A3MichaelMinervaGrahamRobers

A3MichaelMinervaGrahamRobers

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 transferred from being passive learners to active participants propagating the work being done.

Another interesting topic discussed in this piece was the issue of vocabulary being a barrier to successful collaboration between designer and end user. This is an idea George Orwell presented in his book 1984, in the context of this book, the oppressive government attempted to remove words from the language that had to do with freedom and revolution, the idea being, that if one has no word for a concept they have no way of thinking about it. In much the same way, when the user is not given the correct vocabulary to understand the ideas the designer is trying to convey they have no way of conceptualizing these ideas. It is a great point that through working closely together the user and designer will both learn the needed vocabulary that will allow both to understand the full scope of the process and be full participants in this sort of collaboration.

3. What did you not understand.

Simon seems to imply that activities such as city planning are not at all participatory. While it may be the case that "user input" is not often the focus in many such projects, many aspects of city planning are open to public input. Unfortunately, often times people are unwilling or unmotivated to attend city council meetings or lobby their local representatives, either out of laziness or apathy.

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.

This emphasizes the great benefits that prototyping or an iterative approach has over a top approach like the waterfall model. Organizational systems like the constitution, were created to inspire debate not to end it. It would have been impossible for the continental congress to envision all of the contentious issues that America would face in the decades and centuries to come, but by beginning the process of governance, these issues were flushed out naturally. In much the same way when the software designer begins the prototyping process by trying (and often getting undesirable results) they are more clearly able to see what issues they will need to address and will often gain insight into how best to do so.

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.

This comes back to the issue of vocabulary. When we were presented with the game of fifteen, players were distracted by trying to do math in their head and did not focus on applying proper tic-tac-toe strategy. When players are armed with the information that this game is in fact the same as tic-tac-toe, they may properly focus their efforts and the task becomes trivial. In much the same way, when a user lacks the vocabulary to discuss design issues with the designer, they may get lost in the minutia of trying to figure out what language the designer is speaking in and lose their opportunity to participate in the design process.