A Pilgrim's Guide to Developmental Design.




Halcolm’s Progress: A Pilgrim’s Guide to Developmental Design

This comic strip is based on my thoughts and interpretations gained from reading Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use by Michael Q. Patton. 

Every evaluator has walked some version of Halcolm’s winding path — even if we didn’t sketch it quite so literally. This comic follows Halcolm through the uncertainty, messiness, surprises, and insights that Michael Q. Patton describes as the essence of developmental design and evaluation.

In Patton’s world, clarity rarely arrives at the beginning. It emerges through movement — by asking new questions, responding to what shifts, and adapting in real time. Halcolm’s detours make that visible: the Swamp of Subjectivity where meaning gets muddy, the Swarm of Small Things that threaten to drain focus, and the Implementation Storm that forces him to redesign on the fly.

Yet the journey isn’t only chaotic. At places like Feedback Falls and Bud’s Bazaar of Bricolage, Halcolm models the core practices of developmental evaluation — pausing to learn, looping back, mixing methods, choosing tools that fit the moment, and embracing the creative blend of evidence and intuition.

The story ends not with a ribbon-cutting but with a cairn — a marker of learning, not finality. That’s classic Patton: developmental design doesn’t promise a straight path or a perfect answer. It promises growth, insight, and direction that emerges because we walked the road.

Halcolm reminds us that evaluation is less a map and more a pilgrimage — and progress, however humble, is worth marking.

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