Tracee -  The "design for" framing of the generative context is not just to
orient it to the stakeholders problem, which is important, but is aligned
with what Liz Sanders has published on design purposes in "Cocreation and
the new landscapes of design." A lot of practitioners were already adopting
this perspective and her article gives a context for the shift in thinking.
I'm working on a book on design cases and practices across selected domains
of healthcare titled in this way "Design for Care," the thesis being that
designers have the outlook and duty when in healthcare to consider design
work as part of the helping and healing professions, not a separate
discipline with its own concerns for designing. "Design for" is expressed as
a statement of intent to support a much larger social concern. In my way of
looking at this, the specialization in a deep domain resolves the dilemma
discussed by Fil and Klaus, considering the extent to which designers can be
effective as generalists in our increasingly specialized worlds. A third
path is "designing for" a deep domain (such as healthcare practice) in which
no practitioner can claim complete expertise. Design effectiveness can be
seen as responding appropriately to the shared concerns for problem solving
in complex human systems in a domain.

 

With respect to socialization, there is a lot more here, but my framing of
the problem differs from other cases in the literature. I presented a
working paper on socialization at the 2008 Participatory Design Conference,
and published a small management-oriented book as a case study "We Tried to
Warn You" and some other related works on a selected publications page
http://designdialogues.com/?page_id=149   At OCAD we're working this
approach into the curriculum for the new MDes program in Strategic Foresight
and Innovation. 

 

Socialization of practice came about as a response to an organizational
demand for institutionalization of an internal interactive design shop,
after a major product launch failure, and they did not have the right people
or resources to establish a department. I was a design and organizational
consultant who insisted that an institutionalization approach to form a
creative practice might destroy its competitive value to innovation, by
converting it to another set of organizational routines and resources
believed by management to be fungible.

 

The purposes behind "institutionalization" are usually sound - a firm or a
product division needs to have a reliable organizational capability for
product design, user research, design integration, and project advising.
Such a group should be self-organizing, self-developing, and resilient to
the changes inherent in product development and management decision making.
But while product and marketing managers can easily regroup into new teams,
design is a practice that benefits the organization by its development of
more tacit, creative, and situated capacities. These capacities are not
formed, enhanced or protected in an institutionalization context. 

 

I can appreciate why you'd ask about the background and support for the
socialization perspective on design practices. Most of the organizational
research on innovation practice appears in the organizational studies, IS,
and management literatures, and much less is published in design research.
From my perspective, organizational design is a complex system design
problem, not a "management problem" per se. But the support for development
of a theory of practice socialization comes from the IS schools and social
scientists such as Orlikowski and Ciborra, Geoff Walsham, Boland and
Collopy. 

 

Best, Peter

 

Peter Jones   |     <http://redesignresearch.com/dialogues/> Design
Dialogues     

 

Can designers save lives by designing better healthcare systems?
<http://designdialogues.com/?page_id=334> Design for Care




 

<much snipped per Ken>


I love your comment regarding how to frame the issue within the overall
organization -- we are finding this to be true. It helps a lot to reframe a
scenario according to a business bottom line as opposed to adding detail on
the specific use-case/scenario or how a feature will work ... or at least to
mix these statements. The business bottom line is less debatable than a
specific (abstract) design decision. 

I think there's more here, right? Getting to the point of realizing/applying
what you're saying about a socialization process? Are there schools teaching
this now? How do they teach it? What do they teach? How do organizations
recognize this activity and support it? What are the guiding criteria for
success? 

thanks! 
Tracee