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Toward Design Theory and Expandable Rationality: The Unfinished Program of Herbert Simon
Abstract
Problem solving also soon became the key entry to what he labeled a « science of the artificial » or a « Science of Design ». This second program took growing importance in connection with his own involvement in Artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology. Here one can be grateful to Simon's outstanding shrewdness and insight. Although there is now an increased awareness to innovation and growth processes, still few economists would spontaneously think that a good theory of Design is important for their own discipline. Yet, Simon's attempts to develope a Design theory remain unfinished. I will discuss in this paper the two central reasons that support this point : i) Simon's always maintained that Design and creativity were special forms of problem solving while it is more likely that Decision making and problem solving are restricted forms of Design ; ii) Simon's limited interest for the construction of social interaction which is a key resource of design processes3. This discussion will allow me to introduce a concept of « expandable rationality » as a potential paradigm for design theory. To conclude, I will suggest that, in spite of human agents limitations in problem solving and decision making, economic growth and value creation may result from their expandable design abilities.
... Design has been amply studied from many different perspectives such as engineering, economy, management, cognitive sciences, among others. However, it is often that we find in literature that authors seem to agree of the dispersion or lack of development in certain areas, or even on the role and importance that design has beyond simply aesthetics (Dorst & Dijkhuis, 1995;Hatchuel, 2001;Hobday et al., 2011). Beyond this agreement and desire for more research into design field a lot has already been built in what is referred as theory of design from the works of researchers such as Archer, Nadler and Cross or paradigms of design from Simon and Schön. ...
... On one side we find the paradigm of design as a rational problemsolving process. This paradigm was one of the initial theories of design that served as a basis for the understanding and study of design process and still holds an important place on today's views of design (Dorst & Dijkhuis, 1995;Hatchuel, 2001). On the other side we find a completely different paradigm that questions and criticizes the problem-solving paradigm. ...
... The paradigm of design developed by Herbert Simon, is rooted in the organizational field but more specifically in Simon's intensive and extensive exploration of decision making and bounded rationality (Hatchuel, 2001). Simon regarded design as creative thinking that is unconventional and produces novelty and deals with poorly defined problem where an important part of the process is to formulate it (Simon, 1980). ...
It is common for a design team to be handed a problem to solve for others. The handing over is normally referred to as a ‘briefing’ process, and the documentation of the starting point and what is to be done is known as a ‘brief’. It is known that the way we frame and understand a problem influences what paths we see to potential solutions. The aim of this thesis is to understand what makes a good design brief and to do so in order to create an empirically informed, and theoretically underpinned, typology of design briefs and the kind of search processes they are disposed to induce.
Different bodies of literature have tried to grasp how design solves problems in order to understand designer’s behavior and ultimately facilitate or improve it. Distinctions can, and have been made, between different kinds of problem formulations, as well as different problem-solving approaches. This thesis aims to integrate two previously distinct literatures, search process from the organizational perspective developed by James G. March, Herbert A. Simon, Richard Cyert and others and Design and the Design Process from the perspectives of authors such as Donald Schön, Kees Dorst and Nigel Cross among others, to propose a typology of design briefs in order to ultimately facilitate problem formulation and subsequently facilitate the design process.
The simple and immediate answer to the question of what makes a good design brief is: ‘that depends’. It depends on the design process to be followed (if there is one), it depends on the kind of goals that should be achieved, the time available, and it also depends on how much and what is known about the problem and potential solutions. Based on this, four ideal types of design briefs are articulated, including the expected associated search behavior and challenges of design teams.
... Schön traces the history of this view and describes how it has come to dominate institutions of higher education, and how it in turn shapes our approaches to research and education. A detailed summary of this view is beyond the scope of this paper (see [17,25] for general discussions, and [42] for a discussion related to data visualization). As an epistemology of practice, technical rationality implies certain things about the nature of knowledge and how it should be taught. ...
... In some fields, like operations research, it may be possible to follow highly formal, mathematical methods to optimize possible solution paths and achieve rigor in process outcomes. In most design fields, however, where dichotomies of true/false and right/wrong do not make sense, and optimization is often an unhelpful guide, there may be a high degree of uncertainty and, in principle, an infinite number of outcomes that could satisfy the needs of the design situation [25]. As educators in such fields, we need resist the allure of technical rationality and seek out a more appropriate epistemological foundation on which to ground our teaching efforts. ...
As the professional field of data visualization grows, so does the importance of preparing students effectively for the demands of real-world practice. Computing education has historically sought to teach and evaluate abstract knowledge (e.g., theories, principles, guidelines, design patterns) and the application of such knowledge to given problems. However, situations faced in professional practice are often messy, dynamic, and uncertain, and do not lend themselves well to the clear and direct application of such knowledge. This leaves a gap between the knowledge learned in the classroom and what is required for skillful practice in professional settings. In this paper, I discuss some historical reasons for this dominant pedagogi-cal perspective, some of the core features of professional practice that are not typically taught in classrooms, and ways in which data visualization design can be taught to be more resonant with the experience of professional practice.
... More recently, Hatchuel has argued that Simon's attempts to develop a theory of design cognition were left unfinished [22]. Inspired by Simon's famous concept of bounded rationality, Hatchuel has proposed the concept of "expandable rationality" as a paradigm that addresses some of Simon's shortcomings. ...
... A perspective that may be helpful here is Hatchuel's concept of "expanded rationality" [22], briefly described previously in Section 4. Hatchuel argues that true design problems involve infinite and non-countable sets, for which heuristic search his not an appropriate strategy. Bounded rationality does not help with these kinds of situations, because true design situations are infinitely expandable. ...
In this chapter I introduce the field of design cognition and its relevance to data visualization. I outline two historically dominant paradigms of design cognition. The first, promoted by Herbert Simon in the 1970s, is the rational problem solving paradigm which is based on information processing psychology and problem solving theory. The second, promoted by Donald Schön in the 1980s, is the reflective practice paradigm which is based on constructivist philosophy and situated views of cognition. I describe some of their strengths and weakness, and some attempts to reconcile their differences. Underlying philosophical issues pertaining to cognition and epistemology are briefly discussed. I then examine implications of these two paradigms for four data visualization topics: defining, automating, modeling, and teaching data visualization design. In discussing these topics, possible avenues of future research are proposed.
... Successfully dealing with challenges means creating a digital product with a new and comprehensible meaning. However, our findings show that this judgment is based less on optimization and more on satisfaction (Hatchuel, 2001;Simon, 1969). One possible reason is because the incorporation of malleable software assumes endless functional extension and improvement (e.g., the continuous speed-up of the merging system after product launch, DA#05) (Yoo et al., 2010a). ...
... Compared with finding a specific exit point, it is more meaningful to monitor whether and how well the meaning of the digital product being designed meets the challenges associated with the existing product and the desire for betterment. The exit depends on the designers' satisfaction (Hatchuel, 2001;Simon, 1969). ...
Digital product innovation involves a meaning-making process. Designers of digital innovations often challenge established product meanings as they digitize physical products, such as cars, toothbrushes, and water bottles. A significant problem for product designers, however, is striking the right balance between the newness and comprehensibility of product meanings. Failure to do so may result in a digital product innovation that is too conventional or difficult to relate to or understand. Yet, the extant digital product innovation literature pays little, if any, attention to product meaning. To fill this void, this study examines a digital product innovation project in which product designers created a digital theater with product meanings beyond those of the traditional movie theater. Our theory, grounded in in-depth data collection and analysis, explains how product designers attribute meanings to their products in the process of digital innovation by enacting two meaning-making loops: a reinforcing loop that makes the product meaning comprehensible, and a differentiating loop that captures emerging product meanings. The two loops come together via meaning sedimentation, through which a new core product meaning is created. Our study contributes to the digital product innovation literature by shedding light on the essential role of meaning-making in innovation and offers an explanatory process theory.
... To explore the users' expanded and overarching experience related to the computing devices designers used the living lab concept (Brush 2009;Dell'Era and Landoni 2014;Feurstein et al. 2008;Rogers 2011;Taylor 2016). The design process in such real-life settings can best be characterised as one of co-evolution, implying that problem and solution spaces cannot be defined at any specific point in the design process but they evolve over time and can be continually modified (Crilly 2021;Dorst and Cross 2001;Hatchuel 2001;Poon and Maher 1997). In this sense, the living lab condition can be seen as influencing the designers' prevalent process towards greater coevolution of problem-solution spaces. ...
