As of now, I can name countless examples of great, great design driven largely by gut, and informed by scientific general knowledge. I can’t think of a whole lot of great design driven by scientific method as you describe.

Articles like this are easy to write without citing examples, and on their face it’s easy for us readers to nod our heads and agree in theory. I for one want to see this theory of design backed up with examples, not just to show that it actually works at all, but to inspire designers to start thinking of how they might begin to incorporate this thinking into their design process.

First, the title of the article as I wrote it was “Sciences of Human Understanding” without the “The”. I don’t claim it is a comprehensive list, but I do claim it is the core list.

The science actually is remarkably straightforward – albeit incredibly complex and beyond the bounds of our typically learnt knowledge. That straightforward, math-like A-to-B-to-C nature, is what makes it all the more troubling that we aren’t connecting the various, disparate ends together and distilling meaningful social insight, and even better, paradigmatic change.

I’ve spent the last year deeply researching these sciences, most particularly the three social sciences. I’ve learned more in that time than I did in the 6 years of getting my university degrees. This is a subject near and dear to my heart and will underpin the next phase of my career. I’m all-in, so to speak.

From a publication standpoint I do see my role as raising awareness and making a call to action, not being the one to take people into the bowels of understanding. I’m putting my time and energy into developing the ideas into the new company I’m building. The big idea and big picture have historically been the nature of my publishing and speaking, here no different than before. My hope is to open the door to something new and important, and that some curious and ambitious souls will walk thru it.

Fro example:

“As it is a fairly straightforward matter to untangle the objective dynamics behind serious violent crimes in young males using these approaches…”

Is it really that straightforward? And the objective dynamics (as opposed to all other kinds of dynamics?) are all that’s necessary on in order to reach understanding? And only these five sciences – no other disciplines / approaches are needed?

I think as a pointer to fields that design is not properly aware of and learning from, this has merit – but I think the perspective requires critical refinement and further development.

Or is this only meant to be a call to action?

I’d like to see follow-ups suggesting which aspects / recent discoveries / core principles of these disciplines are relevant for designers seeking to understand people, and in what contexts. I know squat about endocrinology, for example, and I doubt that it would be useful for many in the UX community to subscribe to the leading neuroscience journals and try to directly parse primary articles in scientific discourse.

I don’t say this to be snarky, just to point out that there’s more involved in making this viewpoint relevant to design in a meaningful way. And I think Dirk is maybe one of the people who can do it.

So what’s part deux?