Hi Birger,
Your list of core design topics doesn't contradict the pursuit for EBD (I use architecture as a case). In fact, EBD has been a major mode of practice for decades -- see civil engineering and any other kind of physical engineering. Modern and contemporary engineering is research based.
What you mention as core design topics, principles, concerns and skills, is correct. This is the nature of core design. The rest is reseach (I deliberately simplify the situation). As an architect, I love that core work. As a sociologist, I can say that designers need to learn first how to organize space because that is their job. Let's leave research to researchers.
The new movement of EBD in architecture is actually about function (function as an aspect of architecture). Otherwise, building technologies have been EBD based for decades. If we assume/accept that architectural design is about organizing space, materials, and equipment in order to accommodate human behavior, than your principles are the main tools in that trade. EBD brings only the behavioral/activity requirements. They can also be called building specifications with the caveat that in this aspect we talk only about the sociocultural/user specifications for the building project. EBD means or should mean that the people who organize space and materiality should base their decisions on research findings (research can be done in different paradigmatic modes).
EBD is the best thing that can happen to the field of Environment and Behavior (E&B) because it gradually will develop a market of E&B. Currently architects talk a lot about function, but they interpret function in their own way, actually, anyway that they want. They disregard completely the actual social logic of space and the fact that the study of building users and the social logic of space belongs to the realm of the social sciences. Architects cannot accept that in the realm of user research there are might be experts that are better than them. Of course -- architects have hardly taken a course in social science. (Let's exclude the Gen Ed social science courses that architects are forced to take and they study that subject matter with disdain and disgust.)
So, the issue is not whether EBD is good or bad. The issue is how to do it. And how to do research for EBD. Currently the perspectives on EBD range from very rigid Positivist view on knowledge to very permissive view (Kirk Hamilton, with all respect) that includes architect's intuition and personal experience. So, if we accept architect's personal intuition the way we have accepted it for centuries, then -- what is new with EBD. I am not against intuition and actually work on it. However, my approach is how to methodologize intuition and make it on par with scholarly knowledge.
So, it is very important to define what is evidence in the context of design. Actually, I don't like the word evidence because of its foundations in the legal realm. I would rather like research-based design, including research done in accord to several different epistemologies. But in reality, the only way to talk about research is to jump on the EBD bandwagon, no matter how much I deride it.
At this time, the major problem with EBD is that it profanizes scholarly research. This is because the movement is led by the architectural profession that doesn't understand social science research (regarding only the functional aspect). I am trying to recruit social scientists to get into that field, but unfortunately, they are more interested in experiments with mice or organizing the poor against the World oppressors. I can understand them -- that is why they become social scientists.
I hope that at some point of time, E&B EBD will become a standard, just like civil engineers incorporated physics and the scientists about structures in their education and practice.
Now, what are my stakes in this discourse? I want to separate the "evidence" production from design and then to create mechanisms for assimilating "evidence" in design. Why? Because this will bring specialization. The evidence will be produced by social scientists (actually, interdisciplinary teams staffed with social scientists and interdisciplinary professionals). There is a huge resistance in the architectural profession against such an approach because it will take off power and market niche from the architects and transfer it to other professions (social science researchers, programmers, evaluators). The architects are trying to suppress any development in that direction, both in academia and in practice. That is natural. Every profession fights for its turf.
There are also a number of other issues, questions, examples, and so on, but I will stop here because this topic can take hundreds of pages.
Best wishes,
Lubomir
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Birger Sevaldson
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2015 6:01 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Discussions and critique of evidence-based practice
Thanks for the informative replies.
I think they are exciting but I also have some worries. There are many arguments and good points made and i am only able to repond to a few.
Luke thanks for pointing to the fact that evidence needs argument. I would go even further and say there is no evidence without interpretation and argument.
Peter, thanks for the elaborative reply. I acknowledge the results form evidence based design in health care. I am not very knowledgable about EBD but from what I read I have the impression that its main body of research is a quite narrow application in interior design in a setting where it is possible to measure effects over time (hospitals). It seems to me that there are big challenges in generalizing these findings to other fields of design.
