Hi all,
On 2 January 2016 at 11:32, Don Norman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I am a firm believer in evidence-based everything. Design is not an
> exception. So let me try to answer Birger's questions and perhaps address
> some of his concerns.
>
[...Don's excellent post trimmed for space....]
TL;DR version:I agree with Don about the role of evidence in design.
As for what "evidence" is, we are free to reach a consensus on what the
term means in design, just as "theory" means something different in logic
vs science vs lay-language.
For my part, I'm fine with starting with something very conventional, and
building out from there. Wikipedia, for instance, reads: "Evidence, broadly
construed, is anything presented in support of an assertion. This support
may be strong or weak. The strongest type of evidence is that which
provides direct proof of the truth of an assertion. At the other extreme is
evidence that is merely consistent with an assertion but does not rule out
other, contradictory assertions, as in circumstantial evidence."
Evidence is especially important in decision-making. And there's a whole
lot of decisions that happen during a design process.
There's (at least) two points where elucidation is needed to apply this
kind of definition to design.
1. What types of "assertions" are made in design? Are they all subject to
evidentiary examination? I suspect (or perhaps hope) we'll eventually have
a fairly crisply defined and fairly universally agreeable set of... let's
call them "contexts," that will allow assertions to be categorized.
Something like assertions about the situation in which a design
intervention is sought, the design intervention itself, the types of tasks
that constitute development of the intervention (project management,
strategy, ideation/concept-development) - that sort of thing.
2. The strength of the evidence. This is something I don't think has been
discussed enough so far on this thread. Evidence can be good or bad. Some
people seem to talk and write about EBD as if all evidence were good
evidence. That's a mistake, IMHO. I also think that continued study of
where good evidence and bad comes from in and during design will help draw
boundaries (though not necessarily crisp or static ones) between aspects of
design that ought to depend on evidence and the other aspects. Studying
evidence should probably also be bounded by the contexts (per point #1) in
which the evidence is gathered and to which it pertains. Evidence gathered
in/for one context may not apply or even be relevant in another context.
3. Finally, evidence doesn't categorically prove or disprove an assertion.
It does, however, point in the direction of the most robust way to proceed.
Evidence is itself bounded, and ought never be taken as indicative of a
universal truth except where it is overwhelming (e.g., that the earth
orbits the sun for instance, rather than the other way round). So part of
the exercise in using evidence in design is understanding the evidence well
enough to know its limits. This relates, by the way, to the "strength" of
evidence too.
Happy 2016!
\V/_ /fas
*Prof. Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.*
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/
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