Hi Don,
Thank you for the 'heads up' on the articles on 'how social science informs
engineering practice'.
This is one of those fascinating puzzles: why is the field of engineering
design is so far behind in drawing on expertise and knowledge in social
sciences, business and art AND why are other fields of design so far behind
in drawing on expertise and knowledge available in engineering design
fields? Its been the same since the 60s (which is as far back as I can
remember!)
It was interesting to read the article on 'Decision Strategies for
Addressing Complex, "Messy" Problems ' .
The examples were great. Except.... why was there no examples of the ways to
solve this level of problem? Its almost as if everyone is pretending there
are no methods.
Some everyday strategies would be:
1. Use the usual tests for associative commutative identity and
distributive properties of regions of the problem and context (to get some
idea about the qualities of the sub-spaces).
2. identify boundary functions, limits, trends etc for regions of problem
and solution space
3. Map obvious loops, with influences delays, costs and benefits
4. Map the variety distribution of the problem context and solution space
and its likely dynamic changes (to apply variety axioms)
5. Identify classic problem elements and look for relationships between
chunks.
6. Use Zwicky's morphological tests
7. Create 'true to reality' abstractions and then abstractions of
abstractions and repeat until it ceases to be useful
8. Map the situation in terms of problem and entity dimensions and look for
relationships ( and any characteristic behaviours and entity/relationship
clumps (or their inverses))
9. Do some crude brute force mapping to get an idea of the space and how it
changes .
There's probably a few others too I've forgotten for the moment.
The nuclear examples given in the article each look like they could be
easily mapped as a couple or three of linked 'externality' problems. Looked
at a different way, they might be seen having the structure of linked
'tragedy of the commons' problems with 'benefits' and 'decisions' reversed.
(In the same way that in an entity-relationship representation, you can
regard the 'relationship' operators as 'entities' and then have the original
'entities' doing the relationship work - in a similar representative
structure).
We know enough about situations whose behaviours are shaped by
'externalities' or 'tragedy of the commons' factors to predict behaviours
of the parts of the situation over time (and the situations are structured
well enough for this to predict the behaviour of the whole) , even to
modify things to change the outcomes!
It seems like way too many of these kind of situations are lumped as
complex, messy or 'wicked' unnecessarily. The ways of analysing them are
pretty straightforward but a bit harder than 'this causes that' (and its
important to know when 'this causes that' doesn't work!).
It would be good to see more and better explanations and examples of tools
to understand and predict the behaviour of situations that are not so
simple, without reaching for the magic, creativity, intuition and hero
buttons.
This is territory often on the other side of Ackoff, Churchman, Deming and
the like. If you have any pointers to classic texts you've come across, I'd
appreciate them.
Best wishes,
Terry
--
Dr. Terence Love, FDRS
Director
Praxis Education
Research and Academic Publishers
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
[log in to unmask]
(Trading name of Love Services Pty Ltd)
--
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Don
Norman
Sent: Monday, 22 October 2012 9:12 AM
To: Dr Terence Love
Subject: Articles on "messy, wicked, and ill-structured" problems
Some of you might find the articles in the Fall 2012 issue of the magazine
"The Bridge" of interest. This is the official magazine of the United States
National Academy of Engineering (The National Academies are the American
equivalent of the British Royal Society).
The current issue is focused upon "How social science informs engineering
practice," a most unusual topic for engineers to think about (or even admit
to), and one that is very relevant to many of the issues and problems
discussed by design.
The articles are available at
http://www.nae.edu/Publications/Bridge/62556.aspx
The key article addressing "messy, wicked, and ill-structured" problems is
"Decision Strategies for Addressing Complex, "Messy" Problems " but I found
the entire issue to be of interest.
Don
Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group, IDEO Fellow
[log in to unmask] www.jnd.org http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/
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