Cybernetics and Design 9781846636578, 9781846636561

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15/11/2007

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ISSN 0368-492X

Volume 36 Number 9/10 2007

Kybernetes The international journal of cybernetics, systems and management sciences Cybernetics and design Guest Editor: Professor Ranulph Glanville

Selected as the official journal of the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics

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Kybernetes The International Journal of Systems, Cybernetics and Management Science

ISSN 0368-492X Volume 36 Number 9/10 2007

Cybernetics and design Guest Editor Professor Ranulph Glanville

Access this journal online _________________________ 1149 Editorial advisory board __________________________ 1150 Preface __________________________________________ 1151 Greeting _________________________________________ 1152 GUEST EDITORIAL Introduction: special double issue of Kybernetes on cybernetics and design Ranulph Glanville ______________________________________________ 1153

Abstracts ________________________________________ 1158 Try again. Fail again. Fail better: the cybernetics in design and the design in cybernetics Ranulph Glanville ______________________________________________ 1173

Cybernetic embodiment and the role of autonomy in the design process Argyris Arnellos, Thomas Spyrou and John Darzentas ________________ 1207

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CONTENTS

CONTENTS

The origin of modelling Phil Ayres ____________________________________________________ 1225

continued

Towards a virtual architecture: pushing cybernetics from government to anarchy Ana Paula Baltazar ____________________________________________ 1238

Designing cybersystemically for symviability Gary Boyd and Vladimir Zeman __________________________________ 1255

An indeterminate project for architecture in Brazil Jose dos Santos Cabral Filho _____________________________________ 1266

Self-observing collective: an exemplar for design research? D.P. Dash ____________________________________________________ 1277

It’s all about communication: graphics and cybernetics Simon Downs _________________________________________________ 1286

Cybernetics and service-craft: language for behavior-focused design Hugh Dubberly and Paul Pangaro _________________________________ 1301

The dynamics of design Natalie Ebenreuter _____________________________________________ 1318

How to design a black and white box Stephen Gage _________________________________________________ 1329

Systemic environmental decision making: designing learning systems Ray Ison, Chris Blackmore, Kevin Collins and Pam Furniss ____________ 1340

Research through DESIGN through research: a cybernetic model of designing design foundations Wolfgang Jonas________________________________________________ 1362

The cybernetics of design and the design of cybernetics Klaus Krippendorff_____________________________________________ 1381

Design and prosthetic perception Ted Krueger __________________________________________________ 1393

A sociocybernetic approach to wayfinding map studies: the systems of people-map-space interactions Christopher Kian Teck Kueh _____________________________________ 1406

Complex built-environment design: four extensions to Ashby Terence Love and Trudi Cooper __________________________________ 1422

The magic of three Johann van der Merwe __________________________________________ 1436

Architecture as a verb: cybernetics and design processes for the social divide Anja Pratschke ________________________________________________ 1458

Drawing a live section: explorations into robotic membranes Mette Ramsgard Thomsen _______________________________________ 1471

Second-order cybernetics, architectural drawing and monadic thinking Peg Rawes ____________________________________________________ 1486

Cybernetic principles for learning design Bernard Scott, Simon Shurville, Piers Maclean and Chunyu Cong _________________________________________________ 1497

Conversations with the self-knowledge creation for designing Kaye Shumack ________________________________________________ 1515

Design of the netgeneration: streaming the flow of design and science in the educational practice of the creative industry Aukje Thomassen ______________________________________________ 1529

A framework for designing sustainable urban communities Shann Turnbull________________________________________________ 1543

Informing design praxis via 2nd-order cybernetics Randall Whitaker ______________________________________________ 1558

CONTENTS continued

CONTENTS continued

Rethinking the cybernetic basis of design: the concepts of control and organization Theodore Zamenopoulos and Katerina Alexiou ______________________ 1570

Special announcements ___________________________ 1590

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Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 p. 1150 # Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD A. Bensoussan President of INRIA, France V. Chavchanidze Institute of Cybernetics, Tbilisi University, Georgia A.B. Engel IMECC-Unicamp, Universidad Estadual de Campinas, Brazil R. Espejo Syncho Ltd, UK R.L. Flood Hull University, UK F. Geyer The Netherlands Universities Institute for Co-ordination of Research in Social Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands A. Ghosal Honorary Fellow, World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics, New Delhi, India R. Glanville CybernEthics Research, UK R.W. Grubbstro¨m Linko¨ping University, Sweden Chen Hanfu Institute of Systems Science, Academia Sinica, People’s Republic of China G.J. Klir State University of New York, USA A. Leonard Independant Consultant, Toronto, Canada Yi Lin International Institute for General Systems Studies Inc., USA

K.E. McKee IIT Research Institute, Chicago, IL, USA M. Ma˘nescu Academician Professor, Bucharest, Romania M. Mansour Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland K.S. Narendra Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA C.V. Negoita City University of New York, USA W. Pearlman Technion Haifa, Israel A. Raouf Pro-Rector, Ghulam Ishaq Khan (GIK) Institute of Engineering Sciences & Technology, Topi, Pakistan Y. Sawaragi Kyoto University, Japan B. Scott Cranfield University, Royal Military College of Science, Swindon, UK M. Schwaninger University of St. Gallen, Switzerland D.J. Stewart Human Factors Research, UK I.A. Ushakov Moscow, Russia J. van der Zouwen Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Preface Cybernetics as we know is both trans- and multi-disciplinary. In consequence its fields of interest are wide ranging. The Editorial Advisory Board should perhaps be excused for its failure in the 36 years of existence to commission more papers on “Cybernetics and Design”. Our index will show that the area has not been totally neglected although in this time no special issues devoted to this theme have been published. We are therefore extremely grateful to Dr Ranulph Glanville for suggesting that this Special Double issue should be produced and for accepting our invitation to be its Guest Editor. In his introduction he outlines the scope of the issue and “reaches out to an audience that Kybernetes has not previously tried to reach — designers — in an effort to build a bridge connecting cybernetics and design”. He and his invited contributors have undoubtedly done this and we look forward to their participation in future volumes of the journal. The publishers of Kybernetes, the EAB and its editors thank all who have contributed to the success of this special double issue. Brian H. Rudall Editor-in-Chief

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Greeting Every system has a defining function in a larger system of which it is a part. This function determines the properties the whole should have and these determine the kind of parts the whole requires. This is inculcated in architects who always begin with the function of the building: who it should serve and how; then what parts are required, what their properties should be, and how they should interact. This is why so many architects have graduated to social system designers. In analysis one begins by identifying the parts of a whole and then assigning properties to them. Then the properties of the whole are derived from those of the parts. In design (which is synthetic, as opposed to, analytic thinking) one begins by identifying the properties one wants the whole to have. One then extracts from the concept of the whole the set of necessary parts and their properties. The properties of the parts are derived from those assigned to the whole, not the reverse as is the case in analysis. Little wonder that architecture and social system design are close together; design is the sine qua non of both social system thinking and architecture. Russell L. Ackoff

Guest editorial Introduction: special double issue of Kybernetes on cybernetics and design

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Ranulph Glanville The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, London, UK and CybernEthics Research, Southsea, UK Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this editorial is to reach out to an audience that Kybernetes has not previously tried to reach – designers – in an effort to build a bridge connecting cybernetics and design. Design/methodology/approach – Provides a brief review of the papers within the issue. Findings – The collection of papers may provoke wonder, enquiry, and a wish not only to respect each field, but also to open up, to find out more and, perhaps, to enter into a symbiotic bridge building operation that might bring valuable theoretical illumination and realm of practice to both fields. Originality/value – This editorial introduces an exploration that begins to develop any relationships that might exist between the two fields of design and cybernetics. Keywords Design, Cybernetics

This special double issue of Kybernetes reaches out to an audience that Kybernetes has not previously tried to reach – designers – in an effort to build a bridge connecting cybernetics and design. A number of scholars with meaningful involvements in both cybernetics and design have maintained, for the last half century, that there is a significant connection between the two. Assertions made in public and private have sometimes lead to argued publications including Pask’s (1969, 1979), though more often they have surfaced in other publications as comments almost tossed aside in the flow. Other works, such as Scho¨n’s (1983), can be seen, today, to involve essentially cybernetic arguments. Speaking personally, I know, I have often used design examples in cybernetics papers and cybernetic concepts in design papers, insisting there is a connection, but I have only recently begun to make a concerted effort to bring the two fields together fully and explicitly in a reasoned and argued manner[1]. It seemed to me that half a century of innuendo rather than argument was enough! That it was time to start an exploration which would be as clear and explicit as possible, beginning to develop any relationships that might exist between the two fields of design and cybernetics. The idea was to build the bridges, to find mutualism. Accordingly, and with the support of the Editor in Chief, Brian Rudall, I proposed a special issue of Kybernetes devoted to cybernetics and design. The published announcement of the issue included these questions: (1) How does cybernetics throw light on design, and lead to developments and improvements in our understanding of and ability to act in design?

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1153-1157 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827229

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(2) How does design inform us in our understanding of cybernetics and its potential to parallel and throw light on design? (3) What is the mutualism that may hold between them when questions 1) and 2) are seen as part of the same whole? The initial results of what I hope may become, in its own right, a significant area of research (and of action) appear in this double issue. The papers presented here should better be understood not as definitive or conclusory, but as an exploration opening a discussion that might continue within this journal, as well as elsewhere. Organisation of the issue One of the responsibilities of an editor is to organise the sequence of material in an issue and to explain this to the readership. While I understand the wish of many editors to impose an interpretative order on material by finding themes by which to group it, I prefer not to do this. I am wary of imposing my order on others, of removing many possible links by promoting the particular links I see. I prefer to let the reader build his/her own links – to design, as it were, his/her own path through the material on offer, leading to his/her own understanding. To this end, I chose to organise content in the arbitrary (but often interesting) sequence provided by first author surname, and I have used that ordering in this issue, with one exception. I have placed my own, very long contribution as the first paper. The reason is that, as editor, I recognised there were two distinct bodies of readers for this issue: designers and cyberneticians. It is neither reasonable not realistic to expect either to be well briefed in the other’s field, so the first half of my paper is an exposition of design for cyberneticians and cybernetics for designers. Given that my own work is rooted in second (rather than first) order cybernetics, my introduction to cybernetics may also be seen as an argument introducing second order cybernetics to any cybernetician not already familiar with such arguments. Perhaps I should have separated my paper into two, in order also to place my argument about cybernetics and design arbitrarily amongst the others. However, in place of editorially chosen groups, I have moved (with the constructive help of the managing editor) to make it easier for readers to select, in an informed manner, papers and sequences of papers they wish to attend to, by duplicating all the abstracts at the start of the issue. I have never understood why abstracts are only placed in the body of the papers they abstract, so that readers have to wade through pages to reach them. Surely, an abstract is the text that allows the potential reader to assess whether to read the full paper or not, and therefore abstracts should appear all together and at the beginning of a collection, to aid our choice making? This is the path I have pursued here. Content An editor is also responsible for maintaining the quality of material published, and for explaining some motivations and particularities surrounding its publication. In this issue, there are more of these than usual. Firstly, there is the question of what design is. Although, I have given an introduction in my paper (as have others, such as Krippendorff[2], in theirs) there are many interpretations of design. Amongst the authors in this issue there are, I am sure, some who will find my characterisation of design completely unrecognisable. There are certainly papers here which their authors claim to be about design but which, in my opinion, scarcely

touch on the central design activity. Design, as a term[3], has moved from its original connection with what were often called the applied arts (including architecture) to become a term added to others, possibly in order to bring a certain status to undertakings and subjects (consider the way that politicians in the West have started using the word design as a basic indicator, although they rarely know what it is an indicator of). Thus, the word design, attached to other subjects in order to add value and status, has been used by some to indicate complexity, by others to refer to systems of action in which there may be (feedback) loops, and so on. The PhD design web based discussion list (E-mail: phd-design@jiscmail. ac.uk) has many discussants who, in my view, neither practise nor understand design and, although they think of themselves as design theorists and researchers, often completely miss the point of what designers do, preferring to impose onto design their view of what design should be (they probably think the same of me). Instead of considering what designers actually do, they run the risk of (accidentally) removing all the advantages of design and the value that comes precisely from its difference. But, as editor of an issue that is aimed to open debate and encourage discussion, I do not regard it as my job to exclude views of what design is which are held to be valid by others, even if I believe them to be wrong and perhaps damaging. A survey should cover the ground. There is also the somewhat less difficult matter of what cybernetics is. The world of cybernetics can often be divided into those who would practise and extol first, and those who would practise and extol second order cybernetics. To many in the former camp, second order cybernetics may seem a trivial pursuit of little value. Second order cyberneticians might retort by talking of blindness. There is a wide range of views of cybernetics presented in this issue, and, in the case of some of the authors coming primarily from design, we see early, tentative attempts to explore their world through a cybernetic lens. But at least there is a general agreement that cybernetics involves circularity, at some level and in some manner. Our anonymous, peer referees understood this in their reviews. One of the common points raised in the reviews was that papers were not original. Certainly, several are, in at least one of the two fields we are trying to bridge, quite conservative – and it might be argued there is little or no contribution to knowledge in the cybernetic, or the design content of many papers published here. But this misses the point and certainly does not mean there is no original contribution: the originality of contribution is in the building of the bridges (and the consequent importing into each field of some of the great resources and strengths of the other field), rather than in one or both fields, themselves. Many of the authors show courage in their attempts to build such bridges and in offering them to us to consider; and the personal learning they have gone through can be found, often discretely hidden, in their papers. As to the style of presentation, Kybernetes is a scientific journal and it may be assumed that readers understand the range and conventions that are to be expected in such a journal. However, publishing in the academic community of designers often takes a more varied form. The structure and expression of the argument may seem alien to those whose background is more normatively scientific. In the refereeing process I attempted to create some movement towards a mutually recognisable and shared centre ground, but not all the papers in this issue originating in one tradition will be easily read by people whose practice is in the other. This is, of course, a weakness, albeit an inevitable one. But it is also a strength. If there is to be a bridge built, the builders who originate in one tradition will need to understand, accept and

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value the means of expression of those originating in the other; in this issue, we can see some of this difference. Margaret Mead (1968), one of the founders of cybernetics, in proposing a cybernetics of cybernetics (which later became known as second order cybernetics) reminded us that cybernetics is intended as a language, making it possible for people from different disciplines to talk meaningfully with each other. Cybernetics is, therefore, not primarily a technology or even a science, but a meta-subject[4] and an approach. It is often argued that design is the same: that it is a way of thinking that sits in the position of a meta-subject to other subjects: hence its general applicability as shown in its suffixation to other subjects. Meta-subjects are, of course, also subjects: and this is how recursive and reflexive concepts such as the cybernetics of cybernetics and the design of design (and even the language of language) necessarily enter. Those without whom. . . First, let me thank Russell L. Ackoff for generously agreeing to write us a greeting to the project. Professor Ackoff, who first trained as an architect and often talks in public about the value of the way architects solve problems, is also one of the founders of systems theory and operations research. It is particularly encouraging that Professor Ackoff has found the time to support our endeavour in this publication. Any project such as this special issue depends on the good will and hard work of very many people who deserve credit and thanks. In the first instance, if there are no volunteers to write, there is no issue. So first thanks go to our international band of authors who willingly submitted to considerable demands and a very tight schedule in order to create this volume. Next, of course, come our referees. We had a wide ranging panel of nearly 100 anonymous referees who, as always, gave generously of their time, wisdom and expertise to help us evaluate and improve the papers. Coming from both fields, they lent us their time, experience and knowledge, helping us both produce a publication of quality, and to recognise and work with the traditions of the acceptable from both fields. It is no easy job to referee across fields. On the administrative side, we received unstinting and positive advice, encouragement and support from the editor in chief, Brian Rudall, and from the staff at Emerald, publishers of Kybernetes, though Managing Editor Diane Heath and her team. I am particularly thankful for Emerald’s special efforts to accommodate a difficult publication schedule caused by several factors including my own vagrant lifestyle, and their willingness to publish an issue with the abstracts duplicated at the start of the issue. I am grateful, too, for their relatively enlightened copyright and access policies which help make quality work available where many publishers seem set on doing the opposite. We were also very fortunate in the generous loan of a co-ordinating computer program written by Dr Alexander Riegler of Centre Leo Apostel, at the Free University, Brussels. Alex and I recently edited a festschrift for Ernst von Glasersfeld (Glanville and Riegler, 2007) published in the refereed web journal he founded, “Constructivist Foundations” (Vol. 2, Nos 2/3) for which Alex wrote a co-ordinating program so we could better work together. He graciously made this available for this special double issue of Kybernetes. On the support front, I was enormously fortunate to be awarded a grant by the Architecture Research Fund of the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL), enabling me to employ a research assistant to help in the editing tasks. Without this grant, and the help it bought, I would not have been able to complete the

commissioning and editorial aspects necessary to bringing this issue to publication. I gratefully acknowledge this support. Which leaves me with just the greatest debts of thanks. Without the help of Ben Sweeting, who acted as my editorial assistant through the Bartlett’s generous funding, there would have been no issue. The other editors, the contributors and the referees will all have discovered, through communicating with and through Ben, what a good job he has done, with such grace. I can honestly say that his help and advice has been invaluable and we all owe him the greatest debt of thanks. And, at home, my wife Aartje Hulstein has been prepared to give up many days we could have spent together in favour of this project that she judged to be worthwhile, and to give me personal support at those inevitable moments when such a project is in one of its insufferable phases. Finally, there is a wish for you, the reader. I hope that this collection may anger and inspire, irritate and amaze: but above all, that it will provoke wonder, enquiry, and a wish not only to respect each field, but to open up, to find out more and, perhaps, to enter into a symbiotic bridge building operation that might bring valuable theoretical illumination and realm of practice to both fields. Notes 1. However, Jascia Reichardt’s epoch marking “Cybernetic Serendipity” exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, 1968, did build the relationship with design’s near cousin, Art. 2. Krippendorff, along with Dubberly and Pangaro, and I are amongst the few people, and the even fewer authors in this issue, who were educated in and who teach/pactise both design and cybernetics. It is not surprising, therefore, that our views are often sympathetic. 3. The origins of the word design, according to the Oxford Dictionary of the American Language on my Mac, are in the Latin “designare” to designate. It was brought into English via both French and Italian, with the added sense of drawing. It was certainly current in the early 1600s, witness its use by the English architect, Inigo Jones (1573-1652) in his 1613 annotations of Palladio’s “I Quattro Libri Della Architectura” (Glanville, 2007). Corte-Real (2007) shows us that Jones’s use was not novel, in his examination of Shakespeare’s use of the word design. 4. The best known and most notable meta-subjects are, probably, mathematics and linguistics. References Corte-Real, E. (2007), “Shakespeare on design”, The Radical Designist No. 1, available at: www. iade.pt/designist/0/jornal/jornal.html Glanville, R. (2007), “Inigo Jones”, The Radical Designist No. 0, available at: www.iade.pt/ designist/0/jornal/jornal.html (accessed 26 May 2007). Glanville, R. and Riegler, A. (2007), “Festschrift for Ernst von Glasersfeld”, Constructivist Foundations, Vol. 2 Nos 2/3, available at: www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/2.2/ (accessed 26 May 2007). Mead, M. (1968), “The cybernetics of cybernetics”, in von Foerster, H. et al. (Eds), Purposive Systems, Spartan Books, New York, NY. Pask, G. (1969), “The architectural relevance of cybernetics”, Architectural Design, No. 9. Pask, G. (1979), “Artificial intelligence – a preface and a theory”, in Negroponte, N. (Ed.), Soft Architecture Machines, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. ¨ Schon, D. (1983), The Reflective Practitioner, Basic Books, New York, NY.

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Abstracts Try again. Fail again. Fail better: the cybernetics in design and the design in cybernetics Ranulph Glanville Keywords Analogy, Circularity, Conversation, Cybernetics, Design, Novelty Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the two subjects, cybernetics and design, in order to establish and demonstrate a relationship between them. It is held that the two subjects can be considered complementary arms of each other. Design/methodology/approach – The two subjects are each characterised so that the author’s interpretation is explicit and those who know one subject but not the other are briefed. Cybernetics is examined in terms of both classical (first-order) cybernetics, and the more consistent second-order cybernetics, which is the cybernetics used in this argument. The paper develops by a comparative analysis of the two subjects, and exploring analogies between the two at several levels. Findings – A design approach is characterised and validated, and contrasted with a scientific approach. The analogies that are proposed are shown to hold. Cybernetics is presented as theory for design, design as cybernetics in practice. Consequent findings, for instance that both cybernetics and design imply the same ethical qualities, are presented. Research limitations/implications – The research implications of the paper are that, where research involves design, the criteria against which it can be judged are far more Popperian than might be imagined. Such research will satisfy the condition of adequacy, rather than correctness. A secondary outcome concerning research is that, whereas science is concerned with what is (characterised through the development of knowledge of (what is)), design (and by implication other subjects primarily concerned with action) is concerned with knowledge for acting. Practical implications – The theoretical validity of second-order cybernetics is used to justify and give proper place to design as an activity. Thus, the approach designers use is validated as complementary to, and placed on an equal par with, other approaches. This brings design, as an approach, into the realm of the acceptable. The criteria for the assessment of design work are shown to be different from those appropriate in other, more traditionally acceptable approaches. Originality/value – For approximately 40 years, there have been claims that cybernetics and design share much in common. This was originally expressed through communication criteria, and by the use of classical cybernetic approaches as methods for use in designing. This paper argues a much closer relationship between cybernetics and design, through consideration of developments in cybernetics not available 40 years ago (second-order cybernetics) and through examining the activity at the heart of the design act, whereas many earlier attempts have been concerned with research that is much more about assessment, prescription and proscription.

Cybernetic embodiment and the role of autonomy in the design process Argyris Arnellos, Thomas Spyrou and John Darzentas Keywords Autonomy, Second-order cybernetics, Design process, Functionality, Closure, Representational content, Anticipation, Interaction, Cybernetics, Design Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1158-1172 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X

Purpose – This paper aims to develop the role of autonomy in the emergence of the design process. It shows how the design process is facilitated by autonomy, how autonomy is enhanced through the design process and how the emergence of anticipatory and future-oriented representational content in

an autonomous cognitive system provides the functionality needed for the strengthening of both its autonomy and the design process, in which the autonomous cognitive system purposefully engages. Design/methodology/approach – Initially, the essential characteristics of the design process and of the cognitive systems participating in it will be identified. Then, an attempt to demonstrate the ability of an enhanced second-order cybernetic framework to satisfy these characteristics will be made. Next, an analytic description of the design process under this framework is presented and the respective implications are critically discussed. Findings – The role of autonomy is crucial for the design process, as it seems that autonomy is both the primary motive and the goal for a cognitive system to engage in a design process. A second-order cybernetic framework is suitable for the analysis of such a complex process, as long as both the constructive and the interactive aspects of a self-organising system are taken under consideration. Practical implications – The modelling of the complex design process under the framework of second-order cybernetics and the indication of the fundamental characteristics of an autonomous cognitive system as well as their interrelations may provide useful insights in multiple levels, from the purely theoretical (i.e. better understanding of the design process and the conditions for each creative fostering), to the purely technical (i.e. the design of artificial agents with design capabilities). Originality/value – The innovative aspect of the paper is that it attempts an analysis of the design process under a framework of second-order cybernetics, by attempting to analyse and explain the emergence of such a process from the point of view of an autonomous cognitive system. This results in some interesting implications regarding the nature of the design process, as well as regarding its “mechanisms” of emergence and evolution, with respect to the characteristics of the participating autonomous systems.

The origin of modelling Phil Ayres Keywords Observer, Model, Modelling, Black box, Design, Circularing, Architecture Purpose – This paper aims to explore the relationship between modelling and design from a cybernetic perspective. Design/methodology/approach – Cybernetic understandings of the notions “modelling” and “design” are developed initially. The derived understandings are used to define an outline specification for a speculative design project based on an analysis and re-interpretation of an account from Pliny the Elder. The account is re-interpreted to address a long tradition of partial appropriation in which only the two-dimensional representation of three-dimensions by projection on to a plane is considered. The project seeks to re-adjust the focus of this account to an activity that employs two-dimensional representation as a means for subsequent spatial synthesis. It further proposes to make the relationship between model and modelled circular. Findings – There are two findings. First, an understanding that context is constructed by the observer. Second, the need to implement a meta-model to permit circularity between the model and the modelled. Research limitations/implications – This paper presents the conceptual underpinning for a project and design strategy that is yet to be investigated. Practical implications – The design strategy presented suggests the introduction of circularity into the world of built artefacts, allowing the potential for the continual expression of variety over time. Originality/value – This paper introduces the original notion of the “persistent model” as a design strategy complementary to existing practices. The “persistent model” establishes and maintains circularity between the model and the artefact as constructed, in order that the two continually inform each other.

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Towards a virtual architecture: pushing cybernetics from government to anarchy Ana Paula Baltazar Keywords Design process, Virtual, User autonomy, Interface, Anarchy, Process-oriented design Purpose – This paper aims to discuss the possibility of joining cybernetics and architecture as a continuous and open process, bridging design, construction and use, in that which is called cyberarchitecture. Design/methodology/approach – It develops the hypothesis that cyberarchitecture can benefit from taking the virtual into account in the design process, so that the architect is no longer the author of a finished architectural product, but of a set of instruments with which users can design, build and use their own environments simultaneously. Findings – A set of design principles is systematised and examined in three practical realms of design: urban, building, and relational, showing cyberarchitecture’s embryonic feasibility. Practical implications – Cyberarchitecture implies that architects are no longer authors of finished products and users, becoming designers of their own spaces. Originality/value – Cyberarchitecture avoids the usual cybernetics approach based on control-system, indicating a less predictive and, ultimately, anarchic path for architects and users. It focuses on architecture’s intrinsic value as an event, indicating the possibility of a process-based system, which only exists (or is organised) in present-time, when users and instruments (or structures) interact.

Designing cybersystemically for symviability Gary Boyd and Vladimir Zeman Keywords Sustainable design, Cybernetics, Design Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to encourage professional designers of many kinds, and especially those of the entertainment media, to understand themselves as actually being partners in a common educative enterprise, which is through artistry, predictive knowledge, non-dominative legitimative discourse and technology, helping people everywhere to learn to desire to, and to be able to, survive reasonably pleasantly on Earth for a very long time to come. Design/methodology/approach – This paper puts forward three theses: collapse of civilisation is immanent unless people can be educated to live symbiotically with one another and Gaia; all designs have educative and mis-educative importance; designers need to learn to use higher level cybersystemic approaches to be beneficial. Then it argues for the plausibility of these theses from philosophical educational to practical perspectives. In particular, it argues for the importance of modifying cultural propagation so that all our main cultures can become “symviable” – that is can come to live symbiotically with one another and with the ecosystems of Earth. And it is argued that, in order to facilitate this enterprise, a cybernetic understanding of the processes and actions of the complex historically emergent higher level cybersystems in which the authors are all embedded, and which are embedded in us, should become the basis for designers’ actual practice. Findings – By reviewing designers’ functional levels historically the paper finds that many different kinds of influential designers have actually functioned at the higher cybersystemic levels the author advocate and hence can be guiding exemplars in this newly precarious situation. Originality/value – A deeper cybersystemic understanding of just how people are all parts of one mutually educating and mutually surviving Earth-life system changes the value of everything. Designers who manage to use such understanding should be both more successful and more satisfied with the value of their work.

An indeterminate project for architecture in Brazil Jose dos Santos Cabral Filho Keywords Design, Cybernetics, Brazil, Feedback, Architecture Purpose – This paper seeks to describe an experiment carried out in the 1980s by a small practice called Ce´u do 3o. Mundo (C3M) relating to the application of cybernetics principles to a design process with special regard to house design in Brazil. Design/methodology/approach – After discussing the peculiarities of architectural practice in Brazil, the paper presents C3M’s design methodology, which is based on the creation of three models (“conceptual model”, “analogical model”, and “scale model”); a case study is presented and the results of the application of the methodology to several projects are discussed. Findings – The paper shows that cybernetics principles are relevant for dealing with the Brazilian housing shortage, especially because it is an adequate framework to deal with the Brazilian culture, known for its informality, its social plasticity and its playful nature. Originality/value – The correlation of cybernetics principles to the design of affordable houses is articulated through the concept of “indeterminate project,” intended as a project that would allow for flexibility, interpretation and adaptation.

Self-observing collective: an exemplar for design research? D.P. Dash Keywords Cybernetics, Design, Problem solving Purpose – This paper sets out to provide arguments and examples supporting the idea that some “wicked” design problems may be usefully approached through the process of bringing forth a self-observing collective, i.e. a community of observers capable of generating and dynamically adjusting a collective standpoint from where new observations can be made. Design/methodology/approach – Interactions within a community of observers can be designed to generate a collective standpoint from where new observations can be made and fed back to the interacting observers, thus ensuring that the collective standpoint also extends the observers’ capacity to observe. Instances of this process are discussed to demonstrate its contribution towards dealing with some wicked design problems. Findings – The paper suggests that one’s capacity to observe, feel, reflect, communicate, and act can be systematically harnessed in a self-observing collective in order to strengthen each member in the face of complex and unstructured problem situations. However, the continued success of the process depends on the effective construction and dynamic maintenance of the collective standpoint that gives the self-observing collective its unique power. Originality/value – The paper borrows certain insights from second-order cybernetics to suggest a way of dealing with ill-structured (and wicked) design problems by facilitating a process of interaction within a community of observers who must be enabled to live with the wickedness of the problem with minimum harm.

It’s all about communication: graphics and cybernetics Simon Downs Keywords Cybernetics, Design, Knowledge creation Purpose – The paper seeks to serve a dual process, first, to raise awareness of the epistemological weaknesses inherent in the ways that visual communications designers address their own practice, and, second, to suggest that cybernetics has some of the answers to these weaknesses.

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Design/methodology/approach – These objectives of this paper have been addressed through an examination of the cybernetics, critical theory and visual design theory. A comparison of the points of convergence (often of aims) and those points of divergence (often in its ontological reading of the world) is illuminating, especially when post-structuralist semiotics – as a system of knowledge exterior to both design and cybernetics, yet capable of commenting on both – is used as a point of triangulation. Findings – The literature analysis carried for this paper indicates that in both visual communications design and cybernetics there are areas of overlapping interest (concerns with the cyclic nature of coding and decoding information) and areas that might at first seem divergent but are in fact often complementary (the role of the observer as controller and participant in a system). The paper proposes that cybernetics uncovers principles at the heart of communication that in turn inform visual communication practices, which in a circular fashion informs cybernetics. Practical implications – The paper suggests that new areas for cyberneticians to use in their study of second-order cybernetics may be found in the product of visual communications design. It also suggests areas where designers may begin to search for tools that may be useful in evaluating their working practices. Originality/value – The paper notes that an external investigation of visual communications artefacts presents cybernetics with a potential test-bed on which to test its theories, in practice, on a global scale. Cybernetics has the potential to define and offer constructive guidance to visual communications design in examining its own practice.

Cybernetics and service-craft: language for behavior-focused design Hugh Dubberly and Paul Pangaro Keywords Cybernetics, Design, Politics, Service Purpose – This paper aims to describe relationships between cybernetics and design, especially service design, which is a component of service-craft; to frame cybernetics as a language for design, especially behavior-focused design. Design/methodology/approach – The material in this paper was developed for a course on cybernetics and design. Work began by framing material on cybernetics in terms of models. As the course progressed, the relevance of the models to design became clearer. A first focus was on applying the models to describe human-computer interaction; later another focus emerged, viewing cybernetic processes as analogs for design processes. These observations led to a review of the history of design methods and design rationale. Findings – The paper argues that design practice has moved from hand-craft to service-craft and that service-craft exemplifies a growing focus on systems within design practice. It also proposes cybernetics as a source for practical frameworks that enable understanding of dynamic systems, including specific interactions, larger systems of service, and the activity of design itself. It also shows that development of first- and second-generation design methods parallels development of first- and second-generation cybernetics. Finally, it argues that design is essentially political, frames design as conversation, and proposes cybernetics as a language for design and a foundation of a broad design education. Research limitations/implications – The paper suggests opportunities for more research on the historical relationship between cybernetics and design methods, design research on modeling user goals. Practical implications – The paper offers tools for understanding and managing the complicated communities of systems that designers increasingly face. Originality/value – Suggests models useful for practicing designers and proposes changes to design education.

The dynamics of design Natalie Ebenreuter Keywords Second-order, Cybernetics, Design Purpose – This paper seeks to develop the argument that a cybernetic framework will enable designers to act as an observer and participant in the process of designing. The dynamic nature of the design process will be discussed in order to better understand how these aspects impact on a designer’s ability to act effectively in design. Design/methodology/approach – A second-order cybernetic framework is offered as a means to facilitate a designer’s capacity to act as an observer-participant in the co-creation of a design solution. It characterizes the design process as a conversation to enhance a designer’s ability to conceptually develop novel design solutions in participative situations. Findings – The significance of the designer in the design process and the design solution is established. A second-order cybernetic framework provides an explanation for a designer’s actions by acknowledging their presence in the design process. This makes possible the collaborative development of a design situation and its solution between various participants in this process through negotiation and mutual understanding. Practical implications – It is envisaged that the value of cybernetic concepts as a means to augment interaction, reflection, mutual understanding, creativity and innovation to facilitate designerly ways of knowing, thinking, and acting, is realized. Originality/value – The main value of this framework is for designers who struggle with finding an appropriate framework to facilitate and rationalize the subjective nature of human-centred design methods and the complexity of design.

How to design a black and white box Stephen Gage Keywords Cybernetics, Design Purpose – Delight, and the possibility that an observer might continually delight in the same thing, is difficult to deal with in a rigorous way. Very little has been written recently about this subject. The purpose of this paper is to offer insights about this vital subject with reference to design work being undertaken at UCL. Design/methodology/approach – It is the contention of this paper that arguments taken from constructivism and second-order cybernetics can help in this. The cyberneticians who have most significantly dealt with cybernetics and physical architecture are Pask and Glanville. They offer significantly different and contradictory insights. Techniques for conceptualising an interactive performative architecture are discussed, based on work undertaken with postgraduate students at the Bartlett Interactive Architecture Workshop, UCL. Findings – Glanville and Pask can be reconciled. When physical architecture can be considered as contributing to physical performance both sets of insights can exist in a common theoretical frame. Practical implications – Designers should consider creating work that contains rich variety and the cues for observer construction, while also offering the possibility of ambiguity where different distinctions are equally possible. It is possible to utilise the differences that arise from changes in the external environment to manipulate the latter. Originality/value – The paper suggests ways of creating places that offer continual delight to their observers.

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Systemic environmental decision making: designing learning systems Ray Ison, Chris Blackmore, Kevin Collins and Pam Furniss Keywords Cybernetics, Research, Learning, Decision making Purpose – This paper, written for a special issue of Kybernetes devoted to cybernetics and design, aims to focus on case studies that are both informed by cybernetic and systems thinking and constitute a form of second-order design praxis. Design/methodology/approach – The case studies exemplify reflective practice as well as reporting outcomes, in terms of new understandings, from an action research process. Findings – The paper describes what was involved in course design, from a cybernetic perspective, to effect systemic environmental decision making as well as developing and enacting a model for doing systemic inquiry (SI), which enabled situation-improving actions to be realised in a complex, organisational setting. The paper lays out the theoretical and ethical case for understanding first- and second-order designing as a duality rather than a dualism. Research limitations/implications – There is a danger that readers from an alternative epistemological position will judge the paper in terms of knowledge claims relevant only to their own epistemological position. Practical implications – The main outcomes suggested by this paper concern the possibility of transforming the current mainstream identity of educators, project managers and researchers to a position that offers more choices through both epistemological awareness (and pluralism) and the design of learning systems, including SI, as second-order devices. Originality/value – The case studies are based on both novel settings and theories in action; the concept of the learning systems as both a design and systemic practice as well as an epistemological device is novel. The paper is potentially of relevance to any practitioner wishing to use systems or cybernetic thinking. It is likely to be of particular relevance to education policy makers and public sector governance.

Research through DESIGN through research: a cybernetic model of designing design foundations Wolfgang Jonas Keywords Design, Cybernetics, Evolution, Learning, Research, Knowledge management Purpose – The paper seeks to make a substantial contribution to the still controversial question of design foundations. Design/methodology/approach – A generic hypercyclic design process model is derived from basic notions of evolution and learning in different domains of knowing (and turns out to be not very different from existing ones). The second-order cybernetics and evolutionary thinking provide theoretical support. Findings – The paper presents a model of designerly knowledge production, which has the potential to serve as a genuine design research paradigm. It does not abandon the scientific or the hermeneutic or the arts & crafts paradigm but concludes that they have to be embedded into a design paradigm. “Design paradigm” means that “objects” are not essential, but are created in communication and language. Research limitations/implications – Foundations cannot be found in the axiomatic statements of the formal sciences, nor in the empirical approaches of the natural sciences, nor in the hermeneutic techniques of the humanities. Designing explores and creates the new; it deals with the fit of artefacts and their human, social and natural contexts. Therefore foundations for design (if they exist at all) have to be based on the generative character of designing, which can be seen as the very activity which made and still makes primates into humans.

Practical implications – The hypercyclic model provides a cybernetic foundation (or rather substantiation) for design, which – at the same time – serves as a framework for design and design research practice. As long as the dynamic model is in action, i.e. stabilized in communication, it provides foundations; once it stops, they dissolve. The fluid circular phenomena of discourse and communication provide the only “eternal” essence of design. Originality/value – “Design objects” as well as “theory objects” are transient materializations or eigenvalues in these circular processes. Designing objects and designing theories are equivalent. “Problems” and “solutions” as well as “foundations” are objects of this kind. This contributes to a conceptual integration of the acting and reflecting disciplines.

The cybernetics of design and the design of cybernetics Klaus Krippendorff Keywords Cybernetics, Sciences, Design Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to connect two discourses, the discourse of cybernetics and that of design. Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes a comparative analysis of relevant definitions, concepts, and entailments in both discourse, and an integration of these into a cybernetically informed concept of human-centered design, on the one hand, and a design-informed concept of second-order cybernetics, on the other hand. In the course of this conceptual exploration, the distinction between science and design is explored with cybernetics located in the dialectic between the two. Technology-centered design is distinguished from human-centered design, and several axioms of the latter are stated and discussed. Findings – This paper consists of recommendations to think and do things differently. In particular, a generalization of interface is suggested as a replacement for the notion of products; a concept of meaning is developed to substitute for the meaninglessness of physical properties; a theory of stakeholder networks is discussed to replace the deceptive notion of THE user; and, above all, it is suggested that designers, in order to design something that affords use to others, engage in second-order understanding. Originality/value – The paper makes several radical suggestions that face likely rejection by traditionalists but acceptance by cyberneticians and designers attempting to make a contribution to contemporary information society.

Design and prosthetic perception Ted Krueger Keywords Design, Cybernetics, Perception Purpose – The paper aims to consider competing accounts of perception and to examine their potential to support design activity that seeks to extend and enrich perception using interface technologies. The interfaces will enable the direct perception of electromagnetic phenomena that are not now considered to be directly available to humans. Design/methodology/approach – Two models are considered. According to one, the standard view, perception is of an external world known by means of information flowing into an organism from it as conditioned by the organism’s biological sensory modalities; according to the other, the enactive view, perception occurs by means of learning to differentiate oneself from the world by undertaking activities, by learning and mastering sensorimotor contingencies.

