Elicitation Methods in Experimental Design Research

Abstract

At a time when public access to visual information is greater than ever before (via compelling print, broadcast, digital, and Internet delivery), it is appropriate that research exploring the influence of visual communication design on people who use, interact with, and depend on it for information is evolving within higher education. In the past decade, the number of individuals engaging in historical design research and critical-theoretical writing about the social impact of design has grown to such an extent that calls for the formalization of design studies as a liberal art1 are gradually being translated into action by individuals within forward thinking institutions. Less developed in academe are investigations of design as a social science.2 This paper discusses the value of undertaking interdisciplinary research involving direct contact with members of prospective audiences as a means of building a knowledge base about user interaction with communication design, with the goal of strengthening both design theory and practice. Recent conceptions of design research as a liberal art and as a social science 3 are not contradictory or competing ideas, but rather two aspects of the same system-the theoretical and branches of visual communication design research, respectively. Just as physicists provoke, test, and challenge the work of theoretical physicists, and vice versa, so should theoretical and efforts mutually inform and stimulate research in design.4 Historically, the dominant conception of our field has been one of a theory/practice dichotomy that has left theorists and practitioners largely uninvolved with the concerns of the other. But commercial design practice more properly could be understood as the applied branch of the field, with research balancing theoretical investigation in graduate programs. The origins of the theory/practice dichotomy in design (with theory being strongly subordinated to practice) are rooted in the pedagogy of the Bauhaus which has, for most of this century, served as the predominant model for both undergraduate and graduate design education in North America. According to Dietmar Winkler,5 the limitations of Bauhaus pedagogy with its primary emphasis on formal resolution of visual elements and intuitive problem-solving, derive from its status as: ... a typical German Fachschule, a school preparing students for vocational practice-no more, no less. The student's 1 See Richard Buchanan's discussion of design studies in, Wicked Problems in Thinking, Issues 8:2, (Spring 1992); 5-22. See also Gunnar Swanson, Graphic Education as a Liberal Art: and Knowledge in the University and the 'Real World,' Issues 10:1 (1994). 2 Establishment of the Ph.D. program at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, represents an important step toward the development of an branch of visual communication design. The program at IIT primarily is concerned with information theory, advanced communication technology, and human factors issues in the human/ computer interface, thereby finding a closer alliance with engineering, computer science, and ergonomics than with the social sciences which are the topic of this paper. The Illinois group has for years been a leading voice for the development of more rigorous testing methods in design. Creation of the Ph.D. program sets a precedent in North America that other top programs should pursue in interdisciplinary areas most appropriate for their programs. 3 See Jorge Frascara, Graphic Design: Fine Art or Social Science? Issues 5:1 (1998): 18-29. 4 Experimental research in the strictest sense involving hypothesis testing, and the control and manipulation of variables, still is relatively uncommon in social scientific research. Shanto lyengar and Donald Kinder have conducted mass media research in what are essentially laboratory environments, with the intention of controlling environmental interference to an exceptional degree. See News that Matters: Television and Public Opinion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). In a more general sense, the term experimental applies to any form of original social research in which data are gathered through direct contact with persons identified as representative members of a study population. 5 D. Winkler, Design Practice and Education: Moving Beyond the Bauhaus Model, in Jorge Frascara, User-Centered Design: Mass Communications and Social Change, (London: Taylor and Francis, 1997), 129-135. ? Copyright 1999 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Issues: Volume 15, Number 2 Summer 1999 27