... Extensive user journey explored in living lab indicated that the design problem cannot be defined at a certain point of the design process, but it continually evolves and modifies based on the results (Dorst 2006;Hatchuel 2001). ...
In this study, we envision engineering design activities for collective computing, an upcoming era of complex systems of massive social interaction through a wide variety of connected computing devices. A literature review reveals how collective computing, compared to the previous eras of personal and ubiquitous computing, may lead to new design tasks and design processes, as well as new roles for designers. Based on this review, new design activities for the collective computing era are envisioned, and further revised in an interview study with 24 informants. The result is a vision for design in the collective computing era, with actionable guidance for designers in terms of a coherent set of new design activities proposed in relation to advances in computing.
... For me personally, it is a life long research program: the first international article I ever published (Grandori, 1984) made two points: that decision models can be more fruitfully seen as contingent decision strategies (depending on the state of knowledge and the configuration of interests) rather than "rival paradigm"; and that there was a conspicuous "hole" in our decision-making equipment: models that combine the discovery and generative capacity of heuristic reasoning with logically defendable procedures. The guest editors of the present SI were involved already in various roles in a prior SI in memory of Herbert Simon (Foss, 2001;Grandori, 2001;Hatchuel, 2001), intended to develop Simon in directions that, albeit present in his thought, have been neglected. One of those was his methodological and epistemological legacy (Simon, 1977). ...
The special issue “Expanding the boundaries of rationality: Towards new models of decision making for radical uncertainty” addresses the challenge of developing logically sound models of decision making for conditions of uncertainty evading those manageable by established decision making approaches. This editorial characterizes the sought new models and approach as constructivist in nature but neither deductive nor Bayesian in logic: a set of epistemic rationality models for discovering new problems and solutions (“found” either in the real or the artificial world, i.e., either detected or designed) that extend the available bounded rationality models. This editorial offers a map of this territory, positioning the new heuristics identified in this collection of articles in a more general picture of heuristic methods qualifyable as fit to radical uncertainty.
... Thus, human intentionality and environmental contingency make an exclusively 'scientific' approach inadequate for studying this type of artefact and related phenomena (Simon, 1969). This implies that PPA research is primarily a 'science of the artificial', that is, a professional discipline at the interface of creative design and scientific validation (Simon, 1969;Shangraw and Crow, 1989;Hatchuel, 2001). Therefore, a methodology is needed that connects design and validation or, framed differently, prospective and retrospective approaches to research. ...
... Thus, human intentionality and environmental contingency make an exclusively 'scientific' approach inadequate for studying this type of artefact and related phenomena (Simon, 1969). This implies that PPA research is primarily a 'science of the artificial', that is, a professional discipline at the interface of creative design and scientific validation (Simon, 1969;Shangraw and Crow, 1989;Hatchuel, 2001). Therefore, a methodology is needed that connects design and validation or, framed differently, prospective and retrospective approaches to research. ...
... Thus, human intentionality and environmental contingency make an exclusively 'scientific' approach inadequate for studying this type of artefact and related phenomena (Simon, 1969). This implies that PPA research is primarily a 'science of the artificial', that is, a professional discipline at the interface of creative design and scientific validation (Simon, 1969;Shangraw and Crow, 1989;Hatchuel, 2001). Therefore, a methodology is needed that connects design and validation or, framed differently, prospective and retrospective approaches to research. ...
... General Design Theory (Reich, 1995;Yoshikawa, 1981;Takeda et al., 1990), later developed in the Coupled Design Process design theory (Braha & Reich, 2003), has extended knowledge-based design system methods by relying on topological approaches. C-K design theory can be considered as an extension of the Simonian approach to account for "expandable rationality" (Hatchuel, 2002). ...
... General Design Theory (Reich, 1995;Yoshikawa, 1981;Takeda et al., 1990), later developed in the Coupled Design Process design theory (Braha & Reich, 2003), has extended knowledge-based design system methods by relying on topological approaches. C-K design theory can be considered as an extension of the Simonian approach to account for "expandable rationality" (Hatchuel, 2002). ...
... Simon (1996), in his book The Science of Design, defined design as a search for an optimum in a space of alternatives that take into account the specifications and restrictions of a given problem. Hatchuel (2001) highlighted limitations of Simon's position discussing that designing cannot be reduced to taking decisions among a bounded set because the number of concepts related to the problem and the possible number of decisions to be taken could be expandable and uncountable, not only due to human creativity but also to social interaction. ) place Simon and Hatchuel's approaches in a historical timeline that describes different models of how designing is understood, evidencing the challenges for research design as a discipline that defines a common language that includes the impact of context and users in designing, in addition to the problems.. Probably due to the youth of design as a research discipline, or due to its socio-technical nature, it does not yet have a consolidated research methods and techniques. ...
The relation between scientific research and engineering design is fraught with controversy. While the number of academic PhD programs on design grows, because the discipline is in its infancy, there is no consolidated method for systematically approaching the generation of knowledge in this domain. This paper reviews recently published papers from four top-ranked journals in engineering design to analyse the research methods that are frequently used. The research questions consider the aim and contributions of the papers, as well as which experimental design and which sources of data are being used. Frequency tables show the high variety of approaches and aims of the papers, combining both qualitative and quantitative empirical approaches and analytical methods. Most of the papers focus on methodological concerns or on delving into a particular aspect of the design process. Data collection methods are also diverse without a clear relation between the type of method and the objective or strategy of the research. This paper aims to act as a valuable resource for academics, providing definitions related to research methods and referencing examples, and for researchers, shedding light on some of the trends and challenges for current research in the domain of engineering design.
... 3. It is easy to observe that while we try to provide decision support we alternate two types of activities: designing solutions and evaluating them (a concept already present in the literature; see [50], [19]). In this paper we have shown that constructing a set of alternatives upon which apply a decision problem is itself a decision problem, but the creative process of constructing the set is a far more complex topic. ...
This paper presents a general framework about what is a decision problem. Our motivation is related to the fact that decision analysis and operational research are structured (as disciplines) around classes of methods, while instead we should first characterise the decision problems our clients present us. For this purpose we introduce a new framework, independent from any existing method, based upon primitives provided by (or elicited from) the client. We show that the number of archetypal decision problems are finite and so the archetypal decision support methods.
... Rekabet gücü faktörleri arasında giderek önemini artıran ve kendine ilk sıralarda yer bulan tasarım faktörü; küreselleşme ve hızlı teknolojik değişim paralelinde ortaya çıkan üretici firmaların sayısındaki artışına, ürün cins ve özelliklerinin çeşitliliğine, tüketicilerin giderek farklılaşan ihtiyaçlarına, artan kalite ve performans beklentilerine yanıt verebilmektedir (Er, 2002). Bu bağlamda tasarım bir stil ya da görünümle ilgili bir etkinlik olarak görülmesine ek olarak; aynı zamanda ekonomik gelişimi ve refah artışında da payı olan, ürün-süreç-hizmetlerin fikir oluşumundan geliştirilmesine kadar merkezi bir konumda yer alan teknik bir faaliyet olarak ta kabul görmektedir (Walsh, 1996;Tether, 2005;Woodham, 2010;Hatchuel, 2002;Hobday, Boddington ve Grantham, 2012). ...
This aim of this study is to reveal the importance of design function, which has recently been seen as one of the most important elements needed to compete, through studies that prove its impact on the financial performance of firms and countries. In this context, customer preferences, which first have a direct impact on financial performance and are analyzed in many scientific studies, are read through the impact of design activity. Second and last, scientific studies that prove and pioneer the interaction between the economic indicators of firms and countries at the end of certain periods and design activity are evaluated. The study focused only on the impact of design on economic indicators, as studies on the impact of design on other non-financial competitive factors were not sufficient in quantity and quality at the end of extensive literature review and reading. As a result of the evaluations, it is understood.
... While these traditions have all developed from distinctive disciplines, they all share a focus on the concepts of stories and experiences (Moscardo, 2017b). Although there is some mention of stories being able to provide a holistic perspective on design (Hatchuel, 2001), as well as stories being considered particularly important within the applied research areas of design science (Holloway et al., 2016) and design thinking (Liedtka, 2018), stories have not been fully analyzed in design literature (Moscardo, 2017b). ...
