A3ZacTaschdjian

A3ZacTaschdjian

To Do

• please work as a group (minimum: 2 members; max: 6 members) and submit one answer as a group (clearly identifying the members of your group)
• identify one focused topic within the chapter which is of greatest interest to your group!
• each group member: should identify one additional source relevant to the topic chosen!
• each group: provide a two page max summary statement in our course environment (mention the additional resources identified)
• prepare a short presentation to the class for the class meeting on Sept 17! the groups can choose how to present their results (oral only; use slides; one member, several members, or all members); time allocation (will be dependent of the numbers of groups: but somewhere between 4 and 10 minutes)

Form for your response

1. Herbert Simon

Amanda Porter, Zac Taschdjian

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

Schneiderman's discussion of human relationships and needs in the context of technical innovation introduced a few interesting concepts. Of personal interest for us are his underlying assumptions about the mechanics of innovation. While we agree with his goals (useful, usable and functional technical innovation), we find his methods less than convincing. In the exploration of his assumptions and our associated critiques, we find the concept of social capital can be used to develop a better framework for understanding participatory design.

On page 76 he asserts that "If technology developers start from an understanding of human needs, they are more likely to accelerate evolutionary development of useful technology". The tacit assumption of this sentence is that technology developers differ from technology users. This seems to rule out any possibility of participatory design practices and limits users to the role of subject matter experts. Based on Schneiderman's contention that a "… vital stage of activity in a project? involves relationships with others." (pg. 84), one would think that involving the users of technology in its development would fall under his rubric of human relationships. The principal criticism of Schneiderman in this regard is that he appears to miss the point that human relationships, especially in design activities are an important aspect of innovation itself; he argues that technology enhances human relationships, not that human relationships enhance technology.

Part of this derives from Schneiderman's usage of Leonardo Da Vinci as a muse. He subscribes to an idea of auteurship in which a lone genius innovates by making brilliant discoveries. This seems unrealistic in an age where expert knowledge of even a single discipline is virtually impossible to achieve because of the level of technical complexity. A better framework might be the intelligence of groups and the concept that groups of people are often more intelligent than the smartest individuals within them. (Suroweicki, 2005). The reason to choose this as a framework over auteurship rests on the adage that "two heads are better than one". Different people bring diverse backgrounds and knowledge sets to problem solving or decision making. Co-collaborators working on technological innovations are creating knowledge artifacts such as theories, models, proofs, etc. (Stahl, 2006). This is a necessarily public process, involving human relationships and contributing to a body of work within their discipline. Schneiderman doesn't go far enough in examining the process of innovation from the perspective of groups. Social capital is one concept that Schneiderman alludes to and that we thought might address this gap.

Social capital is a concept that can be used to clarify the benefits of innovation from a group perspective. Schneiderman describes using new computing to restore lost social capital resulting from increased time pressures, rising expectations, and the overall fragmented nature of our lives (p. 89). However, the principle of social capital can also be applied to better understanding the design process. It can provide a mechanism for potentially understanding not only the benefits of participatory design, but also why people would even want to work together in the first place. Given this, we see the concept of social capital as an important topic in innovation that should be further explored. The concept of social capital is important because it puts focus on the positive benefits of sociability (Portes, 1998). Social capital has many definitions in the literature, but the term was first used by Bourdieu (1985) who defined the concept as "the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance or recognition" (p. 248). What is important from this definition is that it focuses on the benefits that individuals can accrue by virtue of participation in groups. Thus, the potential benefits of participatory design can be seen as coming from the relationship that is created. In particular, recent research has used the term to demonstrate how social actors can secure benefits by virtue of membership in social networks. In design, this points not only to the importance of creating relationships with users, but also the importance of users and designers co-existing within a common social network. This expands the idea of social capital from dyadic ties to larger communities and puts emphasis on a common social structure. Yet, it is important to be aware that transactions involving social capital, unlike economic capital, tend to be unspecific with uncertain time horizons and given this ambiguity there is always the possibility of the violation of reciprocity expectations. However, the stronger the network norms are, the less likely that violations will take place (Portes, 1998). Overall, the concept of social capital is an important consideration for designers of technology as various models of "putting the human first" are explored. Social capital suggests that relationships between designers and users be reconceptualized from dyadic exchange to embedded networks of mutual recognition.

3. articulate what you did not understand in the article but it sounded interesting and you would like to know more about it

Bourdieu, P. (1985). The forms of capital. In Eds. JG Richardson, Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education, (pp. 241-258), New York: Greenwood.

Amanada -

Portes, A. (1998). Social capital: Its origins and applications in modern sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 1-24.

Zac -

Stahl, G. (2006). Group Cognition: Computer Support for Building Collaborative Knowledge. MIT Press. Cambridge, MA.

Suroweicki, J. (2005). The Wisdom of Crowds. Anchor House Books. New York.