Reflections since Understanding Computers and Cognition – by Fernando Flores with assistance from Charles Spinosa

Last night a I read this paper by Fernando Flores, it was incredible insightful with regards to understanding how we use technology to define our own identities as well as understanding those around us through their made up identities. In this blog post, I will quote parts of his paper and aim to draw out how he has made me re-look and re-think how I view digital public spaces.

We claimed that computers were essentially for communication, not computation. On that basis, we also predicted that computers would come to be used for coordinating action and, in that way, help us to see that the heart of commercial activity was the use of language to coordinate action.

The first line in this quote, made me think of how we have changed in our communication habits or mechanisms. I thought back to a project I did in my undergrad, the main underlying concept was to prove how technology is based on nature. I showed a series of natural organisms in their natural state and technological systems and from a visual point of view revealed the overlapping and underlying patterns which allowed both of these systems to run successfully. It became apparent in this project that, it seemed that we were moving towards a mimicking age, where opposite forces were mirroring each other as we travel parallel to one another, both constantly communicating one another. I looked in depth at the underlying fractal pattern as the base language for a computational system of an animated fractal – which I coded in flash, actionscript. The rules were simple, Rotate 30 degrees, on every rotation add a line. I also juxtaposed coded space invaders onto a video clip from a nature documentary, showing aquatic insects flying. The resemblance spoke for itself.

Jared Tarbell has been on my list of favourite artists for many years, his work best describes the above mentioned  project and visualises it beautifuly.

This basic observation, made me re-look at technological systems which I use today, my main action is communication through all of them.

Companies and individuals need identities that matter. And that is what we are losing today both by virtue of our ability to manage commitments well and by new social practices which are proliferating new institutions, especially those developed in the World Wide Web.

Information depended for its sense on communication, and just as communication was about coordinating action, that is what computers would come to be about. Likewise, it is generally right to see that the World Wide Web is about producing networks of individuals (virtual communities) but I want to stress that such networks are not autonomous. They depend for their sense on individual and corporate identities, which require maintaining identity defining commitments or, as the philosophic tradition following Kierkegaard calls them, existential stands. Consequently, just as computers are coming more and more to be involved in communication, the Web will come to be more and more the medium for building identities.

Virtual communities and virtual worlds where people can live, is definitely rising into a fascinating mental area. I have been fascinated with the behaviour Whatsapp has caused among people I have been sharing digital spaces with. What interests me is how people change their tone, and mental processing while communicating. I think this has largely sprung from the mobile device itself. Mobile has allowed us to have a digital space that moves around where ever we go. It is our own personal reflection which we use to define ourselves, constantly, at every point in time. You always find it in very close proximity to ourselves.It has become so integrated in our daily actions, that not many conversations go by with out a mobile phone being involved at some point.

Back onto the topic of Whatsapp. It has evolved instant messaging to conscious thought almost. It is treated on the same level of telepathy in a way. It is an abstract message which is so far removed from our natural senses, that we have related it to ether. It is almost as if, if something does not pass through our senses it is transformed into the magical abstract etherial level. What I love about this new form of mental communication is how it has made us more intimate. There have been claims that technology has made us a lot more alone or lonely  , I strongly disagree with this, I believe that our communication has just become more ingrained with technology and it allows us to communicate more truly instead of being stuck behind the construct of language. I think that this lack of construct allows us to relate to ourselves on a deeper base level, which allows ourselves to resonate closer to our authentic selves, or does it ?

Getting the precise contours of the current common-sense understanding of personal and corporate identity right has stimulated much academic debate. Even the term “personal identity” is ambiguous in a number of ways (see Rorty, 1976, introduction). People use “identity”:

• to distinguish human beings from animals and computers;

• to pick out the collection of features, like fingerprints, that enable the re-identification of people;

• to indicate the ego as source of our intentions;

• to describe a person’s public reputation, i.e. what the public recognizes as important about a person’s life; and

• to describe the result of an individual’s commitment to whatever person or cause gives meaning and direction to that person’s life so that without it he or she would find life desperate, disoriented, in short, not worth living.

