The Pure and the Impure: Points of View for Designing Services

July 13, 2010 at 7:58 pm · Filed under Design, cinema, community interaction design, interaction, making it public, narration

Service designers identify and order goals in service systems.  Service systems are a unit of analysis for an exchange of skills and capabilities which leads to the production of value in use (Vargo et al., 2008).  Service systems are developed though the creation of value, where reinvention can transform the relationships of use and practice. Service systems are characteristically intangible, heterogeneous, simultaneous in production and consumption, non-perishable, and grounded in times and places that maintain their meaning and value (Kimbell, in prep).

One of the ways that designers understand service systems is by using a variety of approaches and concepts that isolate or concentrate focus on the relevant aspects of a system so they can drive experimentation and change. An example of this is a touchpoint, which means the aspects of the service are visible and come in contact with the users of that service (but see this discussion of its origins). You may have suspected that in a relationship of co-creation, touchpoints multiply quickly when production and consumption are linked since users are creators and vice versa. Another example that designers use is the line of visibility. This is similar to the touchpoint, and it describes what users see and experience in their relationships with a service system. It helps in rendering a system so that its processes and organizational structure are visible.

A draft diagram of a business process showing the line of visibility between the user and the organization dedicated to providing a service.

Because touchpoints and lines of visibility exist not only as tools but in practice, service experiences are tightly bound to tied to the production of narrative. Suspense in particular is a common experience for users when parts of a process, system, or set of relationships are hidden from view.  Just imagine a time when you were the creator or recipient of a service.  Much of your uncertainty or satisfaction was probably driven by what you knew or could expect about the outcome as well as the communication process that was taking place while the service was being delivered.

Richard Allen discusses suspense in his book about [Alfred] “Hitchcock’s Romantic Irony”. Allen cites Meir Sternberg’s distinction that, “suspense derives from a lack of desired information concerning the outcome of a conflict that is to take place in the narrative future, a lack that involves a clash of hope and fear; whereas curiosity is produced by a lack of information that relates to the narrative past, a time when struggles have already been resolved, and as such it often involves and interest in information for its own sake.”

So when working in service design we should decide if we desire to create curiosity or suspense and design our process accordingly. Allen also incorporates Ian Cameron’s view that suspense is a “channeling of emotions”. Clearly emotions can be powerful, but how and why? In Allen’s analysis, suspense is something that happens in us as we are forced to take up the prospect of narrative outcomes that are contrary to the ones we desire. Suspense is constructed out of moral uncertainty, balancing our expectations with potential outcomes.

Allen discusses Hitchcock and develops descriptions of two types of suspense: pure and impure. Pure suspense is broad and objective, prolonged by tension, delay, and narration that is unrestricted, moving between vantage points and locations. It leads to an anxious uncertainty and an increased expectation of a bad outcome as the deadline looms. Arbitrary delays segment time and increase the tension because a bad outcome seems close at hand. Often, the audience sees a threat before the protagonist and surprise happens through the manipulation of time. The outcome almost always favor of the moral victory, especially in popular media.

Impure suspense on the other hand is local and subjective. It is developed from points of view that provide different sources of knowledge often through the eyes of the protagonists and antagonists, keeping the audience informed while the characters remain unwitting. Deadlines are set early on and acceleration commonly heightens the alert attentiveness of the spectators who are active participants in the construction of the suspense. Knowledge is not made by the director. It is made by the audience in cooperation with the information provided to the characters. All too often, the audiences senses the outcome before the characters do by filling in blanks sources of meaning that haven’t been provided. Impure suspense favors empathy for the character, as if we were living through them. The moral outcome is less certain and often unrealized.

In order to try to make the differences between pure suspense and impure suspense more tractable, I imagined what users in a service system might say if they were experience one or the other.  The result is in the chart below, and it adapts these distinctions and starts to resolve how one might go about implementing different narrative objectives for a service system.

