User:MollyPribble/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)

Link

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this articles because I am very interested in design, specifically its intersection with technology/computing ethics. This article matters to me personally because I want to pursue a career related to design, and I think that design is extremely important in creating technologies that are accessible, equitable, and enjoyable. My preliminary impression of design science comes from the design/design-related courses I have taken in the past. I'm very familiar with user-centered/human-centered design philosophies, the design process (in general and different approaches to this process as well), design justice, and other topics relating to the design of technologies for people to use.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Lead Section

The lead section is very short (just one sentence) and does not have an explicit overview of each of the sections in the article. It is very concise, however, I think it could be worded in a way that is more accessible for a wide audience and easy to understand. In my experience talking about design, many people assume I am studying interior design or graphic design and tend to not know about or overlook the part of design that centers more around ethics and designing infrastructure/technology/experiences for successful use than aesthetic design. Therefore, I think the intro could do more to be reflective of what is included in each of the sections an to be easier to understand for audiences coming to this page with a different idea of what design is.

Content

The content seems relevant and up-to-date. It also discusses the issues surrounding ethics in design, decolonization of design, and discusses the implications of design (specifically referring to the built environment at times, so potentially this could be updated to now include the virtual/online environment as well since this is such a big part of our everyday lives now).

Tone/Balance

This article seems fairly balanced. The authors present facts as opposed to statements and include attributions when detailing the viewpoint of experts in the field. I was actually surprised to see that the issues/ethics section was the longest section, and I felt like the authors touched on a lot of the issues being discussed in design (at least that I know of).

Sources/References

The article seems to have adequate sources to back up facts. The authors also do a good job of attributing quotes to various sources. The links that I clicked all work as well. I think the authors tried to include sources from a number of prominent individuals in the field of design studies, but also acknowledge the bias that exists in the field. However, I think overall there are a lack of sources that come from historically marginalized groups in this field (for example, those from the Global South tend to be excluded from a lot of design discourse and history which the authors acknowledge, but I only found a few links to organizations that try to improve the conversation about decolonizing design instead of citations).

Organization/Writing Quality

I think the organization of the article made sense. Everything was well-written, and I didn't catch any typos or mistakes. I think a few sections could be re-written for a wider audience as they are difficult to decipher and contain some jargon which may need additional explanation.

Images/Media

The only image was in the intro section. I think this makes sense since this was an article about a field of study, and visuals may not be as relevant.

Talk Page Discussion

One thing that jumped out at me from the Talk page was the discourse around the ethics/decolonization of design section. One user also noticed that they did not cite any sources that include other underrepresented groups in design. I agree with this comment and think the article could benefit from including these sources. I also saw a comment that another user felt this section was written too persuasively. When reading it, I did not think this was the author's intention, but I when I re-read it, I do think that it seems written with persuasion in mind instead of focusing on facts. I think this goes back to the lack of sources of this section that include these underrepresented groups in the design process and in design history. With more sources that include these perspectives, I think this section could be greatly improved in terms of content, including underrepresented voices, and being less persuasive and more based on fact.

Overall Impressions

Overall, this article provides a good overview of design studies, the history of the field, and some of the current issues in the field. I think the areas for improvement are: including sources from groups that are historically marginalized in design studies, re-wording some of the sections to be more accessible to a wider audience and contain less jargon (or at least explain the jargon), and including more sources/discussion around the virtual environment as well as the built environment.