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Environmental design evaluation
Evaluation and Program Planning, Vol. 2, pp. 303-305, Printed in the U.S.A. All rights reserved.
1979
0149.7189/79/040303-03$2.00/O Copyright 0 1980 Pergamon Press Ltd
BOOK REVIEWS Environmental Design Evaluation, 225 pp., $22.50. Reviewer:
by Arnold Friedman,
Craig Zimring and Ervin Zube. New York: Plenum Press, 1978,
Rudolf H. Moos The case studies are interesting and instructive, especially since the authors have organized them in terms of their “structure-process” model. The material also illustrates by example the real world constraints and potential compromises of methodological purity that await the aspiring environmental design evaluator. Underlying the case examples is the authors’ own approach to environmental design evaluation, which they describe as an “informal systems approach.” While they favor a “systematic” approach to evaluation, they are equally concerned with respecting the complexity of environmental systems and with being responsive to user needs. The clarity, focus, and reliance on examples of this book make it a valuable “casebook” for practicing design professionals who want to learn how to evaluate their projects. It will be more helpful to designers who are approaching evaluation questions for the first time than to those who are already aware of the major issues and methodological complexities of design evaluation. The book will be less interesting to academic researchers in the evaluation and environment and behavior fields, since it does not offer an analysis of issues such as trade-offs in evaluation methods, feedback models of information utilization, or the complex interrelations between architectural and social-environmental domains as they affect user behavior. However, the book is valuable in presenting the major aspects of environmental design evaluation to a wide audience, and in providing a way of thinking about design evaluation and about the human aspects of the design process itself. Beyond that, although the authors treat environmental design evaluation as a separate endeavor, there is the potential for incorporating a focus on physical aspects of settings in more comprehensive evaluations of program and community. environments. Environmental Design Evaluation is thus a useful source for program evaluators interested in expanding the scope of their efforts.
Because the design process usually terminates with the construction of a project, designers have typically failed to observe the behavioral consequences of their work. So claim the authors of this book, which is one of the first devoted to the emerging field of environmental design evaluation. As researchers experienced in this area, the authors are uniquely qualified to survey the state of the art of their field and to attempt to provide a framework to guide future evaluation efforts. This book provides a well-organized introduction to the field that is oriented toward encouraging practicing designers to evaluate the effectiveness of their designs as well as toward urging design schools to include training in evaluation skills as a standard aspect of design evaluation. At the heart of the authors’ approach is what they term a “structure-process model” of evaluation. Structure refers to a conceptual organization of relevant evaluation information, including information about the setting, the users, the proximate environmental context, and the design activity. Process concerns the evaluation activity itself, and encompasses defining the focal problem, defining the larger system, determining methods, and gathering and analyzing data. In addition to initial and concluding chapters that offer a general approach to environmental design evaluation and a consideration of some basic methodological and ethical issues in the field, the book includes three chapters that provide 14 case studies of design evaluation in practice. The case studies are diverse in terms of the physical settings sampled (building interiors, buildings as systems, open spaces) and the evaluation measures represented (survey methods, direct observation, archival searches). They range from small scale, short-term graduate student projects to a multi-year design intervention study which aimed to provide more “normalized” living environments for residents of a state training school for the retarded.
Planning
and Organizing
for Social Change: Action
Principles
York: Columbia University Press, I9 74, 628 pp., cloth, $25.00; Reviewer:
from Social Science Research,
by Jack Rothman.
New
paper, $9.00.
Louis G. Tornatzky
To overview this review of a review, let it first be said that most readers of this journal ought to find this book valu-
able. Although flawed in several ways, this comprehensive review of empirical literature on issues of social change is 303
1979
0149.7189/79/040303-03$2.00/O Copyright 0 1980 Pergamon Press Ltd
BOOK REVIEWS Environmental Design Evaluation, 225 pp., $22.50. Reviewer:
by Arnold Friedman,
Craig Zimring and Ervin Zube. New York: Plenum Press, 1978,
Rudolf H. Moos The case studies are interesting and instructive, especially since the authors have organized them in terms of their “structure-process” model. The material also illustrates by example the real world constraints and potential compromises of methodological purity that await the aspiring environmental design evaluator. Underlying the case examples is the authors’ own approach to environmental design evaluation, which they describe as an “informal systems approach.” While they favor a “systematic” approach to evaluation, they are equally concerned with respecting the complexity of environmental systems and with being responsive to user needs. The clarity, focus, and reliance on examples of this book make it a valuable “casebook” for practicing design professionals who want to learn how to evaluate their projects. It will be more helpful to designers who are approaching evaluation questions for the first time than to those who are already aware of the major issues and methodological complexities of design evaluation. The book will be less interesting to academic researchers in the evaluation and environment and behavior fields, since it does not offer an analysis of issues such as trade-offs in evaluation methods, feedback models of information utilization, or the complex interrelations between architectural and social-environmental domains as they affect user behavior. However, the book is valuable in presenting the major aspects of environmental design evaluation to a wide audience, and in providing a way of thinking about design evaluation and about the human aspects of the design process itself. Beyond that, although the authors treat environmental design evaluation as a separate endeavor, there is the potential for incorporating a focus on physical aspects of settings in more comprehensive evaluations of program and community. environments. Environmental Design Evaluation is thus a useful source for program evaluators interested in expanding the scope of their efforts.
Because the design process usually terminates with the construction of a project, designers have typically failed to observe the behavioral consequences of their work. So claim the authors of this book, which is one of the first devoted to the emerging field of environmental design evaluation. As researchers experienced in this area, the authors are uniquely qualified to survey the state of the art of their field and to attempt to provide a framework to guide future evaluation efforts. This book provides a well-organized introduction to the field that is oriented toward encouraging practicing designers to evaluate the effectiveness of their designs as well as toward urging design schools to include training in evaluation skills as a standard aspect of design evaluation. At the heart of the authors’ approach is what they term a “structure-process model” of evaluation. Structure refers to a conceptual organization of relevant evaluation information, including information about the setting, the users, the proximate environmental context, and the design activity. Process concerns the evaluation activity itself, and encompasses defining the focal problem, defining the larger system, determining methods, and gathering and analyzing data. In addition to initial and concluding chapters that offer a general approach to environmental design evaluation and a consideration of some basic methodological and ethical issues in the field, the book includes three chapters that provide 14 case studies of design evaluation in practice. The case studies are diverse in terms of the physical settings sampled (building interiors, buildings as systems, open spaces) and the evaluation measures represented (survey methods, direct observation, archival searches). They range from small scale, short-term graduate student projects to a multi-year design intervention study which aimed to provide more “normalized” living environments for residents of a state training school for the retarded.
Planning
and Organizing
for Social Change: Action
Principles
York: Columbia University Press, I9 74, 628 pp., cloth, $25.00; Reviewer:
from Social Science Research,
by Jack Rothman.
New
paper, $9.00.
Louis G. Tornatzky
To overview this review of a review, let it first be said that most readers of this journal ought to find this book valu-
able. Although flawed in several ways, this comprehensive review of empirical literature on issues of social change is 303