References:
Vargo, S. L., Maglio, P. P., & Akaka, M. A. (2008). On value and value co-creation: A service systems and service logic perspective. European Management Journal, 26(3), 145-152. doi:10.1016/j.emj.2008.04.003

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The Shifting Balance of Design Practice

July 13, 2010 at 4:16 am · Filed under Design, architecture, biology, community interaction design, complex systems, design ecology, evolution, interdisciplinary, network entrepreneurship

Mountains and Landscapes as Heuristics

In the 1930s, evolutionary geneticist Sewall Wright pulled together research strands in the biology of inbreeding, the genetics of coat color in guinea pigs, statistical methods (including path analysis), and mathematics that codified the changes in gene frequencies in populations as a result of natural selection, mutation, and migration.

His resulting description of these threads set the stage for qualitatively different perspective on the evolutionary process.  Wright described his perspective as a “shifting balance” model of evolutionary change, and it highlighted the role of small populations in the transitions between periods of high and low fitness.  This pattern, which followed from his use of the term “drift”,  describes the fluctuations of gene frequencies that result from the random sampling of small populations.  This random sampling comes from mating in small populations that, because of chance, produces small deviations from the numbers of genes originally represented in the population.

Wright’s Shifting Balance perspective coincided with his introduction of the adaptive landscape as a term to describe the space in which random fluctuations of gene frequencies in small populations could push the populations away from adaptive peaks or periods in which they were reproductively successful, and which would in turn allow natural selection to push them towards new adaptive peaks – areas of differential reproductive success.

Though Wright’s perspective on evolution is controversial (in a generative way), the perspectives and tools that emerged from his ideas have endured.  For example, Wright’s work preceded algorithmic approaches to optimization problems in mathematics, networks (traveling salesman), metallurgy (simulated annealing), and artificial intelligence – to name a few

The process of Shifting Balance is described as a series of three dynamic phases:

Phase 1, the exploratory phase, the action of small groups explores new combinations. Most stay on the suboptimal fitness peak (reasonably successful), but some get caught in adaptive valleys (unsuccessful).

In Phase 2, selection causes the groups that are in the adaptive valleys to move toward new, higher-fitness peaks.

Finally, in phase 3, groups at higher fitness peaks send off migrants helping other groups move to higher fitness peaks.

Phase 1: The Exploratory Phase

Phase 2: The Selection Phase

Phase 3: The Migration Phase

While Wright’s process was intended for population genetic systems, an increasing convergence between social processes, cognitive psychology, technology, ecology, and creative practice suggests that the concepts apply well to the exploratory, form-finding processes that precede the design and production of materials and services. The implementation of the Shifting Balance process as a analog for social and creative strategy is useful for the production of highly original and robust creative solutions – or, at least it’s a testable hypothesis.

For some, analogies between biological and social processes are difficult to comprehend.  However, the design of services and interactions is dependent on the ordering and reordering of processes, materials, people, and ideas. Combinations and recombinations of these things, when developed thoroughly and communicated, can impact the delivery and relational aspects of individuals working in cooperation or separately.

We could envision this process as a sort of charette (period of intense design in collaborative groups) activity where:

1. The exploratory phase initiates adaptive schema (creative combinations) which are driven by the interactions, specializations, and diverse perspectives of small groups;
2. Intergroup selection resulting from evaluation, the inherent heterogeneity among groups, and intended service platforms begins the iterative process of amplification of good combinations;
3. Export and translation of valuable forms/schema to other groups in order to test them against different problems, social contexts for cooperation, and consumptive patterns.

The immediate benefit of this strategy is the demonstration of expertise in practice, the role of discourse, and the chance events that can drive innovation.   Participants from different disciplines will have to opportunity to observe and engage in creative problem solving within highly diverse communities. Here the focus is on collaborative ideation followed by problem-solving across disciplinary and expertise-based boundaries and ultimately an exercise in cooperative translation, storytelling, and communication.

