Tuesday, March 07, 2017

What design judgment is

A designer is constantly involved in making judgments. The reason is that any decision has to be made based on insufficient information. At the same time, a designer is commonly overwhelmed by the richness and the complexity of the situation. So, dealing with an abundance of information that still feels insufficient while being pressured to move forward means that judgments have to be made. However, even though judgment is a core ability for designers and is mentioned frequently, it is not well defined. So, what is it?

In one of his writings the famous philosopher John Dewey discusses at length what judgment is. This is done in his book "How we think" (which is a wonderful text). I am re-reading this book at the moment and will later write more about some of the core ideas in this book and how they are crucial to anyone engaged in designing.

Below are a few quotes from the chapter. I would like to reproduce the whole chapter, since every page is full of sentences that are both insightful and beautiful!



Dewey on why having more information does not reduce the need for judgment:

"For learning is not wisdom; information does not guarantee good judgment. Memory may provide an antiseptic refrigerator in which to store a stock of meanings for future use, but judgment selects
and adopts the one used in a given emergency -- and without an emergency (some crisis, slight or great) there i no call for judgement." (p 107).

Dewey on why judgment can be developed:

"Long brooding over conditions, intimate contact associated with keen interest, thorough absorption in a multiplicity of allied experiences, tend to bring about those judgments which we then call intuitive; but they are true judgments because they are based on intelligent selection and estimation, with the solution of a problem as the controlling standard. Possession of this capacity makes the difference between the artist and the intellectual bungler." (p 105)

Dewey on why judgment cannot be prescribed:

"No hard and fast rules for this operation of selecting and rejecting, or fixing upon the facts, can be given. It all comes back, as we say, to the good judgment, the good sense, of the one judging. To be a good judge is to have a sense of the relative indicative or signifying values of the various features of the perplexing situation; to know what to let go as of no account; what to eliminate as irrelevant; what to retain as conducive to outcome; what to emphasize as a clue to the difficulty....In part if is instinctive and inborn but it also represents the funded outcome of long familiarity with like operations in the past. Possession of this ability to seize what is evidential or significant and to let the rest go is the mark of the expert, the connoisseur, the judge, in any matter." (p 104)

1 comment:

troman said...

This reminds me of a quote by Antoine de Saint Exupéry that I've liked for years: "Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher."

As translated by Lewis Galantière: Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry and Dewey are of like minds in this instance, I believe.