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Findings – The paper presents preliminary results of design work based on enactive cognition and argues that the results, in turn, re-inform and reinforce the theory by the introduction of novel perceptual phenomena that cannot be accommodated within the standard view of perception. Practical implications – The project, rather than seeking an instrumental utility, though this may occur, instead strives to enable the bringing forth of a richer world. Its objective is epistemic rather than pragmatic. Originality/value – The paper presents a reflection on the role of design in the construction of theory.

A sociocybernetic approach to wayfinding map studies: the systems of people-map-space interactions Christopher Kian Teck Kueh Keywords Design, Research, Cybernetics, Feedback, Information research, Sociocybernetics Purpose – This paper seeks to apply a systemic approach to study human-map-space interactions that will benefit the design of a wayfinding map. Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents a case study that was based on Van Bockstaele et al.’s sociocybernetic theory as a research framework to map study. Van Bockstaele et al.’s theory suggests that an individual’s behaviour derives from a cognitive system that consists of latent (background thinking process) and patent (amplified language or action that communicates with the public) action. To observe and understand an individual’s action, the observer must also consider cognitive systems. Applying this theory, the process of individuals using maps to solve wayfinding tasks within the City of Fremantle, Western Australia was observed. The study involved observing 30 international students who use three maps, each of which presents iconic, symbolic, and iconic and symbolic representations, to locate four destinations in the city. Findings – Findings suggest that external systems such as maps and the actual environment affect an individual’s latent and patent actions, while their behaviour affects the way they perceive the external systems. Research limitations/implications – This paper addresses the complexity of systems involved in the process of an individual using maps to solve wayfinding tasks in the actual environment. Practical implications – This study provides graphic and information designers with a substantial understanding of human-map-space interactions based on systemic perspectives. Originality/value – The application of sociocybernetics is uncommon in map studies. This paper provides a link between the two disciplines.

Complex built-environment design: four extensions to Ashby Terence Love and Trudi Cooper Keywords Design, Cybernetics, Social environment, Control, Man-machine systems Purpose – This paper sets out to report on research by the authors into the development and application of four extensions to Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety (LoRV) that increase its utility in the arena of unplanned changes in hegemonic control of designed complex socio-technical systems/digital eco-systems in the built environment that are structurally dynamic or emergent. Design/methodology/approach – Research on which the paper is based focused on exploration of classical systems approaches to the design of complex socio-technical systems in which ownership, power, control and management of structure and benefit generation and distribution are distributed, dynamic and multi-constituent. Support for development of these four extensions to Ashby’s Law comes from observation of four decades of socio-technical systems development along with critical

thinking that combined systems analysis theories with theories and findings from fields of hegemonic analysis, design research, management, management information systems, behaviour in organisations and sociology. Findings – The paper outlines application of four new extensions to LoRV in relation to unplanned changes in distributions of power, ownership, control, benefit generation and benefit distribution in complex socio-technical systems/digital eco-systems in the built environment that are emergent or have changing structures. Three of these extensions have been outlined earlier in relation to the design of learning object-based e-learning systems. The fourth extension builds on these via application of Coasian analysis. The paper also describes a suite of five guidelines to assist with the design of complex socio-technical systems derived from the four extensions to Ashby. Research limitations/implications – The four extensions of Ashby’s Law that underpin the design guidelines in this paper are deduced from observation and critical analysis rather than being “proven” empirically. They are derived from observation of the behaviour of real-world complex systems together with critical analytical thinking that integrated theory and research findings from a range of disciplines where each informs understanding of hegemonic aspects of emergent complex socio-technical systems involving multiple, changing constituencies, and evolving system structures. Practical implications – A design method is derived comprising five design guidelines for use in pre-design and design of complex socio-technical systems/digital eco-systems in the built environment. Originality/value – The paper describes the application of four new extensions to LoRV that extend the analytical role of Ashby’s Law in diagnosis of changes in power relations and unintended design outcomes from changes in the generation and control of variety in complex, multi-layered and hierarchical socio-technical systems that have multiple stakeholders and constituencies. From these, a suite of five new design guidelines is proposed.

The magic of three Johann van der Merwe Keywords Autopoiseses, Cybernetes, Constructivist, Identity, Inter-relational Purpose – This paper aims to combine several modes of thought based on systems organization and observing systems in order to construct a model for a “designerly way of thinking”. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is to regard design as a “groundless field of knowledge” that may source methodological insights from cybernetics, systems theory, cognitive studies and complexity theory, among others. Findings – The focus of this research is to model an adaptive frame-of-reference that design students may use in order to construct their own autopoietic identity systems. The semantic question “How does a student obtain information about design?” is changed to a structural question “How could students acquire a structure enabling them to operate innovatively in a modern design environment?” With the backing of cybernetic principles, it is apparent that this process is not only feasible but also preferable. Practical implications – While the practical use that can be made of any design theory is not within the remit of this paper, it is nonetheless the goal of theory to enhance the individual’s analytical and communicative skills. Originality/value – This paper suggests an autopoietic model-for-becoming that can have the virtual potential of bringing one to understand the grey areas of human-object relationships.

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Architecture as a verb: cybernetics and design processes for the social divide Anja Pratschke Keywords Cybernetics, Public policy, Brazil, Design, Sociocybernetics, Economic cooperation Purpose – This paper aims to draw on current research in public policy, and more specifically about a collaborative design process for a poor suburban community in Sa˜o Paulo, Brazil and its relation to social cybernetics as the “science of effective organization.” The research project in public policy, online-communities, has been financed by the state-sponsored agency FAPESP since 2003, and involves four research groups from the Architecture and Computer Science Departments at the University of Sa˜o Paulo, and various public and non-governmental organizations under the coordination of Nomads.usp Research Center (Center for Studies on Interactive Living, www.eesc.usp.br/nomads). Design/methodology/approach – The design methodology includes three premises: an organization of the team which considers multidisciplinary and multicultural aspects; the involvement of potential users as creators of the virtual community and of its concrete space; and the concern that the process will be organized so that autonomy and evolution take place. Findings – Special interest in the comparison of architectural methods and cybernetics is to understand how information and communication are dealt with using a design process to promote active exchange of knowledge and competences, and to improve interaction and conversation in a local context of large social differences, affected by lack of opportunities and regulating structures. Practical implications – Owing to its constant questioning of viability, adaptability and recursion, cybernetics should be able to make the designer team constantly revise the proposal to change conditions during its process of implementation and later autonomy. Originality/value – The paper discusses the actual relevance of the use of the cybernetic theory as a way to improve information and communication between designers and the population in poor communities.

Drawing a live section: explorations into robotic membranes Mette Ramsgard Thomsen Keywords Cybernetics, Design, Robotics, Textiles, Architecture Purpose – This paper aims to discuss the conceptualisation, design and realisation of a robotic membrane. Presenting research taking place between the cross-over among architecture, technical textiles and computer science, the paper seeks to explore the theoretical as well as the practical foundations for the making of a dynamic architecture. Design/methodology/approach – The project employs an architectural design method developing working demonstrators. The paper asks how a material can be described through its behavioural as well as its formal properties. As new materials such as conductive and resistive fibres as well as smart memory alloys and polymers are developed, it becomes possible to create new hybrid materials that incorporate the possibility for state change. Findings – The paper presents the first explorations into the making of architectural membranes that integrate systems for steering using traditional textile technologies. This paper presents a series of architectural investigations and models that seek to explore the conceptual, computational and the technological challenges of a robotic membrane. Originality/value – The paper presents original thinking and technical innovation into the making of textile spaces.

Second-order cybernetics, architectural drawing and monadic thinking Peg Rawes Keywords Cybernetics, Design, Architecture, Geometry Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine shared principles of “irreducibility” or “undecidability” in second-order cybernetics, architectural design processes and Leibniz’s geometric philosophy. It argues that each discipline constructs relationships, particularly spatio-temporal relationships, according to these terms. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is organized into two parts and uses architectural criticism and philosophical analysis. The first part examines how second-order cybernetics and post-structuralist architectural design processes share these principles. Drawing from von Foerster’s theory of the “observing observer” it analyses the self-reflexive and self-referential modes of production that construct a collaborative architectural design project. Part two examines the terms in relation to Leibniz’s account of the “Monad”. Briefly, developing the discussion through Kant’s theory of aesthetics, it shows that Leibniz provides a “prototype” of undecidable spatial relations that are present in architectural design and second-order cybernetics. Findings – The paper demonstrates that second-order cybernetics, architectural design and metaphysical philosophy enable interdisciplinary understandings of “undecidability”. Practical implications – The paper seeks to improve understanding of the geometric processes that construct architectural design. Originality/value – The paper explores interdisciplinary connections between the disciplines, opening up potential routes for further examination. Its examination of the aesthetic and geometric value of the Monad (rather than its perspectival value) provides a particularly relevant link for discussing the aesthetic production and experience of spatial relations in second-order cybernetics and contemporary architectural design.

Cybernetic principles for learning design Bernard Scott, Simon Shurville, Piers Maclean and Chunyu Cong Keywords Cybernetics, Learning, Design Purpose – This paper aims to present an approach from first principles to the design of learning experiences in interactive learning environments, that is “learning designs” in the broadest sense. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is based on conversation theory (CT), a theory of learning and teaching with principled foundations in cybernetics. The approach to learning design that is proposed is not dissimilar from other approaches such as that proposed by Rowntree. However, its basis in CT provides a coherent theoretical underpinning. Findings – Currently, in the world of e-learning, the terms “instructional design” and “learning design” are used to refer to the application of theories of learning and instruction to the creation of e-learning material and online learning experiences. The paper examines the roots of the two terms and discusses similarities and differences in usage. It then discusses how the processes of learning design fit into the larger processes of course, design, development and delivery. It goes on to examine the concept of a “learning design pattern”. Originality/value – The paper contends that, whilst learning design patterns are useful as starting-points for individual learning designs, learning designers should adopt the cybernetic principles of reflective practice – as expressed in CT – to create learning designs where received wisdom is enriched by contextual feedback from colleagues and learners.

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Conversations with the self-knowledge creation for designing Kaye Shumack Keywords Design process, Knowledge management, Learning, Knowledge creation, Narratives Purpose – This paper aims to draw links between the circularity of second-order cybernetics, and constructive, reflective conversations with oneself in design practice. The paper argues that a structured use of internal conversational dialogues with oneself can assist the design process, enhancing creativity and transformative approaches to design projects. Design/methodology/approach – Theories about the emergence of new knowledge, and the causal nature of internal conversations, are used to present a case for the value of a structured self-reflective conversational process in designing. Emergent knowledge is described in terms of flows across domains of public and personal knowledge, through dynamic processes of semantic absorption, codification and diffusion. The structure and agency of the internal conversation are discussed as a practical way to interpret and locate the emergence of project directions, as a kind of meta-language for design production. This is demonstrated through an action research case study, where an internal dialogue about teaching visual communication design is described. Findings – On the basis of the action research described, the use of a structured internal dialogue can be of benefit to designing, as it provides a mechanism for locating and mapping the flows and developments of emergent semantic concepts and design project directions. Practical implications – The model for internal conversations is a way for designers to acknowledge their dual role as both participant (“subject” self) and observer (“object” self). The paper argues that this can help in locating oneself within a design process. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the debate about knowledge of design and for design. A constructive conversational model is presented, which acknowledges the significant role of experiential, cultural and semantic contexts in framing emerging knowledge for designing.

Design of the netgeneration: streaming the flow of design and science in the educational practice of the creative industry Aukje Thomassen Keywords Cybernetics, Design, Education, Creative thinking, Young adults Purpose – This paper sets out to provide insight into the current debate on art, science and the new net generation of young professionals with the usage of the conceptual framework of cybernetics that will look into the dynamics of this netgeneration. Design/methodology/approach – Literature review will set the stage of the current debate on design education in the creative industries, which aims to provide a reflection. The theory and approaches are then applied to a case study in which the conceptual framework of cybernetics will be unfolded. These concepts are then evaluated in order to provide a proposal for continuing research. Findings – The paper provides insight into the mechanisms of knowledge management systems in particular for the context of design-making processes by the netgeneration. The findings are reviewed and concluded by proposing a method for continuation of research. The case study will benefit from the findings and as such design education itself. Research limitations/implications – It is not an exhaustive scope of literature review as the literature chosen is in particular very applicable to the case study in this paper. However, the point of departure is the current debate within the creative industries on design education and the netgeneration.

Originality/value – This paper interconnects different elements which are the subject within different venues such as within design, science, pedagogy, and knowledge management. Therefore this paper might be applicable within these different articulated venues.

A framework for designing sustainable urban communities Shann Turnbull Keywords Cybernetics, Economics, Governance, Property rights, Urban areas, Communities Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to show how the sustainability of urban settlements can be improved by treating as a variable the design of property rights: to realty, corporations, and currencies, and the communication and control architecture of communities. Design/methodology/approach – System science shows how the resulting increases in the richness and variety of communication and control channels improve the governance of urban precincts. The new variables also provide a way to integrate the design of the built environment into the design of its governance architecture. The scope of orthodox economic analysis is extended to include the value of assets and liabilities to provide additional feedback signals. This more holistic economic framework increases the richness of the “semiotic” channel of social communication and control that complements those based on senses, words and prices. Findings – The analysis reveals self-reinforcing feed-forward and feedback channels between the use and maintenance of the built environment and its governance architecture not available in less holistic design frameworks. Practical implications – The paper identifies the need for urban planners to extend their discipline to become governance architects and how the knowledge of system scientists can be applied to improve the design of capitalism. Originality/value – A new design paradigm is identified that allows improvements to be introduced in the ability of towns or suburbs, to become self-financing, self-governing political units. The paradigm identifies how capitalism can be designed to become more efficient, equitable, responsive, and democratic.

Informing design praxis via 2nd-order cybernetics Randall Whitaker Keywords 2nd-order cybernetics, Biology of cognition, Design, Matorana, Varela Purpose – This paper aims to present lessons learned in applying 2nd-order cybernetics – specifically Maturana and Varela’s “biology of cognition” – to the actual design of interactive decision support systems. Design/methodology/approach – This consists of a review of the rationale and bases for applying 2nd-order cybernetics in interactive IT design, the challenges in moving from theory to praxis, illustrative examples of tactics employed, and a summary of the successful outcomes achieved. Findings – The paper offers conclusions about the general applicability of such theories, two sample applications devised for actual projects, and discussion of these applications’ perceived value. Research limitations/implications – The applications described are not claimed to represent a complete toolkit, and they may not readily generalize beyond the scope of interactive information systems design. On the other hand, the examples offered demonstrate that 2nd-order cybernetics can constructively inform such designs – advancing the focus of discussion from theory-based advocacy to praxis-based recommendations. Practical implications – The paper presents illustrative examples of the exigencies entailed in moving 2nd-order cybernetics ideas forward from theory to praxis and specific tactics for doing so.

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Rethinking the cybernetic basis of design: the concepts of control and organization Theodore Zamenopoulos, Katerina Alexiou Keywords Organization, Control, Complexity, Design theory, Category theory, Emergence Purpose – Even though design as a purposeful activity naturally fits into the realm of cybernetics, the emphasis on control has limited the scope of using cybernetic principles in design. The idea of organization, another fundamental concept in cybernetics, has received less attention in design research and seems worthy of further exploration. The purpose of the paper is to review the two concepts and clarify their role and meaning in design. Overall, using insights from complex systems science, the paper attempts to recast the relationship between cybernetics and design. Design/methodology/approach – The treatment uses category theory as a language and methodological approach in order to formally express the concepts of “organization” “control” and “design” and then study the relations between them. Findings – Organization is defined using the mathematical concept of sketch, i.e. as a characterization of the complementary relation between theories and models. The paper demonstrates that the peculiarity of design rests on the fact that the distinction between theories and models is an anticipated but emergent state. In contrast, control-based representations assume that the theory-model distinction is given in advance, as an intrinsic characteristic. The paper demonstrates that design is a distinct paradigm in relation to control, yet it falls within the domain of cybernetic and complex systems enquiry. Originality/value – The paper contributes to the understanding of design as a distinct type of problem in cybernetics by exposing differences between control and design problems. The paper also further lays the foundations for developing a cybernetic theory of design based on the concept of organization.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0368-492X.htm

Try again. Fail again. Fail better: the cybernetics in design and the design in cybernetics Ranulph Glanville

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The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, London, UK, and CybernEthics Research, Southsea, UK Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the two subjects, cybernetics and design, in order to establish and demonstrate a relationship between them. It is held that the two subjects can be considered complementary arms of each other. Design/methodology/approach – The two subjects are each characterised so that the author’s interpretation is explicit and those who know one subject but not the other are briefed. Cybernetics is examined in terms of both classical (first-order) cybernetics, and the more consistent second-order cybernetics, which is the cybernetics used in this argument. The paper develops by a comparative analysis of the two subjects, and exploring analogies between the two at several levels. Findings – A design approach is characterised and validated, and contrasted with a scientific approach. The analogies that are proposed are shown to hold. Cybernetics is presented as theory for design, design as cybernetics in practice. Consequent findings, for instance that both cybernetics and design imply the same ethical qualities, are presented. Research limitations/implications – The research implications of the paper are that, where research involves design, the criteria against which it can be judged are far more Popperian than might be imagined. Such research will satisfy the condition of adequacy, rather than correctness. A secondary outcome concerning research is that, whereas science is concerned with what is (characterised through the development of knowledge of (what is)), design (and by implication other subjects primarily concerned with action) is concerned with knowledge for acting. Practical implications – The theoretical validity of second-order cybernetics is used to justify and give proper place to design as an activity. Thus, the approach designers use is validated as complementary to, and placed on an equal par with, other approaches. This brings design, as an approach, into the realm of the acceptable. The criteria for the assessment of design work are shown to be different from those appropriate in other, more traditionally acceptable approaches. Originality/value – For approximately 40 years, there have been claims that cybernetics and design share much in common. This was originally expressed through communication criteria, and by the use of classical cybernetic approaches as methods for use in designing. This paper argues a much closer relationship between cybernetics and design, through consideration of developments in cybernetics not available 40 years ago (second-order cybernetics) and through examining the activity at the heart of the design act, whereas many earlier attempts have been concerned with research that is much more about assessment, prescription and proscription. Keywords Analogy, Circularity, Conversation, Cybernetics, Design, Novelty Paper type Research paper

The title “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” is taken from Samuel Beckett’s (1984) novel Worstward Ho! published by the Grove Press in New York. In the author’s view, it captures the conversational act at the heart of designing which is the central focus of this paper.

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1173-1206 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827238

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1. Introduction This paper is made up of two-halves, and should, in effect, be seen as two papers in one. Because this special double issue of Kybernetes pursues the intersection of two fields, cybernetics and design, there may be readers who are not familiar with one field or the other. Furthermore, both fields may often be presented in an almost bewildering variety of ways some of which appear to contradict others. It seemed that there was, therefore, a need for an introduction to each field. I present this in the first half of the paper, although I do not attempt a field survey (which would be beyond what is possible in this issue). Approaches to design cover a wide range. The word design has roots in drawing and in designation. It is used as both a noun and a verb (the preferred use in this paper). There is a long history in the way the word “design” came into English, but studies of the activity are relatively recent. I will distinguish three streams here. Simon (1969) thought of design as a complex but essentially mechanical action (and saw much of how designers actually design as a shortcoming rather than a strength – if he saw it at all). His approach can be typified by the notion of generating a set of alternatives which might be assessed against criteria (assuming the criteria can be specified). In contrast, Rittel and Webber (1984) posited the concept of “wicked problems” as a central feature of designing, while Gedenryd (1998) (with whom I share most sympathy) investigated the relationship between designing and cognition and pointed out that much design research had been concerned with what researchers thought designers should do, whereas he (and I) are more interested in what they do. Approaches to cybernetics are equally wide ranging. The classical presentation of the subject, deriving from Wiener (1948) and the Macy Conferences (Pias, 2003), is of control, feedback, communication, circular causality. This approach takes various forms, with applications in hard engineering to management, law and so on. Social systems soften the approach, but the radical and contrasting variant is second order cybernetics: the cybernetics of observing (rather than observed) systems, as von Foerster (1974) described it. Second order cybernetics grew out of Mead’s (1968) advocacy of the examination of cybernetic ideas and institutions using cybernetic principles and understandings. Second order cybernetics is thus recursive, constructive and very consistent! My own position in each field (in radical disagreement with many other authors in the issue) is as follows. 1.1 Design I value what designers actually do: the act that is at the centre of designing, the heart of the design act that is the source of its distinctiveness, and of the creativity, the novelty, with which design is associated. So I take it that the act of designing is a worthwhile act in its own right, and a proper focus for research. Indeed, designing may be so worthwhile that it may not need improvement: and improvement may not be possible. Unlike some of my colleagues, I consider the attempt to force design to be scientific to be ludicrous – for several reasons, including that the whole point of design is that it is design. Design is a way of acting, a way of thinking, and I have argued that design (as I understand it) is the act at the centre of the Piagetian development of the constant objects with which, Piaget claimed, we populate the world we create from the

experience we live in. In fact, rather than benefiting from ways in which other areas might be applied to design, it may be it is design that has more to offer to other areas.

1.2 Cybernetics Cybernetics is a way of thinking that bridges perception, cognition and living-in-the-stream-of-experience (the involvement of the observer), which gives important value to interaction and what we hold between ourselves and others – whether animate or inanimate. It is concerned with circular causality and the wish to control in a beneficial manner. It comes from a mechanical metaphor for the animate, which is now partnered by an animate metaphor for the mechanical. While it can be of great use in its traditional business of modelling control systems (and hence in control engineering), for me its interest lies in the significance given to the involved observer and the consequent individuality of and responsibility for his/her actions. My position lies at the radical extreme of second order cybernetics and is unrecognisable to some others in the field.

1.3 A sketch of the argument If the first-half of this paper is concerned with an exposition of the understandings of cybernetics and design that I argue from, the second-half of the paper is concerned with the development of a series of analogies that show how design and cybernetics are so closely related, at least in my exploration of them (which reflects my interests in them). The reason for composing this issue of Kybernetes is to explore the (possible) relationship between cybernetics and design. In this last half of the paper I present the analogies I have developed that allow me to claim that cybernetics can act as the theoretical arm of design, while design acts as the practical (active) arm of cybernetics. This paper works with these particular interpretations of design and cybernetics. Many disagree with these interpretations, and the analogies I build. However, my purpose is not to show I am right and others are wrong, but that something may be held to be shared between cybernetics and design that is worth considering, thus bringing them together. Some may say my way of considering design is hopelessly imprecise, that design should be more like science, etc. I reply that if design is more like science, why should we bother with design at all (to repeat myself: the whole point of design is that it is design)? It is the difference that makes design interesting and gives it its value, allowing us to have more than one way of acting, more than one set of values. In my opinion, those who cannot see this should think twice before speaking: it is assertive and wishful thinking to claim that because you cannot see something, no one else can and that your blindness should be taken as universally shared. I say this as a scientist as well as a designer. There will also be those who claim this approach is romantic. But it is not romantic to accept that not everything can be defined and computed, or that there are ways of working that do not depend on such definition: and it is not romantic to value criteria and qualities other than the strictly measurable, or to accept that reality is as we make it. And, for that matter, what is wrong with romantic?

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2. Cybernetics and design: introduction 2.1 Why should we think there is a connection The notion that cybernetics and design might have something to tell each other is not new. The history, over the last 60 years, of both has served to bring them together on several occasions and has shown striking parallels in their histories. For instance, in its early days, when technological optimism was at its height, cybernetics was seen as the subject that would help realise this optimistic view. At the same time, design (particularly in the form of architecture[1]) was seen as being unscientific (and hence theoretically inadequate) and began the search it has pursued ever since to find a theory that it could import that would make it properly scientific. Cybernetics (and its near cousin, systems theory)[2] was seen as a likely candidate. In the late 1950s, there was a profound and serious attempt to turn design into a scientific activity, to rationalise it[3]. This approach originated at the Hochschule fu¨r Gestaltung in Ulm, and found as one of its sources of strength the “new” science of cybernetics, which was at the time, in the way in which we humans look for the universal answer, ambitiously promoted as a new science that would allow us to solve all our problems. It was, therefore, obviously significant for design. At the turn of the 1960s into the 1970s the movement towards explicit scientific rationality as the sole generator of objective design “solutions” (the term is redolent of science) began to wane, and, at about the same time, thinkers in cybernetics began to investigate the paradox that the way cybernetic systems were discussed failed to reflect the nature of cybernetic systems[4]: cybernetic systems were presented using the traditional scientific device of the detached observer, even though they spoke of systems in which the observer (the sensor) is anything but detached: that’s the point of feedback[5]! So at the time that design was retreating from the design methods approach (as so clearly indicated in what I see as the brave volte face of J. Christopher Jones (1980) in the revised edition of his classic, Design Methods, in which Jones completely rethought the approach used in the earlier version of the book), cybernetics was also becoming less traditionally scientific, for it began talking of the observing system as well as the observed, of the observer in the system rather than the observer of the system. The change in cybernetics has scarcely been noticed by many in the field, for a number of reasons I will not go into here, and many approaches, from post modern theory to complexity studies and cognitive science, have suffered from having to re-invent a wheel cybernetics had already invented. Indeed, cybernetic developments are still arguably far ahead of much research in these fields, because cybernetics understood the change in the role of the observer to be so radical that it required a complete re-think[6] – one example of which is von Glasersfeld’s (1987) development of a form of constructivist philosophy known as radical constructivism[7]. The change in design was much more apparent both to and in the field. The regular importing into design (and specially architecture) of theories and modes of argument/vocabulary from other fields became absolutely apparent in, for instance, the various “critical” and “theoretical” accounts of Jencks, who has lead (at least in populist consciousness) the import into architecture of several “foreign” theories. The theories associated with Jencks and others, which continue to dominate much theoretical discourse in design, are theories concerned with the individuality of perception and understanding, which can also be thought of as the unpredictability of

the process of design (and its outcome). As cybernetics moved into a study of systems that include the observer rather than standing independent of him/her, design became more quirkily based in the individual as opposed to a general, single “style” of the period – or, rather, it formed schools which followed theories that recognised the presence of the individual (the observer) in such a manner that these theories came to be expressed, literally, as styles. That is, ready made algorithms that simplify the contexts in which we work so that many (design) decisions are already made. Both cybernetics and design thus accepted the inescapable presence of the observer, who must therefore be understood as active – an actor[8]. It is bizarre that, with this parallel between the two fields, design did not recognise the developments in cybernetic thinking (which became known as second order cybernetics) but took to the earlier, less active version of cybernetics[9], for this newer cybernetics is specifically concerned with understanding systems in which the outcome is unpredictable and individual, and the observer is always present and never ignorable. Nor did cyberneticians generally reach out to design – or, rather, they were all-too-often only prepared to understand design in the manner of so many importers of the word, as a problem solving activity that lives in the world of the complex-yet-definable. There was one cybernetician, however, who did reach out to design: Gordon Pask. Already in the 1960s Pask had understood there were close parallels to be explored between cybernetics and design. In 1969, (Pask, 1969) he brought his nascent insights into the processes of conversation to the world of design in a paper in which he explored the relationship between the architect and the client. Pask’s outreach was long-term and committed: he worked with arguably the most radical architect of the second-half of the twentieth century, Cedric Price, and he taught in architecture schools, particularly London’s Architectural Association School. And he created art works and environments. In the world of art and design he is perhaps best known for his “Colloquy of Mobiles” at the Cybernetic Serendipity Exhibition of 1968, but his design of learning environments is probably more important. More important, still, is the connection to design of his students. At one stage I calculated that of 12 successful doctoral students at Brunel University, eight were architects and six came from the Architectural Association. I was one of those six students. This is an extraordinary accretion of architects who realised that cybernetics had something special to offer them. What is interesting about this cohort is that they were students of Pask at exactly the time when cybernetics began exploring its basic paradox: that it had talked about systems with an involved observer from a position in which the observer of these systems was not involved[10]. Pask died 11 years ago. The link between cybernetics and design was obscured at that time. Today there is a revival of designers’ interest in cybernetics. However, most designers who pursue this interest do so – as has been noted – in ignorance of the developments in cybernetic understanding since 1970, which is perhaps the last time designers looked to cybernetics. In a bizarre twist, the result is that designers may be moving back towards an inappropriate determinism which they are seeking to prop up (and mechanise) with ancient cybernetic arguments. I believe I have shown above that there are parallels between design and cybernetics: in the sorts of approaches they used at various times, and in the sensitivity to the involvement of the active observer. In this paper, I shall explore these parallels, specially using the conceptual framework of second order cybernetics, particularly in

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the form of conversation theory – the second order cybernetic account of communication. In doing so I hope not only to demonstrate there is an important connection(s) between the two fields, but also that more recent cybernetic thinking offers particular relevance and value to designers. In my mind, the homomorphism between the two is such that, as I said in my introduction, I am prepared to claim cybernetics is the theory of design and design is the action of cybernetics. But before I can do that, I need to introduce cyberneticians to design (as I intend it in this paper) and designers to cybernetics (in its recent guise). 2.1.1 Design for cyberneticians. What is meant by design, in the context of this paper?[11]. Before I go into this question, I should re-assert that there is much disagreement and debate in design and design research over this question, and about whether there is a design process and, if so, how to characterise it. The descriptions I give are my descriptions and reflect my belief, experience and understanding. I believe that most designers, and many researchers who are sensitive to what designers do, will recognise what I describe. I base this statement less on the literature than on personal experience and discussion with many designers and students over a long period. Let me start with some negatives. By design, I do not mean problem solving, or even a way of facing complexity (though design does that well, as we shall see). I do not refer to an Object, the result of a design process, or even a process, itself also the result of a design process. Design, in this paper, is an activity that is often carried out in the face of very complex (and conflicting) requirements. We may deal with many of these requirements (functions to be accommodated and other factors) through logical procedures: for instance, an optimal sequence of rooms in the layout of a building may be created using simple network theory. Yet the interest of designers is generally to create the new. They wish to bring delight to the user (and to themselves as designers), while finding a form that can house the requirements in a manner that is satisfactory, by means of the creation of something new[12]. Sometimes, convenience may even be traded off for added delight: we will on occasion accept the less convenient in order to have the more beautiful. And sometimes the process of bringing all the requirements into a new form leads to a new way of accommodating the requirements that transcends traditional logical procedure, at which point a novel type of arrangement may appear. What I refer to is design as a verb, not as a noun. The verb, design, indicates a particular process that constitutes the design activity, a particular and relatively little studied process which I maintain is at the heart of design, the whole undertaking generally being included under the one name. I am not talking about evaluation of the outcome of the process, or of situating that outcome within some schema. This process can be thought of as a conversation held mostly (but not exclusively) with the self. In the most common traditional version, the conversation consists of making a mark with a pencil on paper (equivalent to talking, in a verbal conversation), and then looking at it to see what the mark suggests (equivalent to listening) and, consequently, modifying the drawing. The process goes on and on in a potentially endless circle. Reasons for stopping are that the outcome is good enough or that it fails. As an initial process it may have little or no intention: it is just a sketch or (to downplay the action) a doodle. But the sketch/doodle suggests a form and that is explored,

playfully, and requirements are gradually assimilated into the design as form is brought into being. It is clear that this design process is based around the actions of the designer: to talk of this process as if the designer were not present in it is, clearly, impossible – for there would be no process. It is therefore assumed that whenever this design process is discussed, the process includes the designer. It is this process of conversation, primarily held with the self (but also with others in, for instance, an office), that indicates a cybernetic process at work: for conversation is perhaps the epitome of second order cybernetic systems[13]. And, like any conversation, it is open and can take us to places we did not expect to be, thus introducing novelty. In looking at the sketch, we see it in ways other than we saw it when we drew it: viewing is an exploratory and constructive act. As I was instructed as a student: “Learn to think with your pencil!”. In this manner, sketching, the central source of creative design action, can be described and explained as and by means of a primary second order cybernetic system – the circle of conversation. And, although this is not all of design, it is a, if not the, key activity at the heart of design: so cybernetics supports design and design supports cybernetics, in a further second order, conversational, cybernetic circle! Design may be thought of as an inductive process, where science is deductive. Science has problems when it tries to be inductive: design shows a way (and a change in legitimate expectations) by which we may act inductively. 2.1.1.1 Design and the ill-defined. The design activity (design as verb) that I have described grows what may later be seen as a unique solution to an ill-defined and under-specified set of problems – some so under-specified that they should not even be considered problems. The lack of definition has many sources. In a sense, what is at the centre of design is scarcely concerned with problems, at least as we have come to think of them. We can think of designing leading to an outcome which can be seen as a solution that defines the problem(s), in contrast to the way we normally think of a problem leading inexorably to the solution. This does not mean that designers fail to “solve” what are quite conventional “problems” but that what makes their work and their approach unique is not this aspect. This is one reason design is not and cannot be scientific, in the sense of recent Anglo Saxon use of that word. Design is not a science, but, I have argued, science is a specially and particularly limited form of design (Glanville, 1980, 1999b). No scientific experiment just happens, no theory exists without a reworking of the knowledge associated with it (a point made by Popper (1963) (who called himself a constructivist) in Conjectures and Refutations); more extremely, still, I have argued that the processes of mentation which Piaget argues are at the centre of our thinking are properly considered as design acts, and therefore design is the primary human activity (Glanville, 2006b). And when we come to specify the problems a design outcome has been designed to accommodate, we find that these problems are very complex indeed, that their interrelationships lead quickly to vast complexity and to those areas of problem space that the great cybernetician Ross Ashby referred to as the transcomputable: there is simply not enough physical stuff for us to even dream of computing, exhaustively, logically driven solutions, which makes design an effective approach to complexity – for

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design is not so consequent upon a problem statement, which will often enter into the realm of the transcomputable (Ashby, 1964). 2.1.1.2 A very brief history of (the word) design. The use of the word design in English is recent, and until it acquired its application to what have also been called the applied arts, its meaning was not what it is now. The origins of the noun are in the Italian disegno, to draw[14]. But this verb apparently follows another route, coming into English (according to the Oxford Dictionary of the American Language) from a Latin root: designare, to designate (via French de´signer): this dual route is particularly poignant when thinking of the command “Draw a distinction!” with which Spencer Brown (1968) starts his book, Laws of Form. This book had a major influence on cybernetic thinking, and reminds us that every line we draw also designates, bringing the two understandings together in another way. The intention in using the word design, and the activity it designates, has also changed. But the recent adoption of the word design in areas that have nothing to do with the traditional, central activity I have indicated in my view weakens the concept. Design has become a buzz word appropriated by many fields where, according to my interpretation, it scarcely belongs: it has been colonised. My intention in using it relates to the conversational activity I have described above, and not the post-colonial. There are two more points to make. Firstly, as stated above, design always involves the designer. That is, of course, nothing more than an assertion of a grammatical rule: verbs have subjects. But it is important because it shows in another way that design, with its active agent, the designer, fits in with cybernetics (particularly of the second order), which considers circular systems in which the observer is understood to be both present and active. Second: there are no absolute criteria (there is no clear specification: the criteria emerge after the solution has been found and may be seen as being defined by the solution): design outcomes can only be validated as being good enough (the phrase introduced earlier), not by being best. In fact, it is often difficult to determine that one design outcome is better than another simply because there is no shared standard against which to evaluate. This may be a great, though unexpected extra benefit, difficult for many to appreciate. 2.1.2 Cybernetics for designers. Cybernetics is apparently a modern science, though the origin of its name is old Greek (meaning helmsman) and the word has been in occasional use for a long time. Its modern use is generally taken to originate with Norbert Wiener, whose eponymous 1948 book, Cybernetics, was subtitled Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. However, what is perhaps a better definition is the title of a series of working conferences, “Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems” funded by the Josiah Macy Jr Foundation in New York (1942, 1946-1952) and attended by Wiener, amongst others (including Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead). The name cybernetics was, after the publication of Wiener’s book, taken as summarising the theme of the Macy Conferences by the Conference Secretary, Heinz von Foerster. The word control, in English usage, has two rather different meanings. Probably the more common is restrictive control, where the controller limits the controlled according to his/her whim. This sort of control is essentially aggressive and destructive, e.g. dictatorial.

