Women and Leadership in Times of Complexity
Posted: December 5, 2011 Filed under: social systems, systems thinking | Tags: Annie Lennox, Aretha Franklin, complexity, design, design thinking, leadership, Rosie the Riveter, social innovation, wicked problems, women 2 Comments »
We Can Do It by J. Howard Miller
“The Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves” – Aretha Franklin & The Eurythmics
The old cliches of where a woman’s place ought to be have changed to mean: anywhere she wants to be. Women are poised to drive change in the age of complexity leading us all to consider why this might be the case and what we can learn from it.
There was a time when women repeated the line in graphic artist J. Howard Miller‘s famous piece: We Can Do It! Now, as Aretha and Annie sing, they are doing it for themselves…and in spades. The ‘it’ is leading and innovating in times of great complexity and change and not necessarily by role, but by action. When the challenges of ‘wicked problems‘ become great and pervasive, it is women not men who are stepping up to lead and that might have a lot to do with design. How?
Design and design thinking is fundamentally about strategies used to create, shape and influence. There are many definitions of the concept, but generally speaking it is about finding / clarifying problems at their root, framing them within a larger context, and addressing them using empathic methods. Quite often this involves intense engagement with the issue and those whom the issue most affects and these are areas where women are doing well.
Drawing on the growing literature base on design thinking and a series of ongoing interviews I have done as part of the Design Thinking Foundations project, there are three areas that sit at the core of this way of approaching problems. As it turns out, women are pretty good at all of them:
- Empathy. Getting to learn more about the person / people who are designing for / with by stepping into their shoes is a powerful vehicle for gaining insight into the nature of the problem at hand, its frames, and possible ways forward. Research looking at males and females consistently shows women expressing higher levels of emotional empathy than men (e.g, ). More recent work has begun to explore the ways in which women relate empathically to others, whereas men are more prone to what can be called Machevellian tendencies;
- Literacy. By this I refer to a constellation of skills that sit at the intersection of craft and knowledge to address a particular problem. A designer’s literacy most often includes creativity and the ability to analyze problems. These skills can fall within artistic realms, but also scientific and mathematical realms. Here in Canada, a recent report on the state of education finds that boys are lagging in literacy scores and, for the first time, science scores. They are tied with girls in math. The report (PDF-summary) adds greater weight to the shifting nature of boys and girls.
- Engagement. Designers — whether they are introverts or extroverts — need to be able to engage in diverse social situations in order to create useful products and services. Early work on online social networks is suggestive of this, building on a body of work looking at the strength of associations between gender, emotion and socialization (see 2010 chapter of the same name)
It used to be that women would express these three areas in social roles that were of lower status than men and generally following male leads (e.g., homemaker, assistant). However, the balance is starting to shift and women are no longer waiting for men to give things up, they are taking things for themselves. Indeed, women are becoming the new leaders and are designing themselves lives that will keep them in this position for the foreseeable future if indeed design is the new competitive advantage as has been suggested by Roger Martin at the Rotman School of Business in Toronto.
Lest we think this is isolated to Canada or the United States, the rise of women and girls is being seen globally. Earlier this year, the Economist explored how Asian women are marrying less and marrying later. One of the reasons is that they are no longer tied to men in the same way and are less willing to fill a role that sees them often as less than in their marriages. Indeed, Asian women are eschewing the practice altogether in rates never before seen and may be on the cusp of instilling deep and profound social change.
A lot of Asians are not marrying later. They are not marrying at all. Almost a third of Japanese women in their early 30s are unmarried; probably half of those will always be. Over one-fifth of Taiwanese women in their late 30s are single; most will never marry. In some places, rates of non-marriage are especially striking: in Bangkok, 20% of 40-44-year old women are not married; in Tokyo, 21%; among university graduates of that age in Singapore, 27%.(Economist, August 20, 2011)
One of the reasons is that women are more often placed in roles of great social complexity in the family/social sphere, yet without the power to make key decisions. This might mean child raising (often held as the ideal example of complexity), negotiating and planning social engagements, and doing much of the emotional maintenance in relationships. While these are not universal and suggestive of stereotype, there are libraries full of research that have found these roles tend to be persistent and consistent across most Western countries. Until now. These are also the kinds of skills that are needed in complex systems and to create means to navigate through them.
Women are no longer satisfied (nor should they be) with the roles assigned to them by men, but are shaping and crafting new ones for themselves and reclaiming and challenging outdated, sexist ones. A terrific example of this is the SlutWalk movement that started in Toronto in reaction to public statements by a police officer aimed at helping prevent rape that placed blame on victims, suggesting that women “stop dressing like sluts”. Here, women just took action and men followed.
