Tag: Herbert Simon

businesscomplexityinnovation

What’s the big idea and how are you going to make it real?

on February 6, 2014
What is your strategy?

What is your strategy?

Concepts like design thinking and developmental evaluation are best used when they help ask big questions before seeking answers. How we frame the problem is much more important than the solution we generate, but that way of thinking means going into an area that is much talked about and rarely delivered on: strategy.

Many companies and human service organizations are getting desperate for solutions to the vexing problems they face. However, it may be that the organizations are as stuck finding solutions because they are tackling the wrong problem.

Problem framing is among the most critical, yet often overlooked, steps in design and innovation and often leads to more solutions that fail than those that succeed. Asking better questions is a start and developing a strategy from that is where to go next.

The big idea is your problem, making it real is the strategy to solving it.

What is the big idea?

Herbert Simon wrote about problem forming, framing and solving as the central tenets of design. Albert Einstein, another Nobel laureate, was famously (mis?)quoted as saying this about the discovery process:

If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution.

Like so many of these ‘famous’ quotes, its origins are murky and the (hypothesized) original is much less poetic, but the spirit of the phrase is that problem finding and forming is enormously important for innovation. Case studies from design missions, innovation labs, and my own personal experience suggest that this ratio of 55 and 5 in resourcing is probably not far off from the truth.

Problem forming is also tied to a greater sense of mission, which is where a lot of organizations get it wrong. A clear, appropriately scoped mission provides the boundaries for creativity to flourish and innovation efforts to focus. Steve Jobs charged Apple with the mission of developing tools to enable people to create. That may have started with computers, but it soon grew to software with features that were design-forward and attractive, and then mobile devices and the ecosystems that powered them. When viewed from the mission of enabling creativity, the move to being a music and bookseller isn’t a leap from Apple’s roots as a maker of desktop computers.

Where are you going?

Strategy is about saying what you don’t do as much as it is about saying what you do. It also means saying what you do clearly and meaning it. Both of these have enormous implications for what a program focuses on and what feedback systems they develop to help them innovate and guide their strategy moving forward.

A good, simple resource on strategy is Howell J. Maltham Jr‘s recent book I Have a Strategy, No You Don’t. In the book the author illustrates the many ways in which we claim strategy when really it’s a wish. Malthan asserts that a strategy has:

  1. A purpose
  2. A plan
  3. A sequence of actions or tactics
  4. A distinct, measurable goal

However, most importantly according to Maltham is that this all needs a narrative – the story of what you do and how you do it. Too often we see the absence of narrative or a lack of connection to any of the four components above. Apple has famously developed a strong narrative for how it operates and realizes it mission.

Maltham’s four-point description of strategy works when you are dealing with simple and maybe slightly complicated systems; those with some measure of predictability and control. It doesn’t work well for complexity, which is where many human services are either immersed or shifting to. For that, we need some form of adaptive strategy that provides guidance, but also works with, rather than against complexity. Yet, it still requires a narrative.

Strategy for complex times

Like the above cartoon from Tom Fishburne, the tactics should not precede the strategy. It’s interesting to see how often the term tactic and strategy get confused and conflated. It’s easy to see why. Tactics are tangible. They — like 90% of meetings, answering email and phone messages — offer the illusion of productivity and impact. Getting hundreds or thousands of likes, followers, and re-tweets is a proxy for impact for a lot of people.

But if you’re looking to make real change, it doesn’t matter so much that you’re doing stuff, but rather whether you’re moving stuff.

It’s why adaptive strategy is difficult, because it means moving your ideas, your thinking, your relationships and your operations to constantly re-calibrate your focus. Just like looking at birds through binoculars or watching a football game from the stands, you need to constantly adjust your focus to maintain engagement. The same thing happens with strategy.

At the same time, difficult shouldn’t be the reason not to do something.

This is the new thinking that is needed to innovate and that is why many organizations seek to do the wrong thing righter by doubling down on trendiness to appear innovative without thinking deeply about what the big idea is and how it is supposed to become real. Whether static or adaptive, the narrative will tie that together. So what is your organization’s story and do you know how to tell it?