The other, Wiener’s intended use, is enabling control. This sort of control talks of the benefits of controlled movement in achieving aims: the purpose of enabling control is not to restrict, but to guide towards better performance. Being in control, so that a skier is in control as (s)he speeds down a mountain responding to all the arbitrary surprises in the slope without falling. Control implies two further things. Firstly, some goal or intention. In Wiener’s (and colleagues’) first proto cybernetic paper (Rosenblueth et al., 1943) he and his fellow authors talk of teleology: purposive or intentional action. This was a brave move at a time when science was particularly preoccupied with the removal of intentionality from its processes and practice[15]. Secondly, control implies some means by which the intention (and the control action) can be communicated to an effector or actor. Wiener’s interest in communication largely concerned capacity, and he is the (unacknowledged) precursor of Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) Mathematical Theory of Communication, commonly known as information theory[16]. The question arises as to what constitutes control in a system that enables rather than restricts. This was defined by Ashby (1956) in his Law of Requisite Variety. Variety as a measure of the number of states a system either might or does take. In order not to restrict behaviour, Ashby’s Law tells us, the system that is to control must have at least as many states as the system to be controlled. That is, the controller must have the requisite variety for control not to be, in principle, restrictive. A simple example of a cybernetic system is a domestic heating system. This consists, in essence, of two elements: the sensor and a space served by a heat source. The situation in the room being heated can be described (assuming some goal temperature) using only two states: it is too hot or it is too cold. The controller (sensor) needs, thus, only to have two states, which can be easily achieved with a (heat sensitive) on/off switch. The requisite variety is two, the controller (sensor) may have many more states, but they are optional (and unlikely to be of much use). 2.1.2.1 First order cybernetics. The sensor in the thermostatic system (strictly speaking, the whole system, maintaining a constant room temperature, is thermally static) observes[17] the room’s thermal conditions, distinguishing them into one of two groups (too hot, too cold) that effect one of two actions (respectively, turn heat source off, turn heat source on). The need for this constant monitoring is based on a pragmatic consideration itself as novel and daring as reference to intention: the notion that error is, in itself, neither bad nor good, but endemic – it cannot be eliminated. The cybernetic system constantly drives to achieve its goal. Some attain this and come to a stop, some enter a cycle around the goal as a fixed point, while others pursue a goal that itself moves, so they are always playing catch-up. Consider the primary cybernetic metaphor of the helmsman: any sailor will attest that simply pointing the rudder will not get you where you want – you have to constantly trim and adjust until you arrive. The difference, in cybernetic terms, between the helmsman of a boat and the thermostatic sensor, is that the helmsman hopes his boat will arrive and stop, whereas the heating system will not achieve this: it goes on forever seeking the desired room temperature in a perpetual loop that merely keeps it adequately near that temperature because error is endemic. (In fact, careful consideration shows it is error that drives the system!) Even in this simplest of systems (the thermostat), control is effected through a feedback loop, and the sensor is active: it turns the heat source on and off. However, the

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behaviour of the sensor, itself, is controlled, in turn, by the room heated by the heat source. We will return to this point later in this section: what is relevant, here, is that the (organisational) form of control is circular – as is the causality. The temperature in the room drops below the goal temperature causing the sensor to switch, sending a message to the heat source, which causes it to provide more heat. The heat source provides heat until the temperature in the room exceeds the goal temperature causing the sensor to switch, sending a message to the heat source, which causes it to stop providing heat, and so on, ad infinitum. In fact, we can describe this system as having three goals: the over-riding one of maintaining a specified steady temperature, which is made up of two subsidiary ones; to gain heat when below the specified temperature, and to lose heat when above it. I used the word cause in order to point, in this feedback loop, to the concept of circular causality (remember the Macy definition of cybernetics). This is another radical concept. The aim of traditional science has been to get rid of circularity, yet here is a subject (Wiener, in his book title, was careful not to call it a science, though many have since appended the word as can be seen in earlier usage in this paper) that lives in circularity and turns cause into a circular mechanism: herein lies the radical (and brave) novelty. In fact, some (I among them) have claimed that circular causality is the norm and the linear causality science espouses is a special case with very weak feedback, so weak that it is taken to be insignificant. Subjects such as chaos theory and its precursor catastrophe theory show us what happens when we consider that we may ignore the insignificant. My point is that circular causality is the more general case, with linear causality as a specific limitation; just as Einstein’s mechanics is the more general case while Newton’s mechanics is specifically limited. This does not stop Newton’s mechanics from being very powerful and very beautiful: the Americans flew to the moon using Newton’s mechanics rather than Einstein’s. A legitimate question arises in relation to the nature of control in circular systems: which element controls and which is controlled? In the thermostat example, the sensor switches on the heat source, but the heat source then switches the sensor off. Control is neither in one element nor the other, but between them, shared. It would seem that the general convention is to call that which uses little energy the controller, as if we were dealing with an energetic (and hence physical) system. This was Wiener’s position. I believe he was wrong: cybernetics is not focussed on the physical world, but the informational. Which element we call controller and which controlled is arbitrary and our choice, should we chose to make it. 2.1.2.2 First to second order cybernetics. In Section 2.1, I outlined the shift from first to second order cybernetics. In a system such as the typically cybernetic one of the thermostat, the sensor (the part of the system that was traditionally thought of as controlling) is not only an observer of the system (it observes the two states – too hot and too cold), but also an observer (actor) in the system. It causes changes in the states of the heat source and, hence, through the action of the heat source (turn off, turn on) the room, in turn, changes the state of the sensor. The sensor, in this description, is an example of an involved and active observer. In cybernetic systems such an observer is the norm. Mead’s (1968) paper (commissioned by Heinz von Foerster) has already been mentioned. In it she asked why cyberneticians did not treat their own systems (in this

case exemplified by the American Society for Cybernetics) as a cybernetic system: why not treat a cybernetics society through cybernetics, itself. Hence, the title of her paper, “The cybernetics of cybernetics” that also came to be called the new cybernetics and, more commonly, second order cybernetics. We can generalise from her request: why not treat cybernetic systems through cybernetic understandings and insights? A way of summarising what makes cybernetic systems different from (I have earlier argued more general than) traditional ones is circularity. Circularity is embodied in the role of the observer in cybernetic systems: the observer cannot be inactive, or there would be no system. The question, in discussing and treating cybernetic systems, becomes why, if we are going to treat cybernetic systems cybernetically, do we not treat our examination of them in a similar manner, recognising that the observer even in the conventional scientific arrangement can only be remote and detached through a carefully structured deceit. In actuality, the observer is always present, always active in several ways (for instance, setting up experiments, choosing variables, arranging outcomes in the body of knowledge). Consistency demands that we treat the observer of the cybernetic system in the same way that we treat the observer in the cybernetic system; and the observer in the cybernetic system must be active (to effect change), so the observer of the system should be treated as active, in just the same way. The observer, in second order cybernetics, is in the system he/she is describing just as (when, for instance, describing the thermostatic system) the sensor in that system is understood as an observer in the system. We have observers of observers that are observing (their) observing: another cybernetic recursion. There is, nevertheless, still an irony. In order to talk about the observer in a second order cybernetic system, I have taken the position of an observer of rather than an observer in. This is a consequence of this sort of description. The observer in requires an act of sharing of exactly the sort that happens within a conversation. It can happen in a performance, in a lecture (a special type of performance): we become observers in when we live in experience rather than describing it. For a designer this may be summarised as experiencing total involvement in the act, often thought of as being lost in it. 2.1.2.3 Subject and metasubject. Cybernetics is one of those rare subjects (another being mathematics) which, while being a distinct field worthy of consideration in its own right, is also a subject that casts light upon other subjects. It is an abstract subject which has often been applied to enhance our understanding of other subjects. In its incarnation as second order cybernetics it is both its own subject and its own metasubject. Design is another such subject: a subject in its own right, that can cast light onto other subjects, and which, I have argued, needs to be studied in the light of its own criteria, as a design equivalent of second order cybernetics: the (recursive) cybernetics of cybernetics and the (recursive) design of design (Glanville, 2003). Cybernetics talks of structure and form, leaving emotion and meaning to the observer’s interpretation and insertion. It may be thought of as providing structures within which it is possible to construct the individual meanings and emotions we chose. It does not negate such deeply human areas, but supports structures that in turn

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support our freedom to enjoy them, leading to another form of second order recursion: the support of support. 2.1.2.4 Circularity. As stated in the Macy Conference theme, the central and distinctive feature of cybernetic systems, in contrast with the more traditional systems of science, is circularity: cybernetic systems are circular, whereas scientific systems have traditionally aimed at being linear. When we look at the cybernetic circle, one key point becomes clear: that the circle is organisational, it is the form. The experience, the passage around this circle, is a spiral. That is, the passage acquires history, and, at least for the cognisant observer, there is a process of learning, of change. On each iteration we act, collecting the history of the iterations in an ever enrichening spiral. We do not experience the same spot (twice), for although the spot may appear the same at least in terms of location, we are not. As Heracleitus tells us, “Upon those who step into the same rivers different and ever different waters flow down”. This is another way of expressing what we have been calling recursion. 2.1.2.4.1 Autopoiesis, Eigen-Forms and Objects. Second order cybernetics has developed several very particular circular systems. The most famous of these is the Autopoietic system of Varela, Maturana and Uribe (1974). Autopoiesis (literally, self-creation or self-production) is a process described thus: An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network. [. . .] the space defined by an autopoietic system is self-contained and cannot be described by using dimensions that define another space. When we refer to our interactions with a concrete autopoietic system, however, we project this system on the space of our manipulations and make a description of this projection (Maturana and Varela, 1980).

A second is von Foerster’s Eigen Forms. This is not the term he used, but one I use as an umbrella term to include eigen structures, eigen functions, eigen objects, eigen behaviours and eigen values – terms he did use. Von Foerster wrote of objects – tokens for eigen behaviours – and talks of recursive functions which arrive at a stable and self-reproducing value. Recursion is the act of continuously repeating a process, applying it to the earlier output (consequence) of that same process. Eigen forms provide a model for how, by a process of repeated action (such as observing) we can arrive at a stable and fixed outcome. Von Foerster (1977) used this as a model for the establishment of those stable entities Piaget referred to in his conservation of objects. A third, less familiar circular system, contemporaneous with autopoietic systems and predating eigen forms is what I have called an “Object”. An Object is a self-referential entity (which maintains its form through (circular) action on and in itself). It provides a structure or form for entities that are observable. If entities are to be observable, that is to inhabit a universe of observation, the question is how they come to be in the universe in order to be observable (by others). The answer provided

by Objects is that they must (be assumed to) observe themselves. The great advantage of this form is that Objects, being observed by others, will always reflect the individuality of those others. There are other advantages that come with the package, such as the generation (as opposed to the assumption) of a logic[18] (Glanville, 1975, 1999a). 2.1.2.4.2 Conversation as the essential second order cybernetic paradigm. To these systems we must add Pask’s conversations. The word conversation was chosen by Pask (1975) because it is everyday, and refers to a common experience and form of communication. Conversation involves us listening and talking to each other, in an essentially circular form. Pask analysed the basic mechanism of conversation to get a grip on the bare bones, the structure. This is in contrast to those who consider the meaning of elements in a conversation, or the emotional content and such like. Cybernetics is concerned with mechanism (the machine of Wiener’s subtitle) and with structure/form: this allows enormous freedom in, for instance, emotional interpretation because the structure supports many such interpretations. The purpose of building such a structure, at least for some cyberneticians, is to permit and support such freedom. Pask’s conversational structures required at least two participants, the first of which presented some understanding (of some topic) to the second. The second took this presentation and built his/her own understanding of the first participant’s understanding, presenting this understanding of an understanding in turn to the first participant. The first participant then makes an understanding of (the presentation of) the second participant’s understanding of (the presentation of) the first participant’s understanding, thus comparing his/her original understanding with the new understanding developed via the second participant’s understanding. If these two understandings are close enough, the first participant can believe the second participant has made an understanding that is, at least operationally, similar to his/her original one. Of course, we may never claim the understandings of the two participants are the same. No meaning, no understanding is sent from one participant to the other: the meanings we acquire as we build understandings are ours alone. This is an enormous strength of the conversational model of communication[19]. Pask evolved his conversation theory in the context of learning. Pask may be considered the first to develop machines that learnt, and which took part in a shared learning environment with learners. His conversations were originally intended to permit learners to study the ordered topics of a subject in a manner, and developing understandings, that suited each learner. The conversations were held over the topics of vast “entailment mesh” of topics that constitute a subject, and also in the process of testing understandings developed by means of a thoroughly conversational process – teachback. Conversation is the fourth essential circular cybernetic system that embodies the features of second order cybernetics. As Pask describes it, the conversation is the basic form of genuine interaction: and it is this which makes it so important, such a good model for design. 2.1.3 The interesting conjunction. In Section 2.1.1, I showed something of the conversational character of the process I maintain is at the centre of designing. This parallel is at the heart of the argument in this paper, that cybernetics and design are parallel activities.

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It is the circularity of conversation that is at the heart of this parallel. The circular second order cybernetic systems mentioned in Sections 2.1.2.4 and 2.1.2.4.1 also have something to show us about design. In particular, von Foerster’s Eigen-Forms and my Objects provide strong theoretical support for aspects of the central design process, enriching the support provided by Pask’s conversations. But earlier, first order cybernetics still has something to contribute. I do not refer to the old parallel that helped sustain the design methods movement, but to the working of Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety. I shall start the in depth examination of the parallels between cybernetics and design with what this law can tell us about creativity. 3. Body of argument 3.1 Cybernetics, design and determinism Cybernetics was born at about the time that design became recognised as a way of acting, yet seen to be somehow lacking. This lead, in architecture, to the development of design science and attempts to show that design could be carried out in a completely rational and logical manner – that is, scientifically. This is not the place to explore how this was attempted or the source of what I believe is its inevitable failure. Cybernetics was seen as a major weapon in the arsenal used in the attempt to produce a rational design process, within a determinist framework. This was not surprising, for cybernetics was correctly understood to be concerned with mechanism. What has changed in cybernetics since those days is how that mechanism is seen (Wiener’s metaphor of the animal as the machine has in some respects reversed in second order cybernetics so that the machine is often seen through the metaphor of the animal). There is, however, one first order cybernetics example of an understanding of design that continues to have great relevance and power, and that is Ashby’s Law (of Requisite Variety). 3.1.1 Variety and design. As recounted, variety is a measure devised by W Ross Ashby to help us understand the (cybernetic) controllability of a system, and Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety states the conditions necessary for effective cybernetic control: that the controlling system has at least as much variety as the system to be controlled. (For a second order system, in which, which element is recognised as the controller and which the controlled is essentially arbitrary, each controlling the other, the variety clearly can only be the same. Second order cybernetics originated at the end of Ashby’s career and was not formulated before he died, so he never had the need to reconsider his Law.) In this part of the paper we will examine how Ashby’s Law can illuminate the activity of design. 3.1.1.1 Animal and machine. Cybernetics, especially in its original version, dealt with definable examples which it determined, modelled and then controlled (in the cybernetic sense). It was concerned with clear-cut states. Being able to define states and their causal relationships is one way of describing classical physics (especially mechanics), and abstracting it to this level is one reason cybernetics is (like maths) both a subject and a meta-subject at the one time. This assumption is essentially the assumption in Louis Sullivan’s dictum, sloganised by the modern movement in design as “Form follows function” and was one reason design methods and first order

cybernetics were such natural bed fellows: for both wished (to quote Wiener’s subtitle) to use the machine as the metaphor for the animal. 3.1.1.2 The undefinable. Ashby, himself, pointed to one of the main problems of problem definition that are significant in design. In his “Remarks at a Panel” Ashby (1964) explains that there is a limit to the computing capacity of even the most powerful conceivable systems. These derive from the finite size and life of the universe as we understand it. Beyond this limit we reach the transcomputable. Because the (literally) astronomically vast universe is nevertheless finite, there is a limit to what may (theoretically) have been computed in it. Ashby shows that this limit can very quickly be exceeded. Even relatively simple problems such as computing, exhaustively, the possible states of a light matrix of 20 £ 20 light bulbs exceeds the computability limit Ashby derives, using both his own argument, and the argument developed by Hans J. Bremermann. These arguments tell us that problems very rapidly become transcomputable. Design almost always faces a situation where it has so many interrelated variables (assuming this concept is appropriate to design) that the problems it deals with are essentially transcomputable. But it is questionable whether the concept of a variable (and thus a measurable unit) is relevant in design. In Section 1, I explained that designers are interested in the new: the new is, by definition, not something that is inherent in the existing (so it cannot, in the original sense of the word, be predicted and thus does not depend on a notion such as “variable”)[20]. It may be seen as connected, and even rational, after the event, but before the event it can only be thought of as what, in chaos theory, would be a sort of discontinuity. The new is, by definition, outside the predictable (at least until it is created, when it may be accounted for). Furthermore, as any designer will attest, for all but the very simplest jobs (and perhaps even for them) it is extraordinarily difficult to specify precisely what is needed or wanted, and within whatever specification can be produced there will be conflicts and inconsistencies. I have explored this aspect in a recent paper on design and complexity (Glanville, 2007b) and will not take it further here except to draw to the reader’s attention the lack of experience most of us have in specifying – except in the crudest terms – what we want of a house (to use an architectural example). How do we describe the experience we seek? Do we, in specifying a WC, also take into account that this is the one room (in most houses) where privacy is guaranteed, so that it may serve, for instance, the function of a retreat? Or how do we get light into a kitchen from east, south and west (so that it is sunny all day, in the northern hemisphere) when the kitchen has to fit in with other rooms that also demand light and view – the kitchen being the most used room in a house? These factors render it impossible to expect to adequately and accurately define a design problem. 3.1.1.3 Definability and variety. Ashby’s arguments about limits and transcomputability were introduced at the start of the previous section. Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety states that, for any system to be controlled, or, to use one of the two other cybernetic synonyms, managed (the other is regulated)[21] the variety (number of states) in the controller must exceed the variety in the system to be controlled. But if the variety of the controlled system is transcomputable, it is in principle inconceivable that we can compute enough states to be able to control it. This happens in principle, as has been reported, in surprisingly simple systems. Thus, the

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aspiration to model, to control (without restricting) the performance of many systems is unrealistic. This is profoundly shocking to most of us, and takes some getting used to. Of course, this does not stop us trying, but we use strategies that belie the problem. Ashby also states (in the same paper) “The systems theorist may thus be defined as a man, with resources not possibly exceeding 10100, who faces problems and processes that go vastly beyond this size” – an explicit recognition of the difficulty. The tactics we use to alleviate this essential problem lie in how we define the context in which we chose the states according to some (often unspoken) notion of relevance or appropriateness; or by transforming what we do to the notion of control so it becomes control-as-restricting. Both of these strategies work, but one intentionally restricts, while the other also finds a way of redefining variety so that it becomes manageable. As Ashby tells us in this quote: Systems theory . . . will be founded, essentially, on the science of simplification . . . The systems theorist of the future, I suggest, must be an expert in how to simplify.

3.1.1.4 Being out of control, unmanageability, and creativity. It is therefore possible to describe design problems as essentially unmanageable, in the two senses that: (1) variables may not be relevant; and (2) even if they are, such variables are often incomplete, contradictory and define problems that exceed the transcomputable. In general, when we use the word unmanageable, we indicate a negative. But here it is positive. This is why, a common idea of how we should be in our world is to be in control – that is, to manage. We use this “control” language extensively. It is useful to be in control! Drivers who are not in control, for instance, may be an enormous danger[22]. But being in control means defining, in some sense, the range of what will be considered, that is, the range of the possible. In effect, when I am in control I restrict the world to what I can imagine or permit: I define possible and desirable states; I impose my order. But, doing this, I necessarily restrict: not in the sense of the limiting control practised by, for instance, dictators; but in the sense that I support a predetermination of what-is and what-might-be, and aim towards specified – and therefore predetermined – goals. Let me give an example of the way this sort of control restricts. If I go to a restaurant with a group of friends, and it is always I who chooses the restaurant, we will only go to restaurants that I choose; and choosing the restaurants reflects my taste and knowledge (or, perhaps better, ignorance), which can be seen as a limitation, a sort of filter that reflects only what I already know. If, however, I let others choose the restaurant, I will often go to a restaurant I did not know, thus finding new (to me) restaurants. I can regard these introductions as gifts from my friends, increasing the range of my experience, knowledge and choosables, even if I decide a particular, new-to-me restaurant is bad. (Often, of course, I find great new delights.) My contention is that the restaurant situation provides a good illustration of the operation of the Law of Requisite Variety. The great benefit of not having enough variety to control a system is that, if I give up trying to control rather than being annoyed that I cannot, I can discover many possibilities I would have excluded if I had insisted on being in control. These possibilities are unexpected, outside my frame of reference, in a word, novel. This is akin to giving up control of the choice of restaurant,

letting others introduce new possibilities. If you want to use the concepts and measure of variety, you can easily set up situations in which the variety to be controlled is vastly greater than any variety you might ever have access to and so you cannot possibly control the situation, except restrictively. Stopping trying to find enough variety to control means accepting the vastly greater variety in the now out-of-control element while all those possibilities you would have excluded are no longer excluded, and, to take a cliche´ the world is your oyster. Not restricting what you will consider to what you know already opens you up to experiencing the vast unknown; and in that you are likely to encounter what is to you the new[23]. 3.2 Design as done Research in design can be seen to fall into two categories (Gedenryd, 1998). The first and largest is that in which design is investigated through perspectives and methods imported from or associated with other subjects. For example, the history of design examines the outcome of designing through the perspectives and values of history; while this may give interesting insights, it can be argued that this research misses the central concerns of design, treating design as material to be subjected to investigation by and according to the aims and values of the imported discipline (history). The same can be said for design science, cultural studies and so on. Many researchers believe this is the only way to progress, implicitly suggesting that design is lacking a viable approach of its own and, therefore, needs to import one. These approaches bring their own insights but, I hold, recognise little value in design’s own approaches[24]. There is also slight consideration of the appropriateness of the imported theory (Glanville, 2004a): but, of course, bringing in that which may not be obviously appropriate can lead (as in the argument about Ashby’s Law) to benefits. The second category is research that searches for the presence of a design approach in designing. I have argued in support of this position for nearly 30 years (starting with Glanville, 1980). I believe design is a way of acting which has great (and largely unrecognised) power and potential, and that researching this will tell us not only a lot about design, but will also give us insights into “different” ways of acting, and can cast a different light on other fields. Therefore, I will proceed in this paper by extending the earlier exploration of design as it is done, in a form of conversation. 3.2.1 Design as a conversation with the self (and with others). The idea that the central act in designing is a form of (Paskian) cybernetic conversation held with oneself has already been introduced. It is a common experience that, having drawn something, we look at it later and see in it a different something that was not part of what we were thinking about as we drew it. This experience is at the heart of designing. There are two factors that are central: (1) we look and then we draw; and (2) we see something new, not previously intended. The first is the basic mechanism that allows the circle which is the form of a design conversation. When I participate in the more familiar verbal conversation, speaking, I expect that my conversational partner will listen, and then, in turn, speak. My conversational partner, speaking, expects that I will listen, and then (completing the

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conversational circle) speak. For a conversation to take place, each participant must switch roles from being a listener to being a speaker (note how listening precedes speaking). It is not enough to speak, or to listen: what is at the heart of a conversation is the switch. This switch happens within each participant (I speak, I listen), but also between participants: I speak, my conversational partner listens; my conversational partner speaks, I listen. For a design conversation, substitute draw for speak, view for listen. This is how, when I am my own conversational partner as is commonly the case in design, I can hold a conversation with myself: instead of the drawer/speaker and viewer/listener being identified with two different participants, we understand them as roles, which can be embodied in one participant (by role switching) and even, between groups. This is a basic quality Pask requires for participants in a conversation[25]. (The conversational model also allows the same process to operate between different individuals. It can, thus, also support the familiar social dimension of design – exactly as in the account of a conversation just given.) The second comes from the first. A basic assumption of a conversation is that participants do not transmit or share meanings (this is one of the ways conversation theory is more powerful, and more accurately represents experience, than information theory). It is in this difference that novelty can be seen to arise: indeed, it cannot but arise. Thus, the aspect of the design process seen as conversation (novelty) can be understood not simply as an aim of the designer that some would count an irresponsible whim, but as unavoidable and necessary. Why? Because if we construct our meanings differently, we cannot assume our individual understandings will be the same. Therefore, every time my conversational partner expresses back to me his/her understanding, I must assume it will be in some way different from mine[26]. Every utterance I make (whether spoken, gestured or drawn) will return from my conversational partner as different, and my test for understanding is, to put it tersely, whether I can adequately bring together what I hear with what I said. (This is one base of Krippendorff’s (2006) Semantic Turn, although, surprisingly, he fails to recognise Pask’s pioneering work.) The difference between the two views comes from the distinctiveness not of the body embodying, but of the cognising entity: that is, the distinction in role between speaker and listener, drawer and viewer, regardless of whether they are taken to be in one or several physical bodies. It is the role that makes the difference, and it is the change between roles that allows the conversation with the self: for it matters not whether Pask’s p-individuals are situated in one body or many, or even between members of a group of bodies. To return to the argument about variety made in Sections 3.1 to 3.1.1.3, the conversation is one way in which the variety of the “repertoire” of the designer can be increased. The process of the design conversation with the self opens another important possibility, that of accommodating more and more functions. This process is akin to Piaget’s accommodation in the construction of constant objects and will be discussed below. The point, here, is that iteration of the circle of conversation allows, on each cycle, the addition of more functions and requirements to be accommodated into the design outcome. These can lead to failure, or they can lead to development. Their assimilation and accommodation does not always have to be perfect: the requirement is

that they fit in well enough. This is, I have argued, a major part of how design handles what, in other fields, would be called complexity. There is, in this account, one mechanism that is at the centre of design. This mechanism implies that difference (and hence both the development of design, and the unavoidable potential of novelty) is inevitable; and that conversational partners can exist, equally, in one person or in a group. The circle of the design conversation can be used as a way of increasing “complexity” assimilating or accommodating ever more functions. 3.2.1.1 Trying, failing and re-starting. There are several further features of conversation that grow out of this account and which are also familiar in designing. The first of these is the importance (and value) of failure. It is conceivable (and everyone reading will know the experience) that we cannot communicate in some conversation. There are times when we cannot complete the conversational circle. Under these circumstances, we have to give up. In Pask’s terms, we agree to disagree, after which we can try to begin again. The same often holds in the central process of design. The conversation with the self may end up somewhere where the result is non-viable or even aesthetically unacceptable. It may also be that the particular conversational process cannot accommodate a particular enrichment of functions, with the result that the designer has to reject what has so far been developed and start again. Designers are all too familiar with this need! It has been said of design that the most important ability of a designer is to throw away an old idea that is not working, and start again. This is a regular experience for the designer. In design, there is nothing negative about failure. In this sense, we have another analogy with cybernetics – possibly the first study to take error on board as a fact of life rather than something to bemoan and curse. Cybernetic systems exist because error is endemic. 3.2.1.1.1 Popper and Piaget. The activity that is design can be seen as proto-scientific. Taking Popper’s (1963) characterisation of science as conjectures, tested thoroughly in an attempt (finally assumed to be successful) to refute them, we have a circular activity of improvement and enrichment which fits well to the characterisation, above, of the design conversation[27]. Furthermore, I have argued (Glanville, 2006b) the process Piaget describes in which we take experience, and, breaking it into parts, create (recurring) patterns and consistencies between them – leading us to consider that which recurs as constant or conserved – what we come to treat as an Object with an independent existence in a separate world, but which we learn about and know in experience. In this manner, Piaget (1955) tells us, we come to construct our realities. Of course, sometimes our constructions do not manage to sustain themselves and we have to reject them in favour of new assemblages of constructed patterns of repetition, which we take to be new Objects in our (re-constructed) reality. And sometimes we have to modify or expand a constant Object to accommodate new experiences. All these ways of behaving are strongly analogous to the way we work with the circle of the design conversation. 3.2.1.1.2 Conversation and objects: autonomy and eigen-values. The three other examples of second order cybernetic system that have been mentioned can be seen to

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represent a behaviour or characteristic of the central design conversation, the conversation with the self[28]. The first is the autonomy of the autopoietic system. An autopoietic system is one that in the first place generates, and then maintains itself within an environment. It was invented as an explanation of the process of living, by Humberto Maturana, and developed into its full form with Francisco Varela and Ricardo Uribe. It is the best known second order cybernetic system. While the authors of the notion of autopoiesis have never, to my knowledge, explored in detail how their systems come into being (it is a definitional point that they do so), they nevertheless create the conditions to create themselves, and they continue to generate themselves in their environments. We can say this is their purpose. But this is what designers do in the design process: they create the conditions in which the design outcome can come into being and continue to generate itself – that is, continuing the design act leads to an outcome that remains constant (at least in the designer’s eye)[29], although detail may be enriched. In this respect, the process of designing can go on in principle forever, and, in essence, when we chose to stop designing is generally a personal and arbitrary decision[30]. What is important is that, when we have finished designing we have produced an outcome that maintains itself, as it were, independently of us (even if we still have influence) for no matter what we do it remains essentially unchanging, continuing to regenerate itself: in this manner it appears as an autonomous outcome, that is “organisationally closed”. Thus, our designs are like our children, which grow to become their own persons. The second is Von Foerster’s eigen forms. Von Foerster is interested in certain types of process that, no matter where you start, always end up, and then continue to be, at the same place. Eigen functions that produce eigen objects are (mathematical) recursive functions that stabilise on particular values. Von Foerster developed them as a mathematical example that mimics the (cognitive) process which Piaget describes for the construction of his constant objects. Von Foerster’s eigen forms give a rigourous mathematical demonstration of a process by which a system can operate on its own output, treating it as input, and arrive at a self-reproducing value. They model the process of coming into being, and continuing to be. Von Foerster called the particular systems that behaved in this way eigen objects. Earlier, I had also used the word Object (but with an initial capital letter), to refer to supposed structures of inhabitants of universes of observation – in other words, structures which might support all the different views made by different observers, which, nevertheless, can be thought of as observations of the same object. Von Foerster referred to this work as a calculus for Piaget’s notion of object constancy. The significant aspect of Objects is that, in order to become members of the universe of observation, they are argued to “observe themselves”[31] by taking two alternating roles: (self) observing and (self) observed, between which they are assumed to switch in a continuing circle. In this manner, they switch in the way that the designer in a design conversation does, and there is a strong analogy between the design conversation process and the process by which an Object continues to be in a universe of observation. A universe of observation is, of course, the universe of (radical) constructivism: the experience lies in the observing from which we may postulate and live by/in an external reality made up of objects. These experiences come from observation tagged onto what I call Objects.

Thus, it may be argued that the design conversation is not only built out of Pask conversations, but is reflected in major elements of at least three other prime second order cybernetic systems: Maturana, Varela and Uribe’s autopoietic systems; von Foerster’s eigen forms; and my own Objects. 3.2.2 Conversation as design. We might, after the accounts above of how design activity can be seen as a prime example of second order cybernetics, ask how this cybernetics can be seen as a design activity. We can consider a conversation as being like wandering in the country; perhaps in a wood, maybe carrying a hamper for a picnic. As we talk, we follow paths that, to someone else, will almost certainly seem arbitrary. Even talking around a topic we will move away in a manner that is both unpredictable and seemingly without purpose. We will end up somewhere, and will decide that this is a good place to stop. Swap the word “walk” for the word “talk” and the word “topic” for the phrase “feature in the landscape” and the similarity is clear. The place where we end up is the place where we “decide to have our picnic”. Arriving at this point, we can make sense of our journey: we can explain the trip and give it purpose. The word we use for this sort of walking is wandering: designing and conversation are both like wandering. This is the process of design translated once more. We do not really know where we are going, when we design, but when we arrive we know that we have arrived, and can make sense of the progress. This is not to deny the importance of those aspects of design that we can treat as specifiable and which we can solve (in the traditional sense), but to recognise and allow the central act that makes (almost stumbles on) the new without quite knowing how or why, and can then explain this, by means of explaining the route taken, as a seemingly sensible (even logical) path. This account is, however, not a purposive problem solving activity. It is a post-rationalisation, an explanation after the event. In our post-rationalised explanations, we often refer to the path we have trodden as a design: and thus we treat the outcome of a primary cybernetic event (a conversation) as design. What we do is to design an explanation that makes our activity seem purposive and logically directed: we use the word design in its meaning as intentional, as goal orientated, and therefore as cybernetic. 3.2.2.1 Arriving and stopping. And what are the criteria by which, after the event, we may explain the choices we make? Certainly neither truth nor utility, in any ordinary sense. Perhaps, the concept of beauty fits in here? If so, we have re-established the importance of beauty as a guiding criterion, in a world where we have come to prefer to measure utility. And we are judging the cybernetic act by criteria normally used for such acts. How do we know we have arrived? Through a feeling of “all-rightness” a sense that this is “just right”. This is an intuitive condition, an act of recognition and resolution rather than of a problem solved. We may be able to account for it after the event, but at the time, and to us and the involved deciders, it satisfies our intuition and our sense of OK-ness. This reminds us that designers do not seek the perfect solution, but one that is good enough. They do this not through lack of rigour, but by recognising that the area in which they work is ill-defined: and perfection, therefore, is unattainable. Design brings with it the concept of adequacy as a means of evaluation, rather than perfection.

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This is a recognition and accommodation of the presence of error – that core aspect of cybernetics. Nevertheless, there are outcomes that are so special and which work so well and so transcend inconvenience that we may indeed consider them perfect: such outcomes occur when by some magic the disparate elements and functions to be fitted together are somehow magnificently accommodated by the form that arises: when the designer is “on a roll”. 3.2.2.2 Shaping and forming: not designing an outcome. Perhaps, one of the most interesting differences between first and second order cybernetics lies in the manner in which they deal with purpose as internal or external. For a first order cybernetic system, purpose is associated with a goal external to the system: the system is then steered towards the goal, giving rise to the cybernetic metaphor of the helmsman for which the subject was named. The goal, seen as outside the system, gives motivation[32], but also allows the observer, again outside the system, to examine it in a “quasi-objective” manner. Thus, the external goal is associated with the external observer (the observer of) (Glanville, 1997a, b, 2004c). When the observer is in the system, as in second order cybernetics, the goal that the observer sees the system moves towards must also be within the system. The system with the observer in it has a different quality to the system as the observer of it observes it. We can, as observers of the system, talk of a stable system (as in the thermostat). When, however, we consider a system with an observer in it, and we are that observer, we may be perfectly stable from our point of view, while to an external observer of us we may appear to veer all over the place. Continuity of being, of maintaining our stability, lies within the system (in terms of Objects, and hence the self-conversation at the heart of design, in the switching between observer and observed within the circle that is the system). Viewed against some external goal by an external observer, all may appear different. We cannot, of course, see within the second order system from outside in the same way as we can from within. There is a problem with second order cybernetic systems, indicated earlier yet rarely recognised, that most descriptions of them are from a first order position. To create the second order description, the observers of need to enter in and become observers in. This is, in my experience, where the power of performance enters[33]. But it is also the power of the design conversation, where we, within, become (to the outsider) lost: what we do is incomprehensible and often beyond the scope of the best attempts at explanation. Think of what happens when you try to observe a conversation from outside, as opposed to being part of it. A system, perfectly stable within, may appear erratic when viewed from without. That is the lesson of, for instance, ageing, of erratic behaviour, and of the design act. 3.2.2.3 Stopping and starting again. A further, also previously mentioned, feature of design is that of stopping and restarting. This characteristic is not particular or exclusive to activities known by the term design: for instance, it is inherent in much recent theory of science, such as Popper (1963) and (in a different manner) Kuhn (1970). It is familiar in many activities, of which conversation is the cybernetic example used above, as it is also familiar in the act of wandering that was used to illustrate the path of a conversation – and an act of design. But if this stop-reject-restart course of action is widely familiar, we might argue that this is an example of how design thinking is (unknowingly) in far more general use than in just those areas known as design.

Note, this is not, however, the same point as the point about non-designerly research into design. This is, then, an argument for design as a primary way of thinking and acting, and from this we get notions such as management as a design activity (Collopy et al., 2005). Indeed, several bodies have set themselves up to bring design thinking into “non-design” areas, for instance the Centre for Design at RMIT University, Melbourne. The observation in this section reflects a specialised application of the argument I made that the concepts Piaget argues for can best be understood as ways of designing (Glanville, 2006b). 3.2.3 Being out of control. Let us return briefly to that other cybernetic stream we have pursued: the concept of unmanageability; that is, the outcome already discussed of Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety. Unmanageability comes about when we try to control the uncontrollable. In Section 3.1.1.4, the argument was made that being out of control does not have to be a bad thing: it can be seen as offering more options than we could, ourselves, imagine. Thus, it is a way of increasing our creativity because we have access to (for instance) ideas which would otherwise not have come to our minds[34]. It will be noticed that much of what has since been described in this paper in the form of the (design) conversation, can work only because we do not control. A conversation controlled by one participant is not a conversation. The point of conversation is that others bring what you do not. Restricting your response and the conversation to what you know is to destroy the conversation. It follows that design operates in a world in which Ashby’s Law is not utilised. It is not that the Law is wrong: it is that this is a (second order) cybernetic activity to which the Law does not apply. The same holds with the wandering metaphor. The point of wandering – its power – and the pleasure in it, is to follow your nose, to get lost, not to plan, to avoid the dominance of “efficiency”[35]. Both wandering and conversation gain their strength and effect because they epitomise systems to which Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety is not applied. They are acts in which we are out of control – our lives have become unmanageable. 3.2.4 Complexity. Complexity is often taken to be a major area of concern. Let me repeat a quote from Ashby used earlier. In the same paper in which he discusses the transcomputable, Ashby states: Systems theory . . . will be founded, essentially, on the science of simplification . . . The systems theorist of the future, I suggest, must be an expert in how to simplify.

However, complexity is not a simple and unalterable property of phenomena. Consider what may be understood under the label “London”: we can think of the amazingly complex organism made up of an almost unimaginable set of interrelated parts with a complexity measure that vastly exceeds Bremermann’s transcomputability limit; or we can think of a very simple, unitary whole. The complexity we see in phenomena depends on what we want to see, our purpose, the context and so on. Designers, by definition, are faced with situations generally seen to be of great complexity and ambiguity. But the circular process they go through leads to what may be seen, in the end, to be simple outcomes. Some (including some designers) may claim they are complex. But that complexity lies in what is embodied and contained in the

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outcome: the outcome itself is more often than not simple and, indeed, simplicity is a frequently used criterion of success. The Italian designer Bruno Munari is quoted on the walls of the Design Museum in London, thus: Progress means simplifying, not complicating.

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Simplifying is not to be confused with over-simplification: what Munari points to (as does this paper) is a process by which complex requirements can be brought together within one, unified, unitary form. The complex requirements are dealt with (contained) within this form. Rather than try to specify every requirement and every relationship between these requirements, and then find an optimal solution, design starts more-or-less “aimlessly” and gradually constructs an “evolving” form[36] that not only changes, but in doing so accommodates the required functions also, often in a novel and surprising manner, where normal relations between functions are enriched or even replaced by new ones that are unexpected, different, and often very good! The accommodation of further requirements within the form, the assimilation of requirements by substantial shifts in that form (including rejection and restarting), and the conversational manner in which this is done (itself leading to developments in the form) all help designers to simplify the complicated (complex) in finding their final form through a recursive, circular action process. Design brings to complexity an approach that is distinct from complexity science, which can lead to outcomes of great beauty and elegance. And if some functional requirements are less well satisfied than others, the result may be no worse than the complexity scientist achieves, and has the added value of bringing the beauty of the designed form (in this case, usually the form as physical, an object), and on occasion relationships that bring new pleasure and delight (Glanville, 2007b)[37]. There is always a question of how to stop in such situations. Again, (second order) cybernetics gives us an answer. Von Foerster’s eigen forms give us recursive, design-like processes which, at a certain point, reproduce themselves. The outcome of an iteration has the same value as the outcome of the previous (and the next) iteration: repeatedly carrying out the process on the output, leading to the generation of the same output (the value of one output is the same as the value of the following output). In design terms, the next iteration of the design conversation leads to no change in the form. When this occurs, the designer has reached a stable outcome, but not necessarily the “best”: the criterion best has no relevance in this way of thinking. In practice, designers learn to know when to stop: they develop an intuition that recognises when they have reached a good enough place, just as the wanderer with the picnic hamper recognises when to stop, when (s)he has reached a point where there is no need to go further and (having “arrived”) the wandering can be explained as if purposeful in a manner that makes sense of the journey to this place, because of the recognition of arrival: the arrival defines and gives purpose to the journey just as, so often in design, the “solution” defines the “problem”. 3.3 Criteria and conditions: from cybernetics to design In the above we have already indicated one condition that derives from this understanding of design and cybernetics: that the notion of “best” (in the sense of finding the optimal solution) is scarcely applicable and has little or no relevance in design. The appropriate criterion is not best, but good enough. A design should satisfy

the specifiable requirements. It should lead to the creation of a special object or process that is new. The criterion of being best (or even being better) cannot be applied in any absolute manner because there is no strict scale and no basis for strict comparison, and because the so-called problem is, for many reasons already explored, undefinable. It may, of course, turn out that one design is judged better than another, perhaps because it is more in tune with popular taste, or because it is better marketed, but these are criteria of a different sort. Notions such as optimisation, and other similar efficiency measures are scarcely appropriate to the outcomes of a design act: and the act, itself, is scarcely optimisable. What makes a designer effective is luck, guided by experience, intuition, talent and judgement. The fact that this will not appeal to those who follow a more mechanistic and realist approach does not mean these qualities should be excluded: indeed, it is the argument of this paper that they cannot be avoided and so should be welcomed. Nor is the more practical outcome necessarily to be preferred to the less practical, for one outcome may be deemed preferable to another simply because of the novelty and/or beauty of its form, or for some other apparently arbitrary reason such as marketing success. This is not to argue against functional adequacy, or sound fabrication: it is to say that the criteria by which we may value design outcomes are open, variable, chosen (optional), and not absolute. I can, of course, say that one knife, for instance, is better than another according to many criteria, but I cannot be insistent on the superiority of these criteria. Consider the success of knives with toothed, serrated edges: they never need sharpening, but they are never sharp. Against the functional criterion of sharpness, they fail. But against the criterion of staying as sharp as they were, they succeed. The resulting outcome of a design process is the outcome, and that is all. A particularly attractive consequence of this is the responsibility the designer must accept for what (s)he has designed. The process of design is begun by the designer, the conversation is largely private, the designer drawing to him/herself. The outcome of the process is different in each case: design leads not to the best, but to a large variety of different outcomes, giving choice. The design process may be terminated when it reaches a self-reproducing (stable) state: but further judgements about it, and even about when to stop, are not judgements of absolute rightness or truth, but of honest recognition and beauty. 3.3.1 Ideals of behaviour brought from cybernetics and design (ethics). There are certain behavioural consequences of this way of working. These are seen in the environments in which designers practice. While designers may be almost paranoidly secretive about their ideas with outsiders, in a team they are remarkably open and generally willing to listen to comments and accept suggestions for improvements. Consider the nature of the design conversation: for it to operate there has to be a listener (viewer). To listen requires an open mind and generosity. Without these, we cannot listen (as a creative act) and we do not participate. To design means to be able to see the possibilities not that we already have in mind, but that appear given to us by the other: to do this, we need an open mind (for a closed mind blinds us to (the value of) what the other says); and generosity (of heart) to welcome it as at least worth listening to, and potentially of more value to us than what we had thought of[38].

