A3NicholasEmbreeJacobWisneskyScottKeller

A3NicholasEmbreeJacobWisneskyScottKeller

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

Nicholas Embree, Jacob Wisnesky, Scott Keller

1. Who was Herbert Simon

Herbert Simon was a psychologist by virtue of his degree, but studied, worked, and contributed in a number of fields, such as computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. He had particular interest in studying decision-making and design, and produced many interesting and unique interdisciplinary views and ideas.

Simon's book is related to his interest in design and decision making. It tries to lay a new framework for thinking about design. At the time it was written, design had been de-emphasized in favor of the natural sciences. Simon tries to re-emphasize the role of design in schools, and move away from the view of design as a trivial activity that had become more popular at the time. Simon also made the parallel that Design was not only a good idea, but as human beings, we must be creative in our design and will always try and find a better way to do things.

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

It's interesting that Simon (and Carroll in his article) examine design issues from a social viewpoint as opposed to a more traditional technological viewpoint. The idea that design is "central to what humans are" isn't something that seems intuitive at first, but becomes more apparent throughout the article as the focus shifts from thinking of design as a clear-cut technique for producing a well-defined end product to the idea of design as an ongoing and continual process where the goal is to enable growth and improvement. Where, as humans, design is not only a continual process, but a necessity among our daily lives. To not only want to make things easier, but because we need to make them easier through design.

3. What did you not understand.

Without having read the book, it's hard to tell what Simon himself was saying, but in the article, it's stated that Simon was concerned with schools de-emphasizing design. That said, it seems that Simon's work that's discussed in the article leans more to the theoretical side than the applied side. I'm not entirely sure if Simon's book was designed by the same design processes that he advocated in the book. It's easy to say, "here's a solid theoretical framework for design." It's a lot harder to actually start implementing these ideas, in the sense to how they relate to the real world. The article gives very little real world examples and only deals in theocratic analysis.

Simon also seemed to view social activities as design activities. This is certainly evident in things such as the US Constitution, but I'm not sure as to just how far this view of social activities as design activities goes. The size, scope, and complexity of the of the US Constitution is significant. However, the size, scope, and complexity of my daily plans are fairly minimal. Should my daily plans be thought of as a design activity? What benefit is derived from thinking of it in this way? It seems to fit the criteria of a "living system that grows and evolves over time." But what does Simon mean? that if we did not have an impulse as humans to make our lives easier, that the US Constitution would have been a failure? Of course not, society will invoke design where ever the situation will arise.

If you try hard enough, you could probably argue nearly any mundane activity as design - where exactly does one draw the line between a legitimate analogy that produces valuable insight and making over-zealous connections?

4. First Discussion

The US Constitution is a great example of a living, evolving system. In one sense, there was a clearly defined goal for which a Constitution could be formed. However, the document was also designed with a sort of evolution mechanism in it, in that the document would never truly be finished. In that sense, one of the design goals was really that the document would never be complete, but always evolving in a design process that would enable and encourage growth and improvement.

In the software development realm, designs of systems must take into account expansion and adaptation. Applications are released in versions and are consistently updated and re-released with added functionality, fixes, and features as needed by the end user. Further narrowing the scope to actual production process, we can see why this statement makes sense by thinking about different models. The old paradigm of "waterfall" development did not favor an open ended process of design for the future. Each phase of the project was worked on until the designers were "sure" they got it right. In more recent iterative methods such as XP, the processes of design and evaluation are firmly entrenched in the method allowing for rework and adaptation of code all of the way until release. Even after the release, you could argue that the design process is still ongoing. With updates and patches being released after "it's release date" it is really being redesigned to this very day. With the world shifting into a communication society, it is so easy to collaborate and make it possible to distribute updates for products that will make the design process never ending.

5. Second Discussion

In specialized fields, terminology and conceptual ideas can often get in the way of effective communication. This is especially true in interdisciplinary communication, where multiple disciplines can have trouble communicating effectively due to terminology and conceptual barriers. It's important to come up with ways to overcome these barriers, without losing the essence of what you're trying to communicate in the process. Number Scrabble vs. Tic-Tac-Toe and the Mutilated 8x8 matrix vs. the Mutilated Chessboard are two examples of how problems can be rewritten in ways that make them more accessible to stakeholders while keeping the essence of the problem intact. The number scrabble game may have been a little difficult to grasp at first, as evidenced by the fact that several students in class lost to the Professor rather quickly. Indeed, one student didn't realize he could pick numbers to block the Professor from winning, a good indication that an inaccessible concept of the game made it near-impossible to participate. However, when the game was re-conceptualized into its Tic-Tac-Toe form, a game with which everyone is familiar, the accessibility and meaningful participation in the game was increased significantly. Reformulating the game into a more familiar form made a big difference in participation and understandability, even though the underlying idea remained the same.

The same idea holds for the mutilated matrix vs. the mutilated chessboard. The matrix problem was difficult to conceptualize and solve at first, but altering the presentation of the problem helped significantly to make the solution apparent, even though the underlying problem was unchanged. It made the problem seem easier to approach, and therefore easier to solve, even though it still had the same amount of difficulty.

In a way, this statement does not always have to hold true. For example, in the paper, an interaction was discussed of a "tone-deaf engineer and a mathematically ignorant composer". These two people could have a worthwhile conversation about design. Even though their terminologies and backgrounds were different, there are common elements of design which are universal. This, however, depends on the definition of accessibility. In this sense Simon is right to say that coming from different viewpoints. As humans, not only can we still have a worthwhile conversation about design no matter our background, since design is a natural necessity in the way we live our lives. This conversation would probably benefit from the alternate viewpoints and create a more powerful conversation as a whole.