I had a great conversation similar to this paragraph with a friend. We were talking about ego. First we started chatting about how we understand one another, and  figured that we were having the conversation and were resonating with subjects due to similar experiences previously shared. It made me think of when we listen to one another, we listen from within ourselves and wait till we can grasp onto something that we have knowledge on or experience with and then add to it. We stack up these experiences so that we can understand ourselves and others . It made me understand why it is important to have an ego because it gives us an axis point to understand the rest of the points on the cartesian plane.

But until the breaking point has come, we experience in our day-to-day actions our commitment to who we are as total. Our commitment determines what counts as valuable and meaningful in our world. We would not change our identity on the basis of what others think. We judge public standards by the private values created by our commitment. It defines our world, our frame of reference. It might seem as though such a conception of identity applies only to people. But one of the most important business review articles of the last decade calls companies to identify and focus resources on the core competencies that for various contingent reasons they have come to possess (Hamel and Prahalad, 1994). The point is to develop the companies’ uniqueness.

It is always the underlying question, in design, what is it’s unique selling point and how do we incorporate that understanding into a brand essence which can determine the expereince of the product. I find it interesting that this feels like we are personifying brands, products and systems. Similarly, with user experience design, we try to create a personality or identity which people can comprehend easily so they can relate to what they see in front of them. It’s fascinating that one end we are trying to automate everything and on the other hand we are trying to personify the automation as much as possible.

We are who we are because of the response we have made to the way we have been recognized. And we are the way we are because circumstances have led us to make a commitment to some cause, person, or role with an intensity that we cannot justify in any shared terms. These two different accounts of identity seem radically opposed. One says that our sense of identity depends on others and the other says that it depends solely on the intensity of our individual commitment.

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.

I had a meeting with Sarah-Anne this afternoon. We had met because we both felt that concepts were kind of hanging around my head and there were no real lines drawing any conclusions or rather no defined problem statements as she said. It was really helpful zooming out of my head for a bit so I could look at what was hanging around my head. I had been battling with clarifying my topic, and as I stated in a previous post, I had been striving for perfection which was also having an affect on my topic. I had a problem aligning my day job with research and I felt like I was just going around in repetitive mental loops.  So, Sarah-Anne and I met in an attempt to narrow down my options so that I could find the right subject matter to articulate. I started off with drawing out my initial goal, which looks like this;   So, here’s where I started and… Here is the one I drew up earlier today; We have all the main topics which I will be diving into in the Mphil. period, so I thought it might be best for me to focus on all these tasks and observe the transformation within. I found out that this was too broad. This was like the universe of an idea, Human centered design was like the milky way and Sarah-Anne had informed me that I needed to refine my problem statement area to the size of my thumb. I wasn’t sure what level of micro-macro speech we were on, but it was fascinating. Before this moment, Kosheek had walked past and just happened to drop in the most ideal sentence for the times – ” Just, embrace the chaos.” Timing is everything apparently. At this moment, I had the design squiggle flash through my brain, followed by a calm, frantic smile.

If I was experiencing uncertainty and chaos, I was doing it right! Joy! As I said in the perfection post, I was so busy trying to get out of the madness again, trying to come up with the ultimate outcome doesn’t solve any real issues. Fearing the messy unknown just makes the situation more messy. So, Sarah-Anne had added some grounding to my chaos by continually reminding me of narrowing down my area so I could define a problem statement. I started talking about, experince design and within that; Human- centered design, and that the problem I had with traditional experience design was that there was a lot of claim that projects were being run on a human-centered design based approach, but I had not seen this. I noticed that the problem was that systems were being built from a technical-centered approach first and finding the necessary users, to be used in the process, once they had been assumed. In other words, I had noticed that most design was taking place from a technical or business point of view and community was structured or told to fit into that system. I feel that we need to swap these around, so that digital ecosystems are built from real human needs.

