Dear Don,

Thank you for your reminder. I had thought that Beer's VSM was common
currency in designing products, services and systems. Obviously not! On the
Internet, however, it is well represented. A Google search on "beer VSM"
raises 24,500 results of which the first hundred or so are on target.

Here's a brief explanation and some background on the Viable System Model
(VSM) of Anthony Stafford Beer as it connects with design research.

Beer's VSM is one of the five or so 'classic' system approaches to support
new designs of complex products or services - where complex systems designs
include (say) a pencil, a fork, or a word. The complexity depends on the
viewer rather than the object.

If you Google "Beer VSM wiki" it is the first item (from here in Australia)
and found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_System_Model. The wiki item
shows and explains the basic elements and structure of Beer's VSM. The
understanding and use of VSM  and its application to designing and
researching design is, however, much broader and more complex than the wiki
description. A starting point is to read all of Beer's books and then do a
journal search on how people have used the VSM in research and design.

Stafford Beer developed a Viable System Model (VSM) to show the absolute
minimum in elements and structure that any autonomous system needs to be
viable - whether  a brain, country, animal, eco-system, computer system,
pencil fork or word. A VSM model  is always reflexive in that all and any
element of the VSM contains a whole VSM if it is to be viable.

Beer's VSM model was famously used via the most minimal information feedback
as a means to redesign and successfully turn round the economy of Chile in
the short while before Allende was killed (see, Cybersyn in
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Anthony_Stafford_Beer ).

Mostly in the literature, the use of Beer's  VSM  is described in terms of
organisation design. For an accessible description of VSM see also
http://www.esrad.org.uk/resources/vsmg_3/screen.php?page=preface . Another
easy to read description of Beer's VSM is that of Allenna Leonard on
http://www.cybsoc.org/VSMKEY.doc .

What has this to do with Design or the design of products or services ?

Beer's VSM is a powerful design tool for the design of complex
socio-technical systems. These are design systems (products and services)
that involve people and technology. The combination of 'people and
technology' includes pretty well the whole of all designed output. Examples
of socio-technical systems would include (say), iPod, Mac computer, car,
bookshelf, phd program, airport security, advertisement, silver jewellery,
oil and gas refinery, anti-terrorism strategy and fork. Sometimes
socio-technical systems  are viewed as services and sometimes as products.

For a simplistic example  of the use  of VSM in Organisation Design and
Design Strategy see Love, T. (2008). Improving Design of Micro-business
Systems via VSM and Constituent Orientation Analysis. In C. Rust (Ed.),
Design Research Society International Conference 2008: Undisciplined! (pp.
CDROM). Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Hallam University and Design Research
Society [CDROM] available as a pre-print at
http://www.love.com.au/PublicationsTLminisite/2008/drs-sme-vsm.htm . This
paper uses VSM as the basis to develop design guidelines for improving the
design of business processes and organisational structures for the
micro-business sector.

One powerful aspect of Beer's VSM is the way it can be used to study
pathology of design, i.e. the study of harm and failure of designs (before
they are implemented) or understanding the deep-seated mis-structuring of a
design that will result in failure. When the VSM model does not fully or
exactly map onto a design then the differences are associated with well
known systemic pathological failures that will play out in the life of the
designed product or service. This immediately provides feedback to identify
and rectify designs before they are put into production

Beer's VSM covers the same territory and integrates well with other
dimensions of design practice and design research such as interaction
design, HCI, emotionally-based design, communication design and  ergonomics.
In part, it does this because it spans and provides a parallel
representation of  the theory-bases of several disciplines such as
psychology,  engineering, business and organisations, art and linguistics.

My experience is that (after the few months of initial study needed to get a
handle on it ) Beer's  VSM offers an easy and powerful way of understanding
many cross disciplinary and integrating issues that are badly addressed when
looked at from single issue design research perspectives such as interaction
design, communications, ergonomics or organisation design.

To get some idea of the level of integration of the VSM and design theory,
see the 1959 sketch for a cybernetic factory in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Stafford_Beer

If anyone requires more explanation of Beer's VSM or any other systems tool
in Design, please get in touch.

If anyone wants an cheap ebook on the practical use of systems methodology,
you can download one  from

http://www.praxiseducation.com/catalog/ebook-systems-thinking-associated-met
hodologies-p-60.html

Please make sure you got all the URL!  (I'm the publisher).

I'd love to hear from  anyone on the list is actively using Beer's VSM or
other systems approaches in design  research and design practice.

Best wishes,
Terry
____________________

Dr. Terence Love, FRDS, AMIMechE, PMACM

Director Design-focused Research Group, Design Out Crime Research Group
Researcher, Digital Ecosystems and Business Intelligence Institute
Associate,  Planning and Transport Research Centre
Curtin University, PO Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845
Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask]
Visiting Professor, Member of Scientific Council
UNIDCOM/ IADE, Lisbon, Portugal
Honorary Fellow, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
____________________