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Together, with accepting responsibility (and acting responsibly) these are amongst those qualities we seem to hold as the most humanly and ethically desirable in ourselves. While we do admire, on occasion, the quality of ruthlessness, or we talk with either admiration or quiet resignation of competition, winning and the survival of the fittest (in which we profoundly misunderstand Darwin) and the lean, mean machine, it would nevertheless seem that we do admire people who are generous, open-minded and accept responsibility. Indeed, in today’s world of approaching ecological disaster it is these qualities rather than those of selfish and self-centred competition that will save us, if we are to save ourselves. Design, in this account, is an way of acting that reflects and requires these more admired qualities; in contrast to that sort of problem solving which attempts to turn the world into an ever more efficient machine. What does this offer us, from the side of design, for cybernetics? I have recently argued (Glanville, 2004b, 2005b) that cybernetics (at least, second order cybernetics) has ethical implications that exactly match those listed above: cybernetic systems work if we accept responsibility, and act generously, with an open mind[39]. This is hardly surprising, for the point of this paper has been to claim the central design act is an essentially second order cybernetic conversation: and it is the conversation in each that implies such decent qualities! 3.4 Epistemology Design is, I have argued (Glanville, 2006a) the quintessential constructive activity. Designers, by definition, construct (new) realities. Epistemologically, this places design in a sensitive position. Clearly, there is an aspect to design (in how it has been discussed here) that is close to philosophical solipsism/idealism, as opposed to realism. But the position argued is not idealist. Constructivism proposes a philosophical position that accepts the essential undecidability of questions of the nature of the world when we posit that we are removed from (our experience of) such a world. In effect, it denies that we can remove ourselves from our own acts of observing, and thus it questions what we can know of a world from which the observer is excluded. It is not idealist, it is not realist, it asserts we cannot resolve the difference between these two polarities and must chose, therefore, either one or the other (as we wish, to suit our purposes and convenience, and not necessarily with any great consistency); or we may chose to “sit on the fence” and refuse to decide. In the extreme, some few will chose not to sit on the fence, but to make sure the fence is maintained and valued for what it is. Designers work within a constructivist framework (Glanville, 2006b). This is clear in the literal sense that they construct (or, in the physical world, cause to be constructed) new artefacts, outcomes of the design process. The assumption of the desirability (and inevitability) of novelty in itself presupposed the notion of construction. But at a less literal level, designers also work within a similarly constructivist framework. To understand this we need to return to the primary act at the heart of designing, the conversation with the self. A conversation is a mechanism to contain a constructivist act. No meanings are passed, rather, they are made by the participants. They are constructed, and the presence of the constructors is always acknowledged. Each participant makes his/her own understanding of what they believe their conversational partner means, and re-state them to that partner. Each compares their own understandings before and after

conversational interchanges, to confirm adequate similarity in these personally held understandings. The conversation (as developed by Pask) is a basic second order cybernetic activity: the conversationalist is always involved, is always in the conversation, rather than, as a traditional observer would be, talking about it[40]. So conversation, as expressed in Pask’s conversation theory, is both a quintessentially second order activity, and a constructivist one. But it is also at the heart of design. If the heart of design can be understood as cybernetic and constructivist, design is, itself, a constructivist activity – in terms of its philosophical position. The epistemology appropriate to the act of design is constructivist and the analysis is second order cybernetic. In fact, design is perhaps the most universal and widespread of all second order cybernetic activities. And it is one of the oldest: in terms of both human development (Piaget) and of the history of known, conscious human activities. 3.4.1 Knowledge of and knowledge for. There is one final epistemological aspect, which concerns the type of knowledge that both design and second order cybernetics work with and construct (Glanville, 2005a, 2007a). The word Design, as we have discussed it, is intended as a verb; it is an activity, leading to an outcome which (in other contexts) is also called design – in this case used in the form of a noun. In this paper, I have generally tried to avoid the use of the word as a noun. The sort of knowledge that science gives us, through the observer of the system, is knowledge of the system. This sort of knowledge helps us understand, in a very particular way, what is[41]. This is passive, neutral, leading to no action on and creating no change in the world – as good science should. An important aim in disengaging the observer is to leave the world neutral and untouched. The concern is to produce knowledge of the world, as we find it. But the purpose of designers is to change the world. They are concerned with action on the world that is intended to change it – to create the new. They are not observers of the world, but observers in the world, and hence actors. Designers need knowledge for acting. And, in a sense, the process at the heart of design, generating those actions, can be said to generate this knowledge for acting on the world as we make it. These – knowledge of and knowledge for – are very different sorts of knowledge, reflecting differences in understandings of knowledge (and intelligence) that stem back to at least Aristotle, which have been built on in recent studies by, for instance, Polyani (1967 – tacit knowledge) and Scho¨n (1983 – reflective knowledge)[42]. There is a rarely questioned orthodoxy, that if we understand better, we can act better. This is taken as self-evident, yet seems untested and may be flawed. For instance, being able to predict the heat loss of a proposed building does not much help a designer. Unless the designer is very lucky, all (s)he learns is that (s)he has got it wrong. Knowledge of has traditionally been converted to knowledge for by means of a sort of transfer knowledge that is the special area of technology. Technology, consisting in large part of what we refer to as engineering, converts knowledge of into knowledge for. However, designers look for a direct knowledge for. Often, knowledge of simply gets in the way. Second order cybernetics is the field that constructs knowledge for action in

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the sense that it is always concerned, not so much with knowledge, as with knowing, with knowledge that is generated by and concerned with action and the actor: with observer-involved knowledge for. 4. Conclusions 4.1 The interesting conjunction In writing this paper I have had two intentions. The first has been to show that there is an interesting conjunction between the two subjects, cybernetics and design. To argue this point I have characterised the understanding I have of each field, and introduced a number of qualities which are central to each and can be seen to be similar. In this way, the sympathy and empathy of each subject to the other, and their mutual relevance, was introduced. 4.2 Conversational circularity: the analogy between cybernetics and design The second intention was to demonstrate a strict analogy between cybernetics and design. In the case of cybernetics, circularity is present from the first attempts to characterise the subject of the Macy Conferences, and the general interest in that circularity in cybernetics, to the point where it is understood to be the key characteristic of the subject. We can go so far as to insist that cybernetics studies circular systems and their consequences, even taking this as a definition, should we want. One such circular (cybernetic) system around which the argument was developed is Pask’s conversation; and the workings of the Paskian conversation were explored in this paper. In the case of design, the central act of designers is claimed to be a form of conversation that takes place largely with the self, via paper and pencil[43]. This central act is argued to be circular, and the workings of this circularity are explored – in part as a way of introducing novelty. (There are many other aspects to design, but they are taken to be secondary.) Further, examples of circular systems are explored for their presence in design, and qualities of design are sought in cybernetics. The implications of these further parallels are explored in, for instance, understandings of ethical considerations. The crucial analogy of this paper is drawn around the centrality to each subject of circularity, in the guise of a conversation (usually held with the self). The central analogy between cybernetics and design is argued to exist in circularity as embodied in a conversation. Notes 1. Architects tend to believe they do not belong in the same category as designers. From my point of view (and even though I was educated as an architect and teach architecture), architects design like all other designers, and in this paper I use the verb design for the activity of all designers, including architects. 2. Systems theory and cybernetics are closely related. As Franc¸ois (2006) says: “Cybernetics is obviously the dynamic complement of systemmics.” 3. The Oxford Conference in the mid-1950s derailed architectural education for some decades by imposing an inappropriate and clumsy pseudo scientism on the teaching of the subject.

4. See Mead’s (1968) paper, Cybernetics of cybernetics. 5. It is difficult to appreciate just how revolutionary feedback, circularity, purpose and intention were in science in 1943. 6. Karl Mueller has recently published a study in which he shows that the developments von Foerster made in second order cybernetics amount to a radical and revolutionary research programme (Mueller, 2007). 7. For a critical exposition of von Glasersfeld’s work, see the recent festschrift edited by Glanville and Riegler (2007). 8. I owe my dawning understanding of the importance and workings of actors to my long association with Gerard de Zeeuw. For a critical exposition of certain central themes in de Zeeuw’s work, see the festschrift edited by myself (Glanville, 2002). 9. It is, indeed, stranger that even now, when there seems to be a reawakening of an interest amongst designers and artists in cybernetics, that they are still looking at the older version of cybernetics which is far less relevant to their concerns than second order cybernetics – as we will find out over the course of this paper. 10. There are other personal connections, two of whom participate in this volume. Paul Pangaro comes from drama and studied with Pask, sharing with Pask an appreciation of the importance of drama. He now teaches design. The architect Stephen Gage worked with Pask both as a student (I recently saw Pask’s diary for 1967 – the year I met him – which was full of appointments with Gage) and later as a teacher and practitioner. He even contemplated studying with Pask for a PhD. 11. My original design education was in architecture (and musical composition), and I have taught design, mainly in architecture, all my professional life. When reading an overview of approaches to design, it is often important to keep in mind the design discipline that the author comes from. There are differences in, for instance, beliefs about optimum outcomes that vary from very ill-defined areas such as architecture, to more proscribed areas such as industrial design. This paper is no place to explore this, but it is mentioned in Krippendorff (2007), in this issue. Regardless of these differences, the activity of holding a conversation with oneself is central to all. 12. The earliest, and still arguably the best, definition of architecture was by the Roman architect and writer, Vitruvius, who called for “firmnesse, comodotie and delight” (in the translation by Sir Henry Wootton): in today’s terms, being well-built, functional and delightful. 13. I have argued that Pask’s study of conversation epitomises truly interactive systems (Glanville 1997b, 2005c). Interactive systems may include those systems in which the observer acts. I have also argued that those entities that persist through the action of self observing, which I call Objects, provide a form for inhabitants of a universe, the entry to which is through observation and being observed (Glanville, 1975). 14. This is the use made by the architect Inigo Jones in his annotations of Palladio’s Five Books. 15. The difficulty of intentionality is specially associated with social sciences. While it is not difficult to consider systems made of so-called inert matter as intention-free, it is much harder to avoid intention when we examine animate systems, such as people. The “Hawthorne Effect” in which the subjects in a study change their expectations in line with changes in experimental conditions (what is considered an acceptable light level in a factory increases as the light level of a work place is increased) has been well known since the 1930s. 16. See Conway and Siegelman’s (2004) biography of Wiener, Dark Hero of the Information Age.

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17. The term “observe” is used in its scientific sense, rather than to more pictorial visual sense of the everyday. 18. It is not claimed that Objects exist in any physical sense, but that they can act as an explanation, a structure that permits. 19. A traditional view is that, to take part in a conversation, we need coded (and hence meaningful) communication. I argue the opposite. We can have no code that we share and interpret without a conversation, by which we can establish that we will set up a code. Thus, for me, conversation is the essential communicational mechanism. 20. This is also why it does not emerge, at lest in any historical sense of the word. 21. A reminder: the cybernetic notion of control is distinct from the popular notion. In popular use, control is often connected with restriction. Cybernetic control is enabling: it helps us towards some aim. Another way of saying this is that cybernetic control is concerned with effectiveness, as in Stafford Beer’s definition of cybernetics as effective management. 22. Contrast this to drivers in, for instance, Egypt, who appear to be completely out of control but are actually very much in control: the control is, however, localised in each driver, rather than in a large system. 23. This is one way to increase creative potential. It is not the only way! (Glanville, 1994, 2000). 24. See the 1956 Oxford Conference on Architectural Education. 25. Pask calls such participants p-individuals: p is for psychological (and not, as many have suggested, Pask). In Pask’s account, they are embodied in m-individuals (m is for mechanical). 26. Unless the tendency of language to make uniform flattens out difference. This is why repeating back the statement of the other cannot indicate an understanding, in a conversation, but only an ability to imitate sounds. 27. Keep in mind, however, that science is deductive whereas one intention of design is to be inductive, transcending deduction. 28. The concept of constancy, here, refers to maintaining an identity. It is a tricky concept and will not try to further elaborate here. 29. For references, see Section 2.1.2.4.1. 30. I am not yet certain, myself, whether the progress by which the autopoietic system generates itself in a manner similar to the progress of the design process. 31. The term “observe” is again used in the scientific, rather than the visual sense. 32. In a sense, purpose in a cybernetic system can be thought of as arising from the attempt to unite system and goal. 33. I refer to the power of, for instance, the lecture-as-theatre. Theatrical events (which, by definition, are performed events) have a presence and ability to both convince and involve the audience. The power of performance in the context of explaining second order cybernetics is that the observer (audience member) is no longer left only to appreciate, intellectually, the explanation, but is sucked into the experience of the explanation: they become part of a second order cybernetic system. The immediate effect is often of knowing something powerful has happened but not being sure what it was. 34. The concept of creativity being used here is associated with novelty. How the novel may be made is important. The position taken here may seem to those who believe in the romantic depiction of the troubled creative genius to be too easy, but will be recognised by others as close to the way many people recognised (by their peers) as creative account for the way their novel ideas come into being.

35. Contrarily, the outcome of this wandering (designing) activity often transcends what we could have imagined without wandering, in a manner that leads to improvements in “efficiency” while also promoting qualities such as delight. 36. Form, used in design, is strongly associated with shape. Although not completely divorced from mathematical and philosophical usage, it is the shapely quality that is generally referred to in this paper. 37. There are, however, some who believe that complexity science may be the theoretical arm of design. 38. I am using the conventional, realist short-hand, in this example. 39. These qualities are not the only ones I argue for, but are the most relevant here. 40. A fuller account of conversation theory would include a discussion of the concurrent levels of a conversation: the contextual level of the substrate, and the critical level of the meta-conversation, including an explanation of how the conversation can switch levels so that, for instance, it may ascend to the meta-conversational level. At that point, the meta-conversational level becomes the level of the conversation (we talk about how we talk about conversation, for instance), with a new (meta-)meta-level above this. And so on, recursively and in either direction. See Glanville (1997b), a summary of Pask’s work (especially conversation theory), with extensive references to his work. 41. I am using the conventional, realist short-hand in this description. 42. There is a whole body of work on design knowledge. The work of the two cited scholars is often considered essential. This paper is not the place to explore design knowledge in detail. 43. Of course, nowadays paper and pencil are not always used. Here the phrase is used as a token for all media in which a sketching type of activity takes place. The change of media may, however, lead to significant changes in how we sketch and what outcome we may expect, possibly modifying the design act, in consequence.

References Ashby, W.R. (1956), Introduction to Cybernetics, Chapman and Hall, London. Ashby, W.R. (1964), “Introductory remarks at a panel discussion”, in Mesarovic, M. (Ed.), Views in General Systems Theory, Wiley, Chichester. Beckett, S. (1984), Worstward Ho!, Grove Press, New York, NY. Christopher Jones, J. (1980), Design Methods, Wiley, Chichester. Collopy, F., Boland, R. and van Patter, G.K. (2005), Next Design Leadership Institute, New York, NY, available at: http://nextd.org/02/08/01/index.html (accessed 14 April 2007). Conway, F. and Siegelman, J. (2004), Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, Father of Cybernetics, Basic Books, New York, NY. Franc¸ois, C. (2006), “The observer reobserved”, in Trappl, R. et al. (Eds), Cybernetics and Systems, ¨ SGK, Vienna. O Gedenryd, H. (1998), How Designers Work. Making Sense of Authentic Cognitive Activities, Lund University Cognitive Studies [No.] 75, Lund University, Lund, available at: www.lucs.lu.se/ People/Henrik.Gedenryd/HowDesignersWork/index.html (accessed 14 April 2007). Glanville, R. (1975), “A cybernetic development of theories of epistemology and observation, with reference to space and time, as seen in architecture”, unpublished PhD thesis, Brunel University, London, also known as the object of objects, the point of points – or something about things.

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Glanville, R. (1980), “Why design research?”, in Jacques, R. and Powell, J. (Eds), 1981 Design/Method/Science, Westbury House, Guildford. Glanville, R. (1994), “Variety in design”, Systems Research, Vol. 11 No. 3. Glanville, R. (1997a), “A ship without a Rudder”, in Glanville, R. and de Zeeuw, G. (Eds), Problems of Excavating Cybernetics and Systems, BKS þ , Southsea. Glanville, R. (1997b), Gordon Pask: a summary of his work, InterNet publication commissioned by the School of Business Administration, St Gallen University, available at: http:// projects.isss.org/Main/GordonPask (accessed 14 April 2007). Glanville, R. (1999a), “Acts between and between acts”, in Ascott, R. (Ed.), Reframing Consciousness, Intellect, Exeter. Glanville, R. (1999b), “Researching design and designing research”, Design Issues, Vol. 13 No. 2. Glanville, R. (2000), “The value of being unmanageable: variety and creativity, in CyberSpace”, in Eichmann, H., Hochgerner, J. and Nahrada, F. (Eds), “Netzwerke”, Proceedings of Global Village ’97 Conference, Vienna 1997, Falter Verlag, Vienna. Glanville, R. (2002), “Gerard de Zeeuw – a Festschrift”, Special Issue of Systems Research and Behavioural Science, Vol. 19 No. 2. Glanville, R. (2003), “An Irregular Dodekahedron and a Lemon Yellow Citroe¨n”, in van Schaik, L. (Ed.), Practice of Practice, RMIT Press, Melbourne. Glanville, R. (2004a), “Appropriate theory”, in Redmond, J., Durling, D. and Bono, A.de (Eds), Proceedings of FutureGround, International Conference of the Design Research Society, Faculty of Art and Design, Monash University, Melbourne. Glanville, R. (2004b), “Desirable ethics”, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Vol. 11 No. 2. Glanville, R. (2004c), “The purpose of cybernetics”, Kybernetes, Vol. 33 No. 6. Glanville, R. (2005a), “Certain propositions concerning prepositions”, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Vol. 12 No. 3. Glanville, R. (2005b), “Cybernetics”, in Mitcham, C. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics, Macmillan Reference, Woodbridge, CT. Glanville, R. (2005c), “Lernen ist Interaktion: Gordon Pask’s ‘An Approach to Cybernetics’”, in Baecker, D. (Ed.), Schlu¨sselwerke der Systemtheorie, Verlag fu¨r Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden. Glanville, R. (2006a), “Construction and design”, Constructivist Foundations, Vol. 1 No. 3, pp. 103-10, available at: www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/1.3 Glanville, R. (2006b), “Design and mentation: Piaget’s constant objects”, The Radical Designist, zero issue, available at: www.iade.pt/designist/jornal/jornal.html (accessed 14 April 2007). Glanville, R. (2007a), Proceedings of Conference on the Unthinkable Doctorate (2005), Design prepositions, refereed conference paper, Hogeschool voor Wetenschap en Kunst Sint-Lucas, Brussels. Glanville, R. (2007b), “Designing complexity”, Performance Improvement Quarterly, Vol. 21 No. 2, pp. 75-96. Glanville, R. and Riegler, A. (2007), “Ersnt von Glasersfeld, a Festschrift”, Constructivist Foundations, Vol. 2 Nos 2/3, available at: www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/2.2/ (accessed 14 April 2007). Glasersfeld, E.von (1987), The Construction of Knowledge, InterSystems Publications, Salinas, CA. Krippendorff, K. (2006), The Semantic Turn, Taylor and Francis, Boca Raton, FL.

Krippendorff, K. (2007), “The cybernetics of design and the design of cybernetics”, Kybernetes, Vol. 36 Nos 9/10. Kuhn, T. (1970), The Nature of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago University Press, Chicago, IL. Maturana, H. and Varela, F. (1980), Autopoiesis and Cognition, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science,Vol. 42, D. Reidel, Dordrecht. Mead, M. (1968), “The cybernetics of cybernetics”, in Foerster, H.von et al. (Eds), Purposive Systems, Spartan Books, New York, NY. Mueller, K. (2007), “Heinz von Foerster’s biological computer laboratory: an unfinished revolution of an unfinished revolution”, in Mueller, A. and Mueller, K. (Eds), An Unfinished Revolution? Heinz von Foerster and the Biological Computer Laboratory 1958-1976, Edition echoraum, Vienna. Pask, G. (1969), “The architectural relevance of cybernetics”, Architectural Design, No. 9. Pask, G. (1975), Conversation Theory, Hutchinson, London. Piaget, J. (1955), The Child’s Construction of Reality, Basic Books, New York, NY. Pias, C. (Ed.) (2003), Cybernetics – Kybernetik: The Macy Conferences 1946-1953, Diaphanes, Zu¨rich/Berlin. Polyani, M. (1967), The Tacit Dimension, Anchor Books, Garden City, NY. Popper, K. (1963), Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. Rittel, H. and Webber, M. (1984), “Planning problems are wicked problems”, in Cross, N. (Ed.), Developments in Design Methodology, Wiley, New York, NY. Rosenblueth, A., Wiener, N. and Bigelow, J. (1943), “Behavior, purpose and teleology”, Phil. Sci., Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 18-24. Scho¨n, D. (1983), The Reflective Practitioner; How Professionals Think in Action, Basic Books, New York, NY. Shannon, C. and Weaver, W. (1949), “The mathematical theory of communication”, Bell Systems Tech J., p. 27. Simon, H. (1969), The Sciences of the Artificial, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Spencer Brown, G. (1968), The Laws of Form, George Allen and Unwin, London. Varela, F., Maturana, H. and Uribe, R. (1974), “Autopoiesis”, BioSystems, Vol. 5. Von Foerster, H. (1977), “Objects: tokens for (eigen-) behaviours”, in Inhelder, B., Garcia, R. and Voneche, J. (Eds), Hommage a` Jean Piaget: Episte´mologie ge´ne´tique et E´quilibration, Delachaux et Niestle, Neuchatel. Von Foerster, H. (Ed.) (1974), The Cybernetics of Cybernetics, Champaign-Urbana, Biological Computer Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL. Wiener, N. (1948), Cybernetics, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. About the author Ranulph Glanville studied a diploma in architecture at the Architectural Association School, London (working in the area of experimental electro-acoustic music), followed by cybernetics (his PhD, which tackles the question of what structure might sustain the belief that we all see differently yet believe we see the same thing, was examined by Heinz von Foerster, his supervisor was Gordon Pask) and then human learning (PhD, dealing with how we understand architectural space, examined by Gerard de Zeeuw, supervisor Laurie Thomas). He has published extensively in all four fields. He has taught in universities around the world. Although he took early retirement from a full time post in the UK he currently holds posts at UCL, London,

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UK, where he is a Professor of Architecture and Cybernetics, Sint Lucas Brussels and Gent, where he is Professor of Architectural Research, and Professor and senior visiting Research Fellow at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Melbourne, Australia. He travels the world advising universities as a professor of odd jobs. He has consulted in a variety of areas from a mental health hospital to a bank and from universities to the creation of CAD systems for designers. He has approximately 300 publications to his name. In June 2006 he was awarded a DSc, recognising his research in cybernetics and design. He is married to the Dutch physiotherapist, Aartje Hulstein, and his son Severi works with digital media in Helsinki. His hobby is whichever of his interests he is not currently doing. He lives in Southsea, UK, and relaxes in the upper cabin of jumbo jets. Ranulph Glanville can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Cybernetic embodiment and the role of autonomy in the design process Argyris Arnellos, Thomas Spyrou and John Darzentas

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Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering, University of the Aegean, Syros, Greece Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to develop the role of autonomy in the emergence of the design process. It shows how the design process is facilitated by autonomy, how autonomy is enhanced through the design process and how the emergence of anticipatory and future-oriented representational content in an autonomous cognitive system provides the functionality needed for the strengthening of both its autonomy and the design process, in which the autonomous cognitive system purposefully engages. Design/methodology/approach – Initially, the essential characteristics of the design process and of the cognitive systems participating in it will be identified. Then, an attempt to demonstrate the ability of an enhanced second-order cybernetic framework to satisfy these characteristics will be made. Next, an analytic description of the design process under this framework is presented and the respective implications are critically discussed. Findings – The role of autonomy is crucial for the design process, as it seems that autonomy is both the primary motive and the goal for a cognitive system to engage in a design process. A second-order cybernetic framework is suitable for the analysis of such a complex process, as long as both the constructive and the interactive aspects of a self-organising system are taken under consideration. Practical implications – The modelling of the complex design process under the framework of second-order cybernetics and the indication of the fundamental characteristics of an autonomous cognitive system as well as their interrelations may provide useful insights in multiple levels, from the purely theoretical (i.e. better understanding of the design process and the conditions for each creative fostering), to the purely technical (i.e. the design of artificial agents with design capabilities). Originality/value – The innovative aspect of the paper is that it attempts an analysis of the design process under a framework of second-order cybernetics, by attempting to analyse and explain the emergence of such a process from the point of view of an autonomous cognitive system. This results in some interesting implications regarding the nature of the design process, as well as regarding its “mechanisms” of emergence and evolution, with respect to the characteristics of the participating autonomous systems. Keywords Autonomy, Second-order cybernetics, Design process, Functionality, Closure, Representational content, Anticipation, Interaction, Cybernetics, Design Paper type Conceptual paper

1. Fundamentals of the design process 1.1 Design needs autonomy and interactivity from its participants It is widely acknowledged that the task of defining design and analysing the design process is not something trivial. Banathy (1996, pp. 11-13) lists up to 24 design definitions. Although the definitions differ from each other, they appear to share a common opinion, namely, that design, in general, and the design process, in particular, is considered as a cognitive activity. For instance, this is clearly implied by Simon (1999, p. 111), when he states that “everyone designs who devises courses of action

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aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” In a more inclusive manner, Friedman (2003) argues that most definitions of design describe it as a goal-oriented process, where the goal is a solution to a problem, the improvement of a situation or the creation of something new and useful. Therefore, given that the ability to act upon an environment in order to effect a goal-oriented attribution of a certain purpose belongs to a cognitive agent, design should primarily be attributed to a cognitive agent and hence, it should have as its basis the cognitive process. On the other hand, Kampis (2002) suggests that a strong notion of agency calls for interactivity, that is, the ability of an agent/cognitive system to perceive and act upon its environment by taking the initiative; intentionality, the ability of an agent to effect a goal-oriented interaction by attributing purposes, beliefs and desires to its actions; and autonomy, which can be characterized as the ability of an agent to function/operate intentionally and interactively based only on its own resources. Furthermore, it seems that there is a very interesting interdependence between these three properties. Specifically, as Collier (1999) suggests, there is no function without autonomy, no intentionality without function and no meaning without intentionality. The interdependence is completed by considering meaning as a prerequisite for the maintenance of system’s autonomy during its purposeful interaction with the environment. These properties and their interdependence are characteristics of the strong notion of agency (i.e. the one exhibited by living systems), which is considered as emergent in the functional organization of the living/cognitive system. The term “functional” is used here to denote the processes of the network of components that contribute to the autonomy of the cognitive system and particularly, to the maintenance of the system as a whole (Ruiz-Mirazo and Moreno, 2004). On the other hand, meaning, if it is not to be considered as an ascription of an observer, should be linked with the functional structures of the system. Hence, meaning should guide the constructive and interactive processes of the functional components of the system in such a way that these processes maintain and enhance its autonomy. In this perspective, the enhancement of autonomy places certain goals by the system itself and hence, the intentionality of the system is guiding its behavior through meaning. It should be noted that in such an autonomous system intentionality is not reducible to the processing of meanings, nor are the combinations of meanings bringing forth any “aboutness.” On the contrary, meaning and its functional substratum are the defining properties of an autonomous agent that may act intentionally. In other words, an autonomous system may act intentionally if its actions are mediated by meaning. Hence, it appears that for a cognitive system (an agent) to be able to engage in a design process, it needs to exhibit the degree of autonomy that will provide for the functionality that is needed, in order to support its intentional and purposeful interaction with the environment, the result of which will create new meanings that will enhance its autonomy. Moreover, the design process has an interactive and a goal-oriented nature, which results from the interactivity and the intentionality of each cognitive system that engages in the design process. So far, the characteristic properties of a cognitive system able to engage in a design process have been mentioned. However, the definition and an analysis of the design process cannot be solely based on the properties of the cognitive agent discussed above. As it will be shown in the next sections, there are also some characteristic

properties of the design process that should be supported from each autonomous cognitive system participating in the design process. 1.2 Ill-definedness and the open-ended nature of the design process The goal-oriented nature of the design process is usually related to a problem, or a set of problems, the nature of which is constitutive of the design process itself. Most design problems are defined in terms of properties and needs of the people who will use the outcome of the design process (an artifact, which can be material or immaterial), the purpose it has for them and the form the artifact should posses in order to be deemed successful. Such design problems are ill-defined and the possible solutions are not clear from the beginning. Design solutions are almost never predictable and there is never sufficient information to define the desirable goal state in advance. Particularly, finding a solution requires in addition finding out what the “real” problem is, which in respect to human-centre problems is impossible. The phases of solving a problem and specifying what the “real” problem is, are developing in parallel and drive each other. As Heylighen and Bouwen (1999) argue, solutions and problems co-evolve during the whole design process. The ill-definedness of design problems is also considered by Banathy (1996) when he argues that design confronts interrelated complexes of problems. In particular, he states that design confronts “a system of problems rather than a collection of problems” (Banathy, 1996, p. 29), and he notes that “design problems are ill-structured and defy a straightforward analysis” (Banathy, 1996). Therefore, he adopts an evolutionary approach to design (Banathy, 1989, 1996, 1998, 2000; Laszlo, 2001), which seems to justify both the ill-defined and open-ended aspect of the design process. Particularly, Banathy argues strongly in favor of a design inquiry as the attempt to find out what should become real, in terms of discerning what would be a desirable addition to the real word. Therefore, the design process seems to be considered as a form of inquiry driven by intentional action. Accordingly, the meanings of each cognitive system participating in the design process are continuously evolving and they are constantly incomplete and imprecise, no matter how much the problem solving progresses. Hence, design problems are also open-ended. There are different logical paths to reach a design solution, that is, different cognitive systems construct different meanings of the design problem and consequently, provide different meaning-based outcomes as a respective solution. This turns designing into a process which is difficult to model and even more difficult to prescribe. 1.3 The design process is future-anticipative The receiver (in general, the user in every instance of the design process) of an artifact will interact with it on the basis of his own individual experience. Considering that each user’s experience and hence meanings are different, the content of the design process, namely, that which is being conveyed, during the design process, by a cognitive system to the other cognitive systems engaging in the same design process, or/and that which is being conveyed, after the end of the design process, from the design system itself to one or more cognitive systems outside of the respective design system[1], should not be understood to be the artifact itself. On the contrary, the content is subjectively interpreted and changed by the user’s cognitive processes, while

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in turn, he is purposefully engaging in future design processes. The different interpretation of content from multiple receivers with different meanings implies that the design process should have the potential to be directed towards many different possible outcomes and their consequences. In other words, the design process should have an anticipatory nature by which it will be placed in a pragmatic context and simultaneously be projected against the future, using different directions and time scales, (Banathy, 1996; Nadin, 2000; Jonas, 2001). It is this orientation towards the future that makes design different from mere problem-solving. Its interactive nature implies a new kind of anticipation for each cognitive system engaging in the design process, that learn from the past and appraise what is presently useful and desirable by simultaneously projecting their content into the future. As it has already been noted, a complete description and analysis of the design process is not an easy task. The design process requires the engagement of individual cognitive systems in intentional and purposeful interactions with their environment and consequently with each other, in order to be able to fulfill their ill-defined goals. Such cognitive systems should have an autonomy that will guide them through this kind of interactions, based on their open-ended anticipative functionality. In other words, such cognitive systems require a certain type of embodiment. In the next section it is argued that the design process and its characteristics call for a 2nd-order cybernetic epistemology. An analysis of the design process under the framework of second-order cybernetics is attempted, and it will be argued that a second-order cybernetic system may exhibit the type of embodiment which forms the basis for a system to be able to engage in a design process. 2. Second-order cybernetics and the design process 2.1 Closure and self-reference for self-organisation Glanville (2001) suggests that the design process should primarily be examined within a cognitive framework based on 2nd-order cybernetic epistemology. In that case, a cognitive system is able to carry out the fundamental actions of distinction and observation. It observes its boundaries and it is thus differentiated from its environment. As the cognitive system is able to observe the distinctions it makes, it is able to refer the result of its actions back to itself. This makes it a self-referential system, providing it with the ability to create new distinctions (actions) based on previous ones, to judge its distinctions, and to increase its complexity by creating new meanings in order to interact (Luhmann, 1995). The self-referential loop can only exist in relation to an environment, but it also disregards the classical system-environment models, which hold that the external control of a cognitive system’s adaptation to its environment is replaced by a model of systemic closure (von Foerster, 1981). Owing to that closure, the self-reference of an observation creates meaning inside the cognitive system, which is used as a model for further observations in order to compensate for external complexity. The system which operates on meaning activates only internal functions and structures, which von Foerster (1981) calls eigenvalues, postulating some stable structures, which are maintained in the functions of the cognitive system’s organisational dynamics (Rocha, 1996) and which serve as points of departure for further operations during its interaction with the environment. Indeed, this closure is functional in so far as the effects produced by the cognitive system are

the causes for the maintenance of its systemic equilibrium by forming new and more complex organisations. With system closure, environmental complexity is based solely on system observations, thus, system reality is observation-based. As von Foerster (1976) argued, the results of an observation do not refer directly to the objects of the real world, but instead, they are the results of recurrent cognitive functions in the structural coupling between the cognitive system and the environment. In particular, von Foerster (1976, p. 266) states that “Ontologically, eigenvalues and objects, and likewise, ontogenetically, stable behavior and the manifestation of a subject’s ‘grasp’ of an object cannot be distinguished.” Thus, each new function based on observations is a construction, it is an increase of the organisation and cognitive complexity of the system. This process of emergent increment of order through the internal construction of functional organisations and simultaneous classification of the environment is a process of self-organisation (von Foerster, 1960, 1981). 2.2 Embodied constructions in self-organising systems Overall, it could be said that in the framework of second-order cybernetics, in contrary to the traditional cognitivistic frameworks (Fodor, 1975, 1990; Newell, 1980), cognition is not considered as a process of gathering and assembling of representations that are directly related to objects or/and states of affairs of the environment. Instead, cognition is considered as a process of constant alteration of the intentional behavior of the system through the continuous modification of its functional organisation. In other words, a self-organising system is able to both establish and change its functionality in order to interact with an environment. This provides the self-organising cognitive system with a kind of autonomy that is not supported in the classical symbolic/cognitivistic frameworks, since in the latter, any functional change would be externally imposed. Furthermore, the nature of the systemic closure means that all the interactive alternatives of the cognitive system are internally generated and their selection is an entirely internal process. Therefore, such autonomous cognitive systems must construct their reality by using internally available structures. One should notice that the respective self-organised structures (eigenvalues) are specific to the particularities of the functionality of the cognitive system. Specifically, the functionality of the cognitive system is entirely dependent on its structural components and their interrelationships that establish the respective dynamics. Hence, the functionality of the cognitive system is immediately related to the maintenance of its systemic coherence (Collier, 1999), and consequently of its self-organisational dynamics (Collier and Muller, 1998). This inclination of a self-organising cognitive system to maintain its own self-organisation constitutes the core of its intentional and purposeful (goal-oriented) interaction with the environment. This is a strong notion of embodiment based on the dynamics of the functional organisation of the cognitive system and it is quite different from the almost disembodied nature of a purely symbolic system. 2.3 Embodied constructions are not enough for the enhancement of autonomy However, this specific kind of embodiment and the consequent autonomy do not come gratuitously. The self-organising system cannot grasp every aspect of the environment

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but only these aspects that can be constructed by its functional dynamics. Therefore, the meaning constructed by such an autonomous cognitive system is not open-ended. On the other hand, as it was previously noted, the design process is open-ended and emerges out of ill-defined goals and purposes of its participants, while it also results in ill-defined outcomes with ill-defined consequences. This means that the anticipatory content of each self-organising system engaging in the design process should be open for revision and evolution, in order to reflect both this ill-definedness and the open-endedness as well. In this way, the self-organising system will have the ability to emerge new functions that will be directed towards new goals and hence, the new functionality will contribute to the autonomy of the system in new ways (Collier, 1999). The need for open-endedness calls for the interaction of the self-organising system with other self-organising systems of the environment, while, the functional aspects of such an embodiment and its anticipatory content call for interactive emergent representations. 2.4 From embodied constructions to interactive emergent representations 2.4.1 The need for interactive representations in autonomous cognitive systems engaging in a design process. The internal constructions, with which the self-organising system classifies the environment and acts on it, are not representations of the environment. As von Glasersfeld (1995) argues, these constructions are re-presentations that are generated by the cognitive system in its embodied interaction with the environment. In second-order cybernetics, memory is understood as a process of re-presenting and re-membering by bringing past experiences into the present (von Foerster, 1969, 2003). Hence, re-presentation refers to the self-organised dynamics, by virtue of which a previous construction is re-constructed (re-presented) from memory, given that there is some sensory interaction (perturbation) with the environment. In general, in the context of second-order cybernetics, the notion of representation as an encoded information, which is in an exact correspondence with the aspects of the environment that are supposed to be represented, is totally rejected. Actually, second-order cybernetic systems admit no functional usefulness to representations and they regard information only as socially ascribed to a process from other observers (Maturana and Varela, 1980; von Glasersfeld, 1995). This rejection somewhat constrains the autonomy of self-organised systems to its internal dynamics. But, besides that, there are some cases, where the use of representations is demanded. Hence, Clark and Toribio (1994) argue in favor of “representational hungry” phenomena, which are mostly usual in the daily action of cognitive agents. In a more inclusive manner, Bickhard and Terveen (1995) are note some characteristic cases, where a kind of interactive representations that make possible the internal generation of error, which is detectable by the system itself, is necessary for the successful functioning of the cognitive system. In these cases, “the processing in the system must be potentially controllable, at least in part, by system error . . . ” (Bickhard and Terveen, 1995, p. 210). Such cases appear, among others, in goal-directed interactions, “when system implicit anticipation of the courses and outcomes of interactions cannot be assured” (Bickhard and Terveen, 1995, p. 211) and in learning processes, as

Learning cannot be fully successfully anticipatory – if it were, there would be nothing to be learned. Learning must involve the possibility of error, and such error must be functionally detectable by the system itself so that the learning can be guided by it (Bickhard and Terveen, 1995).

