I completed my first round of research in Paarl-East today. I interviewed 10 members of the e-Centre over three days. I also interviewed the Paar-East e-Centre manager.

The structure of the day at Paarl-East was made up of :

9am Open
9am – 2pm: Adults only
2pm – 5pm: School children only

On the first day of my research I observed what was going on at the e-Centre, I tried to understand what the everyday practices of members of the e-Centre were like. Ultimately my goal here was to understand the worldhood that was apparent and to observe the nature of the current context, in order to re-imagine an emerging future.

On the second day, I started doing some interviews with members of the e-centre. I spoke to members aged between 18 – 30, I didn’t interview any children, mainly because it was difficult to get signed consent forms from their parents. I interviewed 5 participants; 4 members and 1 e-Centre manager. The participants I interviewed are shown below.

I interviewed 3 males and 2 females. From these members, 1 was unemployed, 1 was studying, 2 were consulting and 1 was a working the e-centre manager.

The overall patterns observed were;

1. All members saw the need to gain good digital skills.
2. e-Centre members were very grateful for the centre and said they wanted to help their community learn new skills here.
3. All members had email accounts and reported that it was the first thing they checked when they arrived at the e-Centre.
4. Members were not sure where to learn new digital skills, 3 out 5 members did not know about the basic computer course available to them.
5. 3 members reported that they didn’t have enough time to attend classes, because they were working during training times.
6. The student had reported that she uses the e-Centre get her university assignments done and print out her documentation.
7. Most participants used the equipment available easily and didn’t have any issues with asking for help when needed, all participants had high to medium digital skills.
8. 2 members reported that they needed assistance with their CVs. They said they would like tips on how to get a good job and create a good CV that represented themselves properly.
9. All participants stayed within walking distance of the e-centre.
10. All participants were regulars at the e-Centre, they came to the e-centre 3 times a week or more.

On the third day, I interviewed another 5 members at the e-Centre. I interviewed 4 males and one female. 1 member was in Matric, 2 members were unemployed and looking for jobs, and 2 members were employed and wanting to start their own businesses.

There were similar patterns that were revealed in this group of members. Here is a very high-level look at what patterns were observed:

1. 3 of the members had very high digital skills.
2. e-Centre members were very grateful for the centre and said they wanted to help their community learn new skills here.
3. 1 member did not have an email account and reported that he was looking for information about how to get an email account.
4. Members were not sure where to learn new digital skills, all members did not know about the basic computer course available to them.
5. 4 members reported that they didn’t have enough time to attend classes, because they were working during training times.
6. The matric student had reported that he uses the e-Centre to research information about his exams and assignments.
7. Most participants used the equipment available easily and didn’t have any issues with asking for help when needed. 1 member reported that they found it difficult to use the mouse and had difficulty typing.
8. 3 members reported that they needed assistance with their CVs. They said they would like tips on how to get a good job and create a good CV that represented themselves properly.
9. All participants stayed within walking distance of the e-centre.
10. All participants were regulars at the e-Centre, they came to the e-centre 3 times a week or more.

There are three ways in which my situation of concern is manifesting. The diagram below, shows an overview of my situation of concern and the three sub-areas, which I will articulate below.

Background

This research is situated within the field of design and specifically the design of technology embedded within human activity systems. The aim is to explore the role of technology within societies, with specific emphasis on how these technologies affect human systems to evolve, grow and create solidarity. To do this, I will explore the fundamental ontological claims unacknowledged in traditional design methodologies and whether these assumptions still serve this role for technology today.

The major area of concern in the design of technological systems is that they are embedded within a complex world, of multiple ontological narratives. This means that there are multiple ways of approaching the world, multiple ways of knowing and being. It is the role of technology to bridge these multiple narratives, in a synthetic and integrative manner; such that new worlds, new ontologies are born which act as common ground, in the creation of solidarity and shared practices.

This research approach is distinctly Heideggerrian, in that it attempts to deconstruct the underlying ontological assumptions within technology design. In so doing, it attempts to reveal a more fundamental mode of design thinking; one found on what Heidegger called unconcealment. We will use Heidegger’s landmark paper, The Question Concerning Technology (1953) as the basic theoretical foundations of research. I aim to build on these concepts referencing two further works; Understanding Computers and Cognition (1987) and disclosing New Worlds (1997). These two texts build on the concepts of ontological design.

The majority of the design of technology, we experience today is due to an overemphasizing of the task and an underestimating of the practices, which can be realized through technology.

In Winograd and Flores’ (1988), interpretation, technology does not stop at the material object perceived as a tool, it is about the

“design of practices and possibilities to be realized through artifacts.”  The possibilities and new spheres of practice, which technology reveal to us are what we need to accentuate (Flores & Winograd, 1988).

The Practical Problem

As explained above, technology is often built within a paradigm of instrumental rationality (Heidegger, 1977, pp 3–35), which means it takes an objective view of reality and most importantly places design as that process which manipulates resources to achieve its goals. The effect of such an instrumental technocracy leaves us separated from our role as disclosers of new worlds of being.