Tourism destinations must be encouraged to tell their stories and share them with visitors. The objective of this study is to, firstly, increase the understanding of the role of storytelling in tourism destination promotion and, secondly, to ascertain the impact of storytelling on tourism destination promotion. In this chapter, tourism destinations are approached through the intriguing stories that are told about them. Stories have the potential to enhance and promote the qualities of a destination; hence, the chapter discusses the potential of storytelling as a strategic tool in “wrapping” or promoting destinations. It also provides the platform for discussion between various stakeholders at the destination in finding creative ways of promoting the destination. This chapter also discusses place storytelling and emphasises its relevance in promoting tourism destinations, and how stakeholders such as tour guides are employed as storytellers to promote key attributes of the destination.
... While these traditions have all developed from distinctive disciplines, they all share a focus on the concepts of stories and experiences (Moscardo, 2017b). Although there is some mention of stories being able to provide a holistic perspective on design (Hatchuel, 2001), as well as stories being considered particularly important within the applied research areas of design science (Holloway et al., 2016) and design thinking (Liedtka, 2018), stories have not been fully analyzed in design literature (Moscardo, 2017b). ...
Stories have long been a central component to the interpretation of people, culture, and place. Recent research has substantiated the importance of storytelling in heritage tourism settings; however, few studies have provided an overview of storytelling in heritage experience design. This has left academics and service providers alike with little to no guidance as to how to effectively utilize storytelling in their experience offering. This chapter serves to synthetize what is known on the topic of storytelling in heritage experience design. It will explore the relevance of storytelling and experience design in the context of new museology, give an overview of pre-existing frameworks on the subject, and offer a critical analysis highlighting informational gaps and areas of expansion. Beyond guided tours, interpretative signs, and guidebooks, one thing is clear: if they are to facilitate experiences that are more memorable, engaging, and interactive, heritage attractions must utilize storytelling as a design tool.
... Moreover, numerous tools have been developed in the last decades in agronomy to support the change of practices. While decision-support tools guide farmers to take more effective decisions (Rose et al. 2016), for instance to select one solution among a range of existing ones, design-support tools facilitate the invention of solutions that do not yet exist (Hatchuel 2001). They have been described either as being specific to one design goal (e.g., the change of practices in catchment areas to improve water quality, in Prost et al. (2018)), or as focusing on the design of one type of object (e.g., livestock systems in Martin et al. (2018)), or as supporting the ex ante evaluation of solutions (Colnenne-David and Doré 2015), as one step of the design process. ...
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If the challenges involved in agroecological transition are to be addressed, cropping systems (CS) need to be changed profoundly, which in turn requires innovative design adapted to local conditions. This is however by no means an easy task since such design activity requires extensive knowledge on objects and processes rarely studied until now, most of which is distributed among numerous stakeholders. Since the 2000s, research on design in agriculture has aimed at developing participatory methods to support on-farm design of new systems, but few studies have focused on the elaboration of design-support tools. With a view to defining the features of tools intended to support the design of agroecology-oriented cropping systems, ergonomists recommended an analysis of the activities of the future users of these tools in their real work situations. We started out by implementing a diagnosis of use situations, based on observations of real collective design activities. To this end, we took part in six design workshops, which differed in terms of goals and of designers participating (i.e., farmers, advisors, students, or scientists). We first identified the diversity of features of these design situations, and then analyzed three processes across the design workshops: (i) the reformulation of the design goal; (ii) the large exploration of candidate solutions; and (iii) the local adaptation of these solutions while anticipating the on-field implementation. Here, we show, for the first time, the type of reasonings and knowledge that designers and facilitators displayed and used throughout the agroecological cropping system design process. We identify the features that future design-support tools should have to guide co-designers of agroecological CS. Such tools should promote several types of design reasoning and allow the development of external representations of the object under design. Our results provide operational guidelines for the elaboration of new design-support tools.
... Hatchuel et al. [37] especially recall that the strength of design lies in its 'generativity', i.e. "the ability to conceptualize and create non-existent alternatives". It has thus been argued and demonstrated that design reasoning logic goes beyond "bounded rationality" [56], but rather involved an "expandable rationality" [57]. In this perspective, both problem and solution spaces are associated with a certain degree of unknown and can be progressively expanded through an intertwined exploration of unknown and known objects [58], [59]. ...
Tackling grand challenges requires new forms of collaborative innovation to support intricate design processes involving heterogeneous actors. This article specifically investigates how co-design supports the anchoring of promising novelties into multiple socio-technical systems to accelerate their respective sustainability transitions. A co-design framework adapted to this multi-system context is derived from transition research and design and innovation management research. The framework is validated empirically based on 27 case studies where the novelty to be anchored corresponds to Earth observation data. Contributing to transition research, the article shows how this multi-system co-design framework provides novelty developers with a diagnostic tool to clarify their anchoring strategy, by framing the relevant actions to conduct at different time horizons. Several enrichments of the anchoring concept are also proposed, highlighting some complementarities between different forms of anchoring and the endless property of the process. Contributing to design and innovation management research, the article sheds light on co-design in an original perspective by considering a context crossing the usual boundaries of socio-technical systems and focusing on a diagnostic dimension preceding the organization of collective design sessions. The co-design framework also highlights a so-called “resource-based” form of collaborative innovation aiming to build novelty-based resources for heterogeneous actors facing grand challenges. This approach complements more common “challenge-based” approaches aiming to directly address a targeted challenge.
... La conception de nouvelles solutions se base alors sur des connaissances ou des solutions préexistantes. (Yannou et al., 2013) En France, le modèle de la théorie C-K développé par Hatchuel et al. (Hatchuel, 2001;Hatchuel & Weil, 2002, 2003) représente un modèle fondateur en conception innovante. Ce modèle décrit la conception comme étant un processus d'interaction entre un espace conceptuel (C) et un espace des connaissances (K) comme l'illustre la Figure 21 ci-dessous. ...
Bien que prometteuses et connaissant une évolution croissante, la mise en œuvre de la conception biomimétique et de l’approche du biomimétisme reste complexe et rencontre de nombreux freins méthodologiques et pratiques. Dans ce contexte, cette thèse de doctorat explore comment l’intégration de designers dans les équipes de conception, permet de favoriser le déploiement de la conception biomimétique. Cet axe de recherche nous a permis de définir le rôle des designers dans le cadre de projet en conception biomimétique notamment pour faciliter le transfert de connaissances et la génération de concepts inspirés du vivant. Pour favoriser leur intégration et pour structurer les apports globaux du Design pour la conception biomimétique, des préconisations méthodologiques et organisationnelles sont proposées. De plus, un ensemble de modifications sur le processus de conception biomimétique problem-driven unifié ont été formalisées afin qu’il s’adapte aux pratiques de conception et d’innovation. Les résultats de ces recherches nous permettent d’enrichir conjointement le champ scientifique et le champ industriel de la conception biomimétique. Ces travaux ouvrent des perspectives de recherche à court, moyen et long terme pour développer les recherches concernant le rôle et les impacts des designers et du Design en conception biomimétique, sur le développement du cadre méthodologique et enfin sur la bascule entre la biomimétique et le biomimétisme.
... General Design Theory (Reich, 1995;Yoshikawa, 1981;Takeda et al., 1990), later developed in the Coupled Design Process design theory (Braha & Reich, 2003), has extended knowledge-based design system methods by relying on topological approaches. C-K design theory can be considered as an extension of the Simonian approach to account for "expandable rationality" (Hatchuel, 2002). ...
... Dans la théorie C-K (C pour concept et K pour Connaissances), le design est un processus dans lequel l'expansion des connaissances est intrinsèque (Hatchuel, 2001). Ce design donne naissance à des « conceptions expansives », c'est-à-dire qui créent du nouveau. ...