Another case where interactive representations are needed is when there is more than one possible course of interaction for a specific environment and the system should choose among them on the basis of each anticipated outcomes of these interactions (Bickhard and Terveen, 1995; Bickhard, 2001). It is apparent that the design process is more deeply implicated in the circumstances of a cognitive system-environment interaction, since a design outcome can be fulfilled in more than one way and its use (its interaction with one or more users, that is, other cognitive systems in the environment) may have more than one consequences. The selections cannot be realized through simple triggering, but some more complex process should be involved in the selections of the course of the interaction. Of course, there are some cases, where particular sensory interaction are known to provoke specific responses, especially in well-defined anticipation, where there is no need for the cognitive system to be aware of the subsequent internal outcomes. However, these are quite different and cannot provide an explanation for intentional and purposeful interaction of the autonomous cognitive system. Something is needed, that will justify the relation of internally self-organising structures of the autonomous cognitive system to particular aspects of its interaction with certain state of affairs in the environment. 2.4.2 Emergent representations in an autonomous cognitive system. Such “informational” internal states, which refer to certain conditions of the environment need to have an embodied and situated character (Moreno et al., 1997), in order to be able to ground the representation to the context of the situated interaction between the autonomous cognitive system and the environment. Indeed, considering the functional closure of a self-organising system, its constructions can be seen as internal in-formational patterns, which have nothing to do with the transference of ontological information from the environment to the cognitive system. As long as this internal construction permits the cognitive system to survive, at least in this specific environment, and hence, to maintain or even enhance its autonomy, this construction should be considered as a representation of the situated interaction of the cognitive system with the respective environment. Bickhard (1993, 2000, 2001) exemplifies this situation by postulating a recursive self-maintenant system, which is a self-organising system that has more than one means at its disposal in order to maintain its ability of being self-maintenant in various environmental conditions. This is a self-organising system which avoids going to equilibrium by continuously interacting with the environment, from where it finds the appropriate conditions for the success of its functional processes. Therefore, the primary goal of such a self-organising system is to maintain its autonomy in the course of interactions. Since, it is a self-organising system, its embodiment is of a kind that its functionality is immediately related to its autonomy, through the fact that its apparent inclination to maintain its autonomy, in terms of its self-maintenance (its purpose), constitutes the intentionality of its actions and hence, of its interaction with the environment. In this way, the function of the cognitive system is guided by its autonomy, in the sense of the former contributing for the maintenance of the latter, while its

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intentionality derives from this specific functionality, as the latter is being directed towards the primary purpose of maintaining the self-maintenance. What is still missing is meaning, on the basis of which the cognitive system decides which of the available functional processes should make use of, in order to successfully interact with a specific environment, that is, in order to fulfill its goal. But, where exactly is this meaning to be found? Bickhard argues that such an autonomous system should have a way of differentiating the environments with which it interacts, and a switching mechanism in order to choose among the appropriate internal functional processes that it will use in the interaction. The differentiations are implicitly and interactively defined, as the internal outcomes of the interaction. These differentiations can occur in any interaction and the outcome of the interaction depends on the organisation of the participating subsystems and of the environment. Bickhard emphasizes that such differentiations create an epistemic contact with the environment, but they do not carry, in any way, any representational content, thus they are not representations by themselves. Rather, they are indications of the interactive potentiality of the functional processes of the autonomous cognitive system itself. More specifically, the role of these differentiations is twofold: (1) they indicate the range of interactions that are functionally available for the cognitive system to use in this specific environment, that is, they indicate which further interactions might be possible or appropriate (Bickhard, 2000), in terms of at least contributing to the maintenance of the autonomy of the cognitive system; and (2) they implicitly predicate the environmental properties that would support the success of the functionally indicated interactive processes. In other words, such differentiations functionally indicate that some type of interaction is available in the specific environment and hence, implicitly predicate that the environment exhibits the appropriate conditions for the success of the indicated interaction. In this model, such differentiated indications constitute emergent representations. The conditions of the environment that are functionally and implicitly predicated by the differentiation, as well as, the internal conditions of the autonomous cognitive system (i.e. other functional processes or conditions), that are supposed to be supporting the selected type of interaction, constitute the dynamic presuppositions of the functional processes that will guide the interaction. These presuppositions constitute the representational content of the autonomous cognitive system regarding the differentiated environment. This content emerges in the interaction of the system with the environment and it corresponds to the implicitly defined supports of the functionally indicated interactive process (Bickhard, 2000). This content may be in error, which means that the respective dynamic presuppositions may not hold (i.e. the environment may not provide the presupposed conditions). But this error will be functionally detectable by the autonomous cognitive system itself, since it will be functionally evaluated on the basis of the maintenance of the autonomy of the system (i.e. the indications of the content are embedded in the functionality of the system). These autonomous systems exhibit what Collier (1999, 2000) have called as process and interaction closure, namely a situation where the

internal outcomes of the interactions of the cognitive system with its environment contributes to the maintenance of the functional (constructive/interactive) processes of the system that are responsible for these specific interactions. Hence, meaning is produced by the functional evaluation of the representational content, internally in the autonomous cognitive system, but in the interaction of the system with its environment. It is in this way that meaning is a prerequisite and contributes to the maintenance of the autonomy of the cognitive system during its intentional and purposeful interaction. In this perspective, each referential state of the autonomous cognitive system should be considered as situated in the context of the self-organised in-formational structures, as these are internally constructed due to its functional/organisational closure. In particular, these in-formational structures determine the intentional and purposeful interaction of the autonomous cognitive system, based on the variety of the indicated organisational forms they can support. Therefore, these in-formational structures indicate the representations that emerge (and hence, they can only be defined) in the context of the interaction of the autonomous cognitive system with the environment. In other words, any representational functional organisation is an emergent product of the interaction between the autonomous system and its environment. Hence, in an autonomous system, functionality provides intentionality simply because its functional structure carries, during the interaction, potentially reliable content about the environment. The way an autonomous cognitive system uses its own functions in order to intentionally interact with the environment has some very interesting consequences regarding the design process, which are presented in the next section. 2.5 The design process as interaction between autonomous cognitive systems 2.5.1 Defining the design process and the design system. Following on from the analysis made above, each autonomous cognitive system participating in the design process is considered as a self-organising system with the ability to maintain its autonomy in terms of its self-maintenance in different and dynamic environments. In a serial description (applicable only for demonstrative purposes) of the design process, each one of the participating autonomous systems could be defined as design-systems or user-systems at different time instances. However, the systemic and interactive approach adopted in this paper calls for a more participative and cooperative term, such as “user-designer” (called as UD, hereinafter), used by Banathy (1996, p. 226) to denote the “designing within the system” approach to design. Hence, an autonomous cognitive system acquires the identity of a UD system the very moment that it intentionally decides to engage in a design process. Consequently, in the framework described so far, the design process is seen as an interaction between two or more autonomous UD systems, in order to maintain their capacity for self-maintenance, or in other words, in order to maintain the type of autonomy that permits them to internally create representational content. Since, in the analysis sketched before, autonomy guides functionality, the functional aspect of the design process in which each UD system interactively participates, becomes the purposeful and ongoing transformation and expansion of their already existing representations. For each UD system, a different representational content is internally emerging from their mutual attempts to incorporate the results of each other

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actions (the artifact in each instance of the design process), as a perturbation and not as a static informational structure nor as a content in itself, into their functional organisation. Additionally, the group of such autonomous UD systems engaging in the design process constitutes a design system, which, as expected from the interactive nature of the design process, it is defined on the communicative/co-operative level[2]. 2.5.2 Describing the design process: the role of ill-defined-goals. A logical sequence of the interaction cannot be implied, but for the benefit of this analysis, it can be said, that a UD system attempts to communicate its representations, regarding a possible solution towards an ill-defined goal, to the other UD systems participating in the design process, via the creation of an artifact. Considering the participative and co-operative aspects of the design process, the aim of this communication is to induce, in the other UD systems, the emergence of the necessary representational content that will guide their functional organisation towards the ill-defined goal. From the perspective of autonomy, the aim of this communication, from the point of view of the UD system that decides to communicate an artifact, is to indirectly enhance the variety of the environment, so that the interaction of the UD system with this environment will facilitate the emergence of richer representational content that will further enhance its autonomy. Since, as discussed before, the representational content of each autonomous cognitive system partly depends on the dynamic presuppositions provided by the environment with which it chooses to interact, and partly on the functional dynamics of the system itself, the only way for an autonomous cognitive system to enhance its content is to provide for the enhancement of the representational content of all the other participants in the design process. Furthermore, this mutual enhancement should take place towards the direction of the specific ill-defined goal, since, according to our framework, its attainment will implicitly enhance the autonomy of the cognitive system. Initially, in the early stages of an autonomous cognitive system such mutual dependence upon an ill-defined goal can be easily achieved. It becomes harder as long as ill-defined goals become more complicated. This happens when different cognitive systems construct different meanings of the design problem and provide different outcomes as possible solutions. This means that the ill-defined goal of the design process will never have a genuine and mutual recognition between its participants. Indeed, the degree of mutuality will decrease as far as the ill-defined goal becomes more complicated[3]. On this basis, it can be concluded that the design process is the purposeful communication between two or more autonomous UD systems, in order to shape their dynamical interaction with the environment, in ways that they achieve a kind of functionality that contributes to the enhancement of their autonomy, by attempting to direct their functional organisations (i.e. themselves) towards an allegedly common ill-defined goal. At this point, it has been argued that two or more self-organising systems engage in an intentional and purposeful interaction with each other, in order to maintain and enhance their autonomy. In other words, self-organising systems engage in a design process out of necessity. From an observer’s point of view, the design process could be considered as the attempt of two or more cognitive agents to provide each other a specific solution regarding a specific problem. In the interactive framework of second-order cybernetics, the design process should be seen as an attempt of two or more autonomous systems to communicate their representational content regarding a

possible solution to an ill-defined goal – which is internally and differently formulated by each autonomous system – in order to maintain and enhance their autonomy[4]. What needs to be clarified is the way this enhancement takes place in the face of complicated ill-defined goals and particularly, how the design process might acquire a greater directionality towards these goals, a case which will eventually contribute to the autonomy of the participants.

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3. Anticipation and the design process 3.1 Anticipation and functionality Anticipation relates the present action of a cognitive system with its future state. An anticipatory system has the ability to organise its functional state, in such a way that its current behavior will provide the ability to successfully interact with its environment in the future. An anticipatory system needs to be able to take into consideration the possible results of its actions in advance (that is, prior to its action), hence, anticipation is immediately related to the meaning of the representations of the autonomous cognitive system (Collier, 1999). In this way, anticipation is one of the most characteristic aspects of autonomous systems due to their need to shape their dynamic interaction with the environment so as to achieve future outcomes (goals of the system) that will enhance their autonomy. In the context of the autonomous systems discussed so far, these future outcomes should satisfy the demand for process and interaction closure of the system. Process and interaction closure are evaluated on the basis of the functional outcomes of the autonomous system, therefore, anticipation is immediately related to functionality (Collier, 2000). Even the simplest function requires anticipation in order to be effective. As mentioned before, anticipation is goal-directed. As a matter of fact, anticipation almost always requires functionality, which is, by default, a goal-oriented process. In this perspective, anticipation guides the functionality of the system through its representational content. In the model of the emergence of representations in the special case of autonomous self-organising systems presented above, the representational content emerges in system’s anticipation of interactive capabilities (Bickhard, 2001). In other words, the interactive capabilities are constituted as anticipation and it is this anticipation that could be inappropriate and this is detectable by the system itself, since such anticipation is embedded in the functional context of a goal-directed system. This type of anticipation is very different from the one supported by the cognitivist models of representation, which are trying to find a mapping of the environment to their past decisions. Here, the activity is future-oriented and it can be inappropriate, if the chosen interactive strategy does not internally yield the desired results, or if the respective environment does not support the type of interaction that would lead to the anticipated internal outcome. 3.2 Dynamic anticipation directing the design process As stated before, the design process is open-ended and emerges out of ill-defined goals and purposes of its participants (the autonomous cognitive systems), while it also results in ill-defined outcomes with ill-defined consequences. The anticipatory content of each autonomous system engaging in the design process should be open for revision and evolution. Considering the dynamic and future-oriented type of anticipation

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described above, it can be said that each UD system participating in a design process should have the capability for anticipative interaction with the environment, in order to achieve the closure conditions that will contribute to its autonomy. As already said, the only way for an autonomous system to enhance its autonomy is by constructing even more adaptive representations towards its ill-defined goal. But this can only be achieved through the enhancement of its environment, that is, the emergence of new and more complex representations in the other UD systems, which belong into the same design system. If this is to happen towards the direction dictated by the otherwise subjectively formulated ill-defined goal, then the ability of each one UD system to anticipate the variety of the functional structures of all the other UD systems is crucial for the enhancement of the autonomy. Actually, the higher the degree of anticipation in each UD system, the higher its capacity to evaluate its interaction and the greater its ability to incorporate multiple possibilities in its performance, and also, the higher its capacity to consider the ill-defined consequences of the outcome of the design process, that is, the multiple ways in which each one of the other UD systems may choose to interact with the artifact. In general, it can be said that the more the representational content of an autonomous system is evolved, the more dynamic its anticipative structures become (Collier, 1999; Bickhard, 2001). This has a positive effect in the anticipatory capacity of the autonomous system and in its capacity to evaluate its future interactions. The increase of the system’s capacity for dynamic anticipation expands that what Christensen and Hooker (2000) call the anticipatory time window, which provides a certain degree of directionality (Christensen and Hooker, 2002) in the goal-directed interaction of the autonomous system. Overall, these capacities result in the emergence of new cognitive abilities for the autonomous system, thus, implicitly increasing its interactive autonomy. Nevertheless, no matter how large the window of anticipatory interaction may be, all possibilities and selections regarding the outcomes and the ill-defined consequences of the design process cannot be inherent in the organisation of each UD system. A possible solution is that the UD system should evolve learning capabilities. This would provide the way to expand its dynamical anticipation capacity and its ability to evaluate a possible interaction. The UD system becomes less dependent and more sensitive regarding its contextual interactive capabilities. It increases its ability to better recognize its environment, evaluate conditions and better formulate its goal regarding the problem. This provides an infrastructure better suited to the UD system to define the design problem and anticipate the possibility of success in the emergent interactions between the other UD systems and the communicated artifact. Structural coupling is strengthened and the new and more adaptive representational content acquires a more prosperous field of emergence. Consequently, autonomy is increased. However, it should be clear that not every external perturbation is useful for a dynamical anticipative interacting UD system. Only those contributing to the system’s closure and therefore to the preservation of its autonomy would be selected for further exploitation. Since, in the proposed framework, closure is achieved at the level of differentiations and of the respective emergent representational content, it is concluded that autonomy cannot be statically identified, but as Collier (2000, 2002) suggests, it has a gradual nature.

Hence, autonomy should be considered as an anticipative and future-directed property and it is a vital asset being directly related to the variety with which the UD systems participating in the design process will internally create adaptive emergent representations towards their ill-defined goals. The artefacts are not objects any more, but interfaces functioning as triggers that drive the formation of new representational content. These interfaces between the UD systems should be seen as signals from one to the other that do not have a direct informational content in themselves. Rather, each UD system should exploit each artifact, as both a means of maintenance and the source of the enhancement of its own autonomy. The consequence of this perspective is the paradigm shift from focusing on designing static things to focusing on designing the emergence of thoughts and of novel representational content. The interaction with an artifact results in a differentiated indication of the interactive capabilities of each UD system engaging in the design process. Taking this perspective, autonomy depends on the degree to which the communicated representational content of each UD system, through the artifact, generates to the other UD systems the proper indications of the potentialities of their interactive capabilities. In this way, the increase of autonomy is the result of a creative design process (Arnellos et al., 2007). What should be noted at this point is that based on this perspective, the content of the design process is not the artifact itself. It is also not static, since it is the attempt to communicate the UD system’s representational content to the other UD systems actively participating in the design process. Moreover, due to the capacity for directed interaction, all UD systems engage in a mutual dependence with each other, while they are trying to increase their anticipatory capacity, no matter the degree of mutual recognition of their ill-defined goals. In their attempt to create richer representational structures towards their ill-defined goals, they are continuously interacting with the artefacts and hence, they learn to anticipate, or as it is suggested by Bickhard (2001) they anticipate the necessity to acquire new anticipations. Furthermore, the progressively increasing capability of the UD system’s anticipation creates, as well, an intentional capacity. This is not the same as the traditional notion of intentionality considered as the sum of all system’s representations. Intentionality derives from the UD system’s functional capability of anticipative and purposeful interaction, and aims at the enhancement of each UD system’s autonomy. 4. Conclusions The design process needs autonomous and interactive cognitive systems, while it is an ill-defined process with ill-defined and open-ended goals and consequences. It has been argued that the design process should be examined, analyzed and modeled in a framework of second-order cybernetics, as a cognitive system needs the respective embodiment in order to support the abovementioned characteristics and in order to be able to engage in a design process with its environment. In this case, the interaction of the cognitive system is guided by its self-organising functionality, which arises from its autonomy and it is directed towards the maintenance or/and the enhancement of this autonomy. In a dynamic environment, an autonomous cognitive system with the ability to maintain its autonomy regarding its self-maintenance requires the internal generation of representational content that will drive its goal-oriented interactions.

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The representational content emerges in the respective interactions and it depends upon the dynamic conditions of the environment and of the cognitive system itself. This content emerges in the form of anticipation that indicates the possibility of future interactions for the cognitive system and which result in the emergence of new functionality which in turn is directed towards new goals. The autonomous cognitive system will continue to interact with the environment towards these new goals, having as a primary aim the maintenance of its own autonomy. The need for the enhancement of the autonomy makes each cognitive system engage in intentional and purposeful interactions with each other, aiming primarily at a common ill-defined goal. This is an interactive design process, which is conducted as a purposeful communication between two or more autonomous self-organising systems. These systems become user-designers and form a design system. Each user-design steps into this design system out of the necessity to maintain and enhance its autonomy. Under the perspective of second-order cybernetics the design process is mutual, as in order for a user-designer system to be able to enhance its autonomy, it should first of all enhance the autonomy of its environment, that is, the autonomy of the other participants in the design process. This enhancement is goal-directed (hence, it is essentially a future-oriented process), but, each goal is differently and subjectively formulated in each autonomous cognitive system. This may provide some problems in terms of the directionality of the design process, that will immediately be reflected in the degree of enhancement of the autonomy of the respective cognitive systems. These problems are smoothed out by the development of more elaborated anticipations which provide the autonomous system the capacity to evaluate its interaction and to anticipate its multiple possibilities. This provides a certain degree of directionality to each autonomous cognitive system participating in the design process, which brings each user-designer system closer to the ill-defined goal. Finally, the capacity for directed interaction provides the capacity for learning, which prepares each user-designer to engage in more demanding and more complicated design processes. The prerequisites for learning is that the anticipatory content of the system should be open for revision, it should be able to be in error and this error should be internally detectable by the system itself. These properties are provided by a representational content that emerges in an autonomous system, which is cybernetically embodied, but it also has the ability to interact with the environment, in order to maintain its autonomy. Autonomy drives the design process and profits from it, when both the constructive and the interactive aspects of each participating cognitive system are considered. Notes 1. See §2.5.1 for a clarification regarding the design process and the design system. 2. In the systems bibliography (Churchman, 1971; Ackoff, 1974, 1981; Banathy, 1989, 1996, 1998, 2000, etc.) the design process and consequently, the design system itself are directly defined at the social level. One can also talk about a cognitive system which comes forward to a design process and it is considered as a design system from the moment that it decides to engage in purposeful interactions with its environment (i.e. with other cognitive systems). However, from a systemic point of view, it seems to be more correct to consider as a design

system the set of all cognitive systems which are intentionally engaging in interactive design processes. In this view, and given that for the social scientists a cooperation is the co-action of two or more social actors, which is mediated by acts of communication, which in turn are mediated by acts of cognition by individual cognitive agents (Fuchs, 2003), the design system is solely defined at the social (cooperative) level and the design process acquires an interactive nature. 3. As a matter of fact, in the framework of second-order cybernetics there may be no goal at all (see for instance Glanville, 2004 for such a radical analysis). In the present paper, goals are considered as ill-defined and they are used in order to justify the directionality of the design process, through the intentionality of each autonomous cognitive system that belongs to the respective design system. 4. A reviewer has pointed out to us that the conclusion of this analysis is that design is living. We would like to point out that we fully agree with this remark, but the reason why this has not been stated that clearly so far is that we feel that a more detailed and in depth analysis is needed regarding the properties of the autonomous (living) systems that engage in a design process or the reader may be easily confused. However, we shall aim towards this direction in a future research, as we think that it is the most appropriate way for a naturalized account of the design process. The present paper aims at setting the basis for such an analysis and modelings.

References Ackoff, R.L. (1974), Redesigning the Future, Wiley, New York, NY. Ackoff, R.L. (1981), Creating the Corporate Future, Wiley, New York, NY. Arnellos, A., Spyrou, T. and Darzentas, J. (2007), “Exploring creativity in the design process: a systems-semiotic perspective”, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 37-64. Banathy, B.H. (1989), “The design of evolutionary guidance systems”, Systems Research, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 289-95. Banathy, B.H. (1996), Designing Social Systems in a Changing World, Plenum, New York, NY. Banathy, B.H. (1998), “Evolution guided by design: a systems perspective”, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Vol. 15, pp. 161-72. Banathy, B.H. (2000), Guided Societal Evolution: A Systems View, Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York, NY. Bickhard, M.H. (1993), “Representational content in humans and machines”, Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 5, pp. 285-333. Bickhard, M.H. (2000), “Autonomy, function, and representation”, Communication and Cognition – Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 17 Nos 3/4, pp. 111-31. Bickhard, M.H. (2001), “Function, anticipation, representation”, in Dubois, D.M. (Ed.), Computing Anticipatory Systems, CASYS 2000 – Fourth International Conference, American Institute of Physics, Melville, NY, pp. 459-69. Bickhard, M.H. and Terveen, L. (1995), Foundational Issues in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science – Impasse and Solution, Elsevier Scientific, Amsterdam. Christensen, W.D. and Hooker, C.A. (2000), “Anticipation in autonomous systems: foundations for a theory of embodied agents”, International Journal of Computing Anticipatory Systems, Vol. 5, pp. 135-54.

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Rocha, L.M. (1996), “Eigenbehavior and symbols”, Systems Research, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 371-84. Ruiz-Mirazo, K. and Moreno, A. (2004), “Basic autonomy as a fundamental step in the synthesis of life”, Artificial Life, Vol. 10, pp. 235-59. Simon, H.A. (1999), The Sciences of the Artificial, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, (3rd rev. ed. 1996; Orig. ed. 1969; 2nd, rev. ed. 1981). von Foerster, H. (1960), “On self-organizing systems and their environments”, pp. 1-19, reprinted in von Foerster H. (2003). von Foerster, H. (1969), “What is memory that it may hindsight and foresight as well?”, in Bogoch, S. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Third International Conference: The Future of the Brain Sciences, New York, NY, pp. 19-64, reprinted in von Foerster, H., (2003), pp. 101-132. von Foerster, H. (1976), “Objects: tokens for (eigen-) behaviors”, ASC Cybernetics Forum,Vol. 8, pp. 91-6, reprinted in: von Foerster, H., (2003), pp. 261-71 (Page numbers in the text refer to the reprint). von Foerster, H. (1981), Observing Systems, Intersystems Publications, Salinas, CA. von Foerster, H. (2003), Understanding Understanding. Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition, Springer-Verlag, New York, NY. von Glasersfeld, E. (1995), Radical Constructivism: A Way of Knowing and Learning, The Falmer Press, London.

About the authors Argyris Arnellos holds a PhD from the University of the Aegean, Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering, a MSc in data communication systems from the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering of Brunel University (UK) and a BSc in electronic engineering from the Department of Electronics of the Technological Educational Institution of Athens. His PhD thesis is entitled as “Exploring the Emergence of Meaning in Living Systems and in artificial environments” and it is an attempt to propose and establish a system-semiotic theoretical framework which is used for the modeling and analysis of the emergent meaning processes in the interactions at the biological, the cognitive and the social level. Since, 1998 he is a researcher in the Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering of the University of the Aegean, where he has been involved in a number of national and European research projects. He has published in scientific journals and participated in international and national conferences, in the areas of systems theory; 2nd-order cybernetics; semiotics; biosemiotics; design and design theory; information systems design; artificial intelligence; artificial life and human-computer interaction. Argyris Arnellos is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected] Thomas Spyrou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering. His main interest is to research and to apply systems theories and approaches to real-world scenarios, especially in the case of information systems for human activity systems. He has over ten years of teaching experience in systems design, theories and methodologies of design, as well as various areas of human-computer interaction. He has been director or executive member of technical committees for the design of large-scale network and services infrastructures such as University of the Aegean network, Greek Secondary Educational network, Greek Universities network and Greek Research and Technology Network. He has served as part of the Ministry of the Aegean’s Think Tank. He has directed and participated in a number of projects both funded nationally, and by the European Union. He has published in scientific journals and participated in conferences, in the areas of information systems design, holistic systems design, artificial intelligence, decision support systems, intelligent tutoring systems, simulation and security.

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John Darzentas (BSc Athens Greece; MSc Sussex UK, PhD London UK) is Chair of Operational Research and Head of the Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering, University of the Aegean. He has held various academic positions in Britain, Finland and Greece, including lectureships at the Universities in London and Reading in the UK, visiting professorships at the University of Athens, and the Abo Akademi, in Turku, Finland. He has collaborated in and led many research projects, both in the UK and Greece as well as projects funded by the European Union on a range of subjects, including systems thinking; decision support; simulation; knowledge management; learning technologies human computer interaction; design; and lately design for all. He has spoken, and been invited to speak, at many conferences on various aspects of these topics, he is on the editorial board of several journals, and the author of a substantial number of papers in scientific journals and books.

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The origin of modelling

The origin of modelling

Phil Ayres Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, London, UK, and ˚ rhus Architecture School, A ˚ rhus, Denmark A

1225 Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to explore the relationship between modelling and design from a cybernetic perspective. Design/methodology/approach – Cybernetic understandings of the notions “modelling” and “design” are developed initially. The derived understandings are used to define an outline specification for a speculative design project based on an analysis and re-interpretation of an account from Pliny the Elder. The account is re-interpreted to address a long tradition of partial appropriation in which only the two-dimensional representation of three-dimensions by projection on to a plane is considered. The project seeks to re-adjust the focus of this account to an activity that employs two-dimensional representation as a means for subsequent spatial synthesis. It further proposes to make the relationship between model and modelled circular. Findings – There are two findings. First, an understanding that context is constructed by the observer. Second, the need to implement a meta-model to permit circularity between the model and the modelled. Research limitations/implications – This paper presents the conceptual underpinning for a project and design strategy that is yet to be investigated. Practical implications – The design strategy presented suggests the introduction of circularity into the world of built artefacts, allowing the potential for the continual expression of variety over time. Originality/value – This paper introduces the original notion of the “persistent model” as a design strategy complementary to existing practices. The “persistent model” establishes and maintains circularity between the model and the artefact as constructed, in order that the two continually inform each other. Keywords Observer, Model, Modelling, Black box, Design, Circularity, Architecture Paper type Research paper

Introduction Butades, a potter of Sicyon, was the first who invented, at Corinth, the art of modelling portraits in the earth which he used in his trade. It was through his daughter that he made the discovery; who, being deeply in love with a young man about to depart on a long journey, traced the profile of his face, as thrown upon the wall by the light of the lamp. Upon seeing this, her father filled in the outline, by compressing clay upon the surface, and so made a face in relief, which he then hardened by fire along with other articles of pottery. Pliny the Elder (1855, The Natural History – translated edition). The architect and the model Joseph Michael Gandy’s watercolour, “Perspective of various designs for Soane’s public and private buildings” (1818), presents the observer with a curious and densely populated arrangement of buildings, fragments of buildings, sectional studies, paintings and plans. Within this collection the observer is likely to recognise The Bank of England, Soane’s own home, and George Bailey’s “Sectional perspective through the dome at 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields” completed eight years

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prior, hanging from a wall. The substantial collection of representational artefacts is contained within a space of immense proportions, the scale of which is suggested by a lone diminutive figure, perhaps Soane himself, seated at a large table taking measurements from a drawing with a pair of dividers. Although, a fantastic and deeply romantic image, the visual hyperbole is suggestive of a practice in which modelling plays a central role. The use of models is an integral part of the architects practice. They are necessary because the architect very rarely deals directly with the object being designed (Evans, 1997). Various established and commonly understood, together with more esoteric techniques of representation can be employed in the examination and exploration of the design task, each mode re-presenting its own particular blend of quantitative and qualitative information to the designer as it is constructed. Whether hand-drawn, digitally encoded, physically constructed, sketched, collaged, appropriated or scaled, if the designer (/observer) attributes the artefact under consideration the status of being representational, it acts as a model. This holds no matter how proximate or elaborate the model is to that which is modelled. Edwin Lutyens produced a full-scale and fully detailed model of the Cenotaph in Whitehall in order to quell aesthetic concerns over the design. In this case, the difference between model and modelled was a change in materials from wood and plaster, to stone. Even more spectacularly, Lutyens had his initial proposal for Castle Drogo constructed at full-scale on site from wood and tarpaulin[1]. Despite being very considerable objects themselves, and in the latter case even occupying the actual site, the use and status of these models was embedded within a design process leading to the synthesis of something other. Today’s architect has the further possibility of constructing models within a complimentary and alternative medium. Digital models proliferate, capturing design intent ready to be resourced into multifarious tasks and functions. Ubiquity of modelling The model is distinct from that which has been modelled. Although distinct, the observer must be able to construct correspondence between features of the model and features of the modelled. The correspondence is often only partial implying omission of unnecessary detail whilst preserving salient features. Constructing correspondence implies a function for the model and a goal for the observer. Without a function and a goal, there could be no judgement as to the criteria for discriminating between the necessary features to be preserved, and those that are irrelevant in the construction of the model. The attribution of “distinctness” and “correspondence” as basic characteristics lends the concept of the model abstractness and therefore a general applicability. Isomorphism defines a strict relationship of equality between two entities such that an observer would not detect a difference in behaviour if they were interchanged. Homomorphism defines a relationship in which there is resemblance, but not equality. In this case, the resemblance is determined by the ability to reduce the complexity of one entity so that it becomes isomorphic with the simpler (Ashby, 1957). Therefore, the extent of correspondence determines whether the model has a homomorphic or isomorphic relation to the modelled, although as Ashby (1957) observes, the distinction between isomorphism and homomorphism is dependant on the discriminatory powers

of the observer. Irrespective of the conclusions of the observer regarding isomorphism or homomorphism, it is evident that models are actively constructed. If we assume that the observer actively constructs his experience from his perceptions of the environment – as proposed by constructivism – the statement above holds true for both the observer and the designer of the model. “Make a model!” Quoting from Brown’s (1972) Laws of Form, von Foerster (1973) introduces his paper On Constructing a Reality with the abstract, “Draw a distinction!” To this potent directive one could add, “Make a model!” In his paper, von Foerster quickly provides the postulate: “the environment as we perceive it is our invention”. This is then exquisitely argued. He describes how the environment beyond the observer is composed of electro-magnetic waves, variations of air pressure, variations of kinetic energy, etc. These various forms of energy do not posses the qualitative attributes that we as observers perceive as colour, sound, and warmth. This is the “Problem of Cognition” to which he offers a resolution (von Foerster, 1973). The point to note for the argument of this paper is that the observer constructs a correspondence between what is “out there” and what is perceived as experience. The way in which the observer constructs their reality can be described with aid of the concept of the “black box”. It is used to describe a system with which the observer has only partial knowledge. The distinction of a black box must assume the minimum knowledge of a difference between it and its environment for it to have been distinguished. Constraint exists when the set of exhibited states is reduced from the set of potential states[2]. Each subsequent distinction that is made regarding the black box constrains its possible variety, which implies an increase in knowledge on the part of the observer. Distinctions are drawn and attributes attributed by iteratively testing inputs and observing resultant outputs – a circular process of synthesis and analysis. The conceptual construct of the black box acts as a modifiable model of the system under consideration as tested and observed, for which the observer can make functional descriptions. Through testing and observation, internal models are modified to be isomorphic with the observer’s experience (Ashby, 1957). The notion of the model is critical to the ability of the observer to construct experience. The origin of modelling is to be found with the observer. Modelling and design An abstract definition of design is the reduction of variety through selection (Ashby, 1957). The synthetic activity of modelling requires the active selection of distinctions and attributes. These selections constrain the model so that, at a minimum, there is some homomorphic relationship with that which is modelled – a correspondence. Constraint reduces variety. It follows that modelling is a design activity. If modelling is a design activity and all observers construct and modify internal models to be isomorphic with their experience, then all observers qualify as designers – designers of their experience. That all observers are designers does not mean that all observers consider themselves designers. Context helps in drawing the distinction. The notion of

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context also helps in distinguishing the nature of the design activity under consideration. Context McCullough (2005) uses Gibson’s (1986) notion of “affordances” to define context as the “coupling of perceived resources to active intent”. This definition implies that context is not a property of what is being observed, as both the “perceived resources” and the “active intent” must belong to the observer. If we accept this, it follows that context is actively constructed by the observer. The definition of context could be rephrased as the constructive act of perceiving the essential variables relevant to current goals. It is an activity that requires the observer to model, with all this implies for prediction, action, control, constraint and knowledge. The active intent of this paper is to now re-present the notion of modelling to the scene described by Pliny so that it applies to more than the fashioning of clay. The cybernetic resources discussed so far will frame this re-presentation. Specifically, these resources relate to constructivism, the observer and the model (or black box). They define how through observation, with its implicit time-base, the observer constructs models and knowledge about those models by drawing and modifying distinctions through testing. This testing involves prediction (representation) and subsequent action (realisation) in relation to goals. Attention will be paid to the roles of the protagonists of the scene as “observers of” and “observers in”[3]. Particular consideration needs to be paid to the processes of observation and modelling involved in the transition between the representation in two dimensions of a three dimensional figure, and the synthesis of a three dimensional artefact from the representation. The context shown in the painted interpretation of the scene by Karl F. Schinkel suggests how the relationship between model and modelled might become circular (Figure 1). The scene We shall begin with a forensic look at the description to establish the protagonists, their roles, the props and the space in which the events are conducted. For the purposes of this analysis, events are defined as situations in which there is a clear relationship between an operator and an operand resulting in a transform (Ashby, 1957). Three protagonists appear; Butades the potter, his daughter and a departing young man. The first event is the transition of the departing man (operand) positioned in some manner between a lamp (operator) and a wall. He is acted upon by the diverging rays of emitted light and the wall registers his shadow (transform). Whether the scene is played out within a contained space, or externally against a wall, is ambiguous. We might assume that the departing man considers himself an “observer of” the events around him. From our station of observation, he is distinguished as an “observer in”. The second event, which must be conducted synchronously with the first, is the tracing of the profile of the shadow onto the wall by the daughter. The daughter acts as operator on the shadow (now the operand) to produce the trace of the profile (transform). Again, we can assume that the daughter considers herself an “observer of” whilst we consider her an “observer in” related to the event, the operand considered, and our goal. If we were to consider the two events as one, we could construct an alternative model in which the daughter might construct a variety of models that account for the presence of the

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Figure 1. Karl. F. Schinkel, The Origin of Painting, 1830 Source: Courtesy of Von Der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal

departing man as both “observer of” and “observer in” depending on her goals. Reciprocally, this will apply to the departing man. The third event occurs asynchronously after the completion of the second event. Butades, the potter, lifts the area bound by the trace from the projection plane through the addition of clay compressed onto the surface. Butades is the operator, operating on the trace (now the operand) to produce the transform of the relief. He is considered as an “observer in”. The final event is also dependant on the completion of the preceding event. The operator of fire is used on the clay relief (now the operand) to produce the transform of a hardened artefact of earthenware. In this event, we consider Butades as an “observer of”. These are the events constructed from what is given in the description[4]. Figure 2 shows these events and transitions in notational form. Adding to the constructed model Using the notion of the model and the process of modelling as developed in the first part of the paper we can begin to infer and elaborate on the description provided, modifying the model with particular attention to the protagonists as observers observing.

