practices – Page 2 – Coevolving Innovations

Designing for thrownness, design attitude, decision attitude

December 7, 2012 daviding

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“Designing for Thrownness” showed up for me via “Design, Wicked Problems and Throwness” by Harold G. Nelson. The citation of Karl Weick as a source, with references to Flores & Winograd (1986), led me to find the Managing by Designing research led by Boland and Collopy, with the 2004 conference as Case Western Reserve abstracted in a series of videos (of which Thrownness is #4 of 7).

Boland and Collopy differentiate between a design attitude and a decision attitude.

A decision attitude toward problem solving is used extensively in management education. It portrays the manager as facing a set of alternative courses of action from which a choice must be made.

The decision attitude assumes it is easy to come up with alternatives to consider, but difficult to choose among them.

The design attitude toward problem solving, in contrast, assumes that it is difficult to design a good alternative, but once you have developed a truly great one, the decision about which alternative to select becomes trivial.

The design attitude appreciates that the cost of not conceiving of a better course of action than those that are already being considered is often much higher than making the “wrong” choice among them.

The decision attitude toward problem solving and the many decision-making tools we have developed for supporting it have strengths that make them suitable for certain situations. In a clearly defined and stable situation, when the feasible alternatives are well known, a decision attitude may be the most efficient and effective way to approach problem solving.

… Read more (in a new tab)

“Designing for Thrownness” showed up for me via “Design, Wicked Problems and Throwness” by Harold G. Nelson. The citation of Karl Weick as a source, with references to Flores & Winograd (1986), led me to find the Managing by Designing research led by Boland and Collopy, with the 2004 conference as Case Western Reserve abstracted in a series of videos (of which Thrownness is #4 of 7).

Boland and Collopy differentiate between a design attitude and a decision attitude.

A decision attitude toward problem solving is used extensively in management education. It portrays the manager as facing a set of alternative courses of action from which a choice must be made.

The decision attitude assumes it is easy to come up with alternatives to consider, but difficult to choose among them.

The design attitude toward problem solving, in contrast, assumes that it is difficult to design a good alternative, but once you have developed a truly great one, the decision about which alternative to select becomes trivial.

The design attitude appreciates that the cost of not conceiving of a better course of action than those that are already being considered is often much higher than making the “wrong” choice among them.

The decision attitude toward problem solving and the many decision-making tools we have developed for supporting it have strengths that make them suitable for certain situations. In a clearly defined and stable situation, when the feasible alternatives are well known, a decision attitude may be the most efficient and effective way to approach problem solving.

… Read more (in a new tab)

Digital photos: capturing, archiving, printing, web sharing, photoblogging

December 22, 2009 daviding

2 Comments

Digital cameras have become so common that they’re often now a feature in mobile phones and audio players. Pressing a button to capture a snapshot of time is so easy. The workflow of storing, printing and sharing those images is complicated. Many would like to return to the days when we would just take the film cartridge out of the camera, and drop it to a photo lab for processing (often in about an hour).

People take more photographs digitally than they did with film cameras. In a six-month study in 2000, when digital cameras were relatively uncommon, subjects (aged 24 to 38) took 200 to 1000 (with an average about 500) photographs, compared to their prior non-digital accumulated collection of 300 to 3000 (with an average of about 1000) pictures (Rodden & Wood 2003). This means that when digital cameras were relatively expensive — and camera phones didn’t yet exist — people were averaging about 1 to 5 photos per day!

People presumably use cameras because they want to be able to retrieve the images later. In a study of 18 parents, the value of long-retrieval of family pictures was high (i.e. around 4.7 on a scale of 5). On experiments of 71 retrieval tasks — finding birthdays, family trips, first pictures of a child, etc. — 61% were successful, taking about 2.5 minutes each. On the 39% of unsuccessful retrievals, subjects gave up after about 4 minutes (Whittaker et al.… Read more (in a new tab)

Digital cameras have become so common that they’re often now a feature in mobile phones and audio players. Pressing a button to capture a snapshot of time is so easy. The workflow of storing, printing and sharing those images is complicated. Many would like to return to the days when we would just take the film cartridge out of the camera, and drop it to a photo lab for processing (often in about an hour).

People take more photographs digitally than they did with film cameras. In a six-month study in 2000, when digital cameras were relatively uncommon, subjects (aged 24 to 38) took 200 to 1000 (with an average about 500) photographs, compared to their prior non-digital accumulated collection of 300 to 3000 (with an average of about 1000) pictures (Rodden & Wood 2003). This means that when digital cameras were relatively expensive — and camera phones didn’t yet exist — people were averaging about 1 to 5 photos per day!