As societies, we will (and do) need leaders and innovators who know how to manage complexity well and design solutions and women may be the first place to look because they are doing it already.
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What is Developmental Evaluation?
Posted: November 19, 2011 Filed under: complexity, evaluation, innovation, systems thinking | Tags: complexity, developmental evaluation, emergence, Michael Quinn Patton, program evaluation, road trip, strategic learning, systems thinking 5 Comments »
Developmental evaluation (DE) is a problematic concept because it deals with a complex set of conditions and potential outcomes that differ from and challenge the orthodoxy in much of mainstream research and evaluation and makes it difficult to communicate. At a recent gathering of DE practitioners in Toronto, we were charged with coming up with an elevator pitch to describe DE to someone who wasn’t familiar with it; this is what I came up with.
Developmental evaluation is an approach to understanding the activities of a program operating in dynamic, novel environments with complex interactions. It focuses on innovation and strategic learning rather than standard outcomes and is as much a way of thinking about programs-in-context and the feedback they produce. The concept is an extension of Michael Quinn Patton’s original concept of Utilization Focused Evaluation with concepts gleaned from complexity science to account for the dynamism and novelty. While Utilization Focused Evaluation has a series of steps to follow (PDF), Developmental Evaluation is less prescriptive, which is both its strength and its challenge for describing it to people (things I’ve discussed in earlier posts).
So with that in mind, our group was charged with coming up with a way to explain DE to someone who is not familiar with it using anything we’d like — song, poetry, dance, slides, stories and beyond. While my colleague Dan chose to lead us all in song, I opted to go with a simple analogy by comparing DE to a hybrid of Trip Advisor and the classic Road Trip (due to lack of good vocalizing skills).
Trip Advisor has emerged as one of the most popular tools for travellers seeking advice on everything from hotel rooms to airlines to resorts and all the destinations along the way. Trip Advisor is averaging more than 13 million unique visitors per month and, unlike its competitors, focuses on user-generated content to support its service. Thus, your fellow travellers are the source of the recommendations not some professional travel agent or journalist. At its heart are stories of varies tones, detail and quality. People upload various accounts of their stay, chronicling even the most minute detail through photos, links to their blogs, video, and narrative. If you want to get the inside details on what a hotel is really like, check Trip Advisor and you’ll likely find it.
However, like any self-organizing set of ideas, the quality of the content will vary along with the level of reportage and the conclusions will be different depending on the context and experience of the person doing the reporting. For example, if you are a North American who is used to having even the most basic hotel chain offer a room with full-service linens, a bathroom, closet, desk and separate shower, you’ll have a hard time adjusting to something like EasyHotel in Europe.
The Road Trip part (capitalization intended here to denote something different than a regular trip by road), denotes the experience that comes from a journey with a desired destination, but not a pre-determined route and only a generalized timeline. A Road Trip is something that is more than just traveling from Point A to Point B, which is usually accomplished by taking the shortest route, the fastest route or a combination of the two; rather it is a journey. Movies like National Lampoon’s Vacation (and, European Vacation), Thelma and Louise, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, and (surprise!) Road Trip all capture this spirit to some effect. I suppose one might even find a more grim example of a Road Trip in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy or The Road.
Road Trips have a long history and are not just a North American phenomenon as this article from the Indian Newspaper, The Hindu reports in some detail:
“Road trips are fun when they are not planned point-to-point. As long as you have accommodation booked, that is enough. Its better not to have agendas; get as spontaneous and adventurous as you can. My friends and I went on a road trip to Goa last year. It was loads of fun as it was the first time we took off on our own without parents. To me, it was more than just a trip with friends. It showed that I could take care of myself and that I was now a grown-up, free to do what I wanted,” says Siddharth, who is doing his engineering.
Chance favours the prepared mind
Road Trip Advisor for Developmental Evaluation
“Road-tripping is a great way to bond with the people you are travelling with and I would strongly recommend it to people. It not only makes you appreciate yourself as an individual but is an amazing experience as you get to meet new people, know different cultures and sample different cuisines. I can never forget biking on sleet, riding though torrential rains, gobbling hot rotis at dhabas, the beautiful snow-capped mountains and guy talk with friends on the trip,” says Dheeraj, who recently went to Ladakh.
all is not hunky dory during these trips. You have to be way about accidents and mishaps. And, realise that freedom comes with responsibility. Says Arjun: “I had borrowed my friend’s bike for the trip, and though it looked good, it gave problems on the foothills of Kodaikanal and we couldn’t do the climb. Being a weekend, there were no mechanics. It helps to know your machine. A passion for road-tripping is not enough. You need to be equipped to take care of yourself also.”
