Methods and strategies for bridging the design practitioner-researcher gap

Societies are evolving into a global community by means of new and ever changing technology. Designers, more often than not, are required to make decisions that impact the way people live and, once made and put in to place, the clients or users are left to live with the consequences for years to come. Designers – practitioners and researchers – agree EBR (Environment-Behavior Research) can provide them with the means to be competitive and also lead to increased status of the profession as evidenced based versus just an art form. To date, a significant number of studies have been conducted and results published about the use and the importance of EBR by the design practitioner. While architects show a desire for behavioral research information and have a great interest in designing for people – showing an awareness of the potential impact of EBR on their work – they rarely use it. As Lawson (1980) pointed out, the social sciences are primarily descriptive, while design is necessarily prescriptive, resulting in a mismatch between the strategies used by the two professions.