A3GrahamRobertsMichaelMinerva

A3GrahamRobertsMichaelMinerva

To Do

1. try to explore the web to get an idea
   • who Herbert Simon was
   • what Simon's book is all about (one summary about this book can be found: http://www.cyberiapc.com/writings/almossawi_2005_2.pdf)
2. which was the most interesting idea/concept you learned from the article?
3. articulate what you did not understand in the article but it sounded interesting and you would like to know more about it
4. discuss what the following statement means to your group:
   • Simon discussed social plans and policies as designs. He considered the Marshall Plan and the U.S. Constitution as specifications for organizational designs. These designs are not mere blueprints, as are some of the key examples elsewhere in the book (clocks and houses), but starting points for living systems that grow and evolve over time- systems whose structure and consequences cannot be anticipated at the time of their design.
5. discuss what the following statement means to your group in relationship to the problems which we explored in the last few class meetings (Number Scrabble versus Tic-Tac-Toe; Mutilated 8x8 Matrix; Mutilated Chessboard):
   • Intelligibility of Design Representations - Meaningful user participation in design requires that the discourse constituting the design work be accessible to all stakeholders.

Group Members

Graham Roberts and Mike Minerva

1. Who was Herbert Simon

Herbert Simon was a man of many trades, contributing his knowledge and ideas to many disciplines. The areas he is most commonly recognized in are Computer Science, Economics, Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology.

2. Most interesting idea/concept you learned from the article?

The most interesting idea I found in this article was that of Participatory Learning. I was really fascinated by the study that the author did with the public school teachers. I think one of the reasons that the author so the teachers transition from one role to the next was that the study had a extended duration, enabling the long term effects of participatory learning to be seen. It was interesting how over a few years the teachers transfered from being passive learners to active participants propagating the work being done.

3. What did you not understand.

4. First Discussion

I think that this is a very important point to make about policy. One cannot expect that from the first draft it will be perfect and have no repercussions. With the Marshall Plan, if they had tried to conceive every possibly situation that needed to be discussed in the plan and account for all of the ways that it could be interpreted, they would still be working on it today, and no doubt would never find a solution that would satisfy everyone.

We can have similar goals for the design of our software applications. As is often the case there is some arbitrary complexity that comes from conformity (Fred Brooks, No Silver Bullet, 1986.) We must strive to make our designs open to change and accept the fact that we cannot prevent change from occurring.

5. Second Discussion

Without everyone having knowledge of the games, and understanding the game there can be no meaningful discussion of the game. Before we even began trying the problems that were presented, we were given instructions for how to use the game. Without this we all might have used the puzzles in different ways, solving different problems than the one that was presented. Also, once we were given the opportunity to experiment with the puzzles we could begin to discuss the solutions that we came up with or the ideas that we had about how the puzzles might be solved. This supports the idea that all of the stakeholders must have a full understanding of the design being presented.