Design is meant to serve as a lens to imagine possibilities, to be the bridge between creativity and experience; or a way in which we disclose new experiences. We may say that the current focus in technology design sprouts from the wrong understanding; that which is a narrow objective viewpoint, which is tainted by business contracts, government policies and stakeholder needs. It is rare that the citizens or users come into account as the fundamental components. As Finelli (2001) articulates, we have:

“an extremely narrow philosophical anthropology which leads one to consider the user as a mere customer or, at best, as a human being framed by ergonomics and cognitive psychology; an outdated implicit epistemology of century; an overemphasis upon material shapes and qualities; a code of ethics originating in culture of business contracts and agreements; a cosmology restricted to the marketplace”.

These misunderstandings in design have stemmed from the effect of product engineering and marketing on design, i.e. the determinism of instrumental reason and central role of the economic factor as the almost exclusive evaluation criterion, (Finelli, 2001).

This in turn creates unwanted outcomes and harmful reflections of one self, society and systems. Currently, systems are designed from an objective base, which means, designing a system or product to meet business requirements exclusively. However, there is a greater need to inclusively design in a way that is grounded in human activity to gain a more holistic idea of what the citizen or users experience of what the system or product should entail.

The practical problem here is to figure out what the process is for creating a social utility, which delivers both business value and most importantly citizen value. The platform is a computer literacy system for the citizens of the Western Cape; citizens must be able to easily learn how to use ICT (Information communication technologies) provided by the Western Cape Government. The platform will be designed with the purpose of fulfilling the citizens’ needs of Cape Access e-Centre’s, in rural areas placed across the Western Cape and the business needs of Cape Access programme stakeholders, who sit within the Department of the Premier.

The types of activities associated with these e-Centres are mainly:

• The Use of computers
• Access to the internet
• Access to e-mail
• Printing
• Basic computer training
• Access to government information and services
• Access to job, business and research information
• Accredited computer training

The Research problem

Following on from the practical problem; this way of designing is due to the fact that systems are designed from an objective point of view rather than being grounded in a human centered approach. As (Finelli, 2001) points out, we have become restricted by the culture of business in our artistic approach to designing systems and products, by placing more emphasis on the material shapes and identity.

“The most important designing is ontological. It constitutes as intervention in the background of our heritage, growing out of our already existent ways of being in the world, and deeply affecting the kinds of beings that we are. In creating new artifacts, equipment, buildings and organizational structures, it attempts to specify in advance how and where breakdowns will show up in our everyday practices and in the tools we use, opening up new spaces in which we can work and play. Ontologically oriented design is therefore necessarily both reflective and political, looking backwards to the tradition that has us but also forwards to as-yet-uncreated transformations of our lives together. Through the emergence of new tools, we come to a changing awareness of human nature and human action, which in turn leads to a new technological development. The designing process is part of this ‘dance’ in which our structure of possibilities is generated.” (Flores, Winograd, P 163, Understanding Computers and Cognition)

Ontological design implies different ways of understanding how we, as modern subjects ‘are’ and how we be who or what we are in the modern world. Simply put, we design our world, while our world acts back on us and designs us. (Willis, 2006) The tradition of ontological design emphasizes the role of the intervener or discloser as one who reveals new ontologies. Therefore, the experience of the designer is of critical importance. This is because the fundamental methodology of ontological inquiry is phenomenology. The fundamental methodology of design is to understand the phenomena of the experience itself and to use this to synthesize new ways of being.

For this reason my research will engage into a phenomenological inquiry into design, around three practical projects, which involve the design of techno-social systems. The goal of this research is to shed light into the experience of ontological design, in the hopes of contributing in part to a new context of technology design.

There are two major, practical dimensions I would like to explore here:

1. To create a design strategy for developing a system that is grounded in user-centered design process, which delivers both business value and citizen value.
2. A learning platform for computer literacy and digital e-skills development, for the Western Cape Government’s Cape Access programme.

My exploration lies in two roles; the role of the designer in the creation of technologically orientated human activity systems and the role of technology in creating new worlds or ontologies for citizens.

Research questions

1. How do we design for better network and conversation that enables new social paradigms of interaction?
2. How do we prepare for future technological systems from which to liberate the potentiality of Being and how do we realize this through the many current and future technological artifacts?
3. How do we deliver value to the citizens and create better possibilities and practices inclusively?

I have drawn out this diagram in order to comprehend the process of the my masters thesis that I need to embark on. I have named it the loop on entrepreneuring because it is the beginning process to many iterative loops of continuous entreprenuering. I have started at the theoretical loop area, this was the beginning of my journey on the Mphil course, here I was exposed to many different research papers and books, but I didn’t actually know what I wanted to focus on for my research topic.

The central red area, “situation of Concern”  is an incredibly crucial element to the process, it defines what you are researching. In my case my problem was situated on designing digital systems for inclusion, rather than designing for exclusion. The major area of concern in the design of technological systems is that they are embedded within a complex world, of multiple ontological narratives. This means that there are multiple ways of approaching the world, multiple ways of knowing and being.It is the role of technology to bridge these multiple narratives, in a synthetic and integrative manner; such that new worlds, new ontologies are born which act as common ground, in the creation of solidarity and shares praxis (practise). Yet, the process in which a designer designs from is built off a set of assumptions, that focus on a stagnant time frame of ones many moments of being. These assumptions don’t take into account the entire being as a set of interlocking perceptions but as one final want.