There is enough social scientific research to at least point to the benefit of diverse groups, although it would be worthwhile to have a better handle on an ideal number – i.e. what counts as a small population.  Plus, how do we go about choosing?  What is the process of selection…or should we instead be saying, “What is the process of attachment?”  And finally, are there specific patterns of translation or dissemination that we should aim for?  For if migrants endowed with the most successful schema do disperse and link up with others, they have an opportunity to cooperate and raise the capacity the other groups elsewhere. But through which mechanisms to we initiate and implement these processes?

There are a few other ideas that seem uniquely coupled to the Phases of Shifting Balance. An example is the goal of participation as a unique form of empowerment in community planning exercises. One particular model of participatory engagement provided by Conde et al. (2004) is used in the context of climate change planning (below).

The Landscape of Participation

This example shows transitional categories in participation. When viewed through a model of culture which emphasizes process over characteristics, these are skills acquisition categories that indicate differences with an impact on fitness – i.e. reproductive success.

Each category represents a different level of engagement, a level that itself suggests a tighter relationship between participants and the tools of participation or cooperation.

1. Informative participation is an exchange of information, which may or may not be meaningful.
2. Consultation requires that participants begin asking questions as well as providing information.
3. Functional engagement means that different participants identify and agree to share goals, thus ordering their actions in accordance with each other.
4. Interaction means the initiation of feedback, where signals and shifts in the participation is met with responsiveness and dialog with the others.
5. Self-motivated participation is demonstrated by the points at which processes are acquired and reorganized by the participants themselves.
6. Migration ultimately expands the instances of participation which have been successful, sharing them with other communities, and finding cooperative allies elsewhere.

References:

Conde, C., Lonsdale, K., Nyong, A., & Aguilar, I. (2004). Engaging stakeholders in the adaptation process. Adaptation policy frameworks for climate change: Developing strategies, policies and measures, 47–66.

Johnson, N. (2008) Sewall Wright and the development of shifting balance theory. Nature Education 1(1)

Wright, S. (1977) Evolution and the Genetics of Populations. Vol. 3: Experimental Results and Evolutionary Deductions. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

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A Visual Study Guide to Cognitive Bias

June 8, 2010 at 6:03 am · Filed under Design, cognitive justice, preferences

Good find..thanks to Zack.

Cognitive Biases – A Visual Study Guide

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Ulat Bansi: Designing Water Futures

January 8, 2009 at 9:39 am · Filed under Design, cinema, community interaction design, ecoregionalism, india, proposals, sculpture, teaching and learning, watercasting

Ulat bansi from CEMA on Vimeo.

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Exhibition: Design in the Age of Darwin

August 13, 2008 at 10:56 pm · Filed under Design, art, critical theory, interdisciplinary, metaphors, visual culture

Yesterday I made a point of visiting the exhibition “Design in the Age of Darwin” at the Block Museum of Art on Northwestern University’s campus in Evanston, IL. The title of the exhibition caught my attention when I was flipping through a Chicago guide while visiting with some family there. The terms “design” and “Darwin” are usually brought up in a controversial opposition. However, this exhibition promised to take a deeper look at the relationships present in the fundamental orderings of Darwin’s work on natural selection and decorative design.

The exhibition takes a sort of auteur-like approach, focusing on a few men prominent in the decorative arts at th turn of the century and just before the birth of so-called modernism. The title includes the notables William Morris and Frank Lloyd Wright as well as C.F.A. Voysey, Louis Sullivan, and Christopher Dresser, an English botanist turned industrial designer.

I wrote in the comment book that the exhibition was well-presented, but that it lacked an engagement with the discipline of evolution as well as any other social and cultural field beyond traditional notions of design.

The missed opportunity lies in the ability to untangle well-tread debates of form versus function from ideas about natural and sexual selection, the role of mutation as a creative force, and the cultural and social appropriation of “selection” in the burgeoning onslaught of mass production and “upward mobility”.

