence. Direct evidence is usually preferable to indirect evidence. Direct evidence is for example witness evidence of people who were there.
 
Indirect evidence is things like writings about what happened later. Or even more indirect and unreliable, is trying to distil understanding from what is missing from the written evidence. Think of the design literature from the 60s onwards being only the later part of a period after which things started to get written down. Before that you need to look in a different way. There are plenty of us around who were in engineering design in the 60s and remember what happened.
 
Second, it is useful to look at the process of analysis, particularly in terms of hidden biases in how one filters evidence. A test, I’ve written this before, would a person writing in German about design thinking be excluded from the history of design thinking because they used the German term for design thinking rather than the English ‘design thinking’? If not, then how do you choose to include or not from the history, those who discuss design thinking in English yet use a different terminology - e.g. ‘design cognition’, ‘self-conscious design’, ‘design process’?
 
Pushing this line a little further, Its not unreasonable to suggest that what was discussed under the rubric of ‘design process’ is what we now often call ‘design thinking’. It required both thinking about the processes by which design is undertaken and thinking about the ways that the ‘thinking whilst designing’ was undertaken. Discussion of design processes goes back a long way in engineering design to the time when engineering design activity involved more than a single person. Another point of entry into understanding the use of design thinking was the making explicit of design thinking that came with the use of mathematical analyses in engineering design from the 16th century onwards. This required making conscious the thinking of engineering designers in order to identify when and how it was useful to include mathematical analyses. This latter is somewhat similar to the much more recent inclusion of mathematical analyses in the work of graphic designers that has involved those creating graphic design software to make explicit graphic designers’ ‘design thinking’. Actually, I remember one of my PhD students found that that was probably the other way around. It was more a case that engineering designers, using their understanding of ‘design thinking’, developed software products for use by visual designers and called it ‘graphic design’ software. Then, later, some visual designers who had begun to use the graphic design software started calling themselves ‘graphic designers’?
 
The development of conceptualising design has been a rich historically complex evolution. Looking at the literature only provides part of the story and is often misleading AND to understand the evolution of these issues it is also necessary to be fully conversant with the long development of design literature in engineering.
 
The simple picture, which I presented at the DRS conference in Melbourne some years ago is that developments in theory about design and design thinking in the Art and Design fields are about 50 years behind similar developments in engineering design. 
 
This is easily identified in terms of design practices. I’d suggest the burden of proof for those from Art and Design is to identify ANY aspects of design theory that have been developed in the Art and Design realms before they were identified in engineering design. Can you think of any, and provide evidence?
 
—snip—
 
 

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