Here, the story parallel is about being prepared. Know evaluation methods, know how to build and sustain relationships and to deal with conflict. A high tolerance for ambiguity and the flexibility to adapt is also important. Knowing a little about systems thinking and complexity doesn’t hurt either. Developmental evaluation is not healthy for those who need a high degree of predictability, are not flexible in their approach, and adhere to rigid timelines. Complex systems collapse under rigid boundary conditions and do evaluators working with such restrictions in developmental contexts.
So why do people do it? “Well, my memories of my favourite road trip were an injured leg, chocolates, beautiful photographs and a great sense of fulfilment,” recalls Arjun.
It is youngsters like these who have transformed road-tripping from just a hobby to an art.
After all, friendship and travel is a potent combination that you can’t say no to.
Systems Thinking and the Design of Empathy
Posted: September 22, 2011 Filed under: complexity, design thinking, systems thinking | Tags: Charles Leadbeater, design, developmental design, developmental evaluation, empathy, organizational change, systems thinking Leave a comment »
Leadbeater's Systems Thinking - Empathy Grid
Scalability is an issue that faces practitioners in systems and design. How do we design systems at scale and if so, what might they look like.
Charles Leadbeater has been on a mission to find ways to make large organizations — particularly those in the social sector – more innovative. Leadbeater, like many social innovators, is hard to pin down to a single title or role. He is at once a researcher, a designer, a systems thinker, and a urbanist. Like most innovators, all and none of these descriptors truly fit.
Leadbeater was in Toronto earlier this week to speak on the issue of innovation in cross-sector collaboration for public good at the MaRS Discovery District. If you’ve seen Leadbeater speak (consider the talks on TED here or elsewehere), you’ll know that you’re in for some English-style self-depricating humour alongside of much about the manner in which people engage in change actions within a system. You’ll also get a lesson in social design, the kind that Victor Papanek advocated for.
To my delight, Leadbeater did not disappoint. Unlike other talks, the value came less from a focused “take home message” and more in a way of conceiving social systems through the combined lens of systems and design thinking (my terms, not his). At the heart of his talk was the challenge we face with building systems and empathy at scale. When things interact, eventually they become understood within a set of boundary conditions and interact, thus making a system. The system in turn begins to establish rules (or rather, the rules determine the system). These emergent properties thus shape the way the system operates or, in social situations, governs or guides the actions of those within it.
The problem is that at certain scales the very factors that create positive social relations, that is those that yield tangible emotional, resource, or informational benefits for one or more parties, get warped under the changes in that scaling. Thus, we have the countless stories of a beloved small business grown in a confined community that becomes a multinational corporation and, in doing so, loses the intimacy and connection to its customers in the process. Companies do this, government organizations show this, and so do cities.
The more one designs for the humans within the system in ways that create meaningful engagement, the greater the empathy. Yet deep empathy is often founded upon intimacy, which is something that is difficult to scale. Leadbeater illustrates the various ways in which firms and cities have addressed this on the graph above. In each case, there are examples that fit. In business for example, there is Ryanair, which embodies a highly structured system with low empathy (top left corner). Opposed to that is the local farmer’s market where one gets to know their grower, experience high mutual empathy, but in a manner that is unique, idiosyncratic and non-systematic in most ways. The challenge is how to design organizations at scale from the cosy-ness of the Farmer’s Market without becoming a Ryanair.
It struck me that the food service industry might be one of the areas where the scalability can be achieved. For example, Starbucks is a gigantic corporation with shops worldwide, yet it still manages to create a very homey, local feel at each one. In the mornings I go to the gym I stop by a location to get a smoothie and my server always remembers my order. At the location near where I take classes, they gave me a free drink because they couldn’t get the computer to take off my 10 cent reusable cup discount. In each location, the benefits were not just in customer service, but in the chit-chat and relationships that I develop with the staff. It’s not like I am speaking to owner-operators at some of the great independent coffee shops around my city, but it is close.
The Starbucks experience was thought through, intentional and thus, by design. We can do this with other systems. The key is whether or not the systems themselves are aware enough to know when they have, indeed, become systems. Starbucks today could not be empathic in exactly the same way as it was when it was a one-shop place at Pikes Market in Seattle. But it can create something similar, which is parallel to Simon’s notion that design is about the science of the artificial.