After defining my research problem area, I started to look at Literature to gain a concept for what academics had researched on the topic and what their perceptions were, this literature started to form different lenses for my understanding of further empirical observations that occurred in daily life. These lens start to form and understanding of where there may be any gaps in the literature appearing. Currently, being at this stage I can find myself taking concepts and ideas and superimposing them on each other, while perceiving this integrative way of calculating, with these new formed lens in place.

These lens are now beginning to form research questions and goals or Objectives at this stage I have found myself constantly getting into a loop of asking myself,  what am I trying to do in order to find the right research questions and objectives that I need to start finding.finding. I’ve worked on a diagram, to explain the route of this research so far and what steps I’ll be embarking on.

This diagram, visualizes the research approach  I will be embarking on. After writing out my literature review, I have been able to formulate lenses from which I perceive what I need to research or what sort of methodologies I will need to look at, these methodologies are determined by the research questions and research objectives that I work on.

Research Questions

Research questions are important for enabling the researcher to uncover characteristics or behaviors of some phenomena of interest. The questions that the researcher proposes must be actionable, they must state an implicit objective and they must state implicit criteria for evaluation the result.

This section is focused on proving or allowing the researcher to think deeper and more holistically about why their situation of concern needs to be addressed. In  the act of thinking up questions it makes you define and narrow down the area of research.The main purpose of research questions is to  find out what  you need to ask to prove that your problem is important to solve.

These are some of my current research questions:

• How do citizens feel about these e-Centers?
• Are citizens making use of all the potential services the e-Center’s provide?
• How are citizens becoming aware of the e-Centers?
• Do citizens expect certain types of support?
• In which ways are citizens hoping to be enabled?

Research Objectives

The purpose of research objectives is to establish what you want to determine in your research. In my case it will be to determine how to citizens, communities, small businesses and corporate establishments can make use of technologies to publicly crowd source the public sphere. According to Wikipedia a public sphere relates to an area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action.

The tangible and practical articulation of this will result in a digital system from which citizens can interact with to post their needs, ideas and issues. The system will be running from Cape Access e-Centers (A Western Cape provincial Government mandate). These centers  are mainly to promote digital inclusion. There are 4 main challenges of digital inclusion that these centers thrive to attend to:

• Access – the ability to actually go online and connect to the internet or use these technologies.
• Skills – learning the patterns of a new way of doing things.
• Motivation – understanding why or how these technologies can assist you.
• Trust – not understanding how to go online or moving through a new realm.

Methodologies

I have chosen to work with three different methodologies; Phenomenology, ethnography and Grounded theory.These are  qualitative methods which means these methods are  relating to, measuring, or measured by the quality of something rather than its quantity.

Phenomenology

Phenomenology is concerned with the study of experience from the perspective of the individual,the  taken-for-granted assumptions and usual ways of perceiving what is happening. Epistemology, phenomenological approaches are based in a paradigm of personal knowledge and subjectivity, and emphasize the importance of personal perspective and interpretation. As such they are powerful for understanding subjective experience, gaining insights into people’s motivations and actions, and cutting through the clutter of taken-for-granted assumptions and conventional wisdom.

As a method Phenomenology involves a return to lived experience a listening to the sense and insights that arrive obliquely unbidden or in the midst of life. A methodology that allows a position for philosophical concepts to converge with innate ideas and even critiques that were embedded in my body and surfaced through my performance actions.

Phenomenology provides the dynamics for revealing broader cultural assumptions and practices, for acknowledging the reality that all bodies exist with and through other bodies in social and political contexts, we define ourselves from what we are exposed to. It is a methodology that operates through resonance, rather than an understanding or perspective of  “truth”. For example,  my experience is not going to be held as truth to be put onto other people, but one persons embodied experience when it is reflected upon, may open up meaning or resonances for people to experience truth.

Phenomenology is a process it can grow with you through your devising process of a performance or an action. It is not in affect just a once off analysis, like an ethnographic questionnaire  –  if you develop your reflective practices they will offer different material to you as your work develops. Sometimes it will open up questions, sometimes insights, sometimes frustrations, sometimes nothing – like life.

To put this research method into practice, I will be visiting The Paarl e-Centre and immersing myself into the ways in which it is run, I will be observing how citizens work in these centres and what sort of patterns start forming groupings of these patterns. I will be recording these findings with diagrams and video recordings.

Ethnography

Ethnographic research usually involves observing people in their natural, real-world setting, rather than in the artificial environment of a lab or focus group. The aim is to gather insight into how people live; what they do; how they use things; what do the day to day activities consist of; or what they need in their everyday or professional lives.

Ethnographic research relies on techniques such as participant observation, video diaries, photographs, contextual interviews, and analysis of artefacts such as for example devices, tools or paper forms that might be used as part of a person’s job. Ethnographic research can provide extremely rich insight into ‘real life’ behaviour, and can be used to identify new or currently unmet user needs. This approach is most valuable at the beginning of a project when there is a need to understand real end user needs, or to understand the constraints of using a new product or service by a particular audience.