 

complexitydesign thinkingemergenceevaluationsystems science

Developmental Evaluation and Design

on January 28, 2014
Creation for Reproduction

Creation for Reproduction

 

Innovation is about channeling new ideas into useful products and services, which is really about design. Thus, if developmental evaluation is about innovation, then it is also fundamental that those engaging in such work — on both evaluator and program ends — understand design. In this final post in this first series of Developmental Evaluation and.., we look at how design and design thinking fits with developmental evaluation and what the implications are for programs seeking to innovate.  

Design is a field of practice that encompasses professional domains, design thinking, and critical design approaches altogether. It is a big field, a creative one, but also a space where there is much richness in thinking, methods and tools that can aid program evaluators and program operators.

Defining design

In their excellent article on designing for emergence (PDF), OCAD University’s Greg Van Alstyne and Bob Logan introduce a definition they set out to be the shortest, most concise one they could envision:

Design is creation for reproduction

It may also be the best (among many — see Making CENSE blog for others) because it speaks to what design does, is intended to do and where it came from all at the same time. A quick historical look at design finds that the term didn’t really exist until the industrial revolution. It was not until we could produce things and replicate them on a wide scale that design actually mattered. Prior to that what we had was simply referred to as craft. One did not supplant the other, however as societies transformed through migration, technology development and adoption, shifted political and economic systems that increased collective actions and participation, we saw things — products, services, and ideas — primed for replication and distribution and thus, designed.

The products, services and ideas that succeeded tended to be better designed for such replication in that they struck a chord with an audience who wanted to further share and distribute that said object. (This is not to say that all things replicated are of high quality or ethical value, just that they find the right purchase with an audience and were better designed for provoking that).

In a complex system, emergence is the force that provokes the kind of replication that we see in Van Alstyne and Logan’s definition of design. With emergence, new patterns emerge from activity that coalesces around attractors and this is what produces novelty and new information for innovation.

A developmental evaluator is someone who creates mechanisms to capture data and channel it to program staff / clients who can then make sense of it and thus either choose to take actions that stabilize that new pattern of activity in whatever manner possible, amplify it or — if it is not helpful — make adjustments to dampen it.

But how do we do this if we are not designing?

Developmental evaluation as design

A quote from Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon is apt when considering why the term design is appropriate for developmental evaluation:

“Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones”.

Developmental evaluation is about modification, adaptation and evolution in innovation (poetically speaking) using data as a provocation and guide for programs. One of the key features that makes developmental evaluation (DE) different from other forms of evaluation is the heavy emphasis on use of evaluation findings. No use, no DE.

But further, what separates DE from ulitization-focused evaluation (PDF) is that the use of evaluation data is intended to foster development of the program, not just use. I’ve written about this in explaining what development looks like in other posts. No development, no DE.

Returning to Herb Simon’s quote we see that the goal of DE is to provoke some discussion of development and thus, change, so it could be argued that, at least at some level, DE it is about design. That is a tepid assertion. A more bold one is that design is actually integral to development and thus, developmental design is what we ought to be striving for through our DE work. Developmental design is not only about evaluative thinking, but design thinking as well. It brings together the spirit of experimentation working within complexity, the feedback systems of evaluation, with a design sensibility around how to sensemake, pay attention to, and transform that information into a new product evolution (innovation).

This sounds great, but if you don’t think about design then you’re not thinking about innovating and that means you’re really developing your program.

Ways of thinking about design and innovation

There are numerous examples of design processes and steps. A full coverage of all of this is beyond the scope of a single post and will be expounded on in future posts here and on the Making CENSE blog for tools. However, one approach to design (thinking) is highlighted below and is part of the constellation of approaches that we use at CENSE Research + Design:

The design and innovation cycle

The design and innovation cycle

Much of this process has been examined in the previous posts in this series, however it is worth looking at this again.

Herbert Simon wrote about design as a problem forming (finding), framing and solving activity (PDF). Other authors like IDEO’s Tim Brown and the Kelley brothers, have written about design further (for more references check out CENSEMaking’s library section), but essentially the three domains proposed by Simon hold up as ways to think about design at a very basic level.

What design does is make the process of stabilizing, amplifying or dampening the emergence of new information in an intentional manner. Without a sense of purpose — a mindful attention to process as well — and a sensemaking process put in place by DE it is difficult to know what is advantageous or not. Within the realm of complexity we run the risk of amplifying and dampening the wrong things…or ignoring them altogether. This has immense consequences as even staying still in a complex system is moving: change happens whether we want it or not.