Enseigner le design dans l'enseignement supérieur demande aux enseignants de cette discipline d'accompagner les étudiants vers un milieu professionnel polymorphe dans un processus créatif qui investit des territoires inexplorés. Or le contexte informationnel dans lequel ils interviennent est surchargé et labile. Les enseignants doivent ainsi porter une attention soutenue aux évolutions de la société, de la discipline, de l'écosystème professionnel et des évolutions des parcours de formation. La veille, est un processus qui permet d'organiser l'écoute de l'environnement, la sélection des signes de changement au service de l'anticipation. À partir de ce processus, nous avons défini un cadre d'analyse afin de pouvoir étudier les signes surveillés par les enseignants veilleurs, l'environnement, le périmètre dans lequel ils veillent et les ressources qu'ils acquièrent. Afin d'affiner les cibles de la surveillance et du recueil de ressources par les enseignants en design, nous avons complété notre cadre avec les éléments liés à la pratique du design, que sont les projets, les enjeux, les processus et les systèmes, puis les éléments liés à l'enseignement du design, que sont les ressources curriculaires, les réseaux d'acteurs, les dispositifs pédagogiques et les problèmes-projets). Nos résultats affirment la centralité de la veille dans l'enseignement du design et dans le design lui-même, et positionne l'enseignant en design comme un méta designer. Pour répondre aux spécificités de l'enseignement du design, nous avons redéfini le terme ressources comme des entités matérielles et immatérielles sur lesquelles les enseignants s'appuient pour leur pratique d'enseignement, que cela concerne la préparation ou le travail de cours. Nous avons identifié des ressources que nous avons nommées ressources incitatives, qui sont des tremplins qui ouvrent des champs de réflexion pour les étudiants durant la conception. Les enseignants s'appuient sur des systèmes d'identification des émergences dans lesquels ils convoquent des sources humaines et documentaires composites selon plusieurs rythmes de renouvellement, à court, moyen et long terme. Les sources humaines, par exemple, sont essentielles, car elles fournissent des informations fraîches et grises et l'accès à des ressources professionnelles évolutives. La compréhension des mécanismes de veille ouvre des perspectives quant à la définition des équilibres des périmètres de veille au sein des équipes des formations de design. Elle permet notamment de mettre en œuvre une surveillance de l'environnement plus construite, conscientisée et coordonnée pour la pratique d'un design ancré dans les problématiques sociétales émergentes.
... Even a simple review of contemporary professional design work in the UK can identify design expertise and designers working on a huge range of issues and opportunities: products, the built environment, services, systems, organisational change, public policies, political movements, institutional forms, and so on. Researchers describing design account for this as design as exceeding current framings and ways of thinking (Hatchuel, 2001). Another explanation holds that in contrast to other professions such as law and accounting, most designers (other than in architecture and engineering), are not strictly a 'profession' if this is defined as having a distinct form of knowledge, regulators specifying what can and cannot be done (or saying what should be done), or institutions that govern its boundaries (Abbott, 1988). ...
Introduction to a series of 6 papers articulating a methodology for assessing the impact and value of design in the UK including design's economic, social and environmental value
... Then, the design of solutions is not limited to choices between options based on the available criteria, but rather encompasses the generation of further possible solutions (Lu and Conger 2007). Thus, it is possible to go beyond optimization, and beyond the range of existing solutions (Hatchuel 2001;Hatchuel et al. 2013Hatchuel et al. , 2018. It can be seen that these two types of problem-solving approaches, simple and complex, or innovative, are complementary, as they address different types of problems and exhibit different degrees of elaboration in the resolution of the problem. ...
In this study, we examine innovative design practices on the Saint-Nazaire Airbus factory shop floor. The engineering and manufacturing engineering departments are in charge of the design of products and their industrialization, even though the factory is usually seen as a place for manufacturing, rather than design. However, there is also design activity in a factory that is devoted to the optimization of manufacturing processes. In this study, we highlight an alternative form of design that relies on a collective exploratory approach. A total of 30 projects from the Saint-Nazaire Airbus factory were selected and analyzed. Of these, two were selected as case studies to illustrate the factory’s different design methods. Subsequently, quantitative analysis provided evidence of the existence of two design regimes: closed prescription and expandable prescription. The resulting solutions were examined, and it was found that designs under the expandable prescription regime provided more robust long-term solutions. This study offers new perspectives for reexamining innovation in manufacturing and exploring design activity on factory shop floors.
... Alors que Simon considère que l'organisation est un objet existant de façon objective, Barnard invite à considérer le phénomène organisationnel comme en partie à concevoir : à travers la mise en évidence de la dimension idéale du common purpose, il reconnaît la capacité de l'entreprise de poursuivre un état du monde qui n'existe pas encore. Or, si cette poursuite de « l'inconnu » est difficilement appréhendable dans le paradigme purement décisionnel introduit par Simon (Hatchuel, 2002), elle est au coeur de la théorie naissante de l'Entreprise à Mission. En introduisant un cadre de gouvernance qui encourage et guide l'exploration dans l'inconnu, ce courant contribue à continuer la réhabilitation de la dimension idéale du concept, qui avait été écartée par Simon. ...
L’introduction de la notion de « raison d’être » dans le droit amène à interroger l’identité des entreprises de service public. Si ces entreprises ont par définition déjà pour mission d’opérer des services particuliers, il n’y a pas de théorie propre de l’entreprise de service public ou de sa gouvernance. Les entreprises sont plutôt appréhendées comme des entités hybrides, conjuguant une logique « publique » et une logique privée. En s’appuyant sur les théories récentes de l’entreprise, la thèse propose de relire l’entreprise de service public en partant de sa capacité de création collective. A travers une recherche en partenariat avec La Poste, elle met en évidence que l’entreprise de service public n’est pas seulement un opérateur de service public mais aussi le vecteur d’une dynamique de régénération des enjeux de service public. Elle propose ainsi une nouvelle représentation de l’identité de l’entreprise de service public et de sa responsabilité vis-à-vis des mutations de la société à accompagner et discute, dans ce contexte, les enjeux spécifiques de la raison d’être.
... Frente a este aspecto, Cristofaro (2017) afirma que es importante no confundir el concepto de racionalidad limitada con la irracionalidad. De igual forma, Hatchuel (2001) afirmó que Simon rechazaba el concepto del comportamiento humano basado en la racionalidad y la maximización de la utilidad promulgado por la economía clásica. ...
El propósito del presente artículo es contextualizar al lector sobre la importancia de la estrategia conductual como campo emergente de la investigación en gestión empresarial, particularmente desde la denominada escuela reduccionista, que se orienta hacia el estudio de procesos de cognición individual soportada en conceptos como racionalidad limitada, la teoría prospectiva, las heurísticas y sesgos cognitivos, y el proceso dual de cognición; para de esta forma comprender el proceso de toma de decisiones que puede presentarse por diferentes actores en la empresa, no solo en situaciones de incertidumbre como las que se han vivido a raíz de la pandemia por COVID-19, sino en situaciones generales que implican la toma de decisiones que afectan diferentes aspectos del amplio espectro de la gestión empresarial.
... Les travaux en science de gestion ont défini deux régimes de conception : la conception réglée (rule-based design) et la conception innovante (innovative design) (Le Masson et al., 2014;Le Masson and Weil, 2010). La conception se distingue de la décision dans la mesure où l'objectif n'est pas de sélectionner une solution parmi des alternatives possibles déjà existantes, mais d'élaborer une solution qui n'existait pas au démarrage du processus (Hatchuel, 2001;Hatchuel and Weil, 2002). Les démarches de conception réglée sont mises en place lorsque la solution à développer provient de l'application d'un système de règles qui « assure aux concepteurs qu'ils pourront concevoir une variété d'objets d'un certain type (associée à un « modèle objet ») sans se lancer dans de coûteuses et incertaines explorations », dans une logique de problem solving (Le Masson and Weil, 2010). ...