I’ve been developing and advocating for an approach to creating scale — in time and scope — that I call developmental design. A developmental design approach means shifting and changing over time and designing things in a manner that adjust to the complexities associated with dynamic systems. It brings together complexity, systems, design and the detailed feedback mechanism that comes through developmental evaluation. Leadbeater’s grid helps add to this concept by giving a focus to the development, from one level of empathy to another and one systemic scale to another.
Through thinking in systems and acting through design, perhaps then we can create the kinds of services and organizations that respond to the challenges we face.
And designing for empathy will help us know when we’ve achieved it.
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Quid nunc cogitat? In search of a definition of design thinking
Posted: September 10, 2011 Filed under: complexity, design thinking, Systems science, systems thinking | Tags: Andrea Yip, complexity, creativity, definition, design, design thinking, innovation, OCADU, Richard Buchanan, Roger Martin, strategic foresight, university 3 Comments »
Design Thinking?
Design thinking is a concept that has gained much purchase in the creative industries and beyond, but what does it mean and does it matter? Determining an answer to this question might mean the difference between advancing it further or ending the concept’s use altogether.
The Latin form of the question of “what is design thinking?”, quid nunc cogitat?, asks about what is design thinking now? It implies a sense that design thinking is a moveable, dynamic concept and might better illustrate its true nature than trying to develop a singular definition.
I’ve been struck by the concept of design thinking for some time and this week I began a two-year journey towards a Masters degree in design at OCAD University in Toronto where the concept will be placed at the centre of the curriculum. Perhaps not surprisingly, the first course of the program is Business and Design Thinking. This was the first week of classes and after spending a few days with my classmates it might be expected that this group of mid-career professionals interested in design thinking might have a clear idea of what it is that sits at the centre of their studies, but that hasn’t been the case.
Nor was it the case a few weeks ago at the Design Thinking unconference that I posted on earlier where people from across North America (and beyond) gathered to spend two days discussing the subject. It seems that no matter where I look, whatever books I read, the answer to the question of what is design thinking seems elusive. All these design thinkers and no definition to unite them.
The simplest answer to the question of what it is might be : it is what designers think about when they work.
And a designer might be: anyone who creates something with a conscious intent.
While these might suffice for cocktail parties, they are unsatisfying to those of us who seek to explore the concept of design thinking further than the hors d’oeuvre tray.
Among the best examples of what design thinking is about are conveyed through metaphors, like the Periodic Table of Design (twice!) or the design enzyme, both by social designer Andrea Yip. Roger Martin and others have considered design thinking to be a form of abductive reasoning around complex problem solving. Richard Buchanan suggests that this is the kind of thinking that is applied to wicked problems.
These examples either illustrate the concepts in specific terms or generalized ways of thinking, but do not in themselves provide a definition of design thinking. It seems we are very good at delineating the key elements of design thinking (Andrea Yip), the ways of approaching design problems (Roger Martin) or defining the types of problems that design thinking works best at addressing (see Richard Buchanan), but we are less good at saying what it is.
Perhaps we are left with the paradoxical answer and question posed by Faith No More
What is it? It’s it.
Sudhir Desai has argued that we need terms that have little or no prior meaning to define what design thinking is, lest we risk creating more confusion resulting from pre-conceptions like the words “design” (design what?) and “thinking” (isn’t it about ‘doing’ things too?). Taken further, this argument suggests that we will not find a suitable definition using the existing terms.
I am not so sure. There is another road to take. Consider DT’s close peer, systems thinking. Although not uncontested, many systems thinkers and scientists agree that systems thinking refers to a class of theories, methods and tools that address systems-level issues in a coherent manner. Complexity science, system dynamics, soft-systems methodologies, and cybernetics are among the fields that fall under the broader systems thinking rubric. This organization is best articulated in Michael Jackson’s 2003 book on Systems Thinking, cited in the Censemaking library.
Another good example (also in the library) is the work by evaluators Bob Williams and Richard Hummelbrunner on systems concepts in action. In this concise and articulate work, the authors illustrate the various concepts that fall within the larger realm of systems thinking in a manner that allows people to appreciate the breadth and depth of the concept and its multiple ways of understanding systems.
Design thinking may be ready to make the leap to this style of conceptualization. Rather than seek to kill the term and replace it with something else, as some have argued, perhaps its time to expand it while putting the effort forward towards articulating its components and the relations between them rather than seeking to come up with a gold-standard definition that suits everyone. The latter idea is one that has already suggested its doomed to fail.
Using this example, design thinking might be ripe to be re-defined as an umbrella term to support concepts like human factors design, plan-do-study-act approaches to change, and strategic foresight. Rather than design thinking be conceived of as a specific thing, it might be better off described as a set of things of which design and thinking are two of the central, unifying features.