I would have liked to see, for instance, a more overt discussion of Frank Lloyd Wright’s spandrel and the famous (at least within evolutionary biology) paper “The Spandrels of San Marcos”. In it Gould and Lewontin take on the adaptationist perspective which basically says that form must have function and needs a explanation. The adaptationists neglected the role of happenstance (technically, genetic drift) and frequently created “just so” stories to explain the unexplained. Gould and Lewontin’s view was that evolution is a side-effect of a true adaptation, where some traits arise from correlations between a networked body (i.e. gene networks), rather than arising from natural selection. Admittedly, I haven’t read the catalog for the exhibition, but here was a golden opportunity to flesh out the role that complex dynamism plays in evolution. As it stands, the exhibition just furthers the paradigm of intention and selection in the interplay of form and function.

I would agree with the curator’s thesis that Darwin’s ideas contributed to the design sensibility of the age, but it was probably only the case insofar as both Darwin and these designers relied on the metaphor of selection.

Another missed opportunity was the role that social Darwinism played in the development of modernism. For an excellent paper on the subject, see Christina Cogdell’s “Products and Bodies: Streamline Design and Eugenics as Applied Biology.”

What was there were some fantastic examples of Arts and Crafts and Prairie-style decorative and architectural renderings from Chicagoland area collections. It seems almost like the curator was constrained in the availability of ideas and objects to articulate the thesis, and while the show is a unified presentation, there isn’t anything novel to suggest that accounts of art history haven’t yet “speciated”. For the discipline’s sake, let’s hope it doesn’t go extinct.

Gould, S. J., & Lewontin, R. C. (1979). The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 205(1161), 581-598. Retrieved August 13, 2008, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/77447

Cogdell, C. (2003). Products or Bodies? Streamline Design and Eugenics as Applied Biology. Design Issues, 19(1), 36-53. Retrieved August 13, 2008, from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/074793603762667683

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Community Interaction Design

May 23, 2008 at 1:02 pm · Filed under Design, boundary objects, cognitive justice, design ecology, ecoregionalism, india, interaction, interdisciplinary, making it public, relational aesthetics, teaching and learning, technology

This semester I have the pleasure of being able to lead and help two teams of students create engaging, socially-embedded, interactive design projects. The experience was a success both for me and the students. I learned a lot about my students and what they needed to do excellent work. I think we also found some new ways of working here at Srishti that may prove valuable in the long-term.

The teams also took part in a competition in which the winning team is invited to present their work at the Microsoft Research Design Expo, part of the Faculty Summit held in Redmond, WA in late July. We’re all looking forward to attending because we are very proud of the students’ accomplishments.

The ‘Moon Vehicle’ project consisted of a system to create interactive storytelling experiences around themes of the moon, space exploration and colonization, and India’s forthcoming launch of the Chandrayaan-I moon satellite.

Screen captures from the \'Moon Vehicle\' project design.

The Moon Vehicle team’s design developed in part from the Bangalore Space and Culture Initiative, an interdisciplinary endeavor of artists, scientists, designers, and technologists that began in late September, 2007 and coordinated by Srishti, NIAS, and ISRO.

The Play Revolution project changed many times, but it was always focused on the idea of building a socio-econo-technical system for improving the knowledge-networking opportunities of children living in slums in and around Bangalore.

The lab itself and the social interactions were influenced in part by the GROCS lab at the University of Michigan. Thanks go to Linda Kendall-Knox for her willingness to share aspects of their process.

The course started as a relatively straightforward user interface design series of topics, but this plan was quickly abandoned for a more socially-embedded model that would adapt to the different concerns and questions we were going to encounter. The primary article guiding this process was entitled “Products and Practices: Selected Concepts from Science and Technology Studies and from Social Theories of Consumption and Practice” (Ingram et al. 2007). The article stressed six stages of technological adoption: acquisition, scripting, appropriation, assembly, normalization, and practice.
We used these stages to guide our design process.

