Lois,
(Sorry, long post)
This is an excellent summary of the discussion so far.
The major issues of getting into other disciplines and becoming sufficiently knowledgeable to ask meaningful questions that the other disciplines might be able to help with in design are considerable.
But putting them to one side, I think the focus of design is a key to some critical differences between design and other disciplines.
Many traditional subject matter disciplines are concerned with accumulating knowledge. Design, by contrast, is concerned with solving open ended ‘problems’ either arising from a client or from a designers area of interest. Thus there are different epistemologies at work and different criteria applied to judging potential end points—success, failure etc.
For example, in my own field of information design, we routinely test our designs with the people who have to use them. So we do things that look like the techniques used in social and experimental science, but our approach to sampling people for our research differs quite radically from those of science. Scientists typically sample in order to make generalisations about a population. We typically sample in order to make decisions.
So a scientist asks how many people do I need to sample so that I have a representative sample of the population about which:
1. I can collect enough data about which I have an acceptable statistical confidence,
2. I can claim are generalisable to the populations.
We, as designers, ask how many and what types of people do we need to involve our testing so that we can confidently arrive at a decision about what is or is not working in our designs. Statistical confidence plays no part in our epistemology. Instead we use principles of inclusive design to recruit test participants—people who are likely to have difficulty using our designs—and we stop testing when we think we are no longer collecting any new data.
Typically this figure in our work is around 6 to 10 participants. These figures of 6 to 10 have been widely replicated and reported on in the design research literature. I could elaborate and explain why the figures are so small, but that is a different topic. That the figure is so small might be the subject of scientific investigation, but that is not my immediate concern.
The point to make here is that these approaches to collecting data—science and design—derive from the different epistemologies at work in these different disciplines: adding to knowledge on the one hand, and making decisions in a problem solving context on the other.
I hope this helps.
David
--
blog: http://communication.org.au/blo <http://communication.org.au/blo>g/
web: http://communication.org.au <http://communication.org.au/>
Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
CEO • Communication Research Institute •
• helping people communicate with people •
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Phone: +61 (03) 9005 5903
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