Architecture, interior design and clinical devices have adopted evidence-based design (EBD) and these fields actively contribute to its development through major projects, journal articles, and conferences. Evidence based design is a rigorous design equivalent to the careful application of scholarly evidence in informing care decisions. It is a healthcare term of art and has meaning in that sector.  It is not the gathering of user data as research “evidence” to inform design decisions in digital design.  EBD generally involves:

• Reviewing current and retrospective research literatures to identify precedents, mature findings, and prescriptive guidance from relevant studies.
• Prioritizing and balancing the literature basis with primary data collected from actual patient data, subject matter experts, and professional observations.
• Advancing theories and hypotheses to support observations and structuring evaluations to test outcomes of design decisions (e.g. architecture, facility design, wayfinding, room design).
• Measuring outcomes following implementation and assessing theory validity and any gap between observations and hypotheses.

How are other design disciplines positioned with respect to evidence? Does it make sense for UX and experience design to adopt evidence-based principles, especially in healthcare?

Other design fields are not in the same risk position as architecture and device design. It doesn’t help UX to make claims for evidence that cannot be supported by (some type of) peer review. Design trade publications and user experience blogs show growing interest in EBD. Unfortunately the typical claims being made for (largely qualitative) evidence are not helping the UX field gain credibility (in healthcare anyway).

Except for (relatively) few domain-focused specialists and industrial design firms, most claims to evidence-based design are not supported by the necessary level of research, transparency of sharing data and findings, and multidisciplinary skills.  If EBD is claimed in low-risk or non-critical applications, it is probably not really EBD.  Most projects (e.g. websites) do not require this standard of research design. When lives, liability, and (tens of hundreds of) thousands of dollars are at risk, the due diligence of quantified measurable evidence is necessary to ensure the decisions are supportable.

The assertion that a firm employs evidence-based design should not be made in a healthcare context without being able to justify a validated research and design process and to endorse personnel capable of leading such a project.  If we honestly consider the maturity level of evidence-based design in UX and service design, based on known and published literature, a charitable assessment would be Level 2, Repeatable (pegging it to the SEI Capability Maturity Model):  [Read more on Design Dialogues]