The students were given a design brief that consisted of two challenges: one consisting of Srishti’s existing commitments to cultural, educational, artistic,and design-based engagements with society, and another consisting of a more general challenge to design a user interface and/or interactive experience around the theme of learning and education. They were asked to develop a project that synthesized these challenges into one unique approach that incorporated the concerns, commitments, and constraints that were implicitly and explicitly embedded in the issues raised.

The theme of this year’s competition was “Learning and Education”, and students were challenged to design a user interface and/or interactive experience around the theme of learning and education that improves the daily life of a wide variety of users through learning and education, promotes creativity and curiosity in new topics, demonstrates novel ways of providing instruction, and rethinks education systems and tools.

For more on the project, visit their site.

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The Emerging Economy Report

April 4, 2008 at 3:39 pm · Filed under Design, cognitive justice, technology, visual culture

Check this: This report is intended to help companies design specifically for the so-called base of the pyramid in Emerging Economies such as Brazil, China, Indonesia, India, South Africa, Egypt and Kenya.

An EMERGING ECONOMY is a country that is experiencing rapid informationalization under conditions of limited or partial industrialization. In the past, some of these regions have been understood as being in the process of industrial development, and were therefore described as ‘developing countries.’ Alternatively, they have been described as ‘emerging markets’ for goods and services created in the industrialized nations of the world. Our conception of Emerging Economies, however, recognizes that these parts of the world are not merely slow to industrialize, nor merely markets, but strategic centers for the emerging networked knowledge economy.

One of the biggest challenges found in India is convincing others about the value of design and design research. On the other hand, I have never been in a better place for learning and conducting research that takes into account the views, perspectives, and voices of others. Call it a post-colonial mandate or whatever, but in terms of making design adaptable and responsive to user needs, the context couldn’t be better for innovation and the creation of appropriate technologies and product service systems.

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Food for Wisdom

February 22, 2008 at 7:10 am · Filed under Design, art, biotechnology, boundary objects, interdisciplinary, sculpture

Design and the Elastic Mind is a new show that has opened up at the MOMA that I would very much like to see. It would be great to hear any responses from readers that had the chance to attend.

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Toys as Knowledge-Networks

February 20, 2008 at 9:14 pm · Filed under Design, interaction, teaching and learning, technology, visualization

I’m leading a lab this semester where two groups are developing new and interesting models for user interfaces and interactive experiences. One of the groups is looking at toys as a model for engaging intimately with science. The other day, we started thinking about toys as knowledge-networks and what that might mean for the design of interactive, tactile systems.

They’ve been using SCRATCH as a platform for development, but they’ve also been moving beyond. The team identified a few core values that they hoped to embody in the toys:

1. Astonishment
2. Play/ Tactile/ Haptic
3. Access
4. Information – Knowledge
5. Relatedness of things
6. Engagement – Belonging

Sounds like they’re off to a great start!

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The Emerging Economy Report

January 24, 2008 at 11:23 pm · Filed under Design, complex systems, design ecology, ecoregionalism, interdisciplinary, proposals, technology, visual culture

The Emerging Economy Report is coming! This is a project I’ve been working on over the last few months. It’s been in development for almost a year and a half and represents research in seven countries, all of which have been identified as emerging economies. An emerging economy is a country that is experiencing sustained economic growth as a result of rapid informationalization and limited or partial industrialization. Economic growth in the information economy will continue to be driven by these emerging economies who will benefit from rapid informationalization, innovation, and ephemerilization of the economy, leapfrogging many of the requirements and costs of the Industrial Revolution.

We’ve been working to develop insights into global trends and user perspectives across seven nations including: India, China, Indonesia, Kenya, Brazil, Egypt, and South Africa. By examining specific case studies, visual research, economic trends, and user perspectives on (among other things) technology, access to information, heathcare, and economic resources, we have been able to create strategic knowledge for those wishing to do business in these emerging economies.

The 7 emerging economy countries studied in this report account for 46% of the world population. The report offers a variety of innovative recommendations that will help businesses engage with these economies.

Visit emergingeconomyreport.com to find out more.

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