I will be visiting the Paarl east e-Centre once a week for a full day of research. At this time I will spend a few hours observing participants, and running through contextual interviews, I will be be  interviewing 5 citizens in a visit. I will be participating in any activities where I can gain insight into how the citizens feel while moving through certain actions.

Grounded Theory

Grounded theory is designed to help social scientists generate theory. It is not hypothesis and problem oriented. Basically, in the research process, you collect some data (do an interview or go out and do some ethnography) then you start analyzing it before you finish your data collection. The idea is to produce new explanations of the data or phenomena you’ve investigated (what your data is about) through the analytic process. With grounded theory you create new ideas as you go through your data, which enables you to develop an understanding of the situation and it will lead you to an understanding of who you need to interview or what your important variables might be.

Grounded theory works at finding what works best in a given situation. It also allows you to see what you might be missing in your data collection or sample – so you expand your sample based on your analysis work – in fact your analysis generates ideas of what that sample should be. Grounded theory’s epistemology is similar to user studies in interaction design, they both rely on inductive analysis of data to generate useful abstractions. It is useful in gaining insight into the social dimensions of designed activity, designed artefacts and designed discipline.

The process is about moving from more abstract or analytic levels of understanding towards the end of the project. Grounded theory is used for theory generation rather than theory verification. Glasser(1992), refers to grounded theory as systemic discovery of theory from data as the concepts emerge and integrate, in other words, I have data, and from this data I want to generate or discover a theory.

Grounded theory is used in collaboration with other research methodology – ie. Participation observation, ethnographical – narrative model. I will be using Grounded theory alongside ethnography and phenomenology to dive deeper into where I need to start looking, what sorts of citizens I need to interview and what I am lacking in my study.

Google has released the most amazing style guide ever. What makes it so great is that they have created a guide that crosses through multiple channels and prepares for future channels or worlds in which it will spread it’s service into. I find this particularly interesting because it aligns with precognition of experiences and setting a design style for that precognition.

Google is about to take over your life and you won’t even notice. With their new design outlook which extends beyond the digital screen and restructures the user interface elements to create a more tangible system which is an accumulation of their digital services. This perception reveals a more subtle, more seamless, more invisibly visible, Google. As Golden Krishna says good design, is invisible

Material Design is a way for Google to unify what it is–not just as a collection of similarly designed services for various screens–but as a real secondary world in which everything you see is a snippet of something tangible. 

Our windows to that world may not always be the same–sometimes it might be circles on our wrists, other times it might be rectangles in our hands–but Material Design promises that we’ll always have access to the same, inherently logical bits information regardless of what we’re interacting with. And as content merges more and more between these screens, the feeling will be as natural as gravity.

This is natural outlook of interaction design is very inspiring. There are web concepts such as future friendly and mobile web, and Google have shown immense adaptability.

In other words, any point of friction in your day to day life is an opportunity for Google. It’s not any one preconceived thing, but a wide, opportunist infrastructure that can constantly conform to your life.

Google wants to be as amorphous as its wonder paper.

This research is situated within the field of design and specifically the design of technology embedded within human activity systems. The aim is to explore the role of technology within societies, with specific emphasis on how these technologies affect human systems to evolve, grow and create solidarity. To do this, I will explore the fundamental ontological claims unacknowledged in traditional design methodologies and whether these assumptions still serve this role for technology today.

The major area of concern in the design of technological systems is that they are embedded within a complex world, of multiple ontological narratives. This means that there are multiple ways of approaching the world, multiple ways of knowing and being. It is the role of technology to bridge these multiple narratives, in a synthetic and integrative manner; such that new worlds, new ontologies are born which act as common ground, in the creation of solidarity and shares praxis.

Although it is proposed here that this is the highest form of technological design, for the most part, technologies do not fulfill this purpose.

In using the word “technology” people are generally concerned with artifacts – with things they design, build, and use. But in our interpretation, technology is not the design of physical things. It is the design of practices and possibilities to be realized through artifacts. Computer technology involves machines, but that is not what is ultimately significant. It encompasses the design of new practices (including those of word processing, electronic communication, printing, accounting, and the like), and beyond that it opens the possibility for new realms of practice. (Flores & Winograd, 1988)

In reading this it has shifted my view from merely looking at designing artifacts of interaction, to rather designing possibilities (new worlds) and practices (ontologies) for human beings.

Technology is built within a paradigm of instrumental rationality, which means it takes an objective view of reality and most importantly places design as that process which manipulates resources to achieve its goals. The effect of such an instrumental technocracy leaves us separated from our role as disclosers of new worlds of being.

All the drifts one is witnessing today in design can be attributed to one or all of these three central pillars: the already mentioned “effect of product engineering and marketing on design,” i.e. the determinism of instrumental reason and central role of the economic factor as the almost exclusive evaluation criterion: an extremely narrow philosophical anthropology which leads one to consider the user as a mere customer or, at best, as a human being framed by ergonomics and cognitive psychology; an outdated implicit epistemology of century; an overemphasis upon material shapes and qualities; a code of ethics originating in culture of business contracts and agreements; a cosmology restricted to the marketplace; a sense of history conditioned by the concept of material progress; and a sense of time limited to the cycles of fashion and technological innovations or obsolescence. All these aspects have contributed to the current state of design. (Findelli, 2001)

Design is meant to serve as a lens to imagine possibilities, to be the bridge between precognition and experience or a way in which we disclose new experiences. Similar to Flores and Winograd, Findelli points out that our focus in design sprouts from the wrong basis, which in turn creates unwanted outcomes and harmful reflections of one self, society and systems.