lien : http://www.theses.fr/2021UPASB031
Favoriser la transition agroécologique suppose de modifier en profondeur les systèmes agricoles actuels en s’appuyant sur des processus de conception innovante. Ces processus appellent à s’intéresser à la fois aux connaissances mobilisées pour le changement de pratiques et aux dynamiques collectives favorisant la production et l’utilisation de ces connaissances. Face à un déficit de connaissances scientifiques pour l’agroécologie, et à la nécessité de construire des pratiques adaptées localement, ces processus mobilisent les connaissances des agriculteurs, issues de pratiques innovantes mises en œuvre, interrogeant ainsi les modes classiques de production, formalisation et circulation des connaissances. Dans ce contexte, la thèse propose de revisiter la capitalisation et le partage des connaissances pour stimuler le changement de pratiques vers l’agroécologie, intégrant des apports de l’agronomie systémique et de l’ergonomie. Notre étude se base sur le cas d’étude de l’outil en ligne GECO, mais nos conclusions ouvrent de plus larges perspectives.La démarche mise en œuvre, centrée utilisateur, a consisté en i) la réalisation d’un diagnostic des situations de co-conception de systèmes agroécologiques, dans le but d’analyser les connaissances mobilisées pour concevoir des objets nouveaux, ii) la proposition de formats de structuration des connaissances dans des types spécifiques de ressources cognitives, visant notamment à soutenir l’exploration et la préparation de la mise en œuvre de systèmes agroécologiques, et iii) l’amélioration de ces ressources par des tests auprès des utilisateurs, qu’ils soient concepteurs de nouvelles pratiques, et donc utilisateurs potentiels de ces ressources, ou contributeurs, et donc producteurs potentiels de telles ressources (ex. agriculteurs, conseillers agricoles, expérimentateurs, enseignants, chercheurs). Nous proposons enfin, un dispositif de capitalisation collective des connaissances mobilisant une plateforme en ligne, visant à favoriser l’hybridation entre des connaissances scientifiques et empiriques, détenues par des acteurs agricoles dispersés sur le territoire et dans des organismes de R&D. Nous proposons également des pistes pour développer une communauté épistémique en ligne qui vise à produire, de manière collaborative et évolutive, des ressources cognitives, en mettant en place une animation qui favorise l’articulation entre la production et l’usage de ces ressources.Ce travail contribue à la proposition d’un cadre socio-cognitif pour accompagner la capitalisation des connaissances sur les systèmes agroécologiques, afin de soutenir les processus de conception.
... From perspective of Herbert Simon, the design is also a social process that different people begin with a different understanding of the problem situation (43). He also believes that the design problem is initially vague and ill-defined; therefore, part of the designer's task is the configuration of problem itself ((44) cited by (45)). Cross (1995) believes that one of the most important and effective steps in architectural design process is to analyze and understand the design problem (46). ...
Although many attempts have been made in presenting systematic models for design processes, most projects have been implemented by non-systematic methods, which seems that too much emphasis on the description of the final project (product) and the lack of attention to the design process are to be blamed for this. In this paper, a specific pattern of design scenario formation in the framework of a research-oriented design process will be discussed. Therefore, the aim of this study is to develop a model that can be used in research-based design processes. In the present study, conceptual structures are extracted in the theoretical frameworks for each stage of the design scenario formation process by reviewing the literature of the subject, and then these conceptual structures are placed next to each other and presented in the form of a systematic process called research-oriented design process. The process presented in this paper is the result of the experience gained during 5 years of teaching an architectural design (2), which includes three milestones: 1) Design protocol 2) Subconcepts and 3) Design scenario. This scenario is precisely coordinated and aligned with the design protocol; it also reveals behaviors that require a design response, explains clearly the scenario of the details of the activities and the elements that make up the spaces. This makes the subject more transparent in the minds of designers and details of the design for each stage should be determined.
... "A very unefficient company in terms of cost control could create much more profit and social wealth than a well controlled one if the former has a better design process than the latter." (Hatchuel, 2002) 27 " (McKelvey, 2004) draws on insights from several sources: complexity theory from the European school, chaos theory from the American school, and postmodernist descriptions of complex causation." (Steyaert, psychologist Chris Steyaert (2007) as autopoiesis (i.e. ...
Quand on est à un clic des réponses, n’importe où, tout le temps et sur n’importe quel objet connecté, et avec la promesse que tout peut être appris par des tutoriaux vidéo ou des Moocs (cours en ligne ouverts) ; les livres restent-ils pertinents ? Cette recherche est centrée sur les livres de connaissance. Ces guides sont conçus avec un lecteur à l’esprit et rédigés et mis en page en fonction de la maquette. Ils occupent une position intermédiaire, associant techno et épistémé, et ont pour objet de réaliser une « graphèse » (c’est-à-dire une forme visuelle de production de connaissances). Après des décennies de n’être que digital, le Web s’est hybridé pour devenir un Internet des objets. Ceux qui annonceraient la mort du livre aujourd’hui courraient le risque de se fourvoyer dans les excès de certaines prophéties des années 1990, comme celle de l’essai de Francis Fukuyama sur La fin de l’histoire. Les livres (et les e-books) conservent toute leur place dans cet écosystème phygital complexe et gagnent à être envisagés comme des auto-organisations transmédiatiques. Mon parcours d’apprenant-chercheur s’articule autour d’une démarche réflexive à propos de plus de vingt ans d’expérience dans l’édition, d’une décennie de mentorat en innovation et, en complément, des recherche-actions, l’analyse d’exemples inspirants de publications de connaissance. Ma recherche s’appuie sur des travaux analytiques et théoriques, principalement en Sciences de l’Information et de la Communication, en Sémiotique, en Design et en Publishing Studies. Le résultat de cette recherche s’inspire et illustre à la fois, et avec de nombreux allers et retours, neuf études de cas. Les deux problèmes abordés sont : comment innover dans le processus éditorial ? et, comment designer de bons livres de connaissance ? La première hypothèse est que l’édition est une activité liée à l’économie de la connaissance ainsi qu’à l’économie créative et que l’innovation éditoriale est augmentée par le design thinking. La proposition d’une théorie de design performative – la Théorie du design de connaissance – s’inscrit dans ce sens. La seconde hypothèse est que les lecteurs, les auteurs et les éditeurs souhaitent tous de bons livres de connaissance originaux. Par contre, leurs intérêts peuvent être divergents et ils ne sont pas nécessairement capables de concevoir un compromis désirable. Le Canevas de modèle éditorial a été conçu à la fois comme un outil d’analyse (« tous les livres racontent des histoires sur la raison et la façon dont ils ont été désignés ») et comme un cadre de discussion plus explicite pour les parties prenantes.
... Hatchuel (2001) sees constructionism as a possible route, among others, to expand what he calls "the unfinished program of Herbert Simon." ...
Views of embodied cognition vary in degree of radicalism. The goal of this article is to explore how the range of moderate and radical views of embodied cognition can inform new approaches to rationality. In this exploration, Herbert Simon's bounded rationality is taken for its complete disembodiedness as a reference base against which to measure the increasing embodied content of new approaches to rationality. We use the label “embodied bounded rationality” to explore how moderate embodiment can reform Simon's bounded rationality while, on the opposite side of the embodied spectrum, the label “embodied rationality” is employed to explore how radical embodiment can more deeply transform the idea of what is rational. In between the two poles, the labels “body rationality” and “extended rationality” are introduced to explore how also intermediate embodiment can fruitfully inform the research on rationality.
... Ils sont d'ailleurs nativement faits pour cela. On retrouve ici les propriétés de groupes capables d'innovation : savoir manier et étendre des concepts, disposer d'outils spécifiques en support de l'activité créative et impliquer de nouvelles parties prenantes dans l'activité de conception : une capacité à explorer l'inconnu (Hatchuel, 2002). ...
Middlegrounds allow essential interactions between the innovation needs of upperground institutions and the creative productions of underground actors. We explore the hypothesis that these entities are at the heart of a broader institutional creation dynamic. We articulate, on four case studies, the concepts of middleground (Simon, 2009), intermediary institution (Sainsaulieu, 2001), idea of work and person-institution (Hauriou, 1925) and conflict (Simmel, 1908). The case studies reveal sophisticated articulations between middlegrounds, uppergrounds and undergrounds and show that “working n middleground mode” could constitute one of the necessary betweennesses in the current transformations of our societies.
The learning strategies offered by science for discovering the world by generating and testing hypotheses have been used abundantly to build decision‐making heuristics. In contrast, decision‐making heuristics for (re)designing the world are rarer. This paper develops a heuristic combining the exploratory power of chimeras with a design logic. Chimeras have long been used to foster imagination and build initially unknown futures. And recent advances in design theory show that in decision‐making situations, chimeras can be generated as nonfalsifiable existential statements about desirable alternatives and events. Moreover, design theory offers learning operations that handle nonfalsifiable statements to generate new real objects. This paper uses these operations to build a rational heuristic that may or may not transform initial chimeras into reality. Its main effect is to ensure that stimulated learning leads to decision alternatives (whether pre‐existing or novel) that surpass the initial optimal one. This paves the way for a class of design‐based heuristics extending the main functions of Bayesian learning to a non‐Bayesian world.