Human interaction of people (inside and outside your company) is probably the one complex resource that needs to be understood and carefully monitored. Human interaction needs to be understood as the potentiality of the interaction of people (agents) producing either individuals who co-create out of emergence (on the one extreme) or agents who cause a disastrous conflict (on the other extreme). The situation obtained is not what is important, but rather the process of potentiality and its evolution. Human interaction, just like management learning, might need some supporting techniques that are, however, never of a nature to replace the necessity to understand the interaction itself. Up until now there have been few publications about the process of business economics as a learning and emergent concept. Likewise, there have not been many publications about emergent behavior and the methods of studying it either.  – Value Based leadership in Business Innovation (Walter Baets ; Erna Oldenboom, 2013, p.127) 

I happened to browse through Value Based leadership in Business and this paragraph was screaming at me to be added into this post. At the moment, the Western cape government (WCG) are trying to move along a human-centered approach, they are figuring out that they need to understand citizen behaviour and where they fit in.

This is the area I would like to turn into the size of my thumb; Ultimately, human behaviour is core to understanding real business needs, how are we going to facilitate social needs using technology? That’s a bit too broad. How do we find ways to include users at every step of the design process? Users need incentives for every interaction that takes place. Are we finding the right users to test our digital products, or are we ignoring our larger user base ?

I found this lovely drawing, here ; http://thisisonline.org/index.php/reviews/bookreviews/138-utopia-and-distopia#

I recently found an interesting article Is anyone asking people what they want from the smart cities of the future ? Gary Graham, discusses the dangers of not consulting citizens, when it comes to creating urban technology.

I have most recently started contract work for the Western Cape Government, where we are working on creating e-services for citizens, to support them and generally make their lives a little easier when it comes to getting government related tasks done. Finding this article, made me re-think the e-government angle a bit. I really liked this angle of citizen designed cities, it made me feel like I was definitely in the right place.

Graham states that most of the topics discussed in plans of turning cities into smart cities hardly involve the citizens actual needs.

I recently attended a government meeting about future cities and found that all the discussion related to branding, bio-tech innovation, hi-tech transport infrastructure and opportunities for universities. I pointed out that at least half the population don’t engage with such things directly, if at all. Most everyday people are more concerned with how to get by and even how to survive in an increasingly hostile city.

This made me think, I have been so focused on designing technical systems with the user in mind, where we take complex tasks and make them easy to understand. What about simple survival ? How do you create digital survival mechanisms ? We have large corporations infusing these ideal dreamy thoughts of digital enlightenment, where we are able to have conversations with other citizens from other countries on our walls. Who thinks of survival when we’re faced with this constant digital Utopia? If the future will be like this age, there will still be uneven pockets of wealth and poverty. Most of the cities citizens will not be experiencing the digital city the way large corporations have told us we will.

The people living in cities far outnumber the people making decisions about what those cities should look like in the future. They are disconnected from the plans being made by companies and even governments on their behalf.

We need to start working with everyday citizens to find the right questions – and then work with them towards developing solutions to the problems they raise.

I think this article really changed my perspective on the e-services and e-government because of my fascination with science fiction, I have always watched Star Trek in awe of what the future holds. Gene Roddenberry, strives to redefine human nature in Star Trek, by creating worlds and dimensions, in which humans are travelling through galaxies, ultimately spreading peace. I have escaped into Roddenberry’s Utopian imagination many times and felt a great deal of hope for our future, but I believe there is plenty of work to be done before then.

Graham, points out the dire need to reassess the digital utopia we have all been waiting for. This is true innovation, infusing dreams with practicality to solve problems and create equality, right ?

If I were to use a metaphor to describe this week it would be a calm lake, with a million skimming stones sliding across it, creating numerous ripples. This week was incredible in every aspect, I’m going to attempt to capture as much of it as possible. I started this week off extremely inspired, especially after Friday’s class. I felt I had a clear path to travel along and the path seemed relatively safe for as far as I could see. I started to get really excited about what I was going to be researching. On Friday there was a line that Kosheek said, “ We look at systems as isolated systems, that survive on there own. “ This was a new light bulb moment which had caught my attention. My brain automatically linked it to this quote by Stephen Hay;