We are in a time of massive institutional failure, collectively creating results that nobody wants. Climate change, AIDS, hunger, poverty, violence. The Destruction of communities, and nature – the foundations of our social, economic, ecological and spiritual well being. (Scharmer, 2011)

What is needed is a thinking discipline focusing on synthesis and integration, one in which new concepts may be disclosed. (Martin, Moldoveanu, 2008)

It is a new way of experiencing and imagining that we need to address to prevent thinking in the same loop of destruction. A change in perspective is needed to break free from the loop of observation of subject and creation f what the subject has asked for, because these methods are not creating solutions but are repeating the same issues.

This research approach is distinctly Heidegerrian, in that it attempts to deconstruct the underlying ontological assumptions within technology design. In so doing it attempts to reveal a more fundamental mode of design thinking; one found on what Heidegger called unconcealment. We will use Heidegger’s landmark paper, The Question Concerning Technology (1953) as the basic theoretical foundations of research. I aim to build on these concepts referencing two further works; Understanding Computers and Cognition (1987) and disclosing New Worlds (1997). These two texts build on the concepts of ontological design.

The most important designing is ontological. It constitutes as intervention in the background of our heritage, growing out of our already existent ways of being in the world, and deeply affecting the kinds of beings that we are. In creating new artifacts, equipment, buildings and organizational structures, it attempts to specify in advance how and where breakdowns will show up in our everyday practices and in the tools we use, opening up new spaces in which we can work and play. Ontologically oriented design is therefore necessarily both reflective and political, looking backwards to the tradition that has us but also forwards to as-yet-uncreated transformations of our lives together. Through the emergence of new tools, we come to a changing awareness of human nature and human action, which in turn leads to a new technological development. The designing process is part of this ‘dance’ in which our structure of possibilities is generated. (Flores, Winograd, P 163, Understanding Computers and Cognition)

Ontological design implies different ways of understanding how we, as modern subjects ‘are’ and how we be who or what we are in the modern world. Simply put, we design our world, while our world acts back on us and designs us. (Willis, 2006)The tradition of ontological design emphasizes the role of the intervener or discloser as one who reveals new ontologies. Therefore the experience of the designer is of critical importance. This is because the fundamental methodology of ontological inquiry is phenomenology. The fundamental methodology of design is to understand the phenomena of the experience itself and to use this to synthesize new ways of being.

For this reason my research will engage into a phenomenological inquiry into design around three practical projects, which involve the design of techno-social systems. The goal of this research is to shed light into the experience of ontological design, in the hopes of contributing in part to a new context of technology design.

There are two major, practical dimensions I would like to explore here: My work as a Usability Architect for the Western Cape government, where the focus is on e-Government for citizens and working with Ownpower consulting on the investigation of a Learning management system (LMS) and a Skills intelligence platform (SIP).

My exploration lies in two roles; the role of the designer in the creation of technologically orientated human activity systems and the role of technology in creating new worlds or ontologies for citizens.

Nosakhere and I were chatting about dealing with the Western Cape government, and I feel that it would be a great place to start here. We were sharing our frustrations of dealing with the government. The problem was the large amount of miscommunication that was constantly arising. There are so many levels of meta-communication on a subject that they’re constantly being lost in translation and in turn misrepresented which results in the wrong outcome. This describes the urgency of infusing a different action in the public sphere. How do we allow for innovation to take place in an institute that is so used to the tendency of being run from the top down.

Otto Scharmer states that we live in a time of massive institutional failure, collectively creating results that nobody wants. Similarly, Albert Einstein famously noted that problems cannot be resolved by the same level of consciousness that created them. Basically, the way in which we pay attention to a situation, from an individual perspective and a collective perspective determines the way in which the system will arise and emerge. This time calls for a new consciousness and a new collective leadership capacity to meet challenges in a more conscious, intentional and strategic way. The development of such capacity will allow us to create a future of greater possibility.

I would like to continue from my last blog post where I concluded by saying: With Flores talks about technology reflecting identity and Winograd speaking of designing worlds that provide a uniform and comprehendible structure, which can support human activity in all its complexity and beauty; it is important to use the correct tools and methods to safely nurture the creation of computer and technological systems. In my research I would love to find the right methods and techniques in which we can create systems that can facilitate social self-growth, stability and equality.

This past week, I have been looking at papers by Fernando Flores, Otto Schamer and John Maeda. Firstly I would like to continue from last blog by elaborating on the last paragraph. Flores speaks of the Language-action perspective, it is formed from two main principles. The first is linguistic communication, which forms the basis for understanding what occurs in information systems. Flores goes on to say that ultimately, all information is communication, and it is not an abstract system of bits and bytes but rather a means by which people interact. The second principle states that language is action. Through linguistic acts people effect change in the world.

