Markers of Quality in Design Precedent

The generation and description of design precedent is at the core of design case scholarship. However, traditional standards of quality and rigor that are relevant for other types of design and scientific scholarship do not always apply equally to the generation of design cases. In this paper, I describe the nature of design precedent and the standards for evaluating precedent artifacts in a way that foregrounds access of the reader to aspects of design complexity in the design work being described. Standards of quality point towards the appropriateness and potential contribution of the precedent material to design knowledge, across the following dimensions: interest to other designers; rich representation of the design; articulation of transparency and failure; accessibility of style; and acknowledgement of complexity and scope.