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operator

operand

transform transition

1230 event 1

DM

event 2

D

event 3

B

event 4

Figure 2. Event notation of the scene as described by Pliny the Elder

Notes: Four events are considered from the scene involving the departing man (DM ), the daughter (D), Butades (B), and heat as the four operators. These act upon the operands causing a transform which becomes the operand for the subsequent event until the final artefact is complete – the general trajectory is linear

Consideration will also be given to three additional notions; plane of projection, duration, goals. We can assume that each protagonist constructs their own internal models of the scene from their particular spatial and temporal perspective, and in relation to their

goals or sub-goals. Taking the observers internal models into consideration explicitly introduces circularity and issues of control between the observer and their actions, and the actions between observers. Simple models are suggested for these – they make many assumptions about proceeding models employed in order that these models might be constructed in the first instance. Only those pertinent to the events are constructed. The departing man requires a model that considers his need to remain still for the duration of the recording of the trace. The control for this might be feedback from muscular movements, the observation of his own shadow in relation to the daughter’s trace (if he is in a suitable position to observe this), and adjustments made by the daughter to his stance. The daughter must model the distinction of the contrast between shadow and light, determining where the boundary lies, tracing this through muscular movements co-ordinated by feedback from her observations of the shadow and the trace of the shadow she is constructing. Butades employs numerous models which he must gather together through the construction of a meta-model specific for the task at hand. This meta-model will define a goal through the sub-goals of the employed models. This could be suggested as being the making of an artefact with a semblance of the departing man – a semblance which must be sufficiently suggestive to permit the construction of a memory of him when the artefact is observed. He must therefore posses an internal model of the departing man. This applies whether or not the departing man is present or has departed. Butades must also posses a model that describes the behaviour of the medium in which he is working. This is likely to include the behaviour of the medium under a variety of environmental conditions; its viscosity, its ability to adhere to the given surface, the duration over which he can freely manipulate the medium before it begins to harden through evaporation of its moisture. He also models, through his perceptions, the scene before him – specifically, the wall and the trace. Each of these models is built and constrained from experience, and defines his knowledge of the medium in which he is working, the departing man, and the space in which the work is conducted. The models allow him to predict that a particular sequence of actions will take him closer to the current specified goal. Control of the meta-model is passed continuously between himself and each compression of clay upon the surface. Each action of addition, removal or manipulation modifies the external model. Feedback from this controls decisions about the next action of compression in relation to the internal model – which is simultaneously being modified to reflect both the change and its proximity to the goal. This process is circular. It is a conversation between maker and made (Ashby, 1957). Finally, Butades must posses a model of the transition from clay to hardened earthenware through the process of firing – the process that creates the enduring artefact through which the daughter can construct a memory of the departed young man. The process of firing requires particular temperatures dependant on the type of clay used in order to vitrify. These temperatures are in the order of 1,000-1,4008C. A method of modelling the correct heat of the kiln is required. That the events unfold against a time-base is evident, but the duration of these events is not described. An assumption will be made that the duration of the modelling in clay is greater than the act of the tracing of the shadow. Whilst the relative durations are not of particular importance, there is an issue related to the activity and the

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sensitivity of that activity in relation to changes in certain variables that comprise the environment. The act of shadow tracing requires a relatively controlled environment with little deviation in particular variables for the duration of the trace. The maximum possible duration for this event to occur without significant deviation from the goal could therefore be determined from the rate of perceived change of any of the critical variables. Of course, such a model is subject to a multitude of unconsidered forms of interference that might impinge upon the situation. For example, any interference with the lamp, the departing man, or the plane of projection, would result in a distortion of the profile. The trace is more than a record of an event, or representation from which further synthetic operations might be conducted. It can also act as a model from which the spatial relationship between light source, figure, and plane of projection can be geometrically determined and re-constructed. The tracing of the shadow as cast from a fixed point of illumination arrests the perspective (it will also enlarge the image as a function of distance between the subject and the plane of projection assuming divergent rays from the source of illumination). In order to perceive the trace in correct perspective the observer’s point of observation must coincide with this unique station point (Gibson, 1986). As the oblique angle between the source of illumination and the plane of projection increases, so will the anamorphic distortion of the generated shadow. The Origin of Painting (1830) by Karl F. Schinkel (Figure 1) sharply relates the notions of duration and the nature of the plane of projection by depicting the initialising events of the scene occurring externally with the trace being drawn on the surface of an outcrop of rock. By introducing a celestial source of illumination (with parallel rays) and a topologically complex plane of projection Schinkel introduces a significant dynamic[5]. This suggests the necessity for continuous observation, tracing, and re-tracing. Re-interpreting the scene The scene has been often been interpreted, particularly by the painters. Notable depictions include those by David Allen (1773), Jean-Baptiste Regnault (1785), Joseph-Benoit Suvee (1791), and Karl F. Schinkel (1830). There are many others. However, each of these interpretations selectively edits the complete scene and only models the tracing of the shadow. The separation from Pliny’s account is intensified through the titles of these representations – The Origin of Drawing and The Origin of Painting. There is no suggestion of the subsequent highly synthetic act of re-construction from the two-dimensional representation. As an architect, that translation from representation to realisation is of particular interest. This sets the premise for putting forward an alternative interpretation. Cybernetics focuses on abstract principles of organisation. Its concern is with systems, their goals, and how these goals are managed in relation to information about change in environments. Models as a representational construct, and control as a mechanism of regulation are necessary in that management. Using this model, the re-interpretation of the scene will share a resemblance with that described by Pliny through abstract principles of organisation, rather than explicitly recognisable characters. The “hardware” will be different, as might some of the goals, but it is hoped

that the observer will perceive a homomorphism with regard to the transitions of the original. A statement of intent Prior to the introduction of Schinkel’s interpretation, the model of events in the scene included circularity within each transition, but the general trajectory can be described as linear. Each transition led towards the completion of the artefact which, once fired, concluded the cycle of events. Schinkel was an architect. It could be suggested that his interpretation was a conscious speculation on the implications of a dynamic environment. At a minimum it is an acknowledgement that we do not live in a state of perpetual darkness. Introducing a dynamic environment requires a model that incorporates continuous observation and tracing of the dynamic shadow. The intention is to construct an observing system situated within an environment. Observed changes in the environment perturb variables of the system such that perceived differences develop between current state and goal state. These disturbances provoke actions that, based on predictions, attempt to reduce the perceived difference, or “error”. Verification that the actions have reduced the perceived difference between current state and goal state occurs through observation. It is entirely possible that the action of trying to reduce the error between current state and goal state disturbs the environment resulting in a circular dynamic. Such a system satisfies the definition of a control system in that it continually attempts to maintain goals in relation to observations of a dynamic environment through actions based on modelled predictions. The construct will comprise an assembly of components. Individual components combine to form sub-assemblies which in turn combine to produce a larger assembly, giving rise to visible hierarchies. The assembly allows the addition, re-positioning, and removal of individual components and sub-assemblies. This permits both highly localised changes and global changes to occur within the assembly. The components are fabricated using manufacturing techniques employing digital models of the components and their relationships within the assembly. The digital model is continually revised as changes in the assembly are registered in the environment through shadow, and as the dynamics of the environment distort that registration over time. This establishes circularity between the digital model, component synthesis, artefact performance, the measuring of performance and the feedback of performance to the digital model which makes predictions about subsequent actions. The proposition is conceived as a form of active synthetic spatially occupying hedge, modulating itself through its perception of its dynamic shadow. It is a slow narcissistic dance of the artefact with its own registration – a shadow play. The goal for this system might be as simple as: “maximise the amount of shadow within a specified territory” – the specified territory being constrained by the extent of the system’s perceptive capacity. Such a goal could be simply achieved by considering a form of blind or curtain. However, the intent is to construct an “aesthetically potent environment” (Pask, 1970). Gordon Pask established some key considerations for the design of such environments through his experience of constructing “Musicolor” and “The Colloquy of Mobiles”. One of the criteria is the partial incompatibility of goals as a method of introducing instability into an environment (Pask, 1970). This instability

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forces the system to search. The material choices for the artefact could introduce instabilities if they have qualities of translucency and reflection. One could imagine the satisfying of goal state being attempted through a spatial layering and “thickening” of the artefact. The key interpretation applied to the scene is to consider the departing man as simultaneously being the artefact that is constructed by Butades. In this way, a persistent circularity between the model and the modelled is established. Figure 3 shows this relationship as applied to the context depicted by Schinkel. It is evident that control is passed over time between the three operators; the dynamic light source with parallel rays, the daughter, and Butades. The persistent model The notion of the persistent model requires definition both in general, and in the architectural context to which I wish to introduce it. Persistence is attributed by the observer to perceived continuity of pattern. The pattern may be static or dynamic. The persistent model forms a component of the design control system. It is a component that itself requires designing. This shifts the focus of part of the designer’s activity to that of meta-designer. The focus is turned from the design of the specific eve nt

B

z

event x

Figure 3. Operators operate on the operands as before, resulting in the various transforms of shadow, trace, and artefact

y nt eve

D

DM

Notes: circularity is introduced by considering the "departing man" as the artefact synthesised by Butades. A continuous cycle is established between representation and realisation – the model and the modelled within a dynamic environment

artefact to defining relationships between design drivers that possibly change over time. These changes are absorbed into the design and are expressed in particular quantitative and qualitative attributes of the resultant instance. This type of meta-design activity is certainly not novel. It has many precedents in an architectural design context. Most recently these include the fields termed “parametric design” (or more correctly “associative geometry” (Burry, 2003)) and “evolutionary design” (Bentley, 2003). These have antecedents extending back to the late sixties with research projects such as Soft Architecture Machine in the USA (Negroponte, 1975), and the work of Frazer (1995) in the UK and Ireland. Precedents could then be extended further back, from Gaudi to Palladio. The novelty in the notion of the persistent model lies in its persistence beyond the making of the modelled. The circularity inherent in the design process does not end when the artefact is made. The persistent model permits the potential expression of variety over time by keeping circularity open after the synthesis of the artefact. The design challenge lies in the definition of the model. “Origin of modelling” explores certain areas of potential. These are not prescriptive. There exists an architectural dilemma with regard to the highly specified and the reality of changing patterns of occupation and use over time. The highly specific can lack generosity in supporting changing conditions of use through the extreme reduction of variety. In principle, the notion of the persistent model permits the expression of the highly specific with the recognition that any particular instance of specificity could be a transient condition belonging to a set of potential specificities exhibited over time. The persistent model is presented as a design strategy that places an acknowledgement of “change” at the centre of the architectural design activity. That, architectural artefacts are subject to transient conditions and circumstances can be exemplified by the construction of Vajdahunyad Castle, Budapest, Hungary, designed by Igna´c Alpa´r for the Great Exhibition of 1896. The castle displays a variety of architectural styles and was originally constructed out of cardboard and wood. Owing to its popularity it was subsequently rebuilt in stone and brick between 1896 and 1908[6]. The 1:1 model constructed for Lutyens’ castle Drogo was always intended to be replaced by the modelled. The cardboard and wood version of Vajdahunyad Castle was the artefact. A change in circumstances led to a second iteration being constructed.

Conclusion The role of the model and the activity of modelling have been explored in relation to architectural practice. These notions, related to that of the black box, have been used to examine the role of models and the activity of modelling in the construction of the observer’s perceptions. It has been described how this allows the observer to make predictions of actions in relation to goals, to constrain variety, to define knowledge of the modelled, and to design. Pliny’s scene has been interpreted from a cybernetic perspective. The protagonists have been treated as “observers of” and “observers in” suggesting possible models and goals to account for the various synthetic actions.

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The re-interpretation of the scene addresses a tradition of incomplete appropriation by the painters. It presents the intent to construct a control system with circularity between the model and the modelled informed by the continual observation of changes as driven by the environment in which the system is situated. A generalisation of the implications of this system has led to the notion of the persistent model which has been introduced within an architectural design context. The persistent model is not presented in binary opposition to existing design methods. Rather, it is offered as supplementary to an existing palate of design strategies. It exploits the latent possibilities for circularity that the proliferation of technologies and techniques recently absorbed into design practice allow – a circularity that couples the digital and the analogue, the model and the modelled.

Notes 1. The building of this 1:1 model was brought to my attention by Bob Sheil. 2. Ashby (1957) provides the example of the traffic light consisting of three lamps each with a binary alphabet of states. The British traffic light has the potential to exhibit 23 states, but these are constrained limiting variety to a subset of possible states. 3. The distinction between “observer of” and “observer in” allows consideration of multiple observers. This understanding and its subsequent use in allowing the reader to act as observer to the events containing further observers is due to Glanville (1982). 4. Further events might be parsed from the scene but the four stated are deemed to be the most relevant for the model being constructed. 5. Jean-Baptiste Regnault also chose to depict the scene occurring externally, although the plane of projection is a honed stone surface (The Origin of Painting 1785). 6. The story of the construction of Vajdahunyad Castle was brought to my attention by Ranulph Glanville.

References Ashby, W.R. (1957), Introduction to Cybernetics, 2nd ed., Chapman and Hall, London. Bentley, P.J. (Ed.) (2003), Evolutionary Design by Computers, Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, CA. Brown, G.S. (1972), Laws of Form, Julian Press, New York, NY. Burry, M. (2003), “Between intuition and process: parametric design and rapid prototyping”, in Kolarevic, B. and Kolarevic, B. (Eds), Architecture in the Digital Age – Design and Manufacturing, Spon Press, London, pp. 147-62. Evans, R. (1997), Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays, AA Publications (AA Documents 2), London. Frazer, J. (1995), Themes VII: An Evolutionary Architecture, AA Publications, London. Gibson, J.J. (1986), The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, New ed., Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ. Glanville, R. (1982), “Inside every white box there are two black boxes trying to get out”, Behavioural Science, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 1-11. McCullough, M. (2005), Digital Ground, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Negroponte, N. (1975), Soft Architecture Machines, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Pask, G. (1970), “A comment, a case history, and a plan”, in Reichardt, J. (Ed.), Cybernetic Serendipity, Rapp & Carroll, London, Reprinted in Cybernetic Art and Ideas. (1971) Reichardt, J. (ed.). Studio Vista, London, pp. 77-99. Pliny the Elder (1855), “The inventors of the art of modelling”, An Account of Painting and Colours, Chapter 43.Vol. 35, In translated edition of Bostock, J. (1855), The Natural History, Taylor and Francis, London. von Foerster, H. (1973), “On constructing a reality”, in Preiser, F.E. (Ed.), Environmental Design Research, Hutchinson & Ross, Strondsberg, Reprinted in von Foerster, H. (2003) Understanding Understanding – Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition, Springer-Verlag, New York, NY, pp. 211-228. Further reading Braitenberg, V. (1996), Vehicles, 5th ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Holland, J. (1998), Emergence, Oxford University Press, Oxford. About the author Phil Ayres has been teaching and researching at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, since graduating in 1998. He is a partner in the research collaborative 16 *(makers), whilst also developing his own speculative projects. He has recently started a fully ˚ rhus Architecture School, Denmark. His work focuses on developing funded PhD at the A exploratory design techniques that are computer mediated, but always lead to physical output. Phil Ayres can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Ana Paula Baltazar LAGEAR – Graphics Laboratory for Architectural Experience, School of Architecture, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to discuss the possibility of joining cybernetics and architecture as a continuous and open process, bridging design, construction and use, in that which is called cyberarchitecture. Design/methodology/approach – It develops the hypothesis that cyberarchitecture can benefit from taking the virtual into account in the design process, so that the architect is no longer the author of a finished architectural product, but of a set of instruments with which users can design, build and use their own environments simultaneously. Findings – A set of design principles is systematised and examined in three practical realms of design: urban, building, and relational, showing cyberarchitecture’s embryonic feasibility. Practical implications – Cyberarchitecture implies that architects are no longer authors of finished products and users, becoming designers of their own spaces. Originality/value – Cyberarchitecture avoids the usual cybernetics approach based on control-system, indicating a less predictive and, ultimately, anarchic path for architects and users. It focuses on architecture’s intrinsic value as an event, indicating the possibility of a process-based system, which only exists (or is organised) in present-time, when users and instruments (or structures) interact. Keywords Design process, Virtual, User autonomy, Interface, Anarchy, Process-oriented design Paper type Conceptual paper

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1238-1254 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827265

1. Introduction The documentary The Corporation (Big Picture Media Corporation, 2003) states that a corporation has the legal rights of an individual though has no moral values as an individual, and as an individual it can be diagnosed as a psychopath. The motivation of the discussion developed here comes from the need to stop moving with the flow, in the wave of cybernetics and new technologies orientated towards corporations, and try and discuss the possibility of cybernetics orientated towards the individual: instead of organising and governing systems from the top down, to think of developing tools or interfaces for possible self-organisation from the bottom up and, ultimately, envisaging individual autonomy. In architecture, this implies an analogy with anarchy instead of the usual analogy with government (Malatesta, 1987). This means shifting to a process-orientated production of instruments or interfaces, instead of the usual product-orientated design of systems, objects, spaces and events. This also implies to take that which John Thackara calls “the innovation dilemma” into account, as instead of producing things for increasing big corporations’ profit, this view needs designers worrying about the real value of their products or processes to individuals, and how flexible and open to interaction and change they really are; that is, to worry about

“why” design things (Thackara, 2000). In other words, instead of designing a fridge that tells people when their milk is finishing (I would be quite annoyed with such an intelligent friend-fridge in my house), or designing an intelligent heating system that learns with users’ habit and saves energy but also stimulates the habitual uses of the space, I believe we, as individuals, would be better off with the design of instruments and interfaces enabling users to keep on designing. This paper discusses cyberarchitecture, the possibility of architecture as a continuous and open process, bridging design, construction and use. In this case, the architect is no longer the author of a finished architectural product, but of a set of instruments with which users can design, build and use their own environments simultaneously. This is developed in three parts. The first part discusses cybernetics and its implications to architecture, the second discusses the virtual as a means to open the design to users, and the third elaborates the idea of cyberarchitecture on three practical examples. The first part, cybernetics and architecture, introduces the main features of second order cybernetics for the arguments of the paper. It shows those features that are crucial to the development of cyberarchitecture (the inclusion of the observer in the system, its ethical focus, its conversational basis, and the constructvist approach) and discusses those concepts that are incompatible with cyberarchitecture’s open character (autopoiesis, autonomy and fixed-organisation). I must acknowledge here the influence of Glanville (2002), who criticised my first draft for this paper and introduced me two main sources: his own “Second order cybernetics” and Maturana and Poerksen’s (2004) From Being to Doing. The discussion raised in this part ends up pointing towards the virtualisation of architecture and of the design process as a means to open up the system’s organisation and to include the user as part of the system. The second part, the virtualisation of architecture, discusses the meaning of the virtual as a philosophical concept and its possible application in design. It draws from Le´vy (1996) and Kwinter (2001) and develops the concepts of potential, real, virtual and actual by means of examples from the arts and virtual reality (VR). It makes a critique of representation as a controlled closed-system and proposes a design approach based on open process. This evolves from theoretical arguments borrowed from philosophy (Deleuze and Guattari, 1999), philosophy of science (Latour, 1999; Suchman, 1999) and design (Flusser, 1999; Jones, 1991). It argues that cyberarchitecture is a means to design responsibly, leaving it open to other people to keep on designing; designing the interface rather than the finished and closed system or product. The third part, a set of design principles and three practical examples, discusses some design principles underlying creative thinking that can be used in cyberarchitecture. The principles are introduced and examined in three designs I have been involved: the first regarding the realm of urban design, the second regarding the realm of the building, and the third regarding the relational realm. All three examples are attempts to create open cybernetic systems (cyberarchitectures) with participation of the users in its temporary completion. This leads to the conclusion of the paper, which stresses the difference between the traditional design procedure and the one proposed here; praises the work of Price (1966, 2003) as an early development of cyberarchitecture; and asks for architects and designers to abandon the design of finished products and closed-systems, and start developing virtual interfaces for people to keep on designing their own objects, spaces and events.

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2. Cybernetics and architecture Glanville (1997) clearly states that “cybernetics deserves to be considered in its own terms, and the logic and coherence that is within it deserves to be developed in those terms”. He goes on as to extend this same view to architecture, saying that: . . . practitioners (sic) seems to have so little regard for its own value that they have always to describe it in terms of theories borrowed from other fields, without realising that architecture is the theory in its own right.

As Glanville, I am not concerned here with semiotics, or autopoiesis, but with the implications of possible developments of cybernetics to its own developments. I am also not interested in a theory of architecture borrowed from any other field, but with architecture itself, an event that only happens when experienced, lived by subjects (individuals), and not controlled and imposed by corporations. These two concerns, cybernetics and architecture, motivated by the need to create useful things (not only useable as the intelligent fridge), as Thackara (2000) puts it (borrowing from Bill Buxton), leads to what I would like to call cyberarchitecture. It is no longer possible to think of architecture without thinking of a human-machine relation, that is, to think of cybernetics, even if not computer-based, as this paper illustrates later. Some features of second order cybernetics are crucial to the development of cyberarchitecture, mainly the inclusion of the observer in the system, its ethical focus, its conversational basis, and the constructivist approach[1]. The inclusion of the observer and the constructivist approach can be linked together as the observer is no longer placed outside the system, as in first order cybernetics, but constructs the system through the very act of observation (Hayles, 1999), or in other words, we construct our reality through observation. Glanville (2002) states that “from this interest in the involvement of the observer . . . and a theory of knowledge determined by a knower rather than simply being ‘there’ comes an explicit concern for ethics”. This ethical focus is summarised in Heinz von Foerster’s ethical imperative: “act always so as to increase the number of choices” (Glanville, 2002). This means that ethics is never a predetermined rule, but a responsible choice of the observer (which I would rather call user or actor). The conversational basis questions the possibility of any meaning prior to interaction, pointing to circularity and to the impossibility of a linear system. All these are interrelated and clearly contribute to a process-orientated and open design of interfaces leading to cyberarchitecture. However, some concepts that are at the heart of second order cybernetics can be regarded as obstacles for the development of cyberarchitecture (perhaps also for further developments of cybernetics, but this is not the main concern here). These are the concepts of autopoiesis, autonomy and fixed-organisation. According to Maturana and Varela (1980a), an autopoietic unity or system is a living-system, such as a biological system as a human body. Having an identifiable boundary is the first key Maturana and Varela (1980b) described in a six-step methodology to determine whether or not a given unity is autopoietic (www.gwu.edu/ , asc/biographies/Maturana/EXEM/matvar.html). Maturana (2007) also says that a cell is an example of an autopoietic organisation, while a ribosome is an example of an allopoietic organisation (www.gwu.edu/ , asc/biographies/Maturana/BMA/ matcell.html). Even if one does not understand a lot of biology, it is not difficult to see the difference in organisation between a cell and a ribosome. If on the one hand,

a cell is an independent physical unity, separate from its background, and produced by processes intrinsic in its own operation, the ribosome, on the other hand, is not entirely produced by processes that constitute its operation. This idea of an independent livingsystem, as a cell, with a clear identifiable boundary, having all possible output created from its own input, can only happen in closed-systems. The point that needs to be made is that cyberarchitecture (as I am only concerned with this, and not with other possible applications of cybernetics) can never be regarded as a closed living-system as it has no identifiable boundaries, frustrating the first rule of autopoiesis and being closer to an allopoietic system. Maturana himself strongly criticises the use of autopoiesis to explain social systems (Maturana and Poerksen, 2004). His argument is that: . . . autopoiesis takes place in a domain in which the interactions of the elements constituting it bring forth elements of the same kind . . . Communications, however, presuppose human beings that communicate. Communications can only produce communications with the help of human beings (Maturana and Poerksen, 2004).

For Maturana (Maturana and Poerksen, 2004), “autopoiesis as a biological phenomenon involves a network of molecules that produces molecules” and to replace molecules by communications would mean to exclude people from the system, that is, to say that communications produce communications. This closed system is an impossibility for social phenomena, which have no identifiable boundaries as a molecular system has. In biology and cybernetics, an autopoietic system is also regarded as an autonomous system, as it is self-produced. Autonomy in this context means independence from external sources or other systems to produce itself. However, if we examine the origin of the concept of autonomy we can see that it is a moral idea. Kant formulated it as the ability of people to govern their own decisions by discerning and enacting of a common moral law. This means that autonomy is not an ethical but a moral issue. Morals are different to ethics, in that it is applied by others to others instead of being a “property of the observer” (Glanville, 2002). This means that only people can be autonomous, and also that it is not an independent feature or property of the person, but a relational feature. Nevertheless, even if we disregard this philosophical meaning of autonomy, and take it merely as “self-government” we must be aware that if a system is truly open as to accommodate as many users and their demands as they may come, this ability to govern itself is not enough. Self-government is desired and welcome in closed-systems, but in open-systems we must look for self-anarchy. In other words, there is no way to control, to govern a system that has no boundaries. The proposal of self-anarchy is a more appropriate approach as it implies both self-organisation and emergent-organisation instead of a fixed-organisation. Maturana (Maturana and Poerksen, 2004) states that every autopoietic system has a fixed-organisation; if the organisation changes the system collapses. Maturana and Varela (1980a) use an interesting distinction between organisation and structure. They state that: . . . the relations that define a machine as a unity, and determine the dynamics of interactions and transformations which it may undergo as such a unity, constitute the organization of the machine. The actual relations which hold among the components which integrate a concrete machine in a given space, constitutes its structure (Maturana and Varela 1980a).

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They illustrate that with a toilet, explaining that regardless of the materials used to make the parts of a toilet, it will still be a toilet if its organisation is that of a toilet. Changing materials, means changing structure, not changing the machine as a unity, its organisation (Hayles, 1999). Of course, that spaces, such as a toilet, will always keep its basic organisation, though having different possible structures. However, other architectural spaces, such as cyberarchitecture, need not to be so organised; that is, they are not required to be (and actually, it is not desirable that they be) predefined, having all possible dynamics of interactions and transformations predetermined. So, the idea of cybernetics emphasising control-systems, in which designers control both structure and organisation, restricting users’ behaviour, needs questioning. The design, construction and use of spaces can shift their focus to the event and people can experiment with more freedom, as part of the system. Control, in this case, is no longer directed towards the final system, though the design and production of instruments and interfaces may be controlled. Cyberarchitecture is then a present-time emergent system, in which the idea of self-anarchy is more suitable than that of self-government. The reason why cyberarchitecture cannot be regarded as an autopoietic system with identifiable boundaries is that it is not a predetermined system, but a social, relational phenomenon. In other words, the whole idea behind cyberarchitecture is not only to take users’ interpretation of the system into account and consider the construction of the system for the user in analytical ways. Instead, cyberarchitecture depends on really seeing the user as a physical and undetermined part of the system. In this view, the system does not exist prior to its use, but only happens with and in response to the users. The system is dialogical, and the user triggers communications within it. The autonomy wished for is that of the users, who will act within the system according to their own discernment of what they previously know. The system’s organisation is not fixed, as the function of the spaces and events proposed is not predetermined in the system, but waits use to actually be temporarily assigned[2]. Thus, once more, it reinforces the impossibility of autopoiesis, which presupposes fixed-organisation. That is why there is a need to design instruments and interfaces open enough, and with no fixed-organisation, so people can join them together in different combinations to suit their needs and desires. Thus, self-organisation is possible, though the system is not closed and predetermined. Cyberarchitecture, as any virtual design proposal, is a cybernetic system in the sense that it is a feedback system, a circular system, a self-organised (or even better self-organiseable) system. Regardless of the criticism of autopoiesis and its following concepts of autonomy and fixed-organisation, cybernetics is still the inseparable partner for virtual architecture and design. It must be emphasised that the cyber of cyberarchitecture, though can be related to digital technology, is strongly rooted in cybernetics. This differs to the cyber used before anything that has to do with technology nowadays, which seems to have started its spread with Gibson (1984) coining the term cyberspace. In spite of that, the cyber of cybernetics is very alive and might not be ignored. It must be said that the developments of cybernetics do not concern architecture. In the classic article “The architectural relevance of cybernetics” Pask (1969) mentions the straight relation of both disciplines, as they are “operational” saying that “architects are first and foremost system designers”. However, cybernetics develops from other sort of research, which is not even inspired by architecture and its preoccupations.

The relevance of cybernetics for architecture is huge, but as Pask (1969) states, “there is . . . one sense in which the reactive environment is a controller and another in which it is controlled by its inhabitants”. This alone means a disturbance of any closed or predetermined system, as the observer is no longer constructing it by means of interpretation, but actually using and transforming it. The user is active, becoming an undeterminable part of the system. If on the one hand this can be easily inferred from cybernetics and architecture, on the other, most architects still design representing predictable patterns of users’ behaviour. That is, most designed spaces are closed systems in which users’ unpredictable interference is not always welcome; sometimes, in order to appropriate of spaces users need to radically change its predetermined structure and organisation. Cyberarchitecture intends to join cybernetics and architecture acknowledging this fusion as an open system with no fixed-organisation and with a flexible structure. This means to virtualise both architecture and the design process. 3. The virtualisation of architecture One way of looking at the anarchic nature of cyberarchitecture is to examine it as a virtual entity. “Virtual” in computer terminology is usually associated to digital representation or simulation, meaning something beyond static visual representation of reality; it indicates an environment where the user can always interact. However, the philosophical meaning of virtual in the age of information and communication technology (ICT) encompasses more than that. This paper claims that “virtual” can be used in design terminology as a means to open organisation, to create sets of structures to be organised by users as they wish. Drawing upon Le´vy (1996), virtual can be summarised as “latent event” which is an event that is present but not manifest. Le´vy’s fourfold system shows the difference between possible and virtual, and the interrelationship between possible, real, virtual and actual, in which the virtual is not opposed to the real, but to the actual, which is a present-time manifestation of the always existent and latent virtuality. The real, on the other hand, is manifest at the level of substance, and is opposed to the potential, which, tough latent, also belongs to the realm of substance. The virtual belongs to the realm of the event, the real to the realm of substance. Virtualisation is defined as the inventive passage from a solution to a problem, the opposite of problem-solving. This problematising process is crucial to architecture, as opposed to the usual design strategy based on problem-solving. The relevance of the latent event in architecture is my concern here. Le´vy (1996) stresses the importance of the event as distinct and separate from substance, though both work together in the world. The role of the architect is then to design virtual instruments or interfaces with which users can play with as to actualise them. That is, architects should not merely realise their designs. According to Kwinter (2001), architecture was the first discipline to declare its post-modern emancipation from the Modern Movement, and this post-modern emancipation was a corrupted and inward critique of the innovation proposed by the modern avant-garde, emerging from a tendency to mediocrity. So, post-modern architecture is an inward critique of modern architecture “reproducing” it rather than questioning and developing it further “following” from it. Deleuze and Guattari (1999) distinguish between two models – the “reproduction” model and the “following” model:

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Reproducing implies the permanence of a fixed point of view that is external to what is reproduced: watching the flow from the bank. But following is something different from the ideal of reproduction.

ICT is used in architecture according to the model of reproduction, based on a fixed point of view and the representation of what already exists, as an inward critique. The following model, in contrast, is based on destabilising what already exists and looking for novelty. Considering architecture as an open system, the following model suits best the potential of both architecture and ICT in relation to the whole dynamic system of production and consumption of spaces, beyond representation. The difference between reproduction and following models can be investigated as the distinction between substance and event. Substance concerns the relationship of the possible to the real; event, the relationship of the virtual to the actual. The two approaches are exemplified in two early explorations of VR. First, Ivan Sutherland’s helmet-set and Morton Heilig’s Sensorama, which were created to reproduce some isolated aspects of the physical world in the digital. The helmet-set enabled users to see video images as they saw 3D things in the world; users could also see both physical and digital worlds simultaneously. The Sensorama, apart from stereoscopic vision, also reproduced smell, vibration and sounds from the physical world. In both devices, the potential is rendered real by simulating isolated physical experiences, which are then experienced by users repetitively; their designs focus on reproducing physical qualities in digital environments, on realising the reproductive potential of digital technology. The second example is Lygia Clark’s work[3], in particular Mask with Mirrors (1967), which celebrates real interactivity by holding small moveable mirrors in front of the eyes, juxtaposing and fracturing reflections of the self and the surrounding world. Osthoff (1997) places this work beside Sutherland’s helmet-set as the primitives of VR. In both cases, the spectator has a bodily experience. However, with Sutherland’s helmet-set the spectator experiences a reproduction, a simulation given a priori, while with Clark’s headset spectators become active participants in their own liberation as individuals, connecting art and life through their own experience (Carvajal and Ruiz, 1999; Osthoff, 1997). In Clark’s case, the artist works as a designer who is not limited to rendering the potential into real, as “a person who induces and channels experiences” (Borja-Villel, 1997), creating a place for experience, considering the virtual to be actualised by the spectator. In other words, although substance results from art or design, the final result is not necessarily substance; the final result is always the individual experience of the event. Unfortunately, most designs take substance as the final result, and the event, the actualisation of their virtuality, becomes a consequence rather than part of the design. Clark takes advantage of the event as the core of her work, consciously focusing on the virtual to be actualised by the spectator. Clark’s Sensorial Gloves (1968), proposes a rediscovery of touch. Participants experience different combinations of gloves and balls of different kinds, sizes, textures and weights, alternating with holding the balls with bare hands. The physical perception of touch is enhanced by awakening the participants’ awareness beyond habitual experience. Jaron Lanier, one of the pioneers of research on touch in VR systems leading to experiments with interactive gloves, describes a similar sensitising effect resulting from immersion in VR:

There’s this wonderful phenomenon where when you’re inside a virtual world and if you take off the head-mounted display and look around, the physical world takes on a sort of super-real quality where it seems very textured and beautiful, and you notice a lot of details in it because you’ve gotten used to a simpler world. So there is actually a sensitivity-enhancing effect (Leeson, 1996).

Although these two sensitising effects are similar, their differences indicate an important distinction in design: on the one hand, a predictable substance-based design; and on the other hand, the design of an unpredictable event; the design of the virtual. The rediscovery of touch, the enhancement of perception, is the “final” product of Clark’s work, a product which is not realised in terms of substance but is virtual and depends on the spectator’s participation in order to happen. Clark’s work points towards designing the event without designing the final experience of the user. In her work, the enhancement of perception is achieved by experiencing the work. On the other hand, the sensitising experience described by Lanier happens when one leaves the VR system. The aim of the system, and of the virtual environments it shows, is not to enhance the participants’ perception of the physical world but to partially reproduce it in the digital environment. The VR he describes has as its “final” product the presentation of the virtual environment to the users who, immersed in the system, have most of their senses restricted. The product of such a system is substance-based: the realisation of the potential of the physical world in digital format, often reducing it. It aims not at enhancing perception of the physical qualities of the world, but at extending the world, mainly for communication purposes, by reproducing physical qualities digitally. The design of VR systems and of virtual environments, and design in general, including architecture, is often concerned with realising potentials, with solving established problems rather than raising questions for the user. Clark’s Mask with Mirrors and Sensorial Gloves are designed creating not a result in terms of substance, but rather “instruments” which enhance experience by raising questions to be answered differently by each spectator. Substance works as a key to open up the virtuality of the work when the spectator becomes a participant, actualising it. These examples do not design the experience, but create a piece for experience. They provide the user with tools to enable them to play with their own sensory capabilities, without leading them to any pre-designed perception. The participant is pushed to explore new territories, perhaps without moving, exploring new relationships with things in a non-habitual way. If the designer assumes the reproduction model based on the atomist approach by designing the experience, then experience itself will be limited by the restrictive control of the designer. This is usually the design approach, which Woods (1996) defines as “a means of controlling human behaviour, and maintaining this control into the future”. But, if designers assume the following model, designing for experience, they either give up control altogether, or control the production of instruments without restricting the user experience. Unfortunately, designers usually set an agenda based on substance. This paper indicates cyberarchitecture as a possible means to overcome this. Cyberarchitecture is an event-based space directly depending on people’s present-time interaction. Cyberarchitecture is in principle an open process which recognises that there is no such a thing as finished architecture, because people are always part of architecture regardless of it not being designed as an open process.

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Latour (1999) summarises this in his Pandora’s Hope when he states that instead of replacing one commander by another the reader should recognise “the impossibility of speaking of any sort of mastery in our relations with nonhumans, including their supposed mastery over us”. Latour (1999) demonstrates that “responsibility for action must be shared among the various actants”. In line with Suchman’s (1999) argument on agency, he demonstrates that regardless of what is at stake, responsibility for action always concerns the interrelationship of everything involved, and nothing has the sole power of premeditated mastery. In architecture, this means that regardless of the intent of designers to master their plans and to predict the use of the spaces they design, the final use of spaces will always happen according to the interrelationship of every actant involved, including the very space itself. Of course, that the more closed, finished and restrictive the space is, the more difficult for people to use it differently to the intended plan. This limitation is well explained by Flusser (1999) when defining design as “obstacle for/to the removal of obstacles”. Flusser (1999) argues that everything designed is always an obstacle, as “an ‘object of use’ is an object which one uses and needs to get other objects out of the way”. According to Flusser (1999), every design, be it substance-based or event-based, is an obstacle with a purpose. However, he puts an interesting question: . . . what form must I give these projected designs so that people coming after me can use them to help them to continue and at the same time avoid being obstructed as much as possible? (Flusser, 1999).

This question has no direct answer, but opens up a discussion on responsibility, which Flusser (1999) defines as “openness to other people”. According to him, the problem is that most designs are created irresponsibly, that is, orientated to the object rather than to its openness to people. In his words: . . . the more I direct attention towards the object in the creation of my design (the more irresponsibly I design it), the more the object will obstruct those coming after me (Flusser, 1999).

Moreover, Flusser stresses that this irresponsible design has been almost inevitable since the Renaissance, as since that time there is a need to master everything. If we learn from Latour that there is no mastery, and from Flusser that designers are imposing their will to mastery onto their designs, we can start questioning the irresponsible design and envisaging that which Flusser (1999) calls inter-subjective, or dialogical, or responsible design. This is the aim of cyberarchitecture, designed as an open process, without attempting to define a finished product, recognising that ICT can bring more to architecture than shifting the place of command from the object to the subject or to technology by acknowledging that in fact there is no need for any command. According to Jones (1991), “the design-as-process outcome is the design process”. Jones’ critique of design methods, and particularly of his approach to design-as-process, is that the method ends up being a product. In his words: . . . the fault in method-making was that we made methods as “products” and handed them on to the designers expecting them to use them, as “tools” as a means to an end. Which became a logical trap, turning the idea of process into its opposite (Jones, 1991).

Moreover, he states that they “didn’t realise that the people inhabiting the world-designed, if [the method-makers] changed to process-design, have to be designers, everyone of them” (Jones, 1991). Jones proposes the continuation of design into the world. This has two implications: first, if there is any design method at all it is not a product; that is, it is not finished and ready to be used by designers. The method, or set of rules, or directions, must be open enough to enable architects or designers to keep designing. Second, the design-as-process produced by designers (which I call interfaces or instruments) are to be interacted with by users, and only them become temporarily complete. This means that there is no predetermined end, only an open means to achieve whatever end results from interaction. Jones’ design-as-process and Flusser’s responsible design are yet abstract ideas that can very easy become a method-product, as Jones have already criticised. Looking at architecture’s methods, it is not difficult to understand that since the Renaissance there is a tendency to create models and rules that can be reproduced by other architects[4]. These methods are always prescriptive no matter if based on moral principles, nature’s laws or are a set of rules drawn from the architect’s belief. They usually become a black box that people use ignoring the nature of their principles (Banham, 1999). Taking the virtual into account in the design process is a means to overcome these usual problems, as demonstrated above with the work of Clark. 4. A set o design principles and three practical examples If we are moving in the direction indicated by Jones, designing designing, that is, keeping design open for people to keep designing, we need to do that responsibly, as wants Flusser. It is necessary to design spaces or instruments open enough not to obstruct people, so they can be creative. We must bear in mind that ICT still enables the most democratic environments for creative thinking and acting. The analogy with computer programs here is inevitable. To look at cyberarchitecture as programming is an alternative to prescriptive drawings of finished buildings. In this context, programming means not to predict or predetermine the outcome, but to create tools or environments open to people’s interaction. This interaction will really trigger a process between users and the machine as to create specific outcome for each case. This can be seen in commercial software such as Macromedia Director and Flash, which are programmed so people can create their own programs within them, with more or less openness depending on their ability and will. These sorts of software, as also other design tools said to enable creative thinking, have already been studied. The design principles underlying them can also be used in architecture. In fact, they are crucial to virtual architecture. The creative potential of tools is found to be crucial to any design tool or environment. According to Resinick et al. (2005), “almost by definition creative work means that the final design is not necessarily known at the outset, so users must be encouraged to explore the space”. The design principles developed by them are described here. Drawing from Resinick et al. (2005), the first four features of a virtual design are related to design supporting exploration. They are: (1) the easiness to try things out and undo them; (2) the self-revealing flexibility enabled by the design (interface), because if it is not apparent it will not be used;

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(3) the easiness to use for first timers, though not banal to experts; and (4) the pleasure and fun in using the design (interface), so people will not need to concentrate their efforts in learning the environment but on playing. Apart from that, they also mention an important feature that should come together with the easiness for first timers (low threshold) and the sophistication for experts (high ceiling), which they call “wide walls”. This feature concerns the support and suggestion of a wide range of explorations. The best example of this is traditional LEGO bricks and the MIT’s programmable LEGO bricks, with which kids are encouraged to “create anything from a robotic creature to a ‘smart’ house to an interactive sculpture to a musical instrument” (Resinick et al., 2005). Furthermore, it needs to be open to different users; that is, to be able to accommodate different procedures of use. As it also should support collaboration and interchange, which means that it can be used by teams in collaboration and that it is open to accept other pieces or logics of use not designed in it. Three designs I have been involved with are examples of cyberarchitecture’s, or virtual architecture’s, principles set up above, though the first two are not yet hybrid environments, but steps towards it. They are developments of three different realms: urban, building and relational. First, in the realm of urban design, is the project we presented for a competition of ideas for the Plan of the Technological Park of Belo Horizonte, Brazil[5]. Second, in the realm of the building, is the “interface of spatiality” developed by our research group MOM/LOW (living in other ways, 2007, MOM (morar de outras maneiras) www.arq.ufmg.br/mom). And third, in the relational realm, which is the current focus of our investigation at LAGEAR (Graphics Laboratory for Architectural Experience), is the project “Occupying Spaces” a partnership with the ONG Oficina de Imagens, which intention is to create interfaces for spatialisation of communication connecting people of two remote physical places (Occupying Spaces, 2006). In the first case, the virtual is taken into account to establish an open and abstract logic of occupation. Instead of defining the roads, pavement and plots, we propose only a main road and create a very simple set of rules for occupation. These rules are based on what we call relative units of occupation (RUsO), which are stripes placed side by side perpendicular to the road. Each RUO has seven metres in width and varies in length. The rules state that: . Everyone acquiring RUsO ought to take at least three of them, and if RUsO are to be left between your set and the neighbour’s, these can never be less than three. This guarantees that the minimum size of the final plot will always be greater than the required by the local urban legislation. . The pavement is of responsibility of the property and must give continuity to the neighbour’s pavement, though it is not obligatory that it form a parallel line with the road. . At least, at every set of seven consecutive RUsO, it must have a connection, by means of pavement, between the road and the bushes or the stream behind them, depending on the side of the road they are. These rules are in fact our design proposal, and they are like abstract objects or obstacles intending to obstruct the least possible, attempting to be responsible.