By applying a language-action framework on information technology, it emphasizes the action dimension over a more traditional dimension of information content. Flores observes that this perspective reveals the underlying structure that drives and gives meaning to the activities of people using an information system. It allows for the possibility of encouraging participants in a way that enables them to act more effectively when effective coordination is a necessity.

Douglas Hofstadder (2007) observed in his book, I am a strange loop, that in the end, we are self-perceiving, self-creating, locked-in mirages. We are miracles of self-reference. Hofstadder, uses the metaphor that our brains are in fact hard drives which are continually mirroring the patterns of our external world which we use to establish our known reality, like a feedback loop. Hence the name of the book, I am a strange loop. He goes on to say that the more self referentially aligned one is, the more self aware one becomes.

I had read this a while back, and at the beginning of the MPhil course I had a great conversation with Ayanda, from Ownpower, where we spoke about language, communication and how we articulate ourselves. Luckily I wrote it down, because it is now clearing up a lot of concepts swirling around in my head.

I as telling Ayanda, that I was afraid of doing the Mphil course because I really battle to articulate myself, and often I freeze when I need to say something that means a lot to me. Ayanda profoundly said:

“We don’t actually understand each other, language is just a false construct. We think the other person understands us, but we are actually just infusing ourselves into the conversation and the person listening is listening by infusing themselves into the conversation, so that they can make sense if it. It is impossible.

The way I understood it was that we are basically talking to each other, by listening out for what experience I have experienced, so that I can understand on an experiential level what the other person is saying.

I feel like this conversation has linked what Hofstadder speaks of in I am a strange loop with what Otto Scharmer speaks of when he talks about the four different types of listening.

Schamer (2007) states that most leaders are unable to recognize, let alone change, the structural habits of attention used in their organizations. In Scharmer’s research he observes that this requires particular types of listening, he observes four different types of listening.

Listening 1 : Downloading – Where one listens by reconfirming their habitual judgements, one listens for what they already confirms they know.

Listening 2: Factual -This is listening by paying attention to facts. One is able to switch off their inner voice of judgement and listen for what differs from what one already knows. Factual listening is when one allows the information to talk to you and you pay careful attention.

Listening 3: Empathetic – This is a deeper level of listening, when one is engaged in real dialogue and is paying careful attention, one becomes aware of a profound shift in the place from which one’s listening originates. In other words, when we say, I know how you feel, you feel what someone is saying, without particularly knowing how to define it. Scharmer says this is where we are able to open our hearts, only an open heart gives us the empathetic capacity to connect directly with another person from within.

Listening 4: Generative – This type of listening moves beyond the current field and connects us to an even deeper realm of emergence. This is where one listens from the emerging field of future possibility. Where one listens with an open heart in empathetic listening, with generative listening, one listens with an open will – which allows for a capacity to connect with the highest future possibility that can emerge. When one operates from generative listening, one realizes after the conversation, they are no longer the same person they were at the beginning of the conversation. There is a subtle but profound change, which has connected you to a deeper source of knowing.

I believe that visual design has the ability to hold ones attention the same way in which the last two types of listening, which Scharmer speaks about here. In this realm, one is able to be moved and to experience a profound change which can allow one to experience a deeper source of knowing.

Flores identifies this as the knowledge level, where we are able to go beyond the verbal level. Using Diagrammatic thinking defined by Charles S Pierce (1906), where he states thatthe use of a diagram enables us to create a new way of relating to the unknown, of unfolding the dynamics of orientation in the world. It is this realm, which I hope to work in to create a process or system, which mirrors human potentiality from a pure state of being.

There are two practical avenues in which I hope to achieve this in, one being related to my work I am doing  for the e-Citizen, e-Government department at the Western Cape Government and the other being a GAP year programme titled Expanding Horizons run by the Bertha Centre for Social innovation and Entrepreneurship, contracted by the Western Cape Government.

I have recently asked Nosakhere if I could be apart of the work he is doing for the Western Cape government with regards to the GAP year programme – Expanding Horizons. The purpose of the programme be to provide high performing high school and varsity students with opportunities to aid in the educational improvement of public schools through tutoring, developing social innovative initiatives, and facilitating acquisition of leadership skills and networks to expand their horizons. My role would be to design the process, so that it can be universally understood, with visual representations. This is to provide a space where people can be motivated to dream, where they are not lost in constructs of language which can restrict thought. The aim is to create a process which gives students the ability to freely strive to be the best that they can be. If this sounds ridiculously optimistic, then I am very glad, because there is an incredible necessity for optimism in South Africa right now. Similarly, I would like to do the same for the Western Cape government in the e-Citizen, e-Government sector where they are currently focusing on diminishing the digital divide across the province.

As everyone knows I have recently started contract work at the Western Cape government as a Usability architect, the reason I have been hired is because they have started to understand the benefit of user-centered design, when building systems for the public to interact with. The Western Cape government have recently launched a programme called Cape Access, where they have set up e-Centres, with the focus on enabling citizens to have easy access to information and communication technologies (ICT), which will diminish the digital divide. These centres allow us access to citizens who we can benefit by allowing them to define the systems that are built for them. Similarly, I would like to do ethnographical research, where we are able to gain insight into where the Western Cape Government can create e-Services; and what these e-Services may consist of. Here, I aim to portray the represented data as honestly and naturally as possible; to communicate successfully to the public sector, what the needs of the many are.