Background:
A huge amount of ergonomic research has been carried out in companies. However, territory is now becoming a new frontier for decision-making during design.
Objective:
This article aims to examine how territorial scale impacts the design process of a work system.
Methods:
Two types of methods were used. First, we analyzed and defined what constitutes a territorialized work system. On this basis we conducted a design project for the re-conception of a territorialized work system with the linden tree.
Results:
It is argued that a "territorialized work system" is not limited to its productive dimensions; it engages in a "making of a milieu" which consists in matching the work system with a range of dimensions that make life possible within the territory.
Conclusion:
The territorial aspect of running a design project thus relates to three dimensions: the systemic dimension of the system to be designed, the organization of the design project itself, and the nature of the object to be designed: the possibility of making a milieu, i.e. of being able to live in the territory.
This chapter proposes the origins of the structuring of this field of research in France, showing the point of view of engineering that deals with the theme of innovation and the major currents of thought that have enabled innovation engineering to be structured to support the improvement of innovation processes. In France, the concept of industrial engineering arrived in 1975 to face economic pressures and to solve problems of optimizing the organization of production systems in terms of price, quantity, quality and flexibility. The chapter provides some advice to make the engineering for innovation approach accessible to any researcher, trainer or industrialist who wishes to get out of their routine and acquire new practices to carry out their innovation projects. Innovation processes have radically changed and must take into account the increasing capacity of industrial developments and the growing complexity of surrounding systems.
This paper presents C-K Theory (Hatchuel, et al., 2003) as the adequate theoretical formalism to understand, explain, and communicate what happens during the act of designing games and as the instrument to translate into practice existing game design contributions. To frame the need for such a theoretical approach, the paper offers an overview of game design, providing a general definition, outlining its main characteristics and scope, and pointing out some shortcomings and the lack of epistemological knowledge about design theory within Game Studies. In addition to introducing C-K Theory and contextualizing its ontological characteristics as a design theory, the paper presents an explanation of how C-K Theory operates and exemplifies it by visualizing the design of a published game. The paper concludes by addressing some potential issues surrounding C-K Theory that may arise within the Game Studies community due to previous widespread preconceptions and ideas about game design.
European scientists for the atomic bomb: from Europe to Hiroshima, making and usage Col. G. di F. Marco Valli matr. 375713 ABSTRACT (English version) The dissertation” “European scientists for the atomic bomb: from Europe to Hiroshima, making and usage” tackles the issue of the pacifist European scientists who presumably were forced by circumstances to work at the atomic bomb, as well as the consequent alleged American responsibility for the massacres at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the moral condemnation of the American generals “who are reputed to have butchered innocent civilians”. The dissertation practices and interdisciplinary approach on multiple levels: technological, historical, political, and military. The first level, developed in Chapters 1 (“Prometheus”) and 2 (“Doctor Frankenstein”), begins with the religious-philosophical background and ends with the technique applied to bombs. Since these topics are still partly classified, only published or declassified sources have been used: e.g., the “Notes based on five lectures held by Serber in the first weeks of April 1943 as instruction course related to the beginning of the Los Alamos project, transcribed by E.U. Condon” or the document issued on the Manhattan Project by the United States Department on Energy. The second level, examined in Chapters 3 (“Professor Frankenstin”) and 4 (“Doctor Strangelove), is connected with the first level and highlights the transformation of European scientists from researchers working for the sake of sciences into scientific consultants of the highest level and naturalized Americans serving belligerent countries and, later, industrial-military complexes. In order to show this process, references from famous movies are used (James Whale’s “Frankenstein, of 1931; Mel Brooks’ “Frankenstein Junior”, of 1974; and Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove”, of 1962). The third level, dealt with in Chapters 4 and 5 (“Questions and Answers”), concerns the complex forced alliance between Western democracies and Stalin’s Soviet Union, the beginning of the Cold War during the still ongoing World War, and Russian and American atomic plans. Within this context, a comparison to the current situation in North Corea is developed.(“Corea today”) The fourth level examines the strictly military aspects, as well as the conditions of populations that became victims of a war transformed into extermination. Particular emphasis is placed on the anomaly of a winner-to-be (the US) who longs for peace and fears to be forced to a cease-fire with Japan. In turn, Japan has stopped fighting for victory, but continues the war only to inflict as many losses as possible to the enemy, in order to reach peace. In this paradoxical situation, only the American generals, unjustly defined as “butchers”, keep a clear vision: they advise against using the atomic bomb, support the plan of leaving the Emperor on his throne, and refuse to take revenge of the defeated enemy. Instead, they help the enemy and transform a beaten hostile country into a thriving ally. It is not by chance that the protagonists of the material and moral reconstruction of freedom and democracy in Japan and Europe are General McArthur (Japan’s military governor) and General Marshall (U.S. Secretary of State and author of the homonymous plan). Conversely, the development of theories such as “First Strike”, “Danish Hypothesis”, and “Dead Hand”, where victims are just numbers to establish who has won or has not lost, is due to scientists and intellectuals, some of which naturalized Americans from Europe. Stanley Kubrick offers an excellent and provocative satire of them through Peter Sellers. Indeed, the character “bearing the unpronounceable German name ‘Dr. Merkwürdigliebe,’ changed into ‘Strangelove’ with the acquisition of American citizenship,” represents the most important Americanized European scientists: Von Neumann (for the wheelchair), Teller (for the way of speaking, which is similar to that of a well-known photographer, Arthur Fellig, who was in the movie studio), Szilard (for the theory that elected men should be saved in caves), Wigner (for the injured hand), Fermi (for the slide rule) and, finally, Von Braun (for the blond hair – although the movie is in black and white -- and the final sentence: “Mein Führer, I can walk!”). After a quotation from General Eisenhover about military expences, the dissertation ends with a double effective sentence: “If it is true that ‘war is too serious a matter to leave it in the hands of generals’ (George Clemenceau, called “The Tiger”), nuclear war is too serious a matter to leave it in the hands of intellectuals”.
The principle of Ockham’s Razor underlying scientific explanation and thus conventional MBA concepts is no longer tenable in business. But the human need for simplicity cannot and should not be denied. In dealing with complexity a constant awareness is needed, at the individual level, group level and institutional level, for a constant and strong need for simplicity. As different types of complexity exist, so can different types of simplicity be discerned. The most responsible type of simplicity is that which is achieved through an intellectual effort of understanding the new complexity of a situation, acknowledging that the new complexity cannot be understood through conventional theories. A more short-cut but unreliable simplicity is achieved through the myopia of learning. The simplicity of the era of modernism was achieved through institutional reductionism, especially denying or suppressing the marginal in society. The post-modern movement has broken this up, but also for other reasons the effectiveness of institutions is reduced. In that context, the simplicity of MBA methods was achieved through reductionism, of which the limits no longer can be denied. A specific type of simplicity in business is the phenomenon of dominant logic. For reasons of focus a dominant logic is needed, but relying too heavily on a successfully dominant logic, especially in a changing complex organization will derail the organization. This demonstrates a more general principle that simplicity is not absolute, but is bound to time and situation, simplicity always is needed and always is to be distrusted.
The conventional tactics to solve complex decisions by reductionism falls short to deal with the new complexities. Successful CEOs use abstract thinking and reconceptualizing to make effective decisions in new complex situations. The conventional paradigmatic model of decision-making applies to well-structured problems, which are to be found in operations, but not at the level of strategy and governance. A decision-problem that can be solved through a calculation or algorithm, as pretended in AI, is not a decision-problem, but a calculation. More data in itself does not solve complex decisions nor does it result in better decisions, except within the limitations of a well-structured problem, what are rare. A decision-problem is a state-of-mind acknowledging that existing routines, practices, heuristics, and concepts are incapable to provide the insight needed for new situations and reconceptualization is needed. What is needed is integrative complexity to open up the limitations of cognitive complexity (Sect. 6.3.3) This chapter presents a taxonomy of complex decision-problems, like professional induced complex decision-problems, reflexivity complex decisions, decision-rights complexity, epistemological complex decisions, discovery/justification complex decisions, and how to handle these for different executive tasks, based on the extended international doctrine for administration.