Leaving my first full day of school, I walked a classmate to the subway and we discussed this fuzziness with the term and, prior to us parting said “it really is making things with some intent behind it, isn’t it?” to which the response was “yeah, pretty much “. Behind what seemed like a pat answer on both of our parts is a sense that we know design thinking is real and offers something of value that other concepts do not. That is the reason why the search for a definition is important and why this is not just an academic exercise in semantics, but a larger journey for understanding the role creativity plays in finding and addressing problematic issues and how we can better tackle them all.
So perhaps the new definition for design thinking now is: it is what creative people seek to find a definition for.
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Design Thinking and the Metaphors of Science
Posted: August 28, 2011 Filed under: complexity, design thinking | Tags: Andrea Yip, chemistry, complexity, design, developmental design, learning, science 3 Comments »
The Chemistry of Creation
There is a certain way in which things come together to create a successful design (or relationship) that is often chalked up to “chemistry”. But design chemistry could mean something both literal and evolving just like biological organisms if we take the concept to its fullest.
Metaphors are commonly used in tackling complex problems. The uniqueness of the situation, the level of detail of the manner by which the influencing factors coalesce, and the multidisciplinary ways of seeing the problem in the first place all present a problem of language, thus using oblique comparators can often fill the gap.
Science and mathematics have the advantage of being closer to ‘universal’ languages than many of the other forms of communication we share as a species (Leibniz’s ideas notwithstanding). They are less (not completely) influenced by cultural variations and local differences and can be shared globally. It is for this reason that the the prospect for a means of communicating concepts like design through science has appeal. As Andrea Yip has pointed out, design itself can be transformed into chemistry using the periodic table as a guide to serve as a more universal metaphor for understanding the way design thinking is experienced and practiced.
Chemistry is the study and creation of the bonds of the universe. More specifically, it is:
the science of matter, especially its properties, structure, composition, behavior, reactions, interactions and the changes it undergoes.
As a metaphor for design thinking it works beautifully. Through the Periodic Table of Design Thinking we see an attempt to lay out the properties of design thinking, map out the structure and explain their composition. Through practice and reflection we will see how these compounds play out in the design process.
Another scientific metaphor that takes up the charge from where chemistry leaves off is from developmental biology:
the study of the process by which organisms grow and develop
In the case of this metaphor, design thinking is the organism. Just as an organism, made of chemical compounds interacting over time, evolves, so too does the design process and the thinking that comes with it. In this case, metaphors like those proposed by Ms Yip and the concept of developmental design fit harmoniously.
Designing for and with complexity requires attention to a dynamism that can be lost if one takes the approach that product development happens at only stage of its life cycle. For many products this might be appropriate, but it falls short when we describe social design issues such as creating policies or social programs such as those found in health and education. I’ve referred to this concept as developmental design. Developmental design, like developmental evaluation, implies an evolved, dynamic approach to generating knowledge or outcomes and while I only loosely conceived of it in a way that matched developmental biology, it may be time to revisit that more intently. Designing developmentally means working through the design process on an ongoing basis, like perpetual beta in the software industry. It means evolving strategies for adaptation rather than solving problems because true solutions to wicked problems are often more dream than reality.
Taking the chemistry metaphor, it means that the ingredients, dosage and combinatorial mixes change over time in the production of a new compound or design. They may require catalysts — such as the inclusion of new perspectives or a particular discipline — to provoke certain reactions and move ideas into new space. It may also involve the same type of intervention from the designer to bring these chemicals to life. The chemist is not removed from her creation.
All of these are metaphors, yet they provide us with a means of taking the messiness of the language, something discussed in previous posts, to a new place until we can find the language that is most appropriate. Until that time, science might offer one of the better means of conveying design, complexity and the creativity that comes when we apply them both to generating products and services.
Photo Chemistry! by matfred used under Creative Commons Licence from Flickr.
The Art of Complexity and Public Health
Posted: August 14, 2011 Filed under: art & design, complexity, emergence, health promotion, public health | Tags: art, beholding, contemplative inquiry, health promotion, public health Leave a comment »
“Art is an intimation of the fundamental reconciliation of contradicting possibilities” – Joel Upton
Without contradiction, there is no art. Art itself is about juxtaposing ideas, tensions, concepts and working with form and space. The artist, whether consciously or not, is balancing contradictions in space, medium and form to challenge themselves and their audience to explore an idea, a feeling, concept or all three.