I am still battling with the clarity of articulation here, that will be my aim for the next week, using Toulman’s method and further reading to help crystalize this research topic.

Lately, my research has been focusing on the people, the artists, the humans behind the many subjects, which have been moving my mind cogs. I have recently been looking at a lot of John Maeda,president of the Rhode Island School of Design. I was hooked when I read a write up on him on the great discontent site, where he said many great things that resonated with me, one of them being:

The world kept changing and people kept saying to me, “Don’t worry about money. You’re a creative person; you shouldn’t have to worry about that.” That worried me. I wasn’t sure what they were saying to me, so I went back to school to earn my MBA in order to understand money and not be afraid of it.

I felt Maeda was expressing something that had really determined my previously traveled path. My Steiner education, had rooted my artistic outlook on life. Waldorf schools are known as ‘arty’ schools and it always bothered me that people often looked at art as being a disability when it comes to creating a career for yourself. However, Waldorf had taught me early in life that everything was an artistic task. I was very lucky to have been taught to infuse craftsmanship, artistry and self-mastery into every task I had done. I have recently recognized, similarities in Paulo Frere’s Pedagogy of the Opressed, as well as Nosakhere Griffin-EL’s research on the colours of dreaming.

Unfortunately,  after leaving Waldorf, I had quickly been convinced by the worlds anti-dreamers that, I had to pursue something I wasn’t interested in to make something of myself, in other words – you can’t be a creative and make money, similar to what Maeda, states above. Much like Maeda, I applied to study a BCom in accounting, because I believed it would make me “successful” at this game society had set up. Luckily, I came to my senses early in this journey and left the degree after a year of boredom.  After chatting to Nosakhere, about his work on dreaming, I am gratefully re-establishing this outlook and I find myself closely relating his research on dreaming, with what I was taught at Waldorf.

I like to say that creative people are confident in only one thing: their own doubt. I think there’s a huge lack of self-confidence in a creative person because, by nature, the definition of a creative person is someone who is trying to make something new. They know, if they are professional creatives, that the likelihood of doing that—making something new and significant—is hugely unlikely, so they build within that city of doubt. From doubt, they get to iterate and work extremely hard, hoping to find something new; it’s all about hope. I’ve never met anyone who is good at what they do creatively and is super-confident.

I can honestly, say that doubt has played a large role at destroying most of my potential work. I am still working at the iterative process, where I let go of my self-judging self, or not give in to it – it has always managed to drop in and believe that it is saving the day. I have recently been dealing with this issue with my work with Ownpower; luckily, my need to prove my brother wrong has saved me from giving up and I am discovering how helpful iteration is in this context.

Besides these points that John Maeda talks about, where Maeda really holds my attention; is his clear communication around art being a conduit toward human needs and perception and how it relates to leadership.

Art is about asking questions, which is a good way of looking at how to solve a problem. I like to apply how artists think to look at how to improve design, technology…and now leadership.

Maeda, has infused hope in me, he recognises a strong connection between art and management, two areas that many regard as even less linked than the recent coming together of design and management. At least in “design thinking” and ethnography, there’s a more practical, commercial context than in painting or performance. Maeda states that the leaders comfortable position has eroded a bit, before leaders needed to have the ability to function in a hieracy; but now, we need leaders who also understand that heterarchies are emerging – therefore, to understand both, you have to be creative, Maeda argues that, the way artists think can be more valuable than traditional management approaches.

Maeda (2012) predicts that future art-school grads may not make art or objects, but instead make or remake organizations. However, to comprehend the artistic process as a management strategy they may need an art education, not because art is a mysterious endeavor but because notions of “creativity” at work have typically been misinterpreted into cartoonish, childish directions. Maeda states that creativity needs to be relearned for maximum effectiveness as part of a business’ innovation culture.

In the business world, many people believe creativity is all about filling office spaces with red bean bag chairs, squishy balls, and colorful markers—kid stuff. People have the odd belief that creativity is a shortcut. That it’s easy. Creativity is an arduous process, one that forces you to be open and think imaginatively. That’s what many businesses want to do. And that’s what artists do.

Maeda’s 2012 TED talk, focused on clarifying the relationship between leadership and art, where he describes his pathway and how he has come to make these connections. Maeda goes on to say, “Tech makes possibilities, design makes solutions, art makes questions, leadership makes actions,” summing up the relationship between these disciplines. Similarly,  Andy Warhol’s famous quote:

Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art… good business is the best art.

also draws on this connection. When business is regarded as an artistic endeavor, it has the same potential as an art piece to challenge and impact every aspect of our lives. It has the ability to win and hold the public’s interest, just as any art form does, a business must be practically, well executed, as well as imaginative and engaging at the same time.

I’ll conclude with a quote from John Maeda :

We seem to forget that innovation doesn’t just come from equations or new kinds of chemicals, it comes from a human place. Innovation in the sciences is always linked in some way, either directly or indirectly, to a human experience.