Entrepreneurs move their venture creation process from an uncertain, unknown future toward somewhat more certain and knowable. To support present actions about future outcomes on this journey, entrepreneurs essentially need to understand what they know and don’t know yet. Individuals, however, are not destined to have a complete awareness of their ignorance. It is precisely unawareness why a certain opportunity has not yet been exploited, but decisions require fast strategies to simplify information and not lose the opportunity. Thus, knowledge only might not naturally advance opportunities. This book provides insights about how entrepreneurs cope with this apparent contradiction. Based on qualitative and experimental insights, the book explores the relevance of knowing what you don’t know with the help of the science of self-awareness. A key point is that thinking about thinking plays an essential role to overcome cognitive barriers to come to logical judgments and decisions.
This article considers how design research can benefit from media studies. Starting from an analysis of the literature on materiality in design activities, we expose the limits of the concept of «material» and propose that of medium as a way to better account for the diversity of design issues. This critical analysis will first address the physical and semiotic dimensions of mediums of design. Then, we look at philosophical works on mediality considered as a condition of both design and communication. Mediality is defined as a semiotic severance and distancing from reality that supports the project of communication and is also the condition for a creative relationship to the world. The theory of mediality gives a philosophical basis to design theories of fixation and defixation. Finally, the article approaches the concept of mediation as it takes into account the social and political dimensions of design.
Our research focuses on early‐stages of innovation, especially in the Biotech and Pharmaceutical industry, wherein the business research is still hit‐and‐miss, mainly based on trial and error and experimentation. We leverage the story of a high‐growth startup, building and expanding on behavioral economics that examines the relationships between science and innovation, especially dynamic capabilities and related problemistic search and strategic options generation. A general framework for innovation shaped with both narrow and general AI (advanced data analytics, intelligent algorithms, etc.) is proposed to create and transform market offerings, hybridize domains heretofore dissociated and build organizational fit with prior and novel core elements. For firms, it can be exploitable as a competitive advantage, making it possible to efficiently anticipate, hence adapt to the most general types of change in representation or taking place in the environment.
Paternalism is an instance of someone making a decision on behalf of someone else. A professional designer can exhibit paternalism through conceptualizing, defining, and selecting current or preferable situations or while finalizing outcomes for stakeholders. Paternalism is thus, a critical ethical dimension related to the design profession. The design academy and community must theorize paternalism if we are to avoid or reduce it. Paternalism may be present at three critical junctures of design decision making. Our three-layer framework examines paternalism as it relates to design process decisions, decisions about participation in design, and normative framework decisions. The circular model represents the hierarchy of paternalistic decision making: any effort to overcome paternalism at the (inner) design level or (middle) participatory level will be ineffective if it is present in the (outer) normative layer. We discuss the extent of possible exhibitions of paternalism and the challenges to avoiding it in decisions at each layer, and contrast these briefly with overtly paternalistic design approaches, such as design for behavior change. We find that design may be inherently paternalistic, at times may need to be that way (in certain contexts especially, where expertise is required for decisions to be made accurately), and that it is up to the individual designer whether they exhibit paternalism in their design decisions or not.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has garnered heightened interest and momentum in recent years. These connected devices have extended the concurrent rise of data collection and processing within the everyday objects that cohabit our human lives. Though technology has always changed the way we live our lives these ‘smart’ devices are adding new challenges—particularly concerning privacy and security—not previously experienced when using their older ‘dumb’ predecessors. These challenges are not always apparent to their human cohabitors and often only come to the fore when something untoward happens as a consequence of the data being collected.
These objects are not to blame, they exist in their worlds governed by their own rules established by their creators rather than their users. Designers have traditionally been taught to present these objects as neutral participants in our human lives; there to help, but not supersede. However, these objects exist within many independent and interdependent assemblages of human and non-human actants that go beyond the previously experienced human-object relationship.
Through this discourse, I highlight the overall aim of this thesis to ask questions around our traditional practices of design concerning IoT. In particular, this research strives to do many things: it attempts to intertwine philosophical debate with the act of design; it moves towards an argument of rethinking design orthodoxies around human-centeredness in favour of object-oriented-ness; it explores an alternative side to the phenomenon of the IoT, arguing for agency in a post-anthropocentric perspective of the world and its implications; it tries to bridge the gap between practice-based design research and theory by passing through a veil of philosophical intrigue. But at its core, is an advocacy for the presence of a playful attitude within the practice of design, arguing for an attitude of playfulness as an integral part of the design process. How being playfully charged to create artefacts can usher in unique perspectives for design and technology.
The research is enacted through an iterative Research through Design ideology, using a transdisciplinary approach of Ludic and Speculative Design practice that explore alternative perspectives towards the design of IoT. It is conducted through an exploration of Object-Oriented Philosophy as a means to enact a metaphorical ‘carpentry’ of artefacts that practice philosophical arguments through their execution. In the process of designing three artefacts—a model for a philosophical view of IoT, a board game, and a bespoke deck of tarot cards—this research builds upon the idea of More-than Human-Centeredness for the design of IoT, by introducing the creation of bespoken method assemblages as a means for playful design exploration. It concludes on a debate around the implications and potential of design thinking in a post-anthropocentric perspective through the inclusion of playfulness and philosophy as assets for design, and, the use of philosophical carpentry as a methodology for understanding the nebulous nature of IoT.
In the twentieth century, as a result of the transition to a scientific approach in design, intuition lost its validity and design became a rational act. In well-defined problems, the design process could be structured with this scientific approach, however, in an ill-defined structure, rationality needs to be combined with intuition to analyzing the design problems, decisions making and generate solutions by supporting the creativity of design students. In this respect, intuition can assist to strengthen and develop the required abilities during the process. Accordingly, the aim is to understand the role of intuition, how students use it to work creatively through sketches, and conceptual ideas, and the problematic process of transformation into architectural knowledge in the design process. The study carried out a literature review to draw an understanding of the dimensions of intuition and its role in the architectural design studio. The results of the study demonstrate that intuition has a crucial role in the design process. Relatedly, the lack of intuition becomes problematic, due to the non-conveyable character that it cannot find a place for itself in the design education in terms of crits from tutors, and alteration of intuition into concrete representations leads to a gap between intuition and the final project. Furthermore, these problems could be eliminated through the coherent use of two features which are rational approach and intuition. In this respect, intuition, creativity, and rationality is needed to perform together in order to achieve success by deciphering the potentials of the project through the process.
This paper describes the processes used by students to learn from worked-out examples and by working through problems. Evidence is derived from protocols of students learning secondary school mathematics and physics. The students acquired knowledge from the examples in the form of productions (condition-->action): first discovering conditions under which the actions are appropriate and then elaborating the conditions to enhance efficiency. Students devoted most of their attention to the condition side of the productions. Subsequently, they generalized the productions for broader application and acquired specialized productions for special problem classes.
The theories of supermodular optimization and games provide a framework for the analysis of systems marked by complementarity. We summarize the principal results of these theories and indicate their usefulness by applying them to study the shift to ‘modern manufacturing’. We also use them to analyze the characteristic features of the Lincoln Electric Company's strategy and structure.
This chapter describes the progress made toward understanding chess skill. It describes the work on perception in chess, adding some new analyses of the data. It presents a theoretical formulation to characterize how expert chess players perceive the chess board. It describes some tasks that correlate with chess skill and the cognitive processes of skilled chess players. It is believed that the demonstration of de Groot's, far from being an incidental side effect of chess skill, actually reveals one of the most important processes that underlie chess skill—the ability to perceive familiar patterns of pieces. In the first experiment discussed in the chapter, two tasks were used. The memory task was very similar to de Groot's task: chess players saw a position for 5 seconds and then attempted to recall it. Unlike de Groot, multiple trials were used—5 seconds of viewing followed by recall—until the position was recalled perfectly. The second task or the perception task for simplicity involved showing chess players a position in plain view.
Traditionally, engineering research and teaching have been approached in very different ways. To prepare for research we undergo years of rigorous training, both in scientific knowledge and in methods of gaining new knowledge through experimentation and analysis. To prepare for teaching, we acquire the same knowledge, but, except for a stint as a teaching assistant, we receive almost no training in how to impart it to students.
Fortunately, there is now a well developed science of human learning which has strong implications for the ways in which our students should learn and we should teach. This paper comments on some of the things we know about human learning that can substantially improve our university instruction.
