The problem and the pattern which connects

Design problems are wicked because their solution exceeds what is ready to hand - on the other hand solutions are confined by the horizon of imagination of those who has the problem, and this horizon we may assume is framed by what they see as a solution space, and working rules for acting within this space - hence to reformulate a wicked problem we must exspand the imagination's solution space and rules of manipulation.

After Luhmann

He is right, Luhmann: systems do not understand each other, they disturb, they mingle, and then maybe they change - but although informative for a social scientist, this position is not very helpfull to a designer - we must be concerned with what understanding - despite all disturbance - can run from a user to a producer and back, because the flow between producers, retail/politics, and users is the flow that eventually inform our choices and make things end up the way they do, in the market place or as an application on my desktop. So - designers can not stop at sense making as phenomenologists would recommend - we need to invent pattern languages which against all odds can generate communication between users and designers, between designers and engineers, between designers, engineers and customers. To say that communication in this chain is impossible is to say design is impossible.

and ….. phenomenology

“Where were you then”? “What does your stomach tell you”? are common questions when journalists interview people involved in dramatic events. A search for embodied localized knowledge, it seems. The idea of common knowledge is under pressure, however, at the expense of the idea that experience is all we have. Locations do, however, not speak up themselves, neither do bodies. Humans make locations and bodies speak. Humans interpret experiences in language. Humans communicate. And as soon as we speak, we generate more speak. Language is the currency by which we exchange experience, and hermeneutics is the way we evaluate the exchange.

Phenomenology is a name for the acceptance of knowledge originating from experience, from being-in-the-world, but without language and without interpretation, sharing is impossible, and without evaluation through interpretation knowledge is impossible.

Hence, in case we want to evaluate a learning environment of some sort, let us begin by asking (1) Does this learning space allow participants’ experience to be spoken of? (2) Do participants share a language in which to exchange experiences? (3) Do participants share rules by which to commonly discuss and evaluate the exchange?

Hermeneutics - HELP

Maybe it is the vacation - it certainly can't be the hot summerweather - anyways, I have got this void feeling about my research: what do I really know, what is the firm ground when researching Information Architecture and Information Ecology? I keep coming back to hermeneutics and to embodied cognitive semantics and to space as a phenomenon in a phenomenological sense - but I wonder if that can lead to improvements in design, still I keep trying to find my way

SUMMER IN MAINE

Memorial day is tomorrow and my present voluntary exile – a guesthouse on campus at the University of Maine – is getting into summer. The sky is grey on the framed picture in our sitting room entitled ‘Summer in Maine’: A moose in a wide green meadow with lupines, a blueberry meadow, a small stream meandering, mountains as backdrop. A perfect match to the grey outside, infinite nuances of grey, which you learn to appreciate, since the costal climate sends showers persistently, day and night. Grey is also the news I just read on the Danish news site I follow, about billions of money to be saved by digitizing the forms, which travel between public administration and citizens in need of a passport, a building-a-carport-permit, or a maternity-leave-compensation-application. Dull as it may seem, each little transaction of data-translation in these departments requires transformation, a transformation with political, social and semiotic implications: read Spinuzzi’s ‘Tracing genres through organizations’, or read some of the publications from our just recently concluded research on how to employ interactive technologies (e.g. social media, web 2.0, pervasive and mobile technologies) eGov+ (http://www.egovplus.dk/index.php?id=2234) in the communication between government and citizens. There is no such thing as a transformation free travel of data from one information ecology to the next.
Still, while the moose keeps chewing grass in the meadows of Maine, I keep writing about ‘Information ecology and design of information systems’. The moose and I carry on, just as well, while politicians yell out their blue-sky visions, and maybe get elected for another term.

Change happens - understanding is hard work

"You can only understand life backwards, but we must live it forwards." - This famous Kierkegaard quote runs contrary to the innovation rhetoric which sees innovation as progress while truth is that innovation is our effort to keep up with change in the environment without changing ourselves. Trying to understand backwards is about finding patterns, finding the breadcrumbs I dropped on my way out, it is about coming home, about having changed and discover it.

Spring again

Like this blog has been sleeping since October, so have I it feels, at least, but now this old grizzlebear smells spring and crowl out of its winter dwelling, sniffing and coughing and starving. Back to the old routines of outdoor life - back to life, that is. "Write about us in your blog", one of the students said the other day. Well, ok then: Apart from repeating Steve Job's advice; stay hungry, stay foolish what is there to say but: we are working on it, "it" meaning the training in communicating about human information behavior: how we recognize a piece of information, how we search it out, and how we move it into our repertoire of things that helps us survive in a cruel world. We play the role of a clever project manager, and try to figure out how to communicate with users and customers, how to communicate with programmers, and how to make sure that for each project, the team members refelct on successes and failures and update their personal resume accordingly.