We’re not designing pages, we’re designing systems of components.— Stephen Hay

I came across this quote while browsing through an article by Brad Frost, on his concept of atomic design. In Atomic design, Brad Frost talks about creating design systems where one looks beyond the foundations (ie. The typography, grids, texture) and rather looks deeper into what our interfaces are comprised of and how we construct these design systems. Frost talks about chemistry and that all matter (whether solid, liquid, gas, simple, complex, etc) is all comprised of atoms. These atomic units bond together to form molecules, which then combine into complex organisms, which ultimately create all matter in the universe. This is similar in interfaces, they’re made up of smaller components, which means we can break down entire interfaces into fundamental building blocks and work up from there. I had re-visited this concept of Frost’s in a new light, he had drawn from the elements, a deep understanding of how we design a system. Again, there is this self-observing knowledge which led Frost to uncover a way of design. This week I read through bits of Computers and Cognition by Flores and Winograd (1986) they discuss the designing of a way of being, not only concerned with how the system looks or how it works but rather with cognition and perception. They state that technology is the facilitator of human evolution. If we examine technology, it is largely a way for ourselves to extend our consciousness into another realm. Think of the first piece of technology we know of, a stick – we used this tool to extend our reach, so that we could so something better. Our perception of the world is dependent on how we act within its realm. How do we deal with this reality? This is ultimately why we are so fascinated with technology, because it is at the edge of human ability, perception and cognition. We have created meta-patterns to decipher this new realm, by infusing what we already know into what we still don’t know. I feel that with technology, we can create new ways of explaining the human mind state, while influencing it at the same time.

“ The language-action perspective, as its name suggests, rests on two key orienting principles. The first is its focus on linguistic communication as the basis for understanding what occurs in information systems. Ultimately all information is communication: not an abstract system of bits and bytes but a means by which people interact. The second principle is that language is action. Through their linguistic acts people effect change in the world. In imposing a language-action framework on information technology, we emphasize the action dimension over the more traditional dimension of information content. “

In designing a new foundation for design. Winograd (2006) speaks of the ability to live in designed worlds. With the rapid increase in channels, which compete in absorbing as much of our consciousness as possible, we are already seeing new kinds of interaction emerging. We are already seeing a difference in how one relates to oneself through online channels of consciousness. We recognize a loosening in the grip of self-criticism and self-editing, this allows for constructs to break down so we are able to re-invent and restructure. Winograd refers to introducing a simplicity to a design, but not by diluting the human phenomena to simplicity, but rather by providing a uniform and comprehendible structure which can support human activity in all its complexity and beauty. It is important for us to further develop the perspective to clarify and meld it into a process of user-centered design. Wingrad believes this is where we find a new foundation for design. I have been looking at applying these concepts by Frere and Winograd to my work at the Western Cape government. Right now, I have more questions and less understanding of where to go. I’m currently looking at e-services for Government. Which services can they provide in the digital space, which services does the South African public sphere need. Right now, I have a stack of books, journals and authors to look up and begin researching further into this realm. This fits perfectly into the next part of this week, which is this unknown realm, which I have been battling to articulate. Then I started reading Computers and Cognition by Winograd and Flores, 1986, p.1 and I found two great quotes which expressed what I was going through.

“ I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell. “ Michael Polanyi, The tacit dimension, 1996, p.4 “ Speaking is the alienation of thought from action, writing is the alienation of language from speech, and linguistics is the alienation of language from self. “ Stephen A. Tyler, the said and the unsaid: mind, meaning and culture, 1978, p.17 I

felt myself in new swirling pools of thoughts of new phenomena, which I had been struck speechless and incapable of articulating to anyone who dares to recognise the reflection I was emitting. I had noticed that one of the biggest reasons I had found it so difficult to communicate to others in this time, was the fact that I had been trying to grasp onto this still water in my hand, so I could share it’s perfection with others, and in grasping it – it was lost. I’ll carry on with the metaphor of water here. In this time I had also noticed I had begun to only see my experience of the external world reflected within my communication and internal thoughts. I felt like I was just blurting out previous conversations, media, experiences I had witnessed or heard, which were just stored in my brain like an external hard drive of patterns, circulating in a strange loop of some sort.