The above diagram places evaluation near the end of the corkscrew process, however that is a bit misleading. It implies that DE-related activities come at the end. What is being argued here is that if the place isn’t set for this to happen at the beginning by asking the big questions at the beginning — the problem finding, forming and framing — then the efforts to ‘solve’ them are unlikely to succeed.

Without the means to understand how new information feeds into design of the program, we end up serving data to programs that know little about what to do with it and one of the dangers in complexity is having too much information that we cannot make sense of. In complex scenarios we want to find simplicity where we can, not add more complexity.

To do this and to foster change is to be a designer. We need to consider the program/product/service user, the purpose, the vision, the resources and the processes that are in place within the systems we are working to create and re-create the very thing we are evaluating while we are evaluating it. In that entire chain we see the reason why developmental evaluators might also want to put on their black turtlenecks and become designers as well.

No, designers don't all look like this.

No, designers don’t all look like this.

 

Photo Blueprint by Will Scullen used under Creative Commons License

Design and Innovation Process model by CENSE Research + Design

Lower image used under license from iStockphoto.

art & designcomplexitydesign thinkingevaluationinnovation

Defining the New Designer

on August 8, 2013

Who is the real designer?

It’s been suggested that anyone who shapes the world intentionally is a designer, however those who train and practice as professional designers question whether such definition obscures the skill, craft, and ethics that come from formal disciplinary affiliation. Further complicating things is the notion that design thinking can be taught and that the practice of design can be applied far beyond its original traditional bounds. Who is right and what does it mean to define the new designer?

Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. – Herbert Simon, Scientist and Nobel Laureate

By Herb Simon’s definition anyone who is intentionally directing their energy towards shaping their world is a designer. Renowned design scholar Don Norman (no relation) has said that we are all designers [1]. Defined this way, the term design becomes something more accessible and commonplace removing it from a sense elitism that it has often been associated with. That sounds attractive to most, but is something that has raised significant concerns from those who identify as professional designers and opens the question up about what defines the new designer as we move into an age of designing systems, not just products.

Designer qualities

Design is what links creativity and innovation. It shapes ideas to become practical and attractive propositions for users or customers. Design may be described as creativity deployed to a specific end – Sir George Cox

Sir George Cox, the former head of the UK Design Council, wrote the above statement in the seminal Cox Review of Creativity in Business in the UK in 2005 sees design as a strategic deployment of creative energy to accomplish something. This can be done mindfully, skilfully and ethically with a sense of style and fit or it can be done haphazardly, unethically, incompetently and foolishly. It would seem that designers must put their practice of design thinking into use which includes holding multiple contradictory ideas at the same time in one’s head. Contractions of this sort are a key quality of complexity and abductive reasoning, a means of thinking through such contradictions, is considered a central feature of design thinking.

Indeed, this ‘thinking’ part of design is considered a seminal feature of what makes a designer what they are. Writing on Cox’s definition of design, Mat Hunter, the Design Council’s Chief Design Officer, argues that a designer embodies a particular way of thinking about the subject matter and weaving this through active practice:

Perhaps the most obvious attribute of design is that it makes ideas tangible, it takes abstract thoughts and inspirations and makes something concrete. In fact, it’s often said that designers don’t just think and then translate those thoughts into tangible form, they actually think through making things.

Hunter might be getting closer to distinguishing what makes a designer so. His perspective might assert that people are reflective, abductive and employ design thinking actively, which is an assumption that I’ve found to be often incorrect. Even with professionals, you can instill design thinking but you can’t make them apply it (why this is the case is something for another day).

This invites the question: how do we know people are doing this kind of thinking when they design? The answer isn’t trivial if certain thinking is what defines a designer. And if they are applying design thinking through making does that qualify them as a designer whether they have accreditation or formal training degree in design or not?

Designers recognize that their training and professional development confers specific advantages and requires skill, discipline, craft and a code of ethics. Discipline is a cultural code of identity. For the public or consumers of designed products it can also provide some sense of quality assurance to have credentialed designers working with them.

Yet, those who practice what Herb Simon speaks of also are designers of something. They are shaping their world, doing with intent, and many are doing it with a level of skill and attention that is parallel to that of professional designers. So what does it mean to be a designer and how do we define this in light of the new spaces where design is needed?