Being extremely overwhelmed with trying to find a place to live this week, I haven’t been able to get any thing else done. It had been a week of doing pointless tasks and achieving very little. So, on Thursday, before our lectures on Friday I had a minor freak out. We had a MPhil reading club meet up and I started to realise I had missed out on a lot of work this week, which I needed to do. I had Hillary, Gloria and Lucienne, force me to get some quiet me-time so that I could get my head cleared and focused. Luckily, my brother had just asked me if everything was alright and if I needed help with anything. I said Yes, I need your help! I started blurting out everything I needed to get done; Casual loop diagrams, business models, research topic, literature review and I need to fit it in with work – how do I do this ?

So we sat down and started to work through the mess in my head and we came up with some really wonderful clarity. God bless siblings!

I told him that I was having trouble figuring out what I was going to research, which in turn was effecting my casual loop or not effecting it, however you want to look at it. First, we had to figure out what my research topic was going to be. I told him that I’d like to focus on how to create the right e-services for the Western Cape Government. I had been approached my Ownpower and Nosakhere to help them with similar systems they were trying to create for government. So, broadly my focus would be on, Human-centered design for the public sphere.

In my job at the Western Cape Government, in the e-citizen department, we’re trying to figure out which e-services are needed in the Western Cape. The Western Cape have just launched a whole bunch of centres across the Western Cape which focus on diminishing the digital divide, these centres are referred to as Cape Access centres. The next step from WCG, is to capture data from all these users and find out what services are needed to support the users. With Ownpower, I have been included in figuring out what how to create the best user-centeric systems with regards to their skills intelligence platform, I have been included in their Learning management ethnographical research as well. Nosakhere as asked if I could work as an ethnographical researcher on the GAP year project for Western cape government.

I couldn’t articulate the connection of these interconnected elements but I knew it existed, so I started drawing them out large pieces of paper – because large pieces of paper help with everything! Mehul showed me this diagram from the Rotman school, describing design thinking. He said that’s what you need to do…

Public services provide reliable services because the cycle works and is run from the top down – there is no room for new innovation to happen. Which means that there is a reinforcing loop which just continues without and new fresh ideas. He used the metaphor of electricity; since there is no room for innovation with electricity, because it is a valid and reliable running system – no one would be able to innovate on it. Therefore, solar powered energy would not have been considered. This way, doesn’t create services which are necessarily plausible or valid, this is mainly because they are not in touch with society. They are not servicing the needs of the many.

So, the issue is, how do we allow for innovation to be apart of the public services sphere. How do we facilitate the emergence of bottom up decisions ? How do we create a co-colloborative approach to the public services ?

To flesh out the causal loop, it would be best to model up the Public services sphere first, he helped me with this one, as I found it quite difficult to figure out:

Then we had to create a business model which showed value of co-creation:

Using integrative thinking and looking at both business models we started to figure out how to get started on the causal loop.

This is a balanced system.

Fred Smith, the founder of Federal Express. It is what he called “ Kaleidoscope thinking.” He said, “sometimes when you look at a business plan and it’s intractable, you need to keep looking at it and turning the kaleidoscope until you see a different pattern emerging.” Which goes to show that for creative leaders, getting past the tradeoffs is often a matter of trying to get past the antithetical way of stating the problem.   – Integrative thinking , Spencer Stuart, directors’ breakfast summary

The way in which Kaleidoscopic thinking is explained here, is really beautiful. It resonated with me because it reminded me of a lot of ways in which we make sense of our surroundings or comprehend how our surroundings work together to make something new. I think I find this fascinating because my mind has mot recently been restructured in the way I view things. This is mainly from reading Douglas Hofstadder’s, Surfaces and essences, where he talks about grasping through our worlds through making analogies. We come up with absurd analogies and test them together until we recognise something new or brilliant. This book has really changed the way I listen to people talking and it feels like everyone is just constantly putting their imaginations together in order to have practical communication. It’s beautiful.

Addressing one piece of the choice puzzle means many others are affected, making it impossible to break the puzzle down into small parts and solving each sequentially. Outcomes of initiatives are often difficult to predict, and conditions often change before solutions can be implemented. Further, such choices typically cannot be made from within narrowly defined functional, regional, or operational boundaries. Different areas of an organisation see the issues and the choices that face them from different perspectives. This suggests the need for managers who can attend simultaneously to a vast array of interconnected variables and related choices to deal effectively with enigmatic choices. In short, modern leadership necessitates integrative thinking. Integrative thinkers work to see the whole problem, embrace its multi-varied nature, and understand the complexity of its causal relationships.They work to shape and order what others see as a chaotic landscape.They search for creative resolutions to problems typically seen by others as a simple ‘fork in the road’ or an irresolvable bind brought about by competing organisational interests.

At its core, integrative thinking is an art, not a formula or algorithm that can be followed routinely from start to finish. Managers who attempt to reduce choice making to an algorithm are quickly overwhelmed by the enigmatic qualities their formula overlooks. As in art, a heuristic, not algorithmic process must guide the integrative choice maker.

– The art of Integrative Thinking, Roger Martin and Hilary Austen

We were told to work on business models, using integrative thinking. I worked on three business models. One on Ideo, Adaptive path and one on the MPhil programme. These business models are iterative pieces of work, so here comes the start of learning how to do business model innovation.

We don’t see things, we imagine them!

Walter Baets.