A tad of a chicken-egg dilemma there. While I can only speculate, I'd surmise that the Inuit are / were well aware of their contextual circumstance and designed

A tad of a chicken-egg dilemma there. While I can only speculate, I'd surmise that the Inuit are / were well aware of their contextual circumstance and designed accordingly, and quite likely iterated on the design.[1] The issue I raise is a cautionary tale that when we try to use some abstract evaluation well removed from the context, the "data" can end up being non-information. Worse is when design evaluation comes with hidden cognitive bias or underlying ideology. That is, even a valid concern / complaint of a given design my have no merit given the design context. If we take for example a vehicle, one might complain that it has a lack of cargo space or a child seat restraint. Valid complaint given a very discrete set of design contexts. To follow along the original example in the post, these otherwise valid complaints of a design are moot if the vehicle in question is an F1 automobile designed to be raced in unique circumstances with unique needs. [1] There is also the possibility that some of the design contexts include more abstract needs such as cultural, religious, historical, aesthetic, or even the darker notions of power dynamics. To diminish the potential influence of these facets would be an ignorance in our design evaluation. I'd encourage anyone interested in design context to read Marco Van Hout's article on the rather broken UIGarden.net site. Here's a link via the Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20130719161851/http://uigarden.net/english/global-market-global-emotion-global-design http://web.archive.org/web/20130719161851/http://uigarden.ne...