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Changing interactions to improve L&T#

Spark#

Formal institutional L&T is a complex system. Change in complex systems is best achieved by changing the interactions in preferred ways. Rather than specifying desired outcomes.

If/how can the gathering/weaving/augmenting idea be used to use this idea to improve L&T in concrete/contextual ways?

Thinking#

Snowden's approach to "design thinking" is

  1. Choose a scaffolding
  2. Define your objects (including people)
  3. Define your interactions
  4. See what emerges - respond appropriately

In particular, with software don't automate early. Have people interact with the software and once stability emerges, automate it hen.

design as the emergent property of the interaction of multiple objects around scaffolding over time with further automation and structure of stable patterns as they emerge

It's ecological design. It's not engineering design. You're designing an ecosystem which also means you're open to novel forms emerging which you couldn't have anticipated

Sources#

Ann Pendleton-Jullian - Design Unbound

Pendleton-Jullian, A. M., & Brown, J. S. (2018). *Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World, Volume 1: Designing for Emergence*. MIT Press.

David Snowden - (Snowden, 2023) Rethinking Design Thinking with Dave Snowden - (Snowden, 2019) Thinking about design 'thinking'

Follow up#

Design Unbound#

It talks about design being unbound from thingness and disciplinary boundaries: unbound from thingness so that it can shift its focus from designing things, as content in the world,to shaping contexts; and unbound from disciplinary boundaries so that it can make progress on highly entangled problems. This is the setup for designing for emergence as the means for agency and impact (Pendleton-Jullian & Brown, 2018, pp 8-9)

By focusing on contexts not content,on entanglements of influences not simple causalities,on dynamic not static systems,and equipped with new methods and tools for wrestling with entanglements and designing for emergence, we believe this practice has the potential to affect the future in a bold way. (Pendleton-Jullian & Brown, 2018, p. 40)

Unbound from thingness#

Many of the important problems have to do with systems and models that are not physical,or they are wicked,meaning that they do not lend themselves to solutions at all: education,overpopulation, water shortages,climate change,health,geopolitical conflicts. To work in and on these problems requires more than fiddling with things in contexts.It requires that we work on the contexts themselves (Pendleton-Jullian & Brown, 2018, p. 79)

That is not to say that one does not design things...But it is the design of things in relationship to each other,and in relationship to their contexts—the social,mental, and material ecologies to which they belong—that gives the object a different kind of impact and gives design a different kind of agency. (Pendleton-Jullian & Brow, 2018, pp. 79-80)

Unbound from disciplinary boundaries#

Echoes of epistemic-fluency here

Disciplinary perspectives allow us to unpack the complexity for different purposes. But ecosystems are not definable by discrete functionality, so designing new contexts that are integrated, rich, and coherent means that we need to work vigorously across and above disciplinary boundaries. (Pendleton-Jullian & Brown, 2018, p 81)

Designing for emergence#

Making progress on complex problems that are not about things requires thinking and designing with an understanding that one cannot design for absolute outcomes.The future cannot be designed.The future emerges out of actions in the present as they are influenced and interpreted through actions of the past.One must design understanding principles of emergence. (Pendleton-Jullian & Brown, 2018, p. 81)

El Sistema and its component parts were things.But the real change occurred because they were mechanisms that created small-scale,simple interactions among the diverse individual parts that led to more complex behavioral changes to the social systems themselves. (Pendleton-Jullian & Brown, 2018, p. 82)

A new tool box#

Argues there are three ways to affect the evolution of a complex system

  1. Work on the boundary conditions that define the scope/constraints of the system - these define what is in the "system", how it's thought of?
  2. Create probes and see what happens. (mentions these can be seen as a micromodulator)
  3. Create modules that do work within the system and alter the system and evolution (or as a microprobe)

Their toolbox proposes a set of 9 instruments (knowledge/skill/method-based) for designing for emergence

And three metatools that work at the ecology ofhte proejct.

Tools

  1. Rapid Iteration in a Problem Solving Setting (Think Fast Chess)
  2. The Expanded Brief (Jumping Fences)
  3. Critique (Based In Language Not Science)
  4. Orchestrating Ambiguity (Structured Ambiguity)
  5. Skills Matter (Navigating White Water)
  6. Understanding Emergence
  7. World Building
  8. Understanding Networks
  9. Intervals of Possibility

metatools

  1. Designing for Emergence
  2. System of Action
  3. The Change Triangle 3.0

Changing Interactions - Snowden#

(Snowden, 2023)

I'm changing the way that people interact so that they see things differently are not actually telling anything about what sort of behavior I want and just changing the way that people act and this is a key thing on complexity theory of change we never talk about desired behaviors we talk about changing interactions so that the behaviors will emerge which by the way I think is more ethical

Scaffolding#

(Snowden, 2023)

this is a new type of design which is actually more cost efficient but it requires distributed decision making and we've done a lot of work on that lately and distributed decision making is not the same thing as delegated decision making that's a really important difference

yeah so you choose a scaffolding you define your objects and you define your interactions and you see what emerges and the way we're moving on this on software design at the moment is say people are objects too you could probably get software out a lot faster if you had human objects which interacted with the software objects around scaffolding and once you get sufficient stability you might automate things but you don't automate everything up front because human beings can actually handle judgment in different ways so effectively that's starting to talk about design as the emergent property of the interaction of multi-type objects around scaffolding over time with further automization and structure of stable patterns as they emerge and this deals with things which can't be known until you deal with it it's ecological design it's not engineering design yeah you're designing an ecosystem which also means you're open to novel forms emerging which you couldn't have anticipated but may be more useful instead

See also#