They aim to enable future architects designing the buildings of the park to keep designing the park. This is the case of designing responsibly a logical structure of occupation, leaving it open to other architects to keep designing from it. Even if a very limited example, this non-plan strategy was proposed in opposition to predicting the final spatial configuration of the park and limiting the architects to place their designs in a pre-established grid, without taking part in the design of the park. It points in the direction of designing an open urban structure, taking the virtual into account, as the design is kept open to other architects. Whether or not these architects will keep their designs open is another matter. The final design of the park, as we propose, could become as close as the winner design, as its openness would depend on other people’s designs. But, this is a risk we must take if we are willing to open up our designs to other people, to design interfaces rather than products. The second example, the interface of spatiality, is more concrete than the abstract logic of the RUsO, as its application is more direct; that is, users can simultaneously design and build their spaces. In this case, the virtual is taken into account to open the design for user interaction without predicting the outcome. This interface is a set of plastic pipes – with modular sizes of 60, 120 and 180 cm – spatial joints made of laminated wood, clothes of different fabric, size and colour, ropes and pins to stabilise the structure. The general idea was to design a kit of parts easy enough to assemble so people could experiment different spatial arrangements. The aim of this interface is not only playful, which has proven to be a great success, but mainly social, that is, to check people using it in order to perfect it as a building system to be used by low-income families and individuals to decide upon and build their own spaces. Observing the playful uses of the interface and a pilot test with a group of teenagers of a favela in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, we can say that people are not passive in relation to space because they are naturally passive. People are quite active when given the opportunity, that is, if the space is not so obstructive as to discourage people to make changes. It made us question the fixing of most spaces and how people are willing to play with space, to change it, when faced with challenges and possibilities. When interacting with this interface people are at the same time designing and building. This kit of parts enables continuity of design into the world, that is, ourselves, the architects, are no longer the authors of a work, a finished space-product; we only provide means, instruments, interfaces, so people can design their own spaces. This kit – this design – has most of the features described above. The kit is very easy to use, as its pieces are very light and not too big. Everyone sees its potential flexibility and is able to try it out and undo what is done, even though the connection pieces sometimes make the joints too tight to be undone. We have tested its use in situations in which we assembled a space and people could change it, and in situations in which the kit is there unassembled and people need to figure out what to do. In both cases, the users had no difficulty in playing with it, and also architects were quite kin on figuring out ways for exploring the interface beyond its obvious potential, which is to create orthogonal spaces. The playful aspect of the kit was certainly achieved, but it still lacks “wide walls”; that is, its repertoire of bits and pieces is very limited and limiting of what can be done, and it also needs more flexibility to accept other pieces not designed to be used with it. We intend to keep working on it and try and resolve these faults.

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Nevertheless, one of the most important features of this kit of parts is that it transforms the logic of designing and building: design is no longer an intellectual process of foreseeing a finished product, and construction a hard process which never welcome workers’ decisions. Design becomes a process of producing instruments or interfaces for users, and users become at the same time designers and builders. This interplay of designing and building as users’ activity, on the one hand, and designing interfaces as architects’ activity on the other, is crucial to the development of cyberarchitecture, and of any virtual architecture. In the third case, the project “Occupying Spaces”, the intention was to enable socially excluded people from two remote places to establish relations by means of a hybrid of physical and digital spaces; in other words, to design a virtual space for remote communication, a sort of third space that only emerges in present-time with people’s interaction. If we believe as Wiener (1954) does, that messages and communication facilities tend to play an ever-increasing part in the development of society, we can no longer ignore communication as the main condition for the production of spaces. In this way, not only communication is crucial, but also the spaces that emerge with it. Usually, communication interfaces, the spaces of communication, are not designed as “places”. The telephone is an example: an instrument which enables communication and at the same time emphasises the placelessness of the meeting. The two people communicating by phone stay in their original places, without the phone connection creating any sort of shared place. Following the logic of designing virtual entities, we created an interactive visual circuit connecting two different favelas in Belo Horizonte in one evening. For that, we have used the internet with web cameras and a set of projected interactive environments, so people not only interacted with each other remotely, but created their own spaces by means of projected digital images, as they communicated and interacted with the digital interfaces. We designed collaborative interactive interfaces, which were projected enabling people to interact with each other and with the environment by means of gesture (using different coloured lights in their hands). Some interfaces were puzzle based, requiring two users collaborating in order to move the pieces to form an image, others enabled more freedom, as the one which is a sort of digital graffiti, with which people could create whatever they want. The two main features of this experiment are to enable the emergency of a third space, a shared place, as people interact with each other and with the hybrid environment, and to have “wide-walls” as the physical space can accommodate other projections or other events people could propose, and also, the internet connection can lead to other digital environments available on the web without loosing the remote connection. 5. Conclusion It is important to distinguish between two approaches to design. First, the traditional design, the one in which architects make themselves acquainted with possible uses of the space in question and anticipates these in a finished proposal of space. This is as determinist as every Modernist architecture, which has the architect as the author of a finished product. The other, the open or virtual design, in which cyberarchitecture is included, is the one in which architects understand the way people deal with their

spaces in order to create means for a continuous design proposal. This, though the interface designed can be determined, is not determinist, as the space itself depends on people’s interaction to happen – be it by designing and building simultaneously, be it by merely interacting and completing the building temporarily when having feedback from the physical and/or digital structures. It is crucial to cyberarchitecture, as an open design process, to keep the product open to users interaction, which means that the ones designing must understand how people deal with their daily spaces, but also be able to create something that moves beyond reproducing patterns. Designers of interfaces, be them architects or users, need to evaluate which features are of collective decision and which are of individual decision in order to produce an interface whose determined bits are related to collective decision and the open bits related to individual decisions. The ability to separate collective and individual features when looking at how people deal with their spaces is more important than to identify their needs, as the purpose is not to solve a problem but to create means for users to solve their specific problems. So, instead of planning for the users or with the users, the non-plan strategy needs attention. In order to enable users autonomy and engagement in the constant production of their spaces, the architect must create instruments, interfaces. Sometimes these instruments for autonomy are already out there in the environment, and the last thing needed is a designed building or an urban planning. According to Isozaki (2003), Price’s proposal for the CCA Competition for the Design of Cities in 1999, “A Lung for Midtown Manhattan” was actually not a design proposal “but rather to let the site remain an open urban space – his own unique interpretation of ma.” This designless proposal was recognised by judges Isozaki and Philip Johnson as the best one, though Johnson was not prepared to award him the first prize arguing that “if his proposal comes first, the competition will forfeit all social significance” (Isozaki, 2003). What he meant by social significance is not quite certain, as Price’s proposal seems to be the best suited to social significance in long term. However, the immediate social significance of the competition seems to be understood as having a product, regardless of its relevance or even of its real necessity. This was not the first time Price proposed not to build as a design proposal. An often-quoted example of his attitude is his statement that “the architect/planner must exercise all his expertise, on being asked for artifactual conditioning, on the relevance of or necessity for doing anything at all. (The best technical advice may be that rather than build a house your client should leave his wife.)” (Price, 1966). While architects such as Johnson still try to keep control over design by means of predetermined styles and expected attitudes towards design, Price moved much further than this proposing a value-free architecture in which people should be able to add their value and create their own meaning. He was concerned with time and social relations and not with architectural products. He argued that “no one should be interested in the design of bridges – they should concern with how to get to the other side” (Price, 2003). This attitude towards problematising relations rather than working or reworking obvious spatial solutions makes Price central to the discussion on cyberarchitecture. This distinction between Price and Johnson is similar to the distinction Lefebvre (1991) makes between users and architects. Lefebvre (1991) adopts the term “lived space” to distinguish between users’ and architects’ approach to space: for users space is always lived – relational, subjective and concrete – while for

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professionals such as architects, urbanists and planners, space is a representation – conceived and abstract. Cyberarchitecture abandon the side of architects, abstract, predetermined and dominant spaces, and join the side of users, looking at the open features of spaces – relational, subjective and concrete.

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Notes 1. For a comprehensive account of second-order cybernetics, see Glanville’s paper “Second order cybernetics”. 2. I have developed this argument further in my “Towards a virtual architecture: the mobility of essences and the ‘open-in-hand’ in the production-consumption of spaces”. 3. Lygia Clark is internationally known for her interactive art. For an overview of her work, see Osthoff (1997). 4. See for example, Choay (1997), The Rule and the Model, where she gives an account of Thomas More’s Utopia as a model and Leon Battista Alberti’s Ten Books of Architecture as a rule. In both cases, the method is abstract, coming from intellectual rather than practical observations. 5. This National Design Competition happened in 2003, and the Brazilian architect Renato Ce´sar Ferreira de Souza and I were awarded the second prize. The juri’s report indicated that most flexible features of our proposal were to be used by the winners when implementing the design, but that our design was not fit to the first prize as it was a sort of meta-design, too open to enable one to grasp how the Park would look like after fully occupied. References Banham, R. (1999), “A black box: the secret profession of architecture”, A Critic Writes: Essays by Reyner Banham, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, pp. 292-9. Big Picture Media Corporation (2003), The Corporation, Big Picture Media Corporation, Vancouver, Film Directed by Achbar, M. and Abbott, J., Written by Bakan, J., available at: www.thecorporation.com/ Borja-Villel, M.J. (1997), Lygia Clark, Fundacio´n Antoni Ta`pies, Barcelona. Carvajal, R. and Ruiz, A. (1999), The Experimental Exercise of Freedom: Lygia Clark, Gego, Mathias Goeritz, He´lio Oiticica and Mira Schendel, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA. Choay, F. (1997), The Rule and the Model: On the Theory of Architecture and Urbanism, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. (The) Corporation (2003), Film, Directed by Achbar, M. and Abbott, J., Written by Bakan, J., Big Picture Media Corporation, Canada. Available http://www.thecorporation.com/ Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1999), A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Athlone, London. Flusser, V. (1999), “Design: obstacle for/to the removal of obstacles”, in Flusser, V. (Ed.), The Shape of Things: A Philosophy of Design, Reaktion, London, pp. 58-61. Gibson, W. (1984), Neuromancer, Grafton Books, London. Glanville, R. (1997), “Communication: conversation 1”, Cybernetics and Human Knowing: A Journal of Second Order Cybernetics and Cyber-semiotics, Vol. 4 No. 1, available at: www. imprint.co.uk/C&HK/vol4/v4-1RG.htm

Glanville, R. (2002), “Second order cybernetics”, available at: http://homepage.mac.com/ WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/default?user ¼ ranulph&templatefn ¼ FileSharing1. html&xmlfn ¼ TKDocument.1.xml&sitefn ¼ RootSite.xml&aff ¼ consumer&cty ¼ US&lang ¼ en Hayles, N.K. (1999), How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Isozaki, A. (2003), “Erasing architecture into the system”, in Obrist, H.U. (Ed.), Re: CP by Cedric Price, Birkha¨user, Basel, pp. 25-52. Jones, J.C. (1991), Designing Designing, Architecture design and technology press, London. Kwinter, S. (2001), Architectures of Time: Towards A Theory of the Event in Modernist Culture, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Latour, B. (1999), Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Leeson, L.H. (1996), “Jaron Lanier interviewed by Lynn Hershman Leeson”, Clicking in: Hot Links to a Digital Culture, Bay Press, Seattle, WA, pp. 43-53. Lefebvre, H. (1991), The Production of Space, Blackwell, London. Le´vy, P. (1996), O que e´ o virtual?, 34th ed., Col Trans, Sa˜o Paulo. Malatesta, E. (1987), A anarquia e outros escritos, Novos Tempos, Sa˜o Paulo. Maturana, H. (2007), “A cell is an example of an autopoietic organization; a ribosome is an example of an allopoietic organization”, available at: www.gwu.edu/~asc/biographies/ Maturana/BMA/matcell.html Maturana, H. and Poerksen, B. (2004), From Being to Doing: The Origins of the Biology of Cognition, Carl-Auer Verlag, Heidelberg. Maturana, H. and Varela, F. (1980a), Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 42, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht. Maturana, H. and Varela, F. (1980b), “Varela’s and Maturana’s methodology for determining whether or not a given unity is autopoietic”, available at: www.gwu.edu/ , asc/ biographies/Maturana/EXEM/matvar.html Occupying Spaces (2006), available at: www.ocupar.org.br Osthoff, S. (1997), “Lygia Clark and He´lio Oiticica: a legacy of interactivity and participation for a telematic future”, Leonardo: Journal for the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 279-89, available at: www.leonardo.info/isast/spec.projects/ osthoff/osthoff.html Pask, G. (1969), “The architectural relevance of cybernetics”, Architectural Design, Vol. 39 No. 9, Academy Editions, pp. 494-6. Price, C. (1966), “Life-conditioning”, Architectural Design, Vol. 36, p. 483, Academy Editions. Price, C. (2003), The Square Book, Wiley, London. Resinick, M., Myers, B., Nakakoji, K., Shneiderman, B., Pausch, R. and Selker, T. (2005), “Design principles for tools to support creative thinking”, paper presented at National Science Foundation Workshop Report on Creative Support Tools, NSF, Washington, September, pp. 28-42, available at: www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/CST/report.html Suchman, L. (1999), Human/Machine Reconsidered, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, www.lancaster.ac.uk/sociology/soc040ls.html (accessed April 2000).

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Thackara, J. (2000), “The design challenge of pervasive computing”, A keynote lecture to the CHI – Computer Human Interaction Congress, The Hague, available at: www. doorsofperception.com/archives/2000/04/the_design_chal.php Wiener, N. (1954), The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, Anchor Doubleday, Garden City, NY. Woods, L. (1996), “The question of space”, in Aronowitz, S. (Ed.), Technoscience and Cyberculture, Routledge, New York, NY, pp. 279-92. Further reading Baltazar, A.P. (2007), “Towards a virtual architecture: the mobility of essences and the ‘open-in-hand’ in the production-consumption of spaces”, Proceedings of Architecture and Phenomenology International Conference, Technion, Haifa. About the author Ana Paula Baltazar is a Brazilian qualified Architect, MArch, and PhD candidate at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. She is currently working as a researcher at the School of Architecture at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, developing interactive interfaces and immersive environments for participative design processes. She has lectured at the undergraduate architectural course at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, and at the graduate programme of Architecture of Interiors at the Catholic University of Minas Gerais, focusing on design strategies towards user’s participation. She has several articles published and has been awarded three research prizes and two design prizes. Ana Paula Baltazar can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Designing cybersystemically for symviability

Designing for symviability

Gary Boyd Department of Education, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, and

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Vladimir Zeman Department of Philosophy, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to encourage professional designers of many kinds, and especially those of the entertainment media, to understand themselves as actually being partners in a common educative enterprise, which is through artistry, predictive knowledge, non-dominative legitimative discourse and technology, helping people everywhere to learn to desire to, and to be able to, survive reasonably pleasantly on Earth for a very long time to come. Design/methodology/approach – This paper puts forward three theses: collapse of civilisation is immanent unless people can be educated to live symbiotically with one another and Gaia; all designs have educative and mis-educative importance; designers need to learn to use higher level cybersystemic approaches to be beneficial. Then it argues for the plausibility of these theses from philosophical educational to practical perspectives. In particular, it argues for the importance of modifying cultural propagation so that all our main cultures can become “symviable” – that is can come to live symbiotically with one an other and with the ecosystems of Earth. And it is argued that, in order to facilitate this enterprise, a cybernetic understanding of the processes and actions of the complex historically emergent higher level cybersystems in which the authors are all embedded, and which are embedded in us, should become the basis for designers, actual practice. Findings – By reviewing designers’ functional levels historically the paper finds that many different kinds of influential designers have actually functioned at the higher cybersystemic levels the authors advocate and hence can be guiding exemplars in this newly precarious situation. Originality/value – A deeper cybersystemic understanding of just how people are all parts of one mutually educating and mutually surviving Earth-life system changes the value of everything. Designers who manage to use such understanding should be both more successful and more satisfied with the value of their work. Keywords Sustainable design, Cybernetics, Design Paper type Viewpoint

Universal educational cybernetics maxim: Act in such a way as to increase options for acting (von Foerster, 1984).

1. Introduction This paper is designed to address creative designers of many kinds (and especially entertainment and advertising designers) in order to propose important considerations for our collaborative educative work to ensure our “symviability” – mankind’s ability to act together to ensure reasonably pleasant long-term human survival on Earth. A critical-realist ontology (Bhaskar, 2002), and an evolutionary emergent levels epistemology (Boyd, 2000) are used.

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1255-1265 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827274

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1.1 Kinds of creative designers If one takes a very broad definition of designing as whatever action brings into being new, bounded systems which as wholes have valuable properties that none of their components standing alone have, and then the class of designers is a very wide one. To narrow our scope, let us exclude Darwinian biological evolutionary designing processes which give rise to such things as new emergent insect forms. Our audience can also be better focussed by asserting that what is essential is that you be human designers producing specifications or realisations for valuable (to someone) novel emergent systems/processes. A musical composer producing a new score which she or some others value, is such a designer. A virtual-reality game designer may today be a most important sort of designer. A philosopher producing a new, and by some valued, well-formed philosophical method or system is also a designer in the sense meant here, as is a well received poet. Moreover, in keeping with commonsense pragmatism which tells us that designers are whoever call themselves designers, one should emphasize that for most soi-disant designers: composers artists and many engineering designers, the aesthetic dimension of their work is at least as important, if not more so, than the practical, economic and moral dimensions. Having defined our main audience next we set out three main theses: (1) Given limited resources on Earth, and given current and foreseeable technology, and given the humanimal instinct to propagate and most seriously given the human imperative to develop and competitively propagate (quasi)immortal collective cultural identities we are going to experience a devastating collapse of population and civilisation later in this century, unless enough people all around the world can be educated to work toward eco-co-cultural symbiosis – what here is called e-symviability. (2) Designs of objects and performances, which are actually experienced by people, are not neutral, but are very important educative or, too often, mis-educative influences. (3) Designers and educational technologists really need to learn cybernetic systemic thinking and modelling to adequately understand what they are doing and how to do it more effectively for our collective eudemony and long-term survival. 2. Education for symviability is now paramount “Symviability” is a new term which we use to refer to the ability of human cultures to adjust harmoniously to each other and to nature, that is to live symbiotically with each other and with as great a diversity of biological systems as possible. It is an extension of Stafford Beer’s conceptualisation of “Viable systems” (Beer, 1984). Each culture arises and is maintained by the evolved-in humanimal imperative to develop preserve and propagate its own cultural identity. Each culture has a survival and propagative imperative. For a culture to survive the people who carry it and the animals and plants which carry them, must all survive together. From this, you may gather that our ontology is a methodologically pragmatically chosen one (Rescher, 1977). The critical realist ontology at first seemed a good candidate but now Bhaskar’s (2002) meta-realist ontology commends itself to us by transcending possessive individualism.

Now that world population is most likely to reach nine billion by 2050, and the ecological footprints of most cities far exceed their local territories, for any civilisation to survive (Rees, 2006) a universal conserving and sharing culture must be developed (Targowski, 2004). Therefore, the over-riding role of life-long education world-wide has to be oriented toward viability through understanding and being committed to ecological and co-cultural symbiosis. Without a deeper understanding of the required modifications to each and every culture in order to limit destruction of non-renewable resources and limit human population, and limit “crimepetitive” competition, we will continue destroying “Space-ship” Earth. For life on Earth to go on surviving, cultural competition for brain space, by advertainment in particular, must be regulated democratically. Such regulation needs to be legitimated discursively (Habermas, 1975) on the basis of scientifically-sound shared understandings. Most ventures normally are legitimated either historically (this is what we have always done!), or on the basis of deference to some respected authority. But Habermas argues for “discursive legitimation” which involves non-dominative negotiative discourse including representatives of all the stake-holders to discuss until, at least near consensus is achieved about what is to be done. Given current communication and entertainment technology, e.g. (TV evangelists’ religious proselytizing and addictive advertainment) cultural competition for Lebensraum and brain space is leading not merely to terrorism and wars, but is becoming unwittingly “vivicidal”. There are particularly acute problems with the designs of massive multiplayer online games (Bolton, 2007) and other “mind-altering” media (Phillips, 2007). A global overview of cultural and economic competition and environmental destruction seems to indicate that we are heading toward the extinction of civilised human life, and much other, life on Earth as well (Oelschlager, 1992). 3. What everyone needs to learn for symviability, and why In order for us to co-steer the systems we are in and the systems within us (where it is possible to do so), we have to understand how these complex-conflictual dynamic systems actually work in the physical-biological world (Roth, 2003). Learning to see relevant communicontrol system boundaries and then learning to do histories of systems so that at least roughly predictive modelling becomes possible is the first step. Then learning to do sensitivity analyses to determine where and when small interventions can have big effects in the desired direction, without bad side-effects, is clearly essential for choosing what to do. That is to say, cybersystemic knowledge, tools and skills are essential. Of course, designers also need deep transcultural appreciations, and sensitive interpersonal negotiating strategies, skills and commitments if successful influence is to be exerted to steer the World’s cultural-economic-political-techno systems away from mutually assured self-destruction. It is true that modern biology curricula, and control-engineering curricula, and some socio-cybernetics programmes and applied human sciences courses do offer much of the needed knowledge and skills to a small minority of the World’s learners. However, since much of such cybersystemic study tends to be embedded in specific disciplinary work situations, people often have great difficulty transferring their knowledge to other situations where it is now also vitally important. The still strong ideological current of exploitive objectifying modernism (Toulmin, 1990) also tends to exert

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pressure against transferring such basic cybernetic understandings to wider socio-political solutions. Given the present technological advances, with their global character and their encroachment on even spheres traditionally viewed as the most private ones, we certainly require major new adjustments in education to cope with this cultural turbulence. Moreover, given our ecological awareness today, education has to be an organic element supporting the symbiotic viability of the overall environment in which we all live. Consequently, world-wide education for ecological-cultural and multicultural symbioses which can helpfully be called “Symviability” should be our highest educative priority for the next few decades (After that it will probably be too late). 4. All designs are: educative or/& mis-educative unless ignored 4.1 Kinds of designers We recognize very different salient types of designers – the practical problem solver – engineering designer, the aesthetic seducer, the game-player negotiator, the dramatic romantic “auteur” individualist, the utopian visionary and yes, philosophical discourse designers’. All create visions which when embodied in drawings, writings or musical scores, etc. inform the work of performers, makers and builders – also that of suicides, murderers and wreckers. Art is successful as art if and only if it captures people’s attention, is held in memory and informs their future actions so that it goes on propagating. The aesthetic dimension is crucial here both for the attractiveness of the works and for their retention and re-creation (Pye, 1978). Signed art generates reputations, for designers that connect art with markets for survival and growth. All art is first of all then, the design of successful memes and memeplexes (Dawkins, 1976; Balkin, 1998) – ones which are aesthetically seductive and prompt continuing reproduction by their hosts. Important art changes, the options people feel and/or understand to be available to them. If the newly perceived options are practically and socially-ecologically valuable to the receivers then the art is educative, if they are not it is mis-educative. Valuation, like all valuations, is not an intrinsic property of the design, but has to be assessed relative to the characteristics of audiences (Lemos, 1994). 4.2 Designers as educators and mis-educators For our purposes, properly educative experiences are defined as only those which guide and support persons to construct socially and ecologically responsible attitudes and commitments together with potent knowledge and skills. Cultivating potent knowledge and skills without responsible commitments is mis-educative. Since, culture is whatever is transmitted from human generation to generation by other than genetic-cytosomic means, all of our designed artefacts are at least passive propagators of culture, are indeed educative or mis-educative, whatever else they may have been intended to be. A round table promotes affable discourse, a long narrow table authoritarian discourse. When any designs are realised and used by people education (or mis-education) invariably arises from them. Technology increases the educational impact and the number of persons “educated” by designs. Therefore, nearly all technology whatever its professed purpose, is actually about people-making – steering, leverage and coverage, not just efficiency or profit. For example, because they evoke the metaphor of

bridging gaps between people which is so important to us, physical bridges should be designed to look inspiring, not just to carry a lot of traffic safely. A great deal of serious mis-education goes on today through the creative designs of the mass media including the internet, and irresponsibly designed addictive toy-games (Phillips, 2007).

Designing for symviability

5. Cybersystemics which designers as educators need to learn The visions of designers have five essential dimensions – the practical, the aesthetic, the political, the moral and the teleogenic (- that which generates aims and goals). Cybernetics as the science of communication and control obviously has much to contribute to the practical, the aesthetic and the political dimensions of design. “Cybersystemics” (which is Boyd’s (2000) name for the science of historically and evolutionarily emergent levels of cybersystems, including “second-order” (von Foerster, 1984) cybersystems) has much to contribute to the aesthetic, moral and teleogenic, not just the practical, dimensions of design. Philosophy (Toulmin, 1990; Bhaskar, 2002) and ecological science (Rees, 2006) can and should contribute greatly to the teleogenic dimension of design if it is to educate towards long-term human survival, rather than against it.

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5.1 Optimally chosen emergent cybersystemic levels An ontology of at least three emergent levels is generally, although even that is not, alas, universally, accepted to be what nature has designed through evolution. It is accepted that life emerged from highly dissipative non-living physical mass-energy sources, and that Homo-sapiens sapiens emerged as it were “designed” by evolution from other mammal life and that coherent cultures emerged designed by human life. For purposes of education and educational design it is very useful to define a somewhat more fine grained model framework of emergent cybernetic systemic levels (Abbott, 2007), one where each level is characterized by what it must control in order to exist, and that is by the functional control capability which it must both protect and exercise in order to exist (Table I).

Abbreviation

Name of emergent level

Type of uncertainty reduced by its actions

EHS

Earth-humanity-symviability

S

Scientosophic

L

Liberative

ICP

Identity conjugo-propagative

N

Negotiative

V S P

Viral Sustenantial Physical mass-energy carriers

Uncertainty of very long-term reasonably pleasant eco-co-cultural survival on Earth Uncertainty about how everything and everybody is likely to behave if X is done Uncertainty of overcoming pathological cognitive-fixities, addictions and neuroses Uncertainty of transvidual identity-memeplex survival Uncertainty of on-going continuing ability to negotiate Uncertainty of formal (Gestalt) reproduction Uncertainty of short-term survival Various

Table I. Emergent levels of cybersystems

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At the bottom is the oldest Physical systems level. Energy-mass systems are entropic-they just get colder and messed up and spread out. Above that we have various classes of systems which either we maintain or which maintain themselves by using a lot of energy and varied materials. A “Sustenantial level system” must preserve and exercise its ability to seek, acquire and use appropriate forms of available energy, and get rid of waste, in order to survive. A “Viral” level parasitic system must preserve and exercise its ability to attract (perhaps aesthetically) and connect into hosts which will reproduce it. A “Negotiative” level system must preserve its ability to negotiate (perhaps morally) with other negotiative systems to sustain its capacity to go on doing so. An “Identity Conjugative-reproductive” level system must marry into such other complementary systems as will enable its indefinitely ongoing reproduction. A “Liberative” level system must liberate others from behavioural (neuroses) and cognitive fixities in such ways as will ensure its ability to continue learning as a liberative system. A “Scientosophic” level system enlarges and deepens its coherent reliable model of the universe in whatever ways enable it to go on doing so. The slowly coming into being universal “Ecolo-co-cultural Symviable” system preserves and improves whatever it finds sustains the desire and ability to survive happily together on Earth longer – indefinitely if possible. Can educational systems actually be “designed” in sufficiently inspiring ways to get most people to become productive members of these two higher-order systems? -and if so how? Perhaps – yes. Let us consider what designers have done and are doing now. 5.1.1 A categorization of designers who have learnred to work at the successive emergent cybersystemic levels. Designers play a number of roles, depending on the situation and on their ambitions: (1) Sustenantial designers. The designer as “Servant” sees a need and imagines how it can be met by practical means and works professionally to achieve a satisfying result. Such designers are well reputed within their profession but remain largely unknown to the public. The typographers: Christophe Plantin, William Caslon and Robert Bringhurst come to mind, millions of students have read more easily and thoughtfully because of their unobtrusive work without ever noticing its peculiarities – or knowing their names. Many cyberneticists and computer scientists, etc. have designed practical systems such as dynamic systems simulators of great educative value. Others have specifically designed systems to serve educative purposes and a few of these have actually called themselves “educational cyberneticists” – notably; Gordon Pask, Helmar Frank, Milos Lansky and Gary Boyd. There have been and are many educational technologists who make cybernetic systems theory central to their work without labelling themselves as cyberneticists per se. Lawrence Stolurow and Lev Landa were important pioneers in its use, as were Leonard Silvern and Bela Banathy. Currently, Diana Laurillard, Charles Reigeluth and David Jonassen, are leading exemplars. (2) Cost-effective designers. Designers of mass-production goods and services who design-out manufacturing and delivery costs, while designing-in attractiveness to customers. The anonymous Texas instruments’ designer of “Speak & Spelle and Barry Richmond the designer of the dynamic systems modeller Stellae” and the designers of CoSye and Web-cte are good examples. They too are

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

mostly anonymous outside their professional niches, but have benefited many thousands of learners. Conjugo-propagative designers. These get you to clone parts of their identity into yours. The “Auteur” the prima-donna of design whose work has a clear striking form – a stylistic signature, to ensure recognition and memorability is archetypical. Their works have been monuments of renaissance as in the cases of Andrea Palladio, or Pugin and are contemporary inspirational models such as the works of Gaudi, Hundertwasser and Ghery. Specifically, for education some of the most notably successful identity-propagative designers have been educational television producers such as David Suzuki. In the computer-aided learning field Seymour Papert with his LOGO language and Mindstorms marketing book is probably the best known designer personality. Liberative designers. Here we find the great artists who changed the ways of seeing altogether Giotto, Leonardo, DuChamp, Picasso, and more recently say Francis Bacon the painter. More mundane “Therapist” designers are, for example, clothing designers and interior designer/decorators who, like good portrait painters, get to know their clients so that they can design wonderfully supportive works. Then too here belong the designers of the monumental modern architecture revolution – Walter Gropius and Mies Van der Rohe – Bauhaus minimalism – “less is more” et alia. Their educational equivalents are perhaps: – Johann Amos Comenius with the first illustrated textbooks, Maria Montessori with her experiential realia, and B. F. Skinner with teaching machines employing intermittent positive reinforcement to shape learning through hundreds of tiny steps. Seymour Papert too was liberative with the introduction of his educational version of the recursive string-handling language LISP which he named LOGO. LOGO liberated teachers and students from the conceptual and rigid syntactic limitations of COBOL and FORTRAN, etc. and from the strait-jackets of programmed-instruction type CAI – as did the unfortunately less well publicized designers Collmaurer &co. with their declarative logic language PROLOG. In education today, perhaps Nunan (1983) who rails against constricting instructional design technology, and Sternberg and Facione who insist that the teaching of critical thinking is essential to free creativity in learners, are prime exemplars. Scientosophic designers. Historically one thinks of the inspiring designs embodied in:- Plato’s Republic, Francis Bacon’s Novum Organon, Thomas More’s Utopia, Bento Spinoza’s, Ethics, Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan and John Locke’s theory of the state, more recently Dewey’s (1928) Progressive Education, has been perhaps the most influential philosophical design for education. Rescher’s Methodological Pragmatism could be written up into an inspiring scientosophic educational design. Some think this of Von Glasersfeld’s Constructivism and of Carl Bereiter’s steps toward a better theory of mind (Bereiter, 2002). Trans-integrative earth-symviability designers. Although this is the category we might all well aspire to, it is not altogether apparent who may actually be working at this quasi-transcendent level. Perhaps, we can include – Buckminster Fuller as exemplified in his tensegrity designs and his

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Nine Chains to the Moon, and Lovelock with his The Gaia Hypothesis. Probably Targowski‘s “From Global to Universal Civilization” in the journal Dialogue & Universalism. Some of the science fiction writers and artists should qualify – perhaps Arthur C. Clarke with the film 2001 and Doris Lessing are with her Science Fiction. Homer-Dickson’s The Up-side of Down, is a good recent example. Also, Bhaskar’s (2002) Reflections on Meta-Reality fits very well here and its critical integrative meta-realism will endure and grow in significance we believe. 6. Practicalities Of course, in daily life, in order to survive professionally, designers must function at least at all the basic levels up to and including the negotiative level. The negotiative level is essential for establishing the legitimacy of our endeavours through non-dominative discourse and for obtaining the co-operation and resources needed to realize our designs. Beyond that, ideological educators function fiercely at the identity conjugo-propagative level. Emancipative critical thinking developer-designers such as radical artists, teachers (and psycho-therapists) and artist therapists function at the liberative level. Some philosophy and science professors design education at the scientosophic level. Some now also do so at the level of e-symviability cultivation. Educational recursion is involved – designers first need to understand cybersystemics in more than intuitive and rule-of-thumb ways in order to design education embodying such understanding to educate everyone. Why, to make our designs more beneficial should we aim to support global symviability capability by modelling how people can learn to participate in the three top-level socio-cybersystems? Because, only if these are more clearly and systematically incorporated in our designing can we clearly appreciate which kinds of uncertainty-reduction capabilities people are acquiring through our works and choose the most appropriate. All the levels of cybersystems have historically evolved to try to control their own survival. Because, we can pretty clearly determine as we go along, what it takes for them to be reasonably successful, they are a good basis for positively educative designing. Certain levels of positive educative value are most crucially important today. In order to function as symviability-educators, we designers need to function not merely on our habitual levels, but also at the top three emergent cybersystem levels – the liberative, the scientosophic and the Earth-symviabilty transintegrative levels. 7. Conclusion – designing global education for Earth-symviability is more likely if many more designers educate themselves to think cybersystemically Designing legitimate public global education has to be carried out at many levels by many kinds of designers. To do so, all need to understand appropriate uses of cybernetic principles and how underlying cybersystemic processes generate our experienced world. Moreover, while most designers operate within one sphere of design and are usually by sheer necessity of professional life limited to one of the roles mentioned above,

symviability would remain a purely theoretical construct unless they understood principles and importance of roles other than their own. Such broadening of horizon requires not just cybersystemic thinking in general, in its methodological aspects, but some understanding of interdependence of those various roles. Thus, goals and values in various areas of human activity as well as on less and more inclusive or general levels must be viewed as interconnected in their status as well as in their consequences. Designers’ purely instrumental use of reason for immediate reputational advantage sours quickly and in the long run often becomes downright pathological for us all — as is the case with violent entertainment media designs. Such opportunism is a form of what Garrett Hardin explained to us as the “tragedy of the commons”; let us together learn to rise above such myopic designing.

References Abbott, R. (2007), “Emergence explained; getting epiphenomena to do real work”, available at: [email protected] Balkin, J.M. (1998), Cultural Software; A Theory of Ideology, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Beer, S. (1984), “The viable system model: its provenance, development, methodology and pathology”, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 35 No. 1, pp. 7-25. Bereiter, C. (2002), Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age, L. Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ. Bhaskar, R. (2002), Reflections on Meta-Reality; Transcendence, Emancipation and Everyday Life, Sage, New Delhi. Bolton, J. (2007), “Distinguishing addiction and high engagement in the context of on-line game playing”, Computers and Human Behavior, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 1531-48, including the special Issue: Avoiding simplicity, confronting complexity: advances in designing powerful electronic learning environment. Boyd, G.M. (2000), “The identification of levels of action through the use of stratified computer-communications media; towards the thoughtactorium”, Systemica, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 29-41. Dawkins, R. (1976), The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Dewey, J. (1928), “Progressive education and the science of education”, Progressive Education, Vol. 5, pp. 197-204. Habermas, J. (1975), Legitimation Crisis, Beacon Press, Boston, MA. Lemos, N.M. (1994), Intrinsic Value: Concept and Warrant, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Studies in Philosophy, Cambridge. Nunan, T. (1983), Countering Educational Design, Croom Helm, London. Oelschlager, M. (Ed.) (1992), The Wilderness Condition, Island Press, New York, NY. Phillips, H. (2007), “Mind-altering media”, New Scientist, Vol. 94 No. 2600, pp. 33-7. Pye, D. (1978), The Nature and Aesthetics of Design, Van Nostrand, New York, NY. Rees, W. (2006), “The global integrity project”, available at: www.globalecointegrity.net/ecofp. html (accessed 30 April 2007). Rescher, N. (1977), Methodological Pragmatism, New York University Press, New York, NY.