Engaging with art is about beholding. To behold requires focus, attention and some enthusiasm for the subject matter (knowledge doesn’t hurt much either). It requires time to contemplate the elements above and explore the contradictions and the perspective of the artist and the beholding audience. Health promotion and social change is full of contradictions. For example, how to promote freedom and self-determination while ensuring appropriate regulation to protect those who’s self-determined choices put others at risk? How do we create community and common space while respecting diversity and uniqueness — including those perspectives that don’t support commonly held values?
The list can go on. Art and the art of beholding can offer some ways to address this complexity through contemplative inquiry and learning about perspective and perspective taking.
Claude Monet in painting the Maintee sur la Siene did so from the river in his boat. By being on the river Monet was able to gain a perspective that is fundamentally different than had he painted from the shore, which he also did in other works. To behold Monet’s painting yields insights that cannot be gained by simply passing the image over.
Spending time before the work yields perspectives that cannot be obtained through mere casual observation. One is immune to the overlaying circles, the misty cornering of the Siene, or the fact that nearly all of the painting exists in reflection. When one looks at the painting in the context of others using the same angle and different colour shades, we see that this is a work that is distinct. Searching through the various forms of the work, one sees new layers of possibility and complexity emerge as the tones change, the textures shift and the intensity of the work alters. The version held at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, where Professor Upton teaches, is particularly complex in how subtle the reflections and use of colour and texture are parlayed on the canvas.
Learning more about Monet at the time he did this painting, his life, the fact that it wasn’t like he painted it from the water, he DID paint it from the water.
But we might have known that had we not spent the time in contemplation of the painting. Got to know it, and understand it deeply. Submitted ourselves to the work with a level of intimacy that can only be obtained through the act of contemplation and engagement with the art. The longer one beholds the work and sees the various forms within it, the greater the complexity that emerges — qualities unknown or unknowable without the contemplation of the work in depth.
Monet knew that he had to survive, to produce a work of art that was in demand and could sell. He had to survive, but also did art to ensure that people were inspired and challenged. His wrestling with contradiction, his application of knowledge to a medium, and the expression of his creativity through both is what made him one of the most widely renowned impressionist painters who ever lived.
Health promotion is about contradiction. It deals with complexity all the time. How do we inspire change in others and still support self-determination? How can we change a system when that system has no single voice? How do we get individuals to do what we want, yet simultaneously respect what they want?
Health promotion also seeks to respect diversity, but at the same time, what does it do to truly understand this diversity? Do we take the time to get to know the communities it deals with. Really, truly know these communities. Do we give the time to be intimate with them?
My experience is sadly, no. In public health we use focus groups — which were initially designed to focus a research question, not serve as a means of research unto itself — to generalize from a group-think scenario to an entire community and then claim that we know them. Really? Is this beholding? Is this the kind of contemplative inquiry that makes sense for public health.
Could we learn more from artists? Our methods certainly could (see art of public health), but perhaps the way of the artist is also something we could learn more from.
Design for Social Norms or Social Change?
Posted: August 6, 2011 Filed under: behaviour change, design thinking, health promotion, systems thinking | Tags: complexity, creativity, danah boyd, design, emergence, health inequity, health promotion, Keith Sawyer, social change, social design, social justice, Social media Leave a comment »
Social change or social norm?
Designing for how people live is part of good design practice, but what about designing for the way people could be? What does it mean to design for social norms and what role does design have in changing them?
Media scholar and youth researcher danah boyd recently wrote on the need for designers to consider social norms as part of their media creations. The post received a lot of attention in the mediasphere and came on the heels of another interesting post by Keith Sawyer on Chinese social norms and the Tiger Mom phenomenon (that I also wrote on a while back). Returning to boyd’s argument, she makes the case that designers don’t dictate the behaviour of people in the systems they create, the people tthemselves do:
Social norms aren’t designed into the system. They don’t emerge by telling people how they should behave. And they don’t necessarily follow market logic. Social norms emerge as people – dare we say “users” – work out how a technology makes sense and fits into their lives. Social norms take hold as people bring their own personal values and beliefs to a system and help frame how future users can understand the system. And just as “first impressions matter” for social interactions, I cannot underestimate the importance of early adopters. Early adopters configure the technology in critical ways and they play a central role in shaping the social norms that surround a particular system.
What boyd is arguing (using my words and concepts from complexity science) is that emergence and path dependency shape design’s manifestation in the social realm. In technology-oriented systems, the ‘early adopters’ are the ones who set the stage for how the next wave of users interact with the system and boyd points to examples from Friendster about how attempts to control its community helped drive people away from the site (ultimately leading to its demise).
