Category Design Research

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Wicked Problems and Design Science

Oct 8, ’10 6:26 PM

Just finished reading Hevner, et al. “Design Science in IS Research.” 76. MIS Quarterly Vol. 28 No. 1.

Some important IS concepts are:

  • Realm of IS research (people, organizations, and technology)
  • Design artifact (constructs, models, methods, instantiations)
  • Behavioral science (concerns of “what is true?”, passive relationship with technology) + Design science perspectives (concerns of “what is effective?”, active relationship with technology)
  • Utility

Great summary of design-science research:

The fundamental questions for design-science research are, “What utility does the new artifact provide?” and “What demonstrates that utility?” Evidence must be presented to address these two questions. That is the essence of design science. Contribution arises from utility. If existing artifacts are adequate, then design-science research that creates a new artifact is unnecessary (it is irrelevant). If the new artifact does not map adequately to the real world (rigor), it cannot provide utility. If the artifact does not solve the problem (search, implementability), it has no utility. If utility is not demonstrated (evaluation), then there is no basis upon which to accept the claims that it provides any contribution (contribution). Furthermore, if the problem, the artifact, and its utility are not presented in a manner such that the implications for research and practice are clear, then publication in the IS literature is not appropriate (communication). (Hevner, et al. p. 91)

Cool. But here’s where it gets interesting for me. When Hevner, March, and Park introduce wicked problems in the discussion. They write, “Design-science research in IS addresses what are considered to be wicked problems” (p. 81). And later,

Given the wicked nature of many information system design problems, however, it may not be possible to determine, let alone explicitly describe, the relevant means, ends, or laws. Even when it is possible to do so, the sheer size and complexity of the solution space will often render the problem computationally infeasible … In such situations, the search is for satisfactory solutions, i.e., satisficing (Simon 1996), without explicitly specifying all possible solutions. The design task involves the creation, utilization, and assessment of heuristic search strategies. That is, constructing an artifact that “works” well for the specified class of problems. (Hevner, et al., p. 89)

Ahh, I see how Simon’s work is incorporated into the design discourse and the stressing of “heuristics” in HCI and information systems.
Both view design as “a search process to discover an effective solution to a problem.” (Hevner, et al., p. 88).

But this approach does not address the “solving” of wicked problems. If design just comes up with solutions that work (again, emphasis on the principle of utility), what’s being done about the essence of the wicked problem?

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My Herbal Medicine OOBE

Aug 27, ’10 2:03 PM

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):

Herbal Medicine

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.
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Problem of Theory & Practice in Gramsci & Dewey

Mar 21, ’08 12:04 PM

I’ve been reading a bit more Antonio Gramsci (Marxist Theorist) and John Dewey’s Art as Experience. Although the two have two very different notions of reality, they seem to have the same macro-problem.

PROBLEM: Separation of Thought and Action.

FOR GRAMSCI:
Thought is the theory of contradictions in a society and action is the people’s actual consciousness. Because of a separation between the two, he was interested in how to align the people’s consciousness with the theoretical. For him, there is a crucial issue of freedom at stake. When thought and action are one, this is freedom (he calls this the philosophy of praxis, a.k.a. Marxism).

Ok, this is interesting but what does it mean? Well, Gramsci lived in a time when the Italian populace was more in tune with foreign culture than a national Italian culture. That’s because, according to Gramsci, the intellectuals/elite in Italy weren’t concerned with the lower classes; they were still tied to the caste tradition. He writes,

All this means that the entire “educated class,” with its intellectual activity, is detached from the people-nation, not because the latter has not shown and does not show itself to be interested in this activity at all levels … but because in relation to the people-nation the indigenous intellectual element is more foreign than the foreigners.
(An Antonio Gramsci Reader, p. 369)

He asks, “What is the meaning of the fact that the Italian people prefer to read foreign writers?” For him, with the exception of opera, there was no organic relationship between high culture and low culture. Then what is needed to bridge the gap between thought and action? Well, for Gramsci, he says that organic intellectuals are needed (to help create a counter-hegemony). Organic intellectuals are intellectuals from among the people. This makes sense. These individuals from the people feel tied to them, know their needs, aspirations, and feelings (Isn’t this what we do as interaction designers?).

This particular theme of Gramsci deals with his concern for the lack of a vernacular Italian novel that consists of both the national and popular. Simply put, he was envious of the French who had an Alexandre Dumas. He wanted an Italian Alexandre Dumas.

Gramsci and Design:
Is it possible to create products (whether they be novels, artifacts, services, organizations) that reflect the people’s popular psyche? By “people,” I don’t just mean the majority; people can come to mean subaltern people, especially in the context of a great chunk of Gramsci’s works. For example, can we have a Korean American Alexandre Dumas? (This is the theme of my thesis) Or design for the vision-impaired?

FOR DEWEY:
Unlike Gramsci’s entitative/materialist reality, Dewey has an essentialist reality. He is concerned with man, the “live creature,” and his environment (note: different from “surrounding”). In Art as Experience, he, too, is concerned with the separation of thought and action.

Dewey begins his book by stating that a philosophy/theory of art is an effort to understand the actual experiences. He writes,

For theory is concerned with understanding, insight, not without exclamations of admiration, and stimulation of that emotional outburst often called appreciation. It is quite possible to enjoy flowers in their colored form and delicate fragrance without knowing anything about plants theoretically. But if one sets out to understand the flowering of plants, he is committed to finding out something about the interactions of soil, air, water and sunlight that condition the growth of plants. (p. 2)

Hence, the situation or environment is key to understanding. It is in the action, the actual doing that one experiences life at the fullest and it’s these fulfilling experiences that man is incessantly after.

When he talks about this experience, it consists of both thought (esthetic undergoing, perception) and action (artistic doing, making) – his artistic-esthetic experience. He says that there cannot be a distinction between esthetic and artistic; they must be united for an experience to be an experience. An artist must have both doing and undergoing while creating a product, and a beholder/audience must also do both in order to create his/her own experience.

So how does he relate to Gramsci? Well, he, too, is uncomfortable with how we’ve come to distinguish between high art (placing them in museums) and low art. This wasn’t so in past cultures. His goal is to recover the continuity of esthetic experience with normal processes of living. He says, we need to go back to “experience of the common or mill run of things” (p. 9).

Activities, such as dancing, making music, painting, making drama, were just parts of group life – the significant life of an organized community. In fact, the Greeks formed the idea that art is an act of reproduction/imitation. Art used to have such a close connection with daily life. Now, we must go out of our way to go to a museum, a theatre, etc. Art has lost its indigenous status and great paintings, for example, are secluded in the homes of the wealthy and powerful. Gramsci would not be happy.

Dewey and Design:
Dewey’s pragmatism and works have enormous implications for design. He’s all about interaction. In fact, Moholy-Nagy, when he came to Chicago to start the New Bauhaus (didn’t last long although from what I know, it’s had influence in the creation of IIT’s design school), met Dewey through a mutual friend in NY. Dewey’s treatise on art became a textbook for the New Bauhaus. His chapter, “Having an Experience,” as Richard Buchanan says, is THE text, the foundational piece, for CMU’s interaction design program.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
What does all this mean for the nature of products or even the purpose of the things we create? For example, I think it’s great that the i-pod is in the MOMA as an iconic artifact of everyday life along with Eames’ chair. Taking parts from Gramsci and Dewey, can we start talking more about the products we can make and how they support/shape sub-cultures, groups of cultures, and Culture?

(btw, I’m in no-wise a marxist. I’m taking the parts that are interesting to me in these theories and looking for practical applications for Design)

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