People presumably use cameras because they want to be able to retrieve the images later. In a study of 18 parents, the value of long-retrieval of family pictures was high (i.e. around 4.7 on a scale of 5). On experiments of 71 retrieval tasks — finding birthdays, family trips, first pictures of a child, etc. — 61% were successful, taking about 2.5 minutes each. On the 39% of unsuccessful retrievals, subjects gave up after about 4 minutes (Whittaker et al.… Read more (in a new tab)

Conversations: for action, for clarification, for possibilities, for orientation

December 12, 2009 daviding

5 Comments

In the Adaptive Enterprise research that I had conducted between 1998 and 2001, I was primarily focused on conversations for action, towards a commitment action protocol. I extended, in 2008, those ideas into a research paper to recognize (at least) four types of obligations:

commitments to produce a deliverable;
commitments to follow a process;
commitments to provide a capability; and
commitments to contribute to a relationship.

These four types were not considered exhaustive, but helpful in understanding how service systems work.

In the background, I’ve always known that there are other kinds of conversation. To be explicit about these, I’ll refer to a 1987 article by Terry Winograd (that was a revision of 1986 workshop paper reprinted in 1988).

Winograd provides the foundations back to speech act theory, from Austin, and then Searle.

Austin (1962) noted that not all utterances are statements whose truth or falsity is at stake. Performatives, such as I pronounce you husband and wife are actions, which can be made appropriately (felicitously) or not, but which are neither true nor false in a simple sense. Similarly, the language actions of commands, questions, and apologies are not descriptions of a non-linguistic world.

Searle (1975) identified five fundamental illocutionary points — things you can do with an utterance:

In the Adaptive Enterprise research that I had conducted between 1998 and 2001, I was primarily focused on conversations for action, towards a commitment action protocol. I extended, in 2008, those ideas into a research paper to recognize (at least) four types of obligations:

commitments to produce a deliverable;
commitments to follow a process;
commitments to provide a capability; and
commitments to contribute to a relationship.

These four types were not considered exhaustive, but helpful in understanding how service systems work.

In the background, I’ve always known that there are other kinds of conversation. To be explicit about these, I’ll refer to a 1987 article by Terry Winograd (that was a revision of 1986 workshop paper reprinted in 1988).

Winograd provides the foundations back to speech act theory, from Austin, and then Searle.

Austin (1962) noted that not all utterances are statements whose truth or falsity is at stake. Performatives, such as I pronounce you husband and wife are actions, which can be made appropriately (felicitously) or not, but which are neither true nor false in a simple sense. Similarly, the language actions of commands, questions, and apologies are not descriptions of a non-linguistic world.

Searle (1975) identified five fundamental illocutionary points — things you can do with an utterance:

Workshop on “Flexible Modeling Tools”, Cascon 2009, Markham, ON

October 28, 2009 daviding

1 Comment

When a group of people come together for sensemaking about a situation, it’s pretty typical for someone to start sketching out boxes and lines to improve the clarity of the ideas. Amongst 2 or 3 people, this might be sketching on a napkin. Convening in an office usually suggests that a flip chart or a whiteboard will be used. These media have the advantage of expressiveness — effectively conveying ideas — with the challenge of replicable precision and subsequent intelligibility to people beyond the original participants. As the average business professional has become more adept with computer-based tools, presentation graphics — often as dreaded Powerpoint slides — are common. Although more advanced drawing tools (e.g. vector graphic editors) and specification languages (e.g. UML and SysML) are easily available, the gulf between “easy-to-use” office productivity tools and “rigourous” modeling tools has yet to be bridged.

Based on a legacy of collaborations with IBM Research, my colleague Ian Simmonds pointed out the upcoming workshop on “Flexible Modeling Tools” at Cascon 2009 — a short commute within the Toronto area — with the following description.

This workshop will explore why modeling tools are not used in many situations where they would be helpful and what can be done to make them more suitable.

For example, during the exploratory phases of design, it is more common to use white boards than modeling tools. During the early stages of requirements engineering, it is more common to use office tools.