People don’t like to be configured. They don’t like to be forcibly told how they should use a service. They don’t want to be told to behave like the designers intended them to be. Heavy-handed policies don’t make for good behavior; they make for pissed off users.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t design to encourage certain behaviors. Of course you should. The whole point of design is to help create an environment where people engage in the most fruitful and healthy way possible. But designing a system to encourage the growth of healthy social norms is fundamentally different than coming in and forcefully telling people how they must behave. No one likes being spanked, especially not a crowd of opinionated adults.
The focus here is more on social media and online spaces, but the argument could be made for the same thing in social design. But unlike information technology, which favours a very particular group of people, social design has the potential to intentionally engage specific populations. Using boyd’s argument, one might assert that much of the technology we use from Foursquare to Instagram to the iPhone itself is shaped by the under-40 set of educated, middle class, largely white male hipster knowledge workers as they are typically the earliest visible adopters for such technologies (even if that is changing) .
In this model those with the most power, privilege and social capital at the outset greatly determine what comes next. This might be OK for technology, but is highly problematic for social justice and social inequities. A health promoting social design has the potential to change this by seeding that early adoption cycle with different people with potentially different values to shape outcomes not defined by a narrow set of social groups.
Keith Sawyer’s article points to the social norming around Chinese parenting (as defined through Amy Chua’s Tiger Mom) and how it clashes with a particular type of parenting model that dominates in the United States and our ideas of creativity. In describing his reaction to a recent review of Chua’s book and its contents, Sawyer points to the unease it creates in him when comparing norms and what it means for creativity and innovation:
I ought to be lined up with all of the horrified American parents who hate this book. But I just can’t side with them on this one. Creativity is hard work, and you don’t get creativity without paying your dues. No one magically learns how to play piano or violin (I’m reminded of the old joke: “Do you play the violin?” “I don’t know, I haven’t tried it yet.”) And as Amy Chua points out, there’s nothing like the joy that comes from being able to do something well, knowing that you earned it with hours, months, and years of hard work. As a child, I took piano lessons for eight years, and now thirty years later it’s a major source of joy in my life.
Chua’s parenting is an issue because it doesn’t fit with the dominant social norms, just as the self-esteem-at-all-cost approach that Sawyer rightly exposes as problematic in its own right would be in China.
These are designed systems. Just as we create path dependencies for one set of values, so too can we do the same for others and with other people. The focus on the outcomes of systems rather than their design is problematic if we want change. Starting with design and values at the outset, being conscious of who we invite in and how we engage them and by remaining contemplative about how these systems unfold and the emergent patterns that shape them, designers of all stripes may be better positioned to create social change rather than just for social norms.
Social Networks: Beyond the Numbers
Posted: July 8, 2011 Filed under: Social media, Systems science | Tags: research, social change, social network, social network research, storytelling, tobacco control, Twitter Leave a comment »
There's More to Connections Than Lines
Social networking research is becoming a hot topic as people discover the potential that mapping has for guiding policy and practice, however like many other “hot” research methods, there is a need to go beyond the numbers to make sense of what they really mean lest we create beautiful maps and have no place to go with them.
The rise of social media applications and the ability for anyone to use simple tools to create, extend and shape their social graph with a mouse click or tap of the app has helped stoke interest in network research. Social networking methods are those that tend to favour quantitative development of maps and numerical representations of what a social network looks like. We are most often terribly ignorant of the role and position we play within a network so to see ourselves and peers positioned literally on a map can be revealing in more ways than one.
Between 2005 and 2006 my colleague Tim Huerta and I did a study that looked at the formation of a community of practice (CoP) in tobacco control through the lens of the social network and published a paper on this based on that work. Part of the study involved giving a group of people who were meeting face-to-face a survey and ask them about who they knew that influenced their work in the web-assisted tobacco interventions (the CoP’s focus), how well they knew the people they identified, and what kind of things they did together. This data was entered over the first night and analyzed for the next day’s meeting with the network map revealed (see summary here, full article here) .
While the map itself was generated through quantitative analysis, revealing patterns akin to the image above, it was the meaning that people gave to those connections that allowed this group to begin envisioning how they could leverage their untapped potential in the network to advance their interests as a community. This sense-making process is too often neglected in social network research and risks turning something meaningful (like a relationship) into a statistic that can more easily be dismissed — or misunderstood.
This week another social network study was published looking at tobacco control and the use of Twitter as a medium to support that. This study didn’t map the network per se, but rather looked at the type of people in the network and what the content of the messages that were shared within it. This represents another type of social networking study where the researchers aim to peer into the activities of a group of people who are interconnected and describe from afar what they see and who they think they see. This has some utility for those wanting to delve into areas where there is little known (such as Twitter and smoking cessation), but can also mislead people if used improperly. Networks are dynamic, with influence shifting and participants activity modulating greatly within its lifespan and because of this, cross-sectional data poses the risk of capturing a slice of activity that might not reflect the whole.