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Roth, W-M. (2003), “From environmental determination to cultural-historical mediation: toward biologically plausible social theories”, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 8-28. Targowski, A. (2004), “From global to universal civilization”, Dialogue and Universalism, Vol. 14 Nos 3/4, pp. 121-42. Toulmin, S. (1990), Cosmopolis; The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. von Foerster, H. (1984), Observing Systems, Seaside California, Intersystems, Salinas, CA. Further reading Boulding, K. (1956), The Image, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, pp. 200-7. Boyd, G. (2006), “Reinventing education for realistic hope of on-going eco-co-cultural humane long-term viability”, in Nolan, V. and Darby, G. (Eds), Re-inventing Education, Synectics Educational Initiative, London. Boyd, G. and Zeman, V. (1995), “Multiple perspective co-channel communications as a knowledge and attitude reform tool for a sustainable civilisation”, in Burkhardt, H. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Ryerson Conference on Knowledge Tools for a Sustainable civilisation, Ryerson University, Toronto. Britan, S. (2004), “A review of learning design: concept, specifications and tools”, A report for the JISC e-learning pedagogy programme, available at: www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/ ACF1ABB.doc (accessed on October 2006). Facione, P.A. (1990), “Critical thinking: a statement of expert consensus for purposes of educational assessment and instruction”, ERIC document reproduction service no. ED315423, American Philosophical Association, Newark, DE. Frank, H. (1969), Kybernetik Grundlagen der Padagogik, Agis Verlag, Baden Baden. Homer-Dixon, T. (2006), The Upside of Down; Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization, Knopf, Toronto. Klir, G.J. and Weierman, M.J. (1999), Uncertainty-Based Information, Physica Verlag, Springer Verlag, New York, NY. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980), Metaphors We Live By, University Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. OED (1955), The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Vickers, G. (1981), “Rationality and intuition”, in Wechsler, J. (Ed.), On Aesthetics in Science, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 143-65. Zwicky, F. (1948), “The morphological method of analysis and construction”, Courant. Anniversary Volume, Intersciences Publishers, New York, NY, pp. 461-70. About the authors Gary Boyd, PhD is a Professor of education (educational technology). He received his PhD in Geophysics from the University of British Columbia. Since, 1968, he has been teaching in the MA and PhD educational technology programmes of Concordia University. His research specialty there is Educational Cybersystemics – his main research question being – what are the underlying processes which generate educative experience, and how can they be better co-steered with the aid of theory and technics? His research has been about; how to collaboratively design and conduct the knowledge building credibility-status games through modelling, simulations and structured conversational learning. He is also a serious amateur photographer, poet of sorts, and an amateur architect. Some main influences have been:

Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Dewey, Frank Lloyd Wright, Virginia Woolf, Norbert Wiener, Ross Ashby, Gordon Pask, Stafford Beer, Nicholas Rescher and Roy Bhaskar. Gary Boyd is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected] Vladimir Zeman is a Professor of the Department of Philosophy, Concordia University. He was an Assistant Professor from 1965 to 1968 in the Department of Philosophy, Charles University, Prague, where in 1967, he earned his PhD in philosophy and methodology of science. Over the years, he has presented, lectured and published in philosophy of science and history of philosophy of science, German philosophy, cybernetics and systems theory, both in Europe and America. Besides various administrative functions he was also a Co-director of the University Centre for Systems Theory and Knowledge Engineering. E-mail: zemvlad@alcor. concordia.ca

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LAGEAR – Graphic Laboratory for the Experience of Architecture, School of Architecture, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Jose dos Santos Cabral Filho

Abstract Purpose – This paper seeks to describe an experiment carried out in the 1980s by a small practice called Ce´u do 3o. Mundo (C3M) relating to the application of cybernetics principles to a design process with special regard to house design in Brazil. Design/methodology/approach – After discussing the peculiarities of architectural practice in Brazil, the paper presents C3M’s design methodology, which is based on the creation of three models (“conceptual model”, “analogical model”, and “scale model”); a case study is presented and the results of the application of the methodology to several projects are discussed. Findings – The paper shows that cybernetics principles are relevant for dealing with the Brazilian housing shortage, especially because it is an adequate framework to deal with the Brazilian culture, known for its informality, its social plasticity and its playful nature. Originality/value – The correlation of cybernetics principles to the design of affordable houses is articulated through the concept of “indeterminate project,” intended as a project that would allow for flexibility, interpretation and adaptation. Keywords Design, Cybernetics, Brazil, Feedback, Architecture Paper type Case study

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1266-1276 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827283

1. Introduction This paper describes an experiment carried out in the 1980s regarding the application of cybernetics principles to a design process with special regard to house design in Brazil. First, the experiment and its context are described in general terms; then, some of its main strategies are detailed; and, finally, its results are correlated with some of the most important practices that dealt with the intersection of design and cybernetics. The referred experiment was inspired by the discussion brought forth by German biologist Wieser (1972) in his book “Organisms, Structures, Machines – Towards a Theory of Organism.” The experiment was carried out by a small practice called “Ce´u do 3o. Mundo” (C3M) (it can be translated as “The Third World Sky”), which was comprised of three young architects and one engineer. The work was devised as an attempt to cope with the specific conditions of informality and instability found in the Brazilian cultural and economic scenario. It was aimed at designing private affordable houses for a sector of the population ignored by Brazilian architects, who normally work for the upper middle-class. The work lasted five years (1985-1990) and about 30 projects were developed according to a special design process that took into account concepts such as circularity, flexibility, conversation and indeterminism. Most of the projects were built. Although the design strategy was conceived for the planning of private houses, which accounted for the majority of the projects, there were also other kinds of projects such as shops, schools and even a municipal cultural centre.

C3M’s work was done without the aid of computers, that were virtually not present at architectural practices in Brazil at that time. It was a practical experiment with no intentions to achieve a theoretical development. The use of cybernetics principles was purely pragmatic in the sense that they seemed to provide an adequate framework to tackle the apparently insurmountable challenges posed by the Brazilian context – a huge housing shortage, one of the world’s widest gap between the rich and the poor, and an unpredictable economy. It was a free adaptation of the concepts presented by Wolfgang Wieser, and looking in retrospect it can be related to the work of architects that, one way or another, dealt with indeterminacy in their practice, such as Cedric Price, John Weeks and Water Segal. 1.1 Peculiarities of architectural practice in Brazil Contrary to the European context, the work of Brazilian architects is largely related to the design of private houses, within a process of close and direct contact with the clients, who usually are the end-users. Since there is great availability of land open to new development, it is not uncommon in Brazil for people to buy a plot of land and build their private houses, either by commissioning a professional or by doing it themselves. In fact, most of the Brazilian urban environment is built informally. Very often, those who cannot afford the service of professionals, build their houses with the help of the family, friends and members of the community, in a process called “mutira˜o”. In recent years, “mutira˜o” has become part of the housing policy of the central government. Furthermore, in an attempt to cope with the housing shortage, the local administrations of some small towns have adopted the practice of offering “standard house plans” for free. These plans offered by the municipalities do not need approval to be built and are tax-free. There are usually three different “standard house plans,” offering a very basic guideline for construction: the floor plan, two cross sections, the roof plan, and the fac¸ade. As no further detail is offered, people use them as a guideline rather than as proper construction documents, and as people are often directly involved in the construction, they make adjustments as they feel necessary to do so. Thus, the resulting house bears only a vague similarity to the original plans, even if the main organization and the layout of the rooms are maintained. The modifications made by the dwellers/owners tend to deal with functional and symbolic aspects, seeking the adequacy of the standard plan to the specificities of the site and permeating the house with personal detailing that was lacking in the original plan. In the end this practice allows at least for minimum quality of the built environment, especially if compared with the total “freedom” of building in unregulated shantytowns. 2. Towards a non-linear design process The origin of the professional architect as we understand it today is associated with the “invention” of the perspective techniques in the Renaissance. In the customary practice, the architect conceives a building a priori in his or her office, translates the concepts of the building into drawings and sends the drawings, once approved, to the building site. The workers will then interpret the drawings and follow their indications to build up the object, which is supposed to be a precise replica of the building the architect has devised. This linear and causal chain, although not corresponding to the more complex reality of the day-to-day practice, is the ideal process architects aim for in their profession. The concepts underlying this ideal chain show a cause/effect relationship, which implies that the building and the drawings must have an absolute correspondence.

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This concept of architects being detached from the working site and using drawings to convey precise information about the building was first made possible by the dissemination of the perspective techniques in the Renaissance, which brought about the possibility of accurately representing a 3D environment in a 2D plan (Cabral Filho, 1996). This detachment of the architect from the building site was accompanied by a more distant relationship to the clients/users for whom the design was, in fact, created.

1268 2.1 The design strategies of the C3M Not satisfied with the traditional linear design process and faced with the constraints of the Brazilian context, C3M’s architects envisaged a design process that would be more open and flexible. It was partially inspired by the practice of the “standard house plan” referred to above and partially based on the ideas discussed by Wieser (1972) in his book Organisms, Structures, Machines – Towards A Theory of the Organism, originally published in 1959, and revised by the author for the Brazilian edition in 1972. Wieser builds up a comparison between organisms and machines, aiming to devise basic structural laws common to both. He pays special attention to machines that functionally incorporate feedback procedures, such as the new electronic machines that were the focus of the scientific community at the time. He argues that organic structures are organized according to the same principles as technical structures, based on the same formal principles and responding to the same “laws.” Wieser discusses at length the organizational aspects of adaptable systems, be they biological or technical, considering the issues of feedback, ultra-stability, coordination, autonomy and hierarchical order. Of special interest for C3M’s architects was Wieser’s examination of the interplay of determinism and indeterminism in complex systems. Coupled with circularity and flexibility, indeterminacy seemed extremely adequate to support a more realistic design process in terms of Brazilian circumstances. The challenge was to think of a process able to accommodate and respond to the complex and dynamic constraints of a low budget, low-tech building site and poor workmanship, which contrasted with the owners/“builders” high level of creativity and high level of direct engagement with the building process. The basic idea was to devise a working strategy that would be analogous to the development and evolution of organisms as described by Wieser: an organized (formalized) process leading to an unpredictable outcome. Thus, the proposed methodology took the traditional linear process of designing (from brief to sketch, on to development, then to technical drawings, and finally to construction) changing it into recursive steps, with loops in which every participant/actor involved in the project could mutually inform each other. By allowing a combination of discreet self-organized phases, the design process could, at the right time, accommodate the input of unforeseen factors brought in by clients and other people involved in the process. As an articulated process, it was highly adaptable and could be re-configured to suit new clients and contexts. It consisted of three independent phases where the creation of three “models” was pursued and devised: (1) conceptual model; (2) analogical model; and (3) scale model.

The phases were developed around recursive strategies, and the whole work was developed through an intense interaction between clients and architects based on regular meetings. The meetings were held once a week or so, when architects and clients would alternate in the role of bringing in materials, presenting them and leading the discussion. Such a dialogical strategy usually put the cultural/professional contrast in evidence and, by showing the differences amongst clients and architects, would allow the establishment of a dialogue. The “cross-cultural” dialogue built in these circumstances seemed always the only possible dialogue between the parties at that moment, and its development was crucial for the success of the project. The self-exposure and the delimitation of differences and similarities between the people involved would ensure the possibility of a real interaction (Cabral Filho, 1996). 2.2 Working out ideas: the “conceptual model” The first phase, which targeted at building up a “conceptual model” of the house, was carried out in a close relationship with the clients. Drawings were avoided and work was done mainly through linguistic interaction, with all the “actors” bringing in their expectations, images and wishes. Besides, the creation of the conceptual model, one of the functions of this stage was the establishment of a common language, or a way to get to know each other, a moment to tune into the diversity of languages. As the “conceptual model” was considered the key to the development of the design, it was comprised of a greater number of meetings in comparison with the two other phases. After the initial arrangements about charges, methodological procedures and schedule, clients were given the Book of Habits to start up the process. The Book of Habits was a group of forms presented in a matrix fashion to be filled out by the clients, enabling them to carry out a guided investigation of their habits according to three cycles: cycles of events, cycle of places, cycle of occasions. The cycles were described in a kind of collection and then submitted to a comprehensive analysis. The habits were analyzed regarding the following key concepts: rhythm, density, scale, distance and desire. Moreover, the correlation of the habits with architectural space and the time of the day were thoroughly examined in two special matrixes. The Book of Habits was thought to work at first as a simple survey, but it turned out to be in fact a formalized way of bringing the clients to view their relation with architecture in a more abstract framework, which could then be communicated to the designers in a clearer way. In the following meeting, the architects would have their say regarding the findings brought about by the Book of Habits. In the sequence, clients were asked to present their ideas for the house in a meeting called “visit to things, ideas and places of the clients.” It was done according to a framework previously defined by the architects and was carried out around all sorts of material brought by the clients: magazines, pictures, videos, drawings, verbal descriptions, and so on. To complement the referential material brought into the discussion, clients were asked to select places of special meaning for them, preferably places that could be visited. Next, they would take the architects to visit the site, explaining how they imagined the house to be located there. The next meeting was the designers’ turn to show their “things, ideas and places,” by displaying their personal architectural references that would best relate to the design questions raised by the clients. This showing was supposed to bring to the clients unexpected and unknown architectural possibilities, enlarging their formal and

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spatial repertoire. It was also intended to allow the clients the possibility of getting in touch with the more specialized universe of interest to the architects. If possible, the clients should be taken to visit pertinent examples of architecture. To conclude the presentation of the “things, ideas, and places” of the architects, there was a visit to the site, where an analysis of the plot was presented. This second visit was concerned with the constraints and the possibilities, focusing on both the pragmatic and subjective aspects of the potential location for the building. In response to and complementing the clients’ analysis of the site, the architects would carry out a detailed examination structured around four aspects: the symbolic, the bodily, the formal and the technical. To end the first phase, all the material brought in was collected and organized in a kind of map, which constituted the “conceptual model” for the future house. Rather than a list of rooms with correspondent sizes as in the traditional architectural briefs, the conceptual model was a description of the future house seen as a system of relational issues. It would work as a guideline for the architects to propose the first formal approach to the actual design. 2.3 Working out visions: the “analogical model” After assessing the first phase, clients and architects together would decide whether or not to continue the project. In case of a positive decision, the “analogical model” was then started. As the name says, this second phase aimed at the development of a model for the house based on analogical descriptions. It was only then that the concern with the actual design, understood as the drawing of a graphical scheme was introduced into the process. The first idea for the house was proposed by means of various kinds of allusive representation, such as diagrams, abstract collages, sketches, imprecise layouts, etc. The presentation would put emphasis on the correlation between the spaces of the future house trying to sort out their association and connections. The intentional absence of details was meant to leave space for discussion, suggestion and adaptation. In fact, it was an informal presentation that would deal with the formal aspect and not the shape of things. Thus, its fuzziness, while introducing ideas, would still trigger the imagination. This comprehensive and yet ill-defined proposal was left with the clients for a couple of days. They were encouraged to consult with friends, family and whomever they wanted before giving the feedback to the architects, who would then proceed working on the proposed plan. Owing to the intense engagement of every participant in the production of the “conceptual model” the re-working of the plan never happened to be the re-design of the scheme. Instead, it was rather a process of making incremental adjustments along with the continuing development of the model. This phase could accommodate as many reiterative meetings as necessary to achieve a satisfactory resolution of the scheme before moving to the development of the “scale model.” 2.4 Working out technicalities: the “scale model” The third phase, the “scale model,” was concerned with the architectural object itself and its feasibility. It was the phase in which the client would be less present and the work would be done mainly at the office. The “analogical model” was then put in a drawing to scale and technical problems were sorted out. Despite being the less conversational phase, depending on the case, there could be some technical visit to

places or shops to investigate a specific material for the house. After that, a set of more realistic presentations was rendered and, together with the technical drawings, offered to the considerations of the clients. The technical drawings sent to the clients were still drawn in graphite, as a way to signal the possibility of changes. After the clients’ careful examination, any necessary re-working or adjustment was done and the drawings were finally done in ink. Then, they were taken to bureaucratic approval at the local administration. 2.5 The “indeterminate project” Inspired by the experience of people adapting “standard house plans” in Brazilian small towns, C3M’s working drawings were carried out within the concept of an “indeterminate project,” which means a project that would allow some flexibility and interpretation. The idea was to open a gap between the representation and the building. Whenever possible, the specifications would be kept loose, or would offer different possibilities, or just offer general indications. Also, it was stated which parts should be built in strict accordance with the construction documents, and which ones could be subject to some alterations. In this way, the construction documents would guide the building process instead of determining the exact configuration of the final object, making room for the inevitable mistakes of the workmanship and for the welcome interference suggested by clients when in contact with the physical reality of the building site. The final aim was to use the design to trigger and organize the architectural process as a whole, never to fully prescribe it. In this way, the architectural object resulting was expected to have only a weak resemblance to the original design. 3. Plinio’s house – an example of an “indeterminate project” C3M’s methodological strategies were developed and adjusted in each new case. On the one hand, the whole design process evolved to become much more formalized, and on the other hand the three phases became a group of strategies that could be combined and re-arranged to a certain extent. These adjustments made clear that C3M’s working process was, in fact, an “interactive design strategy.” One of the best examples of how this “interactive design strategy” could lead to an indeterminate project is the design of Plinio’s house. As the client was a mathematician, the first phase during the development of the “conceptual model,” the “language tuning” strategy, was worked out through a series of formalized and conversational meetings that had math as the key theme. In the first meeting, the client was asked to bring in ten mathematical concepts related to space, which he explained thoroughly to the architects. After the detailed explanation with all the math jargon, in the next meeting the architects returned with ten architectural spaces that illustrated the concepts previously discussed. In addition to the “tuning language” aspect, this strategy also was aimed at giving a feedback to the client and at redirecting the discussion for the next round in the definition of the architectural brief. Moreover, the chosen spaces were carefully selected in order to inspire and provoke responses that could lead the discussion towards the definition of the “conceptual model” for the house. The proposed plan for Plinio’s house dealt with the idea of indeterminacy by devising a systemic scheme where some parts would have to be built in strict

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accordance with the design, and some others could be adjusted on the building site or even later, as required, in response to unforeseen needs. The scheme was comprised of a central corridor with attached rooms. The corridor was large enough to accommodate and articulate the fixed services of the house such as the gas container, the water tank and all the plumbing. In functional terms, the corridor, apart from containing the wet areas, also worked as an element that articulated all the connections in the house, including the front door and the back door. The rooms in the house were attached to this large and high corridor with enough independence to allow them to grow in length, as long as the width was kept the same. During the construction, the client changed his mind regarding the overall size of the house and made use of the possibility of increasing the length of some rooms, without damaging the total organization of the building. Additionally, a few mistakes committed by the workers were absorbed into the building without generating any problem. Having a small and well defined area that had to be built strictly according to the construction documents demanded the presence of the architects on the building site only during crucial moments to guarantee correct measurements and positioning. The rest of the construction would work fine since it was designed with some latitude for errors and adjustments. Also, it was made clear to the client that he could choose different types of windows and doors as long as they were within certain specifications such as their size and the type of glass, (transparent or opaque). As a result of all the changes, the final building only resembled the original design to a certain extent, but on the other hand presented some qualities usually identified only with self-built architecture. 4. A critique of C3M strategies from today’s point of view Looking in retrospect, it can be said that, based on the concepts presented by Wieser, C3M’s architects attempted to implement a “second order” shift by means of including the observer/user in the system. The client/user, that is usually understood as an outside factor, as one of the many constraints in the design, was brought in to be considered an essential part of the design. Such a move was already proposed by Pask (1969) in his seminal paper “The architectural relevance of cybernetics”. In fact, C3M’s way of working was carried out along similar lines as Pask’s “Conversation theory” (Glanville, 2001). The whole process was based on a circular set of activities, a dialogue based on indeterminacy, which could lead to novelty. In this sense, what was termed “interactive design” can also be dubbed as a “conversational design process.” In the development of this approach, indeterminism was a key idea, an operative concept to deal with the necessary openness to carry out a truly conversational process. As a matter of fact, at the beginning of the experiment, C3M’s architects called their design process a “probabilistic process.” However, to term the process as probabilistic was a misuse of concepts, in view of the fact that, as Maturana reminds us, in “a statistical view of a social system (. . .) people with particular features do not feature in it” (Maturana and Poerksen, 2004). Under this light, the whole design process was everything but probabilistic: it did not deal with a generic description of processes, neither it worked with a reductive strategy. Indeterminism was a better conceptual framework and it was adopted later, since it was in fact the basis of the entire way of working, from conceptualizing and sketching the first ideas to the construction drawings for the building site.

Thus, the use of indeterminacy by C3M can be summarized as follows: . Indeterminacy in the design process. The search for a process that allowed the presence of the other (the client, the community, and the context), not by making their desire feasible (building what they want), but by proposing an interactive design framework. Such an approach opens space for envisaging design solutions unexpected to both the professional and the client. . Indeterminacy in the construction process. The use of carefully under-detailed construction drawings that allowed for creativity and the emergence of novelty to be extended to the construction site and its participants. . Indeterminacy in the use of the architectural object. Providing spaces that were more open in the sense that what was emphasized on their design was the latent qualities of their configuration, rather than their prescriptive possibilities. However, C3M’s use of indetermination was never of the same level or kind as in Cedric Price’s work. While some of Price’s proposals intended to offer a building that could be re-arranged by users, by means of electronics and mechanical devices (Price, 2003), C3M’s approach was more similar to John Week’s strategy (Hughes and Sadler, 2000). Weeks would conceive the building with arranged layouts that would allow for extensions later on its life span. These extensions could respond to necessities that were not present at the time of the construction or could accommodate unforeseen demands. In fact in the last 50, years architects have been attempting to deal with indeterminacy, and as far as the design process is concerned, some of the more experimental designers seem to have accepted the advantage of being out of control. Three tendencies can be pointed out in this approach: losing control over the design process, opening the design process to the intervention of others, and challenging prescriptive representation in a critical way. However, as Glanville (2002) argues, even knowing that being out of control can expand the options available to designers, allowing them to be more creative, it is still difficult for our culture to accept it. Coupled with the difficulty of being out of control, the major problem for architects seems to be accepting what Pask (1969) termed as “architectural mutualism,” meaning that not only the bricks and mortar part should be considered by architects design, but rather a larger system that includes the structure and the human components. This move from an object centred perspective is indeed so difficult to make that even Pask himself apparently does not take it to the limits: he usually corroborates the idea of the architect as a catalyst (Pask, 1969; Frazer, 1995). A catalyst, as we know from chemistry, is a substance that accelerates a reaction without undergoing any permanent change. That means that a catalyst does not enter into a proper conversational strategy, it only engages in a linear and predefined process, speeding it up, without getting involved in a real interaction that could lead to novelty. It is interesting to observe that being a catalyst was not the case with Cedric Price’s Fun Palace, which was done in close collaboration with Pask. The Fun Palace clearly indicates a way out of the object’s primacy, disregarding the usual discussion on architectural form. The idea of designer as a catalyst tend to lead to approaches such as the “evolutionary architecture” proposed by Frazer (1995). To a great extent, Frazer’s endeavour is to envisage new ways of defining architectural “phenotype” or to discuss the intricacies of “form-generating processes,” questions that Price had already

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abandoned in his theory and practice. Of course, to see architecture as an evolving system represents a big step away from the orthodox view of architecture as the design of fixed and crystallized objects. However, if we want to aim at a truly second order displacement in architecture, we must stop taking the object (be it animate or inanimate) as the central point and start focussing in the relation between the object and the user (or the observer, in second order cybernetics terms).

1274 5. Conclusion – towards a conversational design process It is certain that most architects do not work within a rigid and linear framework as suggested by the traditional design process. In fact, most of the architects seem to work in circular procedures, with loops and feedback. However, these circular procedures occur in a non-systemic way, and, very often, against the architect’s desire, sometimes forced by the client’s refusal of a proposed scheme. The normal practice seems to consider the circular procedure as a waste of time, which only happens because of irrational factors present in the design process. A “conversational design process,” as the one implemented by C3M, on the contrary, takes advantage of these apparent irrational factors and put them to work to the benefit of the process. The conceptual aim of the “indeterminate project,” for instance, was to open a gap between representation (drawings) and object (building) in such a way as to allow the interference of all participants in the building process (clients, engineers, building site workers, as well as friends and relatives.) By being allowed to bring their creativity to the process, they automatically became more responsible regarding their duties in the process and the final result was a great sense of identity with the building. Moreover, such a strategy allowed for adjustment on the building site, something crucial in countries like Brazil where economic problems are compounded by a low level of workmanship. Certainly, there were many limitations to C3M’s experiment since it was carried out within very limited conditions, by a start-up practice of a group of recently-graduated architects. In fact, to respond to the real challenge of dealing with the huge housing shortage in Brazil, the same kind of strategies would have to be re-thought and extended to a more massive scale, using a different sort of instrument and institutional support. However, what this modest use of cybernetics has shown is that applying cybernetics principles to design can open the avenue for a radical approach to design, changing the very foundation of traditional design in its authoritarian and prescriptive form. Although C3M’s design strategy can be viewed as a romantic and almost naive approach to cybernetics, it was indeed built around cybernetics principles discussed by Wieser and these were what gave it a substantial advantage in terms of the Brazilian context and market. In fact, the way cybernetics frames the world, focusing on “abstract relations, functions and information flows” of the systems, rather than on their concrete material or components (Heylighen, 2001), seems especially adequate to approach the Brazilian context, which is known for its informality, its social plasticity and its playful nature (Ribeiro, 1995). The idea is that taking advantage of a localized interplay of control and creativity, a design process can guide the building procedures instead of determining the exact configuration of the final object. In other words, by accepting small errors and deviations, the building as a system could maintain a higher

level of integrity, even if by the standards of traditional architects it would look like an example of bad, defective design. Generally speaking, C3M’s approach points to a definition of architecture as the set of relationship established between people and the built environment. If architecture is interpreted in this way, then architects should focus their efforts not solely on the design of the geometry of buildings. Instead, they should concentrate on the design of the system to support the interaction between people and building, a system to enrich the quality and the patterns of such interactions. Such a system is in fact, a “relational space,” a conceptual space where the interaction between people and building takes place. Architects should thus be concerned with the designing of this “relational space,” and to be able to do so, as Jones (1991) has argued, they should start by designing the process of designing the building instead of just designing the actual building. References Cabral Filho, J. (1996), Formal Games and Interactive Design – Computers as Formal Devices for Informal Interaction between Clients and Architects, Sheffield University, School of Architectural Studies, Sheffield. Frazer, J.H. (1995), An Evolutionary Architecture, Architectural Association Publications, London. Glanville, R. (2001), “Second order cybernetics (6.46.3.3)”, paper presented at American Society for Cybernetics 2001 Conference, Vancouver, May 2001, unpublished manuscript distributed for the Treasures of Second-Order Cybernetics Workshop, available at: http:// homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/default?user ¼ ranulph&tem platefn ¼ FileSharing1.html&xmlfn ¼ TKDocument.1.xml&sitefn ¼ RootSite.xml &aff ¼ consumer&cty ¼ US&lang ¼ en Glanville, R. (2002), “On being out of control”, available at http://homepage.mac.com/ WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/default?user ¼ ranulph&templatefn ¼ FileSharing1. html&xmlfn ¼ TKDocument.1.xml&sitefn ¼ RootSite.xml&aff ¼ consumer&cty ¼ US&lang ¼ en Heylighen, F. (2001), “Cybernetics and second-order cybernetics”, in Meyers, R.A. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Physical Science & Technology, 3rd ed., Academic Press, New York, NY, pp. 155-70. Hughes, J. and Sadler, S. (2000), “The indeterminate building”, in Hughes, J. and Sadler, S. (Eds), Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism, Architectural Press, Oxford, pp. 90-103. Jones, J.C. (1991), Designing Designing, Architecture Design and Technology Press, London. Maturana, H.R. and Poerksen, B. (2004), From Being to Doing. The Origins of the Biology of Cognition, Tucker & Theisen, Zeig. Pask, G. (1969), “The architectural relevance of cybernetics”, Architectural Design, Vol. 39, pp. 494-6. Price, C. (2003), The Square Book, Wiley-Academy, London. Ribeiro, D. (1995), O povo brasileiro – A formac¸a˜o e o sentido do Brasil, Companhia das Letras, Sao Paulo. Wieser, W. (1972), Organismos, estruturas, ma´quinas – para uma teoria do organismo, Editora Cultrix, Sao Paulo.

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About the author Jose dos Santos Cabral Filho, MArch, PhD (Sheffield University), is a Brazilian architect whose activities are related both to practising and teaching architecture. For more than ten years, he was the Head of LAGEAR, the computer laboratory of the School of Architecture at Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, one of the leading multimedia labs in Brazil. He has a keen interest on the contemporary attempts to overcome the so-called perspectival paradigm in the design process. He is a founding member of Brazilian Institute of Architecture Performance (IBPA) and writes extensively on the convergence among body, media and place. Jose dos Santos Cabral Filho can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Self-observing collective

Self-observing collective

An exemplar for design research? D.P. Dash Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, India

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Abstract Purpose – This paper sets out to provide arguments and examples supporting the idea that some “wicked” design problems may be usefully approached through the process of bringing forth a self-observing collective, i.e. a community of observers capable of generating and dynamically adjusting a collective standpoint from where new observations can be made. Design/methodology/approach – Interactions within a community of observers can be designed to generate a collective standpoint from where new observations can be made and fed back to the interacting observers, thus ensuring that the collective standpoint also extends the observers’ capacity to observe. Instances of this process are discussed to demonstrate its contribution towards dealing with some wicked design problems. Findings – The paper suggests that one’s capacity to observe, feel, reflect, communicate, and act can be systematically harnessed in a self-observing collective in order to strengthen each member in the face of complex and unstructured problem situations. However, the continued success of the process depends on the effective construction and dynamic maintenance of the collective standpoint that gives the self-observing collective its unique power. Originality/value – The paper borrows certain insights from second-order cybernetics to suggest a way of dealing with ill-structured (and wicked) design problems by facilitating a process of interaction within a community of observers who must be enabled to live with the wickedness of the problem with minimum harm. Keywords Cybernetics, Design, Problem solving Paper type Research paper

1. “Wicked” design problems Problems in planning and designing are often “wicked”, i.e. unique, ill-structured, confusing, having many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and which usually adapt to any solution efforts giving rise to ever new problems (Rittel and Webber, 1973). Wicked problems have been discussed in the literature for 40 years now, the earliest reference going back to 1967 (Churchman, 1967). A number of responses to the challenge of wicked problems can also be found, many of which have utilised systems-theoretic ideas, for example, problem structuring methods, which aim at developing a shared understanding of the issues and thus a commitment to action (Rosenhead, 1996), future search, which seeks to support diverse stakeholders in bridging various gaps and collaborating on tasks of mutual concern (Weisbord and Janoff, 1995), critical heuristics, which offers a process of dialogue among multiple rationalities impinging on the problem situation (Ulrich, 1987), and so forth. Responses to the wicked problems of planning and designing have typically sought to stabilise the variety – to use a cybernetic notion – through various forms of participation or interaction among perspectives, which sometimes results in the much desired common ground of shared understanding, although not necessarily consensus but still something that serves as a basis for a well-defined collaborative action.

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In fact, this kind of process has been of interest to systems and cybernetics researchers addressing problems of planning and designing in different domains (e.g. special issue of Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Dash, 2002). The present paper interprets the above types of response in the light of second-order cybernetics and, through a discussion of two pertinent examples drawn from the author’s own work, arrives at the notion of a self-observing collective – which is then left to be explored as a possible exemplar for design research. The notion implies a process of interaction of observers, which could be so coordinated as to generate a collective standpoint from where new observations could be made and fed back to the interacting observers, thus ensuring that the collective standpoint also extends the observers’ capacity to observe. A brief outline of the cybernetic understanding of observers and their interaction is presented below, primarily for the benefit of the design researchers among the readers of this special issue, who might not be familiar with the tenets of second-order cybernetics. 2. Interaction of observers The neurophysiologist and cybernetician, Humberto Maturana (b1928) once expressed a key insight pertaining to the nature of observations, now quite well-known in cybernetics: “Anything said is said by an observer.” Extending this insight, another noteworthy cybernetician, Heinz von Foerster (b1911-d2002) commented: “Anything said is said to an observer” (Foerster, 1979). The first statement hints at the fundamental relativity of all observations, especially as these are imbued with the properties of the observer, i.e. the conditionings, intentions, capabilities, and illusions, and so forth, typical to the observer at the moment of observation. The statement, thus, sets aside the principle of objectivity which dictates that observations should be independent of the observer. The second statement hints at the ubiquity of observers’ interaction with each other. One observer communicates with another through some language or model. There is no other way an observer can convey an observation to another observer. “This is not a limitation, but is precisely the motor for the generation of a consensual domain” (Espejo and Harnden, 1989). The so-called consensual domain arises when specific models intersect and provide a basis for intelligibility among the interacting observers. Although, the act of observation might appear to be a process rather private to an individual observer, but it is thoroughly social in nature, as it interfaces with the social collectives to which the individual observer belongs. The observer draws upon social and cultural resources to make sense of experiences, arrive at judgements, communicate with others, and conduct oneself in social settings leading to new observations by self and others. An eloquent picture of this human and social aspect of observation is given by Checkland (2005, p. 288), who draws upon the basic ideas of Geoffrey Vickers (b1894-d1982) – a thought-leader in systems and cybernetics fields. It is an important cybernetic insight that some forms of interaction among observers can lock-in and generate relatively stable (or invariant) outcomes, which would then go on to play an important role in collective life. Modern science is taken to be a prominent example of this. This is related to the so-called “constructivist” view in the philosophy of empirical science, to which a number of cyberneticians, such as von Foerster, von Glasersfeld, Maturana, and Varela have contributed (for an accessible entry point into this literature, see Umpleby, 1990). One interesting implication of the constructivist view of science is that, if the appropriate forms of interaction among

observers can be designed, then we may have science-like results even in contexts other than empirical science. This presents a most promising path of inquiry for fields in which the established conventions of empirical science have proved to be unattainable. The core thesis of this paper is related to the above promise. Wicked design problems may be managed by introducing specific interactions among the observers involved in the problem situation, so as to produce a stable outcome that facilitates the living, functioning and learning of those involved. In this regard, a specific type of outcome called self-observing collective is proposed as an interesting exemplar for design research. This thesis is built upon two examples from the author’s work. 3. Example-1: designing caring communities Although, the problem of designing caring communities is age-old, with a vast body of research literature, Example-1 would relate to a strand of work initiated by the psychologist, Kurt Lewin (b1890-d1947). Among other things, Lewin was inquiring into methods for integration of minority groups and resolution of social conflict (Bargal et al., 1992; Lewin, 1946). He argued that one would never understand or predict human behaviour without studying how humans perceive and conceptualise their world, i.e. their life space. One of the methods of building harmonious inter-group relations pioneered by him is known as sensitivity training (also known variously as encounter group, training group, or T-group); the method facilitates an exploration of each other’s life space in a small-group setting. The example here is drawn from the author’s experience of participating in a series of sensitivity training events conducted by the Indian Society for Applied Behavioural Science. Since, the author has acquired this experience over a period of three years now (2004-2007) and has had occasion to critically reflect on it and write about it (Dash, 2005a), the account here may be taken as a reflective self-report. Sensitivity training refers to a facilitated group process through which the participants are expected to become aware of their own behaviour patterns and experiment with possible alternatives to those patterns. This usually becomes an experience of self-discovery and -renewal, aided by a process of observation and feedback within a small-group setting. The process can be taken as an example of interaction of observers that is designed to achieve some well-defined objectives, such as becoming aware of one’s own behaviour patterns, knowing the impact of these patterns on others and vice versa, improving one’s interpersonal effectiveness, discovering one’s potential to live more effectively and meaningfully, and so forth. 3.1 From designing to learning In this example, the task of designing caring communities has been transformed into the task of learning about life spaces and behaviour patterns. This learning is expected to provide an opportunity to recover and repossess one’s personhood, so as to manage one’s life towards greater freedom, satisfaction, and fulfilment – thus creating the conditions for the emergence of caring communities. As one learns to manage one’s own self, one also learns to respect others as equally legitimate beings. One learns to listen empathetically and appreciate another person’s life space. One becomes conscious of any oppressive or otherwise damaging relationship one might have developed with others. This not only liberates one from that pattern, but it also liberates one’s relationships from a progressively deteriorating mode to, possibly, a healthier and developing one. It can help improve relationships

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and promote caring, interdependence, and collaboration. Overall, the method seeks to produce sensitive individuals who are capable of coming together to form caring communities. 3.2 The interactive process In a typical sensitivity training (or T-group) event, a small group of about 8-12 strangers meet for eight hours everyday for about five days, in the presence of one or two facilitators. In these events, there is a focus on making observations on self and others and sharing those in a low-risk environment – maintained as such by the skilled facilitators. Generally, facilitators are persons with extensive training and experience in observing and diagnosing behavioural processes. They deploy a vast repertoire of skills in encouraging members who are willing to work on understanding and renewing their behaviour. Although no specific structure or agenda is followed, the facilitators do make an effort to keep the group connected to the “here and now” – an important catchphrase in the context of sensitivity training. Apart from this, the facilitators assume a non-directive role, occasionally helping the members or the whole group to get unstuck, if the need arises. Everyone is required to state their here-and-now observations throughout the process. In this sharing, criteria such as directness, authenticity, congruence (i.e. between experience and expression), and empathy are emphasised. The process is often pictured as a process of inquiry into self and relationships. Facilitators make use of the vocabulary of empirical research, namely observation, data, hypothesis, assumption, exploration, experiment, confirmation, explanation, testing, interpretation and so forth. As the group begins to come together, as relationships are formed, the participants are encouraged to observe the group process and their roles in it. They are also encouraged to take greater risks and explore the nature and strength of the relationships being formed. Each participant’s autonomy is respected and the multidimensionality of each person is acknowledged. In general, what ensues is an interaction among autonomous observers, who are also the observed, in a setting where their actions (e.g. of participating, not participating, giving feedback, suggesting hypotheses, etc.) make new observations possible. The process makes full use of the emotions of the persons involved. If an action provokes too much emotional disturbance in some members, the group takes it as something to be addressed, so as to restore a state of balance. On the foundation of this balance, members are expected to facilitate each other’s growth towards their known and unknown potentials. 3.3 My experience as a participant I have attended six such learning events so far, in my preparation towards becoming a T-group facilitator. These events have been quite enjoyable and enriching for me, although there have been moments of puzzlement, stress and frustration. On the whole, the experience has led to some self-understanding and some appreciation of human relationships. I present below a brief sketch of my self-understanding produced early in this process. Of course, this brief sketch would not prove or disprove anything conclusively; it could only be viewed as a case study in sensitivity training, illustrating the process and the outcomes from a participant’s viewpoint. I had not paid sufficient attention to my emotions earlier. I had a blind spot that made it difficult for me to observe myself. During the initial phases of my training,

I was quite surprised to find that others could observe some feelings and behavioural patterns in me even before I became aware of these. I had also been blind to the feelings of others. Sensitivity training has made me aware of these blind spots. I feel more ready now to appreciate my multi-dimensional being and I am able to relate better with others around me. I had a need to be friendly with everyone. It was difficult for me to disagree with anyone. It was also difficult for me to state my position clearly. While in a group, I was often seeking support. But such support was not easy to get. I was rather quick to point out errors, evaluate other’s statements, and advise others. Often I remained self-absorbed, which hampered my ability to observe and listen. I found within me a tendency to reject compliments and friendly gestures. I became keenly aware of certain fears within me, such as the fear of rejection, fear of embarrassment, fear of humiliation, fear of being hurt, and so forth. I realised that I have been withdrawing from problematic situations and taking flights of fancy into multiple avenues of safety, such as philosophy, music, internet, and interactions where I am in a position of power. As a member, I would be both observer and observed. I would make both individual-level and group-level observations. Every time a certain level of cohesion is achieved in the group, which usually happens two or three days into the event, the group emerges as a distinct player, dynamically harnessing members’ capacities and contributions in different combinations, to assume a particular path of development. I have always felt a sense of being “taken care of” by this process. After participating in a few sensitivity training events, I have reorganised some of my behavioural patterns. The experience has been very meaningful to me and I have been able to take major steps to rebuild my personal life. 4. Example-2: designing safe traffic This example pertains to the widespread problem of traffic safety. The traffic problem turns out to be rather wicked. Designing safe traffic remains a challenge. Simple solutions often make matters worse (Pfleiderer and Dieterich, 1995). Driven by the growing number of traffic accidents in Indian cities and the obvious ineffectiveness of the common approaches to traffic management, a study was designed by the author to explore an alternative approach to traffic safety. The study was located at Bhubaneswar, a fast-modernising provincial capital, located in eastern India. Example-2 is based on this study, which highlights a process of rethinking traffic safety, shifting the focus from improving traffic infrastructure to adjusting traffic behaviour (Dash, 2005b). 4.1 Traffic safety through self-guided learning Attempts at traffic safety in India have focused on increasing investments in traffic infrastructure, traffic control systems, and campaigns for public awareness of traffic rules. This approach trivialises the complexity of the road traffic phenomenon and portrays the human subject as essentially forgetful or irresponsible, or both. Anyhow, since traffic mishaps have continued to grow in number, