Truth is important if we are designing

“One test is worth a thousand expert opinions.” That quote is attributed to rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun, who would likely have known a few things about the value of tests versus opinions. Rockets either fly as they were intended to, or they don’t — with catastrophic results. And you only find this out by trying them.

I heard this quote on the radio recently and it struck me with particular acuity. I was already thinking about the value of expert opinions. I had been reflecting on recent experiences in museums. They were experiences in which I had, once again, felt that the information that I was being given, either by a guide or the captioned text, was wrong. I’m surprised at how often wood is misidentified as to species. I know something about the particulars of some wood types because I have worked with them. I have handled them, cut them, abraded them, planed them, jointed them, finished them and usually even inhaled them. I feel that I have arrived at an intimate relationship with them, and I now know them. This isn’t book-learning, this is testing and I trust it.

As well, the old tools and the things made with them are often misidentified. I may not actually know the truth, but I’ve had a lot of experience with tools and making things. Sometimes the functions and correct configurations seem pretty obvious to me. I know how I would have done something and what the results would have been and I trust that. People who have not had a direct connection with the production of things often lack the instincts that would have revealed a better answer. They didn’t get their hands dirty testing things.

I have sometimes questioned the experts in the museums about the veracity of their claims.  And the authority by which they make them. I ask them nicely and they tell me that they are trained in the higher reaches of academia. Being in academia myself, I kind of know how that works. Clever students are quickly hired by the schools where they study. Usually, before too long, they are themselves training a new generation of students — who in their turn become the experts. They didn’t pass “go” and they didn’t collect two hundred dollars. But they did collect credentials. Of course, there are many exceptions, but there is a pattern here.

What I find particularly dismaying about this is the loss of good data through the casual (and even arrogant) dissemination of bad. Most people don’t know if the wood is maple, not birch, or what an old wooden case clamp would look like. They wouldn’t particularly care, anyway. It’s not that important to them and may not be to anybody, anyway. But I remain troubled. It is a parallel situation to read media coverage of events or situations that I am specifically familiar with. Not infrequently, the information isn’t quite accurate. What we get is a form of expert opinion, not the empirical knowledge that is only obtained by testing. And this leads me to doubt everything I read. If reports on what I know about aren’t quite to be trusted, then that will surely also apply to what I don’t know anything about, with even more unfortunate results.

Is truth important? It is if we are flying rockets and it also is if we are designing other things. They either work or they don’t (except when they only sort-of work, which isn’t recommended). And there is going to be some testing required. As a design educator, I find a couple of things get in the way of an embrace of testing. One is a reliance on expert opinions. The risk of the whole area of research (of the expert opinion kind) is that it can be very comfortable. We don’t need to confront the messy and public possibility of conspicuous failure. It is safer and cleaner.

The other, ironically, is the powerful tool of computers. They are very good at being right and can be uncompromisingly accurate. But the whole world of the virtual remains very close to an illusion. On screen, all seating is comfortable. All tables are stable (and all rockets fly true). But if you have any experience in creating furniture, you know that there is no substitute for actually sitting in the chair.

You get there by doing it, not talking about it.

Paul Epp is a professor at OCAD University, and chair of its Industrial Design Department.