Which slice do you want?
Consider the analogy of slicing a watermelon sideways and doing so at the end, rather than in the middle: if you love watermelon, you want the middle slice because it’s bigger and richer than the end. The same might be true for social networking activity.
The tendency to want to produce network maps using numbers alone to explain them is highly problematic. Even Facebook has decided it will give greater priority to what people do in the network, rather than how big the network is as evidenced by the push to add Skype-powered video to its service this week. Facebook knows that their value is determined less by how many friends you have, but more about how you truly connect: photosharing, comments, game-playing.
True, this can all be quantified, but they are going a little further beyond the numbers. The Facebook example provides an interesting example of potential social network studies that could look at the type and content of the photos shared, how people have reacted to them, and what kind of social movement has been formed by the content created for and shared through that network. If you want to leverage a network for social change and good, this is the kind of stuff you need to focus on, not just the total numbers of people involved.
Powerful social network research is as much about having a good statistician as it is an anthropologist and together, they need to have the story that comes from it, woven together by the users and a good storytelling host.
*** Watermelon photo by Rameez Sadlkot used under Creative Commons Licence from Flickr. Network image used under licence.
Social Media and the Limits to Growth
Posted: July 4, 2011 Filed under: complexity, public health, social systems, systems thinking | Tags: design, information overload, Social media, wayfinding, wicked problems Leave a comment »
Social Media, Social Noise?
Social media provides a virtual firehose of content that surpasses anything we’ve had access to before. But is this sea of content becoming too much to manage and what does this mean for knowledge-driven enterprises as the barriers to content creation drop almost as low as they are for consumption?
I added some new friends to Facebook this week. To my knowledge, there weren’t any that left my roster. I also had quite a few new people follow me on Twitter. This blog was visited a few hundred times and even my other, less widely publicized blogs got some traffic. So too did millions of others. Despite there being holidays North and South of the Canada-US border, people still were reading and writing and so, too, was the rest of the world.
Dana Meadows’ classic work in system dynamics, The Limits to Growth, has served as a treatise on the problem of the “more of everything” mindset for a generation and continues to inspire work in the environmental movement. It may be time to dust off our copies of Meadows’ book (or pick up her newer, posthumously published one, Thinking in Systems) and consider what this means for social media.
The argument is pretty straightforward: “more of everything” thinking to solve problems leads to dynamic shifts in our system that have unintended consequences. If our current capacity to handle information — whether in quantity or quality — is a certain level now, adding more input will result in a change in this capacity. These changes are often non-linear in nature. Consider the example of lifting weights at the gym. You might do 10 repetitions of an exercise where the first 7 feel comparably similar and then grunt and push your way through the final three with difficulty that gets exponentially more difficult with each additional rep. This is an example of a type of distribution of experience that social media operates in.
Complex dynamic systems, of which social media is indeed one, frequently operate using Pareto distributions of activity, not the standard normal one. What this means in complexity terms is that when we start to feel that it is hard to handle things, the gap between our current capacity and maximum capacity is actually very small not something far off. I believe we are getting close.
What this means is still a mystery. We humans are remarkably adaptive and if the information layer is too thick in one area of our life, we will compensate in others. Unfortunately, this means neglecting other activities, whether that be face-to-face relations with others, hobbies, other interests, travel and so on. Another compensatory response is to distribute attentional resources differently. That is, spend less time in depth on issues to allow for greater breadth.
All of these are problematic when many of the challenges we face require more sophisticated thinking, contemplative inquiry, and the space to bring diverse perspectives to bear. Complex problem solving is difficult because it often requires working with others, considering different perspectives, listening deeply and broadly; all of which take time, which is something we are taking less of more and more. In public health, we’re doing a bad job of serving as role models in caring for ourselves and giving us the time to contemplate these big problems. A fascination with social media, while helping us consider the role of relationships, could also be undermining our already fragile state of attentional awareness.
I recently experimented with the new service Path, which allows you to build a deep relationship with others using social media. It was among the shortest experiments of my social media career. Interesting idea, but the wave of content that it helped unleash was too much, too soon. What I am worrying about is spending less time on things, not more. In embracing social media as a tool to support complex decision making and learning I am realizing that there is an ironic twist in that it, in some cases, is reducing my ability to do so.
In striving to create better wayfinding strategies, I am getting lost.
These are design problems, wicked problems, and ones that we will need to tackle soon lest we have more of everything and wind up with lots of nothing.
