Category Frameworks

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Exploring models we use to understand our world(s).

Paradigms as Products

Oct 3, ’10 12:06 AM

I’ve been in a “materialist worldview” land for a few weeks now. Much of the readings are from authors/researchers who are concerned with how scientific activities can be used to create knowledge that provides and understanding of the natural world. In some cases, there is a deviation from the hard sciences with an effort to apply the rigor and relevance found in the science disciplines to the social sciences.

I am gaining familiarity with such terms as “socio-technical” as well as “design science.” I can see why so many schools of thinking are concerned with this idea of design science. In the midst of this, I am constantly asking myself, well, what about design? (I suppose I’m subconsciously also asking about management now that I’m in a management school).

On a side note, it is fascinating to be in intensive, intimate seminars with various faculty members. It doesn’t take long to find out their underlying philosophical assumptions and their intellectual heroes. For example, here are some of the names that keep coming up: Habermas, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Simon, Dewey, and Popper just to name a few. That probably provides someone a glimpse of the tone of my doctoral program.

Two of the people I’ve been reading lately (and enjoying) are A. F. Chalmers (What is This Thing Called Science?) and Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).
Chalmers’ easy-to-read style and analysis of various thinkers in science is a pleasure to read (especially his illustrations of historical episodes) and Kuhn’s thoughts on paradigms and revolutions makes me think of Gramsci’s thoughts on hegemony + society as well as the book on worldviews I recently read by James Sire (Naming the Elephant).

Some thoughts and possible issues:

  1. How does paradigm differ from worldview?
  2. What is exactly is Kuhn’s process/mechanism for a revolution? He doesn’t really go into detail as to how such change occurs. He does mention that this process is not based on logical and rational arguments but that we must defer to psychological and sociological investigations to better understand how hegemony of a paradigm takes place.
  3. Chalmers tries to reconcile the criticism that Kuhn is a relativist by pointing out that Kuhn has a contradiction (subjective if one follows the process of paradigm change in an individual but possibly objective when looking at a group of practitioners as a whole as well as the various products, such as technological tools, methodologies, and processes the scientific community creates as they adopt a new paradigm) and pointing out the more objective argument he has of the two interpretations. Interpreting Kuhn ontologically, one can argue that Kuhn believes that the history of science (paradigm to paradigm) is a history of progress

Summarizing the subjective interpretation of Kuhn’s paradigm shifting process, Chalmers writes,

Thus one scientist might be attracted to the Copernican theory because of the simplicity of certain mathematical features of it. Another might be attracted to it because in it there is the possibility of calendar reform. A third might have been deterred from adopting the Copernican theory because of an involvement with terrestrial mechanics and an awareness of the problems that the Copernican theory posed for it. A fourth might reject Copernicanism for religous reasons. Chalmers, pp. 115-116

This is fascinating because people are always different and looking for personal meaning. And the various reasons Chalmers gives as an example here may be present in a design project. This is probably why I enjoy asking my fellow group members when I join for a project why they’re in the group and what they hope to get out of the project. Usually it ranges from “I have to take this class to graduate” to something very personal. These personal narratives capture the subjective aspect of the activity of design.

If design had an objective chapter, it has to be the nature of the project or the product that is created. In the case of Chalmers’ example, is the product the paradigm (Copernican framework) that was created? It was a group of men (and I mean men) who organically coordinated in the public arena to socially form and accept a paradigm and “allowed” it to become a normal science. It was a “massive change” type of project.

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Behavioral Research and Design

Aug 31, ’10 9:35 PM

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.
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Ten Organizations

Aug 24, ’10 4:52 PM

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.

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