“In the end we are self-perceiving, self-creating, locked-in mirages. We are miracles of self-reference.” Douglas Hofstadder

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything. – Gustave Flaubert

While searching for the perfect research topic to pursue for the MPhil. programme, I have found myself in a very dangerous area. Seeking the ultimate perfection. Now, that might sound like I’m being incredibly pessimistic, this might be true, but this seems like a great time to figure out what perfection means in this case.

Last week’s MPhil lectures really got me thinking of the role of an artist. As Joseph Beuys says ” We are all artists”. This is similar to the opening quote by Flaubert. They may be speaking of traditional art which involves paint and canvas, but these are merely mediums, for the canvas may be the canvas of the world and how you paint yourself against it, how you find your place among the chaos, or within your own heart. Since we have started this programme, I have been finding it difficult to remove self growth or self observation from every task I have been performing, constantly I have been surrounded by swirling thoughts of self-analysis and in so doing, I find myself just talking and thinking in circles. We are all continually striving to improve ourselves, every day is tantamount to living a life worthy of  life.

I feel like this is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it is the pursuit of perfection that makes us reach out for something greater than ourselves, it enables us to imagine new ways of expressing oneself. On the other, it can be a circular path to walk- when nothing less than perfection will do, there are obstacles,which never-end, and are always coming up in a new form, our imperfections are infinite. To fight this is to fight infinity itself.

So, in this inner turmoil of trying to come up with the perfect research topic, there have been constant challenges erupting – and ultimately, without question I absorb the challenge, in the pursuit of self-growth. Obviously, in observing this within myself, I have started to see it in my external surroundings, more prominently. There is this constant re-molding of our foundations, our core being which we believe define who we are. A perfect metaphor in this case would be, the process of the construction of a building. In the beginning, we have the scaffolding, we are constantly trying to get the perfect scaffolding layout. It must be perfectly proportioned if it has to support the rest of the building. Eventually, though, in constantly sculpting and re-sculpting the foundation, you come to realize that the entire project has passed in this pursuit, and we’re left with little time, and no building at all, and a near perfect scaffolding.

I have found it fascinating, observing this self-aspiration of perfection. The greatest freedom, was realizing that it was merely a concept, where we chase after this illusion of a goal which only exists if we look at ourselves as a being with no imperfections. Which in turn means we are just not being honest with ourselves. To build a true foundation of self-growth, we need to factor in our perfections and observe how we work and evolve with our imperfections, so  that we don’t get caught up in the vicious cycle of self-editing, where we climb no ladders, but merely make ladders. Perfection does not lie in perfection itself. Perfection exists only in ignorance of itself.

Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. –  Khalil Gibran

Picking up from last week’s class where we created causal loops, today we learnt about integrative thinking and business model innovation. We also had an inspiring session with Warren Nilsson, where he showed us a speech by Roberto Unger where he speaks about what the task of the current social innovation movement should be he talks about a minimalist view and a maximalist view towards this movement. In this post I’ll summarise what we explored in class and how that has helped in recognising where my  research path may lie or may not.

First we must understand that it is very important to understand, analyse and experience the space we are going to be subjected to, this is so that we can understand the metacognition, or learn for ourselves how we learn. If we can do this we can create of it, from a base level. In academic words, we must understand the pedagogy of our research, it is crucial for this programme. Why is this important – this is what the journey is about it is about the depth of self-evidence, it is about understanding what we are trying to investigate or solve on an actual or experiential level. We have acquired a game of playing research where we have the researcher and the outcome of researcher, we have people that create knowledge and people who use knowledge but that is them imagining a static society, which doesn’t grow, it is just viewed from one section of its life.

Akrasia, is the state of acting against one’s better judgment. We have inherited a weakness of will to react, we have covered up our emotional responses to objects, actions and resources. We’ve lost the idea of community. For example, mass production, the obsessive behaviour when it comes to consumer goods. How do you subject yourself to a reality where self-evidence does become an assumption that you believe is dead, how do you avoid the conditioning we have, where there is a weakening of will. Especially when there are so many more platforms that are demanding our conscious attention, How do we deal with this, or not get trapped by this ? I began to realise that I needed to re-evaluate my research without any programmed lens or perceptions I’ve been trained to see through, I needed to take away my self-editing where there is true understanding of self-evidence. The for this is, integrative thinking, where we accept the depth of self-evidence, we arouse social commitment and arouse emotional understanding or empathy towards a problem.

