Session One: Performance Appraisal (conference session introduction)

After a good deal of talk in the last 20 years about the need for designers to obtain feedback information on the quality of their products, at long last techniques for doing this are being developed and this session covers many of them. The papers raise, and to some extent answer, some fundamental questions:
1. What is the real difference between a building and a representation of it?
2. What is the design process like and especially how does the introspective act which we call appraisal take place?
3. The key question: If it is people's efficiency and above all their feelings, relationships and personal responses which are to be the main criterion of success, how do we measure these, and how can we predict them?