In organisation theory a schism has developed between the traditional organisational behaviour literature, based in psychology, sociology and political science, and the more analytically rigorous field of organisational economics. The former stresses the importance of managerial leadership and cooperation among employees, while the latter focuses on the engineering of incentive systems that will induce efficiency and profitability, by rewarding worker self-interest. In this innovative book, Gary Miller bridges the gap between these literatures. He demonstrates that it is impossible to design an incentive system based on self-interest that will effectively discipline all subordinates and superiors and obviate or overcome the roles of political conflict, collective action, and leadership in an organisation. Applying game theory to the analysis of the roles of cooperation and political leadership in organisational hierarchies, he concludes that the organisation whose managers can inspire cooperation and the transcendence of short-term interest in its employees enjoys a competitive advantage.
Introduction, 99. — I. Some general features of rational choice, 100.— II. The essential simplifications, 103. — III. Existence
and uniqueness of solutions, 111. — IV. Further comments on dynamics, 113. — V. Conclusion, 114. — Appendix, 115.
Knowledge management is currently looking like a symptom of the crises in collective learning: for several decades now, knowledge management within firms has been the domain of specific contributors - specialists from design offices, research laboratories, the administrative field, etc. - but the emergence of innovation-intensive capitalism has plunged this particular group of protagonists into crisis. The question the situation raises is no longer that of knowledge "transfer" but that of management of the reciprocal learning vital to the collective production of knowledge. This management presupposes new types of organisation described as "design-oriented"; as these encourage cycles of collective learning, they make possible the simultaneous regeneration of objects, skills, and professions.
In this paper, I wish to sketch a way of developing Simon’s legacy that may usefully add to what has become the dominant interpretation of it, both in Organization theory and Organizational economics. The prospected way of extending and refining our perception of Simon’s cognitive foundations of organization science draws, in part, on my own work in that intended direction since the early eighties. In fact, since my early reading of Simon’s works, I sensed some discrepancies among the complex message on rationality, logic and knowledge that could be drawn from Simon’s whole work 1 and the interpretation and framing of ‘bounded rationality theory’ given in organizational and economic analyses, and sometime even by Simon himself. Simon’s insights generated a broad research program consisting of an ‘information-processing view of organization,’ based on the different informationprocessing capabilities of different decision strategies and organizational mechanisms. Among these strategies and mechanisms, the status of those mainly studied in economics – value-maximizing strategies and price-based equilibria – has been predominantly considered to be that of an ‘unrealistic’ theory of coordination based on an empirically false behavioral foundation. However, Simon himself, in his very early and very late writings (1951, 1997) tended his hand toward a different interpretation: value-maximizing decisions and price-based coordination are feasible and efficient in certain classes of highly-structured problems, but the solution to the wide majority of economic problems requires a quite different logic with respect to deductive calculation; it requires a logic of discovery – discovery of relevant alternatives, attainable and desirable objectives, and of likely consequences. In that perspective, both ‘optimizing’ and ‘satisficing’ models of behavior could be possibly conceived as particular cases of a more general, unitary theory of rationality; and the assessment of the relevant ‘superiority’ of those strategies (and others) in dealing with certain classes of problems (a prescriptive theory of contingent-information processing) could become a relevant issue (Grandori, 1984). Therefore, the spirit of this paper is to use the precious ambiguity of BRtheory in that respect, and to develop some consequences of a ‘pluralist’ (rather than adversarial) view of rationality, suggesting that Simon might have emphasized the adversarial interpretation towards economics more for rhetoric and academic reasons, for conquering space for the then new discipline of organization, rather than because he really excluded a more integrative interpretation.
Hans Krebs' discovery, in 1932, of the urea cycle was a major event in biochemistry. This article describes a program, KEKADA, which models the heuristics Hans Krebs used in this discovery. KEKADA reacts to surprises, formulates explanations, and carries out experiments in the same manner as the evidence in the form of laboratory notebooks and interviews indicates Hans Krebs did. Furthermore, we answer a number of questions about the nature of the heuristics used by Krebs, in particular: How domain‐specific are the heuristics? To what extent are they idiosyncratic to Krebs? To what extent do they represent general strategies of problem‐solving search?
The relative generality of KEKADA allows us to view the control structure of KEKADA and its domain‐independent heuristics as a model of scientific experimentation that should apply over a broad domain.
The boundary between well structured and ill structured problems is vague, fluid and not susceptible to formalization. Any problem solving process will appear ill structured if the problem solver is a serial machine that has access to a very large long-term memory of potentially relevant information, and/or access to a very large external memory that provides information about the actual real-world consequences of problem-solving actions. There is no reason to suppose that new and hitherto unknown concepts or techniques are needed to enable artificial intelligence systems to operate successfully in domains that have these characteristics.
The "Savage paradigm" of rational decision-making under uncertainty has become the dominant model of human behavior in mainstream economics and game theory. However, under the rubric of "bounded-rationality", this model has been criticized as inadequate form both normative and descriptive viewpoints. This paper sketches the historical roots and some current development of this movement, distinguishing between attempts to extend the Savage paradigm ("costly rationality") and the need for more radical departures ("truly bounded rationality"). Copyright 2000 by Oxford University Press.
The last few years have brought a large movement of interrogating issues concerning the role and image of Operations Research. But, as a matter of paradox, the ‘OR crisis’ gives a better understanding of the role of rational modelling in choice processes and decision making. Rational models are a mean for conceiving idealised behaviour—rational myths—in structured situations; they are not first of all destined to be implemented or applied; they are the reference against which the analyst confronts the observed behaviour of specified actors.This confrontation permits the analyst to build with these actors a new vision of the constraints and objectives in which they operate. The resulting organisational dynamics are the soundest basis for evaluating the efficiency of this process.It is argued that the underlying mechanism of this learning process can be generally specified as a ‘tool-structure interaction’. These concepts describe a possible bridge between OR and organizational studies; it may lead to a renewed research in Management Science, avoiding the known pitfalls of these fields, when considerated separately in practice or in training.These points will be illustrated by the help of two cases studies concerning respectively scheduling problems in a job-shop and risky decisions in oil production investments.
Information Systems Working Papers Series
The analysis of decision making under uncertainty has again become a major focus of interest. This volume presents contributions from leading specialists in different fields and provides a summary and synthesis of work in this area. It is based on a conference held at the Harvard Business School. The book brings together the different approaches to decision making - normative, descriptive, and prescriptive - which largely correspond to different disciplinary interests. Mathematicians have concentrated on rational procedures for decision making - how people should make decisions. Psychologists have examined how poeple do make decisions, and how far their behaviour is compatible with any rational model. Operations researchers study the application of decision models to actual problems. Throughout, the aim is to present the current state of research and its application and also to show how the different disciplinary approaches can inform one another and thus lay the foundations for the integrated analysis of decision making. The book will be of interest to researchers, teachers - for use as background reading for a decision theory course - students, and consultants and others involved in the practical application of the analysis of decision making. It will be of interest to specialists and students in statistics, mathematics, economics, psychology and the behavioural sciences, operations research, and management science.
Organization in Action
- J D Thompson
Thompson, J.D., Organization in Action (New York: McGraw-Hill).
Design Theory and Organization Theory Collective Action in Design Worlds”, Plenary Lecture at the EGOS Conference
- A Hatchuel
« Decision making and problem solving Report on the research briefing panel on decision making and problem solving. The National Academy of Sciences
- A H Simon
Simon A. H. (1986), « Decision making and problem solving », Research Briefings 1986,
Report on the research briefing panel on decision making and problem solving. The National
Academy of Sciences. National Academy Press Washington D.C.
« The processes of creative thinking (1979) «Models of Thought 1 » New haven and london yale university press p
- A H Simon
- A Newell
- Shaw
Simon A.H., Newell A., JC Shaw (1962). « The processes of creative thinking ». Reprint in
Simon A.H., (1979) «Models of Thought 1 » New haven and london yale university press
p.144-174.
« The Scientist as problem solver Complex information processing : the impact of Herbert Simon
- A H Simon
Simon A.H (1995), « The Scientist as problem solver » in David Klahr and Kenneth Kotovsky
(eds) « Complex information processing : the impact of Herbert Simon » Hillsdale, NJ,
Lawrence ErlBaum associates..