This made me understand that my problem was the fact that I didn’t actually have a problem, I was just seeing past choices, past concepts bubbling up and I was trying to incorporate it into a research proposal. This is why I had problems with my causal loop in session one, I started at the wrong base. So, what is the problem I’m trying to solve?

Integrative thinking

Roger Martin explains Integrative thinking as;

“Integrative thinking is a discipline and methodology for solving complex or wicked problems. ”

The Rotman School of Management defines integrative thinking as:

“…the ability to constructively face the tensions of opposing models, and instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generating a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new model that contains elements of the individual models, but is superior to each.”

Last year, Ownpower asked me to create an infographic on Integrative thinking.
View integrative thinking inforgaphic.

There are four key points to Integrative thinking ; Salience, causality, sequencing and resolution.

Salience

The salience of an object or perception is the quality or state by which it stands out in comparison to what it is surrounded by.

According to Wikipedia:  Saliency detection is considered to be a key attentional mechanism that facilitates learning and survival by enabling organisms to focus their limited perceptual and cognitive resources on the most pertinent subset of the available sensory data.

A great example to explain this concept further was used in today’s session; when you are reading, this salient reality is emerging, one comes up with a systemic understanding of the area of focus on. Individual parts become clearer and so the whole becomes known. From the surrounding tension, the concept becomes clearer.

In intergrative thinking you want to identify extreme objects and subject yourself to them.

Causality relates to how all these salient points connect as pieces of a puzzle. Causality is understanding how all these objects connect to each other. How does one make sense of what is in front of me ?

Sequencing

Sequencing relates to understanding the primary structure of these salience elements. So, they keep a holistic view of all things that are salient. What tasks will I do, and in what order ?

Resolution

Resolution relates to the outcome or conclusion. How does one make the most creative resolution ?

Integrative thinking is a method we can use to create new concepts, to create new business models, not merely recognising a new business model, but the actual creation of business model innovation.

Business model innovation

As a species, we have become used to certain things and take a lot of actions for granted.Things happen automatically, etc cooking, learning, driving – we become habituated into human practise and we cannot step back. Our bodily expectations of how the world should react.Only if something causes a breakdown. That is when I would examine the object/world around ourselves, as to WHY it didn’t live up to one’s expectations you only notice something as useful when it breaks down or you examine all the parts of it. We need to fall in love with the business model, that means understanding how it works on a systemic level. Understand it’s style so one can unpack this style as quickly as possible and then create new models around them.

A style is a name or description for how practises are co-ordinated. We used to have a style for being in the world where we  had a different relationship to things we used (eg. ride bikes, or horses) there was patience, deeper connection to where it came from. from industrialisation we have become gradually more and more unconscious of our world. we’ve almost factored ourself out of the world, we’re not sensitive to these things because our style has changed.

The type of style can be modelled with a business model. a style that is self-evident in manner to behaviour . One can change the style in business model innovation. If we create new consumption methods we need to change the stye. Every business model has an operative style. The thing about a style is – it is what the norm,it is sensible, it is the guide or structure of how things are.Why we collapsed it – emergence, divergence, narrowing of content. We want to keep our emergence falling in love with one model at a time. until you understand how a model works, what are the mechanisms, how do you create value business models start with a style from someone.How does this model produce it’s benefits ? what are it’s mechanisms ? There is never a clean sheet of paper,because human beings cannot step out of their reality.

we are doing articulation, the role of articulation is underestimated.

whenever the world breaks downs, you need to articulate WHY the world has broken down. why was my expected reality not met ?Articulation, re configuration, cross appropriation – bring marginal elements into a style and super impose into essential views on how human beings can make cultural change. Innovation happens in these three ways; Articulation, re-configuration, cross appropriation

Articulation is responsible for bringing to the surface, the raw experiences, making them known to the many. We need to know how to communicate wicked crazy problems so that we can solve them. In figuring out how to articulate something we unravel it and compare it so many of our past experiences to make sense of it, so we view it in different ways.

