kipthinks

For now, my formal department of study at the Weatherhead is “Information Systems.” It is in the context of this discipline that I’m taking a “Research and Methods” class. I am curious as to how this fits into management and more curious as to how this fits in with design.

The first reading for the “Research and Methods” class is Fred Kerlinger’s Behavioral Research: A Conceptual Approach, a pretty straightforward book on the fundamentals of behavioral sciences with some helpful comments on the natural sciences as well. What’s eerie to me is that the book starts off with the question, “How do we ‘know’ the world?” and two paragraphs later the author states, “Unfortunately, authority and ordinary observation are not always reliable guides.” It’s eerie because Descartes starts off his argument the same way: the issue of epistemology followed by skeptism. Perhaps this parallel is not surprising since Descartes’ method of argumentation is very scientific.

For the purposes of his book, Kerlinger specifically focuses on the behavioral sciences of psychology, sociology, and education. I cannot help but think that the dept of Information Systems thinks of itself as a type of behavioral science (hence, this among other assignments as my first set of readings). This is not surprising since thinking about management (and even design) as a “social science” is one powerful school of thought.

However, there are some very interesting parts of today’s reading that made me turn my head in wonder as I tried to grasp how this relates to the Weatherhead’s theme of “Managing as Designing” as well as to the discipline of design as a whole. This cautious reflection is probably best summarized in one of the first phrases I underlined in the first chapter of today’s reading:

“To measure aspects of human behavior …”

I am curious to see how this will unravel and help shape my studies. Afterall, if there is a dialectic aspect to this, I can agree that human behavior is something that resonates with me – this is what interaction design is all about.

Some other interesting thoughts:

• “Relation” is probably the most fundamental word in science. The only way to explain anything is to determine how that thing relates to other things (to understand a phenomenon, one has to find out how it relates to other phenomena).
• “Variables” are concepts/constructs.
• Virtually no scientific knowledge would be possible if phenomena did not vary. The psychologist could not study intelligence unless people varied in intelligence. I wonder if pluralism (in design) works the same way.
• Kerlinger argues that the purpose of science is theory (A theory is a systematic account of the relations among a set of variables) and explanation. I think by theory, he’s talking about a framework. What’s interesting is that he disagrees with those who state that the purpose of science is to better humanity – this is not the purpose but a by product. I wonder if the same could be said of design although I would argue that explanation is not an essential purpose of design since design’s strength does not come from analyzing the natural world and laws.

So, my first assignment back at school was to take some pictures of a product/service/product+service as an exercise on observation. Pretty straightforward stuff – in fact, it’s stuff that probably comes as second nature now since I do this all the time in my day-to-day living. Anyways, I decided to do a little more than take some pictures. I only had one day, but I decided to make a simple map of an experience.

It just so happens that my mom ordered some Korean herbal medicine for me to give me strength as I start off my PhD. Something about Korean moms and their faith in oriental, herbal medicine – for those unfamiliar, this herbal medicine is basically able to treat all illnesses not treatable by Western medicine. I received the medicine two days ago and it seems like an interesting subject matter. There’s a product (in the narrow sense of the word) and a service – granted, the service has not be designed intentionally, but nonetheless, there is a service. Here’s my OOBE (out of box experience):

My Herbal Medicine OOBE

I ended up giving the experience a form with 4 major buckets: personalization, orientation, instruction, and conclusion. Very quickly, I realized that there was an experience before the arrival of the medicine. There were human interactions motivated by concern, care, and love. This is the moment when the herbalist diagnosed me over the phone. It was very personalized and depending on our conversation, the product would be made to fit my needs. Once the package arrived, there was a period of orientation, trying to figure out what this product is all about and trying to see if it’s legitimate. Once I got to the content, there were instructions on how and when to take the medicine, what foods to avoid, and a contact number in case there are any questions. There was also a moment of confusion because I had no idea what one of the contents was. Under the bucket of conclusion, there was resolution as the herbalist explained to me in detail what the unknown content was. The experience also ended on a high note as I connected with my mom in gratitude (human interaction) and felt self-actualized as I planted the used materials for renewal.

Three thoughts:

1. Although parts of the experience were not designed deliberately (at least I felt this way), the herbalist deliberately designed for trust. She added the deer antlers she used to make my medicine so that I could visually verify the contents that were used. This gesture overshadowed some of the other sub-par aspects of the service, such as the shady “unknown” telephone number, the poor coordination with FedEx on the herbalist’s part, the herbalist’s mother scolding me at one point because she thought it was my fault that the delivery was delayed (long story). One trustworthy gesture overpowers a series of failures (a.k.a. “service recovery”). How many other services could benefit from this? I’ve heard several Platinum rewards members from the hospitality industry tell me that all it would take is an “I’m sorry” from the hotel staff to make things right as opposed to getting more rewards points that they don’t really need. What is that one gesture in each service industry that can make or break the experience?
2. The climax of the experience was a simple phone call with my mom to thank her for giving me this herbal medicine as a gift. I just heard of yet another interaction design program being offered in the States – technology is, no doubt, a big player in the discipline of interaction design. So it’s easy to forget about the intimate, human interactions that have been a part of our world since the beginning of time. Sometimes I feel we try to design complicated solutions involving technology when a design is possible with something as simple as a phone call.
3. For the line describing the emotional engagement, I initially designed the baseline with the emotional intensities rising up from the baseline but then it felt very “Western” in thinking about design as emotional spikes. In the spirit of the Asian content and subject matter, I felt that emotional representation should actually go downwards from the baseline … kind of using the metaphor of roots and thinking about emotions as depth as opposed to peaks. Hmm. What a weird thought.

Had my first day of class today. What an unusual experience to be sitting in class again after a long hiatus. The title of the class is “Design in Management” and the structure and content (from a glance at the syllabus) is similar to the DMOC class at CMU. Parts of the class include “The Art of Management” and, of course, “The Nature of Design.”

The question I want to address in today’s post is personal and it’s an exercise to see how relevant the idea of organizations is. How much do organizations impact my life? It stems from something that was addressed in passing during today’s class (that all of those in the room could probably jot down and discuss at least 10 orgs in our lives) along with this article I came across the other day. Drucker called management “the most important innovation of the 20th century,” and I am certainly – to an extent – a product of the 20th century. So the question – what are 10 organizations that are relevant to me?

1. Institution of family (wife, mama, papa, brother, in-laws)
2. Local church (also an institution and probably better described as an organism rather than an organization), other churches from my past, other Christians
3. My friends
4. My physical environment (the greater Cleveland area, Ohio)
5. My country & trans-national country (Korean America/Korean diaspora, America, political association)
6. My education (various universities)
7. My work (Marriott International, past jobs and professional networks)
8. My life brands (Apple, Whole Foods, JCrew, PNCBank, Coca-Cola Company, Moleskin, etc)
9. My digital environment (Facebook, WordPress, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc)
10. My interests & hobbies (music, design, food, etc)

What’s striking is that one could easily write a college essay saying that the accumulation of these 10 organizations makes up what is called my identity. However, I’d like to think that my identity transcends the wrapping of these organizations. I’ve also noticed that the resulting list is different from what I intended to do – I thought the exercise would yield the top 10 brands in my life but it ended up as a list of major groupings rather than individual brands. I suppose this framework reflects the way I want to view organizations since individual brands are constantly changing in my life. This makes this list more stable (i.e. individual friends may change but friends as a group will always be a vital organization). I also wonder why I separated the digital from the “real” physical environment. I wouldn’t be surprised if these two categories merged in the years ahead.