Design and Evaluation: A conversation worth having

The two fields of Design and Evaluation don’t cross paths very often. Speaking as someone who lives in both of these professional worlds, I think it's time for this to change.

When most evaluators I know think about design, it’s usually the design of an evaluation. That is the methods and approach to gathering data about a thing — a social program, a product, or a service — and how that data will be analyzed. They might also consider ways of working with the clients (or ‘evaluands’ in evaluation-speak). Sometimes they consider the thing’s design, but that is usually in the background. Their focus is on evaluation.

When I speak with designers, evaluation is a term that is rarely used at all. Designers will often use words like impact and change about their products, maybe even inspiration, yet rarely speak of how it is that we know these things take place. They are commonly taken as givens.

I once heard a senior design lecturer say, “We know that design thinking works” to which I replied, “How?”.

His response: “we just do.”

That’s not going to fly far. When pressed, he couldn’t articulate what “works” meant and how we know it. He just asserted it, and those around him did, too. This is what evaluators are good at; we ask these questions and have methods…