Reconfiguration, is responsible for bringing a marginal style that is at the periphery to the main focus point. We have analysed it and we try to figure out a way to control it,  so that we can steer it.We have over emphasised control, what happens when we get rid of this control ?

Cross appropriation means to understand the styles – then find out what you like and don’t like about them and mix them into something mouldable. Immerse yourself in it. This allows us to experience the style for ourselves and embody it, which leads to true empathy. Empathy is Fundamental to design thinking. This is crucial in creation of something new, but we all never get to any coherent suggesting, because of our own critique, we don’t have empathy. One finds it easier to criticise something before falling in love with it.

Warren Nilsson’s session

Warren showed us a really great talk by Roberto Unger.  This speech really supported Kosheek’s lecture in the morning and it was superb to be able to be exposed to different explanations.

“I propose to speak of social innovation as a transformative movement in the world and not simply as a field for academic study. Now, there are two basic approaches to social innovation as a movement that one might distinguish; let me call them the minimalist and the maximalist approaches. According to the minimalist view of the social innovation movement, social innovation is a movement within civil society and about civil society. It does not directly engage in the politics of state power and it renounces the hope of proposing a comprehensive project for society. The minimalist approach to social innovation has the attraction of modesty and apparent realism.

According to the maximalist view of social innovation, the social innovation movement, although headquartered in civil society, is not simply about civil society, but about everything, and therefore, must engage the politics of state power and must have a comprehensive proposal for society. In my intervention now, I propose intransigently to defend the maximalist view, but I will do so not by arguing for it in the abstract, but by seeking to exemplify what its content would be because its content is far from being self – evident. “

Today I had a meeting with the Team lead of my Department at WCG (Western Cape government). This meeting was aimed at uncovering a suitable methodology for research, where I could incorporate WCG.

Dr Marco Pretorius is Team lead of Usability for E-4CG (Department of premier and e-innovation) for the Western Cape Government. He has completed his PhD focused on institutionalising User Experience (UX), usability and user-centred design for government systems. We met to chat about how I can incorporate my job into my research and he was incredibly helpful.

We started looking at what path I was going on at the moment. He knows that I am passionate about data information, info graphics and diagrammatic thinking. My current occupation here at the Western Cape Government was a Usability Architect and designer, this would include jobs such as creating wireframes which are usable and useful for our users, then finding the right users and testing the system with them in the Western Cape Government testing lab.

I have always been fascinated with people, and their backgrounds on a personal level. I think that is why I enjoy design so much, because of it’s respect for human values and for creating systems or products for a particular mindset. So, we brainstormed about possibilities in this area. Our main areas which we looked at were;

User centred design process

User journey maps

Personas

Scenarios

User interviews

Information visualisation

Task flow

Systems observation

e-Government

Government Services

Users needs

We started mapping out my what we as a Usability team need to achieve and what I was interested in. We found that there was a great need to find out what services our users need to achieve to live better lives. We needed to conduct in depth research regarding ethnography of our users, then we needed to record this research and display it in a way where we can analyse them and find out how to supply these electronic services.We came up with a methodology to create personas, user journey maps, task flows, prototypes and User testing for South African e-government  automated services.

This would include all of the topics mentioned above.

Using diagrammatic thinking to figure out what to report on.

This week I have been exposed to these external influences. Paper : Systems dynamics and systems thinking, Soft OR, Jay W.Forrester | Paper: System behaviour and Causal loop diagrams, Jay W.Forrester, M. Senge |  Book: Surfaces and essences Douglas Hofstader  | book: micro interactions, Dan Schaffer  | web article: http://tinyurl.com/odajf29 (Diagrammatic Thinking Alexander Gerner) | web article: http://tinyurl.com/p2c5enb (Buddhism, emptiness) video: Mobile UX (Luke Wrobleski) | Charles S. Peirce, Manuscripts on Existential Graphs, | Social event: KaosPilot. A whole bunch of Swiss and Danish people.

From the above mentioned influences, there were three over arching influences this week which have influenced me and made me dive deeper into more of an understanding of thinking, communication and patterns.