Don thanks for your note. It points towards something that maybe could form a common ground. Maybe there is no sharp dichotomy between evidence based practice and lived experience as it is portrayed in the article from social work practice I mentioned in my original note. Maybe in design most of us have always been looking at knowledge production as something composed of many modes, approaches and components. So if this is a common realization in our community this could form a common ground.
But I am not sure if there are still serious contradictions within what could be this common ground. I am not sure we would agree what to include and how to frame it. The causes for my worry is based on for example the former discussions on the need for design education to change. As I recall the arguments they are mainly about turning the design education towards a more scientific orientation, e.g. evidence based design. In other discussions designerly approaches are portrayed as less substantial and rigorous and hence less worth despite that the notion of rigor is inadequate when discussing the core notions of design as I will try to show.
Don, looking at your eight levels I am glad you make a point that the leveling is not about quality or goodness but the levels are about increasing degree of rigor. That is fine and I agree that all of those levels are relevant. But I would suggest that level 2 to 8 are only supportive to the core of design. This discussion triggered me to produce another list where rigor is of none or little relevance. This is a list of the core notions of design. It is a very foggy, difficult and hard to discuss list exactly because it escapes totally or partly issues of rigor and evidence. It is sorted from design-specific to more general notions. Some of these escape the realm of evidence and rigor totally because it is just a different dimension; others could be underpinned and supported but not replaced by e.g. evidence based design. The list maybe unfolds your level 1.
The core notions and the "jewels in the crown" of design are to my mind the following:
* The notion of composition. Composition of space (like in a painting or an object or building) or time (like an interaction, a service, an experience). The composition of a process, a co-design workshop, an organization, a policy etc. Composition is relating and arranging things in a way that goes far beyond sheer assembly. I suggest this to be the most important notion of design.
* The notions of visual thinking, reflexive practice and design thinking
* The notion of creativity. To imagine and envisioning what could be.
* The notion of wholeness or Gestalt. To understand whole systems as figures rather than rigorous models.
* The notion of wholeness across systems or the notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk
* The notion of expression or the poetic dimension of design. Symbols metaphors, analogies, semantics.
* The notion of thrownness (Geworfenheit). Being thrown into a situation where one cannot oversee the consequences of one's action. Not acting has also its consequences.
* The notion of Fronesis, the experience and intellectual capacity acquired over time, how to judge and react and practice in relation to unique real life situations.
* The notion of the wicked problem
* The notion of dynamics, the moving target. While we plan, things change.
* The notion of adaptive expertise
* The notion of expert intuition (Dreyfus model)
* The notions of ethics, empathy, dialogue, values and politics
(disclaimer: Please criticize and massacre, subtract and add. I am not well informed on Heidegger nor Aristoteles, maybe others who know more could critique this?)
What worries me is that this flimsy and incomplete list is a list of notions off which many rarely are made explicit (with exceptions, e.g. The Design Way). I have the impression that composition is taught silently and tacitly at most design schools. It is the implicit result of the design studio model. (is this true? Maybe others have other impressions?) Anyway, We tend to gravitate away from things that are tacit, hard to grasp, that one needs to practice and experience over time to understand and towards things that are seemingly logic, clear, undisputable and hard facts. This means we are constantly gravitating away from the core of design!
My list is hard to sell to clients, but when we work with them they will experience composition skills, visual thinking etc and this is highly appreciated.
I agree design needs to change, but I am wondering which sub-domain of design needs to change in what way? Personally in our common ground I would like to put more emphasis on the above list, leaning on EBD and others through collaborating with those design researchers who are experts, while others might emphasize developing e.g. EBD.
If this degree of inclusiveness, acknowledgment, interaction and appraisal of pluralism is embedded in our conception of our common ground I think we are making real progress. Is there reason for my worry or am i trying to break down open doors?
What does the list think?
Birger Sevaldson (PhD)
Professor at Institute of Design
Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Norway
Phone (0047) 9118 9544
www.birger-sevaldson.no
www.systemsorienteddesign.net
www.ocean-designresearch.net
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
