Dear, Dear Ken,
You are very kind and complimentary, and I stand both flattered and rebuked.
Perhaps I will deploy other personas for other occasions in the future: the ascetic monk, the loutish sports fan, the rabid revolutionary, the dusty scholar, or the evangelical futurist, to mention just a few! It is all part of adding colour and texture.
Whether or not people buy our publications because they think I’m a serious researcher or a brandy soaked clown is another matter, and it is for them to decide. It is possible to be both or none of these things.
I do, however, want to make an important point about intellectual discussions in our common interest —evidence-based design. You capture an important sense of the difference in some of our approaches when you say:
> The greatest number of design practitioners today continue to rely on common sense, trial and error, and experience. While this involves some kinds of evidence, it is immediate sensory evidence based on personal aesthetic judgment. The approach is traditional, and the traditional framework often makes it difficult for practitioners to assess the evidentiary nature of the issues they consider.
I have no way of quantifying whether or not this is ’the greatest number’ or not, but I hope it is, and I hope it will remain so. This is what we must build on. It is the fact that it is rooted in tradition and aesthetic judgement that make it important. That is what we must build on, not demolish or devalue. This is our starting point, not something to turn against or belittle. I mentioned in my post on “An example of Evidence-Based Design Practice” about our experience with Diagnostic Testing:
> 5. We find it one of the most creative parts of our work.
>
> The last point may come as a surprise to many designers who eschew an EBDP. What I can report, however, is that sitting alongside people who are struggling with our crude prototypes and talking with them about their use of the prototypes provides us with insights that we could not get in any other way. It’s like an epiphany, a moment of revelation. Indeed, if more than one of us is conducting the testing, the first question we ask each other when we emerge from the testing is “what struck you?”. We go into the testing with the expectation of being surprised, and we are seldom disappointed. This is obviously quite different to the rather cliched view of EBDP that designers without this experience sometimes have of testing. All I can say is try it and see.
In the context in which this occurs what we are augmenting is what you describe as the:
> immediate sensory evidence based on personal aesthetic judgment
It is the designers with their personal aesthetic judgement who undertakes the work of diagnostic testing and have the epiphany. Thus it is THEIR definition of evidence that prevails not some intellectual abstraction conjured up in our debates. Which is why I said in my last post:
> With so many assumptions floating around about the nature of “evidence”, and all the clever and smart arguments that can be used to defend or deflate a particular points of view on the subject, it might be useful to ask practitioners why they used the term, in what context, and how they do useful work that involves the term “evidence”.
>
> All the rest seems to me like posturing.
I hope this helps join up some of the dots and move our discussions forward in a productive direction.
Warm Regards to all,
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
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