This week I started working for the Western Cape Government as a Usability Architect . So, I would say my mind was more focused on figuring out how to incorporate all tasks into into something workable and palpable . In this time I noticed that I was in a heightened state of observation, in all areas so that I could figure out how to incorporate everything in and still research something I was truly passionate about. While this was an incredibly busy week of external interactions with the world, I feel like there were more internal interactions and analysis going on.I recognised that I had spent most of my time analysing what I was doing, rather than getting any ‘real’ work done. I think the reason for this was because I was trying very hard to recognise an emerging pattern or constellation of how everything connects to each other. Where are the overlapping areas?I noticed that there was not enough clarity in my thought, so I was unable to recognise where parts where overlapping. Similarly to last week I had been visited by way too much anxiety. So, once again I stepped backwards and decided to look at where thinking, innovation or creativity would step in and start to come up with an evolution or new idea of this reality.

 “It is by searching for strong, insight-providing analogues in our memory that we try to grasp essences of the unfamiliar situations that we face all the time – the endless stream of curve balls that life throws at us. The quest for suitable analogues is a kind of art that certainly deserves “vital”, and as in any other for of art, there seldom is a single right answer. For this reason, although proportional analogies may on occasion be gleaming jewels of precision and elegance, the image that they give of the nature of analogy-making is wildly misleading to anyone who would seek the crux of that mental phenomenon. “ Douglas Hofstader ,Surfaces and Essences, Pg 33 |

This week I have been a lot more mindful about, language, visual images and conversations. In Surfaces and Essences, Hofstader claims that our language is made up of analogies. We create these analogies to figure out what someone else has experienced. In other words, when we are talking or listening to someone, we use our imagination to understand them. We either interpret what they are saying through our own experience or we user our own experiences to help them perceive what we are trying to articulate. I noticed that this was particularly interesting when meeting new people. There are no established precepts yet. There are no patterns or clusters of information which have been created together to form a standard set of understandings. The only reference of the person in front of you, is everything you have experienced within yourself. It’s almost as if we’re constantly going through self-actualisation through the recognition of images, conversations and recognition of behaviour in others. In my interactions with others I noticed that I was listening from my own understanding of the subject, so that I could find meaning for myself. I was trying to understand the exchange of analogy. Similarly, Dan Schaffer speaks about the construction of metaphors in User interface design, in Microinteractions.

“Everything we see or hear while using digital devices is an abstraction. Very few of us really know what’s happening when we use any kind of software device. Just as examples, you’re not really putting a “file” into a “folder” and “email” isn’t really arriving into your “inbox.” Those are all metaphors that allow us to understand the interactions that are going on. anything you see, hear, or feel that helps you to understand the rules of the system is feedback, the third part of micro interactions. “  Dan Schaffer ,Microinteractions, Page 37 |

This is similar to what Hofstader mentions above. Our communication streams are bundled up pieces of pattern or code which we have at one point in our life experienced and we have stored it in our hard drive for a later instance. This is also how we deal with absurdity, by mix matching all of these preconceived patterns into different orders to figure out or create our reality.

 “We form in the imagination some sort of diagrammatic, that is, iconic, representation of the facts, as skeletonized as possible. The impression of the present writer is that with ordinary persons this is always a visual image, or mixed visual and muscular [ … ] If visual, it will either be geometrical, that is, such that familiar spatial relations stand for the relations asserted in the premises, or it will be algebraical, where the relations are expressed by objects which are imagined to be subject to certain rules are, whether conventional or experiential. “ Charles S. Peirce, Manuscripts on Existential Graphs, CP 2.778.

While reading this statement it also made me think of Usability testing with interfaces, from my understanding 70 % of users would say to me in a test.“ I’m a very visual person, I like to understand what I need to do by looking at a picture. It’s just easier .”  It always amazes me that almost everyone I have encountered in a usability test says that.Since figuring out how to create causal loops from last weeks class, this excerpt really resonated with me in a new light. It made me think of the state I was in at the beginning of the week. I was trying to grasp through the abstract absurdity of situations to look for a solidified visual perception, understanding or recognition so that I could report back, in this very learning log. Of course, the way I came to understand this, was by drawing a diagram about it.