… Read more (in a new tab)

When a group of people come together for sensemaking about a situation, it’s pretty typical for someone to start sketching out boxes and lines to improve the clarity of the ideas. Amongst 2 or 3 people, this might be sketching on a napkin. Convening in an office usually suggests that a flip chart or a whiteboard will be used. These media have the advantage of expressiveness — effectively conveying ideas — with the challenge of replicable precision and subsequent intelligibility to people beyond the original participants. As the average business professional has become more adept with computer-based tools, presentation graphics — often as dreaded Powerpoint slides — are common. Although more advanced drawing tools (e.g. vector graphic editors) and specification languages (e.g. UML and SysML) are easily available, the gulf between “easy-to-use” office productivity tools and “rigourous” modeling tools has yet to be bridged.

Based on a legacy of collaborations with IBM Research, my colleague Ian Simmonds pointed out the upcoming workshop on “Flexible Modeling Tools” at Cascon 2009 — a short commute within the Toronto area — with the following description.

This workshop will explore why modeling tools are not used in many situations where they would be helpful and what can be done to make them more suitable.

For example, during the exploratory phases of design, it is more common to use white boards than modeling tools. During the early stages of requirements engineering, it is more common to use office tools.

… Read more (in a new tab)

Anachronism: citation style with city of publisher

April 10, 2007 daviding

1 Comment

I’m relatively conscientious about referencing sources when I write in an academic style (or even when I blog)! I was in the middle of writing a paper where I cite How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand, and found that the entry on Amazon doesn’t include an image of the front matter that describes where the book was published.

So I went down into my basement for my paperback version of the book, and which gave me the following geographic information:

I’m relatively conscientious about referencing sources when I write in an academic style (or even when I blog)! I was in the middle of writing a paper where I cite How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand, and found that the entry on Amazon doesn’t include an image of the front matter that describes where the book was published.

So I went down into my basement for my paperback version of the book, and which gave me the following geographic information:

Practices generating innovation, a language action perspective

December 17, 2006 daviding

1 Comment

I’m a big fan of Disclosing New Worlds by Charles Spinosa, Fernando Flores and Hubert Dreyfus. Its practice perspective, rooted in Dreyfus’ reading of Heidegger, is complementary to the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, who provides a foundation for the research into communities of practice by Etienne Wenger and John Seely Brown.

Thus, I was thrilled to read an article by Peter J. Denning and Robert Dunham on “Innovation as Language Action” in Communications of the ACM. (To make the social network link, Dunham was at BDA with Flores). This article appeared in a special issue on “Two Decades of the Language-Action Perspective“.

Working from the conclusion to the article, Denning & Dunham make the main claims that:

Innovation occurs when a group or community adopts a new practice.
Invention and innovation are two different skill sets.
The language-action perspective helped identify seven practices that constitute the innovation skill set.
Anyone can learn the innovation skill by mastering the seven personal practices. [p. 52]

I like the first three claims, but have some reservations on the fourth!

Denning & Dunham are helpful to clarifying innovation research by making the distinction between theoretical, empirical and generative frameworks:

I’m a big fan of Disclosing New Worlds by Charles Spinosa, Fernando Flores and Hubert Dreyfus. Its practice perspective, rooted in Dreyfus’ reading of Heidegger, is complementary to the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, who provides a foundation for the research into communities of practice by Etienne Wenger and John Seely Brown.

Thus, I was thrilled to read an article by Peter J. Denning and Robert Dunham on “Innovation as Language Action” in Communications of the ACM. (To make the social network link, Dunham was at BDA with Flores). This article appeared in a special issue on “Two Decades of the Language-Action Perspective“.

Working from the conclusion to the article, Denning & Dunham make the main claims that:

Innovation occurs when a group or community adopts a new practice.
Invention and innovation are two different skill sets.
The language-action perspective helped identify seven practices that constitute the innovation skill set.
Anyone can learn the innovation skill by mastering the seven personal practices. [p. 52]

I like the first three claims, but have some reservations on the fourth!

Denning & Dunham are helpful to clarifying innovation research by making the distinction between theoretical, empirical and generative frameworks:

Coevolving Innovations

… in Business Organizations and Information Technologies

Currently Viewing Posts in practices

Designing for thrownness, design attitude, decision attitude

Digital photos: capturing, archiving, printing, web sharing, photoblogging

Conversations: for action, for clarification, for possibilities, for orientation

Workshop on “Flexible Modeling Tools”, Cascon 2009, Markham, ON

Anachronism: citation style with city of publisher

Practices generating innovation, a language action perspective

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