Designing a disciplinary identity

Writing in Design Issues, Bremner & Rodgers (2013) [2] argue that design’s disciplinary heritage has always been complicated and that its current situation is being affected by three crisis domains: 1) professionalism, 2) economic, and 3) technological. The first is partly a product of the latter two as the shaping and manufacture of objects becomes transformed. Materials, production methods, knowledge, social context and the means of transporting – whether physically or digitally — the objects of design have transformed the market for products, services and ideas in ways that have necessarily shaped the process (and profession) of design itself. They conclude that design is not disciplinary, interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary, but largely alterdisciplinary — boundless of time and space.

Legendary German designer Dieter Rams is among the most strident critics of the everyone-is-a-designer label and believes this wide use of the term designer takes away the seriousness of what design is all about. Certainly, if one believes John Thackara’s assertion that 80 per cent of the impact of any product is determined at the design stage the case for serious design is clear. Our ecological wellbeing, social services, healthcare, and industries are all designed and have enormous impact on our collective lives so it makes sense that we approach designing seriously. But is reserving the term design(er) for an elite group the answer?

Some have argued that elitism in design is not a bad idea and that this democratization of design has led to poorly crafted, unusable products. Andrew Heaton, writing about User Experience (UX) design, suggests that this elitist view is less about moral superiority and more about better products and greater skill:

I prefer this definition: elitism is the belief that some individuals who form an elite — a select group with a certain intrinsic quality, specialised training, experience and other distinctive attributes — are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most weight. By that definition, Elitist UX is simply an insightful and skilled designer creating an experience for an elevated class of user.

Designing through and away from discipline

Designers recognize that their training and professional development confers specific advantages and requires skill, discipline, craft and a code of ethics, but there is little concrete evidence that it produced better designed outcomes. Design thinking has enabled journalists like Helen Walters, healthcare providers like those at the Mayo Clinic, and business leaders to take design and apply it to their fields and beyond. Indeed, it was business-journalist-cum-design-professor Bruce Nussbaum who is widely credited with contributing to the cross-disciplinary appeal of design thinking (and its critique) from his work at Newsweek.

Design thinking is now something that has traversed whatever discipline it was originally rooted in — which seems to be science, design, architecture, and marketing all at the same time. Perhaps unlocking it from discipline and the practices (and trappings) of such structure is a positive step.

Discipline is a cultural code of identity and for the public it can be a measure of quality. Quality is a matter of perspective and in complex situations we may not even know what quality means until products are developmentally evaluated after being used. For example, what should a 3-D printed t-shirt feel like? I don’t know whether it should be like silk, cotton, polyester, or nylon mesh or something else entirely because I have never worn one and if I was to compare such a shirt to my current wardrobe I might be using the wrong metric. We will soon be testing this theory with 3-D printed footwear already being developed.

Evaluating good design

The problem of metrics is the domain of evaluation. What is the appropriate measurement for good design? Much has been written on the concept of good design, but part of the issue is that what constitutes good design for a bike and chair might be quite different for a poverty reduction policy or perhaps a program to support mothers and their children escaping family violence. The idea of delight (a commonly used goal or marker of good design) as an outcome might be problematic in the latter context. Should mothers be delighted at such a program to support them in time of crisis? That’s a worthy goal, but I think if those involved feel safe, secure, cared for, and supported in dealing with their challenges that is still a worthwhile design. Focusing on delight as a criteria for good design in this case is using the wrong metric. And what about the designers who bring about such programs?

Or should such a program be based on designer’s ability to empathize with users and create adaptive, responsive programs that build on evidence and need simultaneously without delight being the sole goal? Just as healthy food is not always as delightful for children as ice cream or candy, there is still a responsibility to ensure that design outcomes are appropriate. The new designer needs to know when to delight, when and how to incorporate evidence, and how to bring all of the needs and constraints together to generate appropriate value.

Perhaps that ability is the criteria for which we should judge the new designer, encouraging our training programs, our clients (and their asks and expectations), our funders and our professional associations to consider what good design means in this age of complexity and then figure out who fits that criteria. Rather than build from discipline, consider creating the quality from the outcomes and processes used in design itself.

[1] Norman, D. (2004) Emotional design: why we love (or hate) everyday things. New York, NY: Basic Books.

[2] Bremner, C. & Rodgers, P. (2013). Design without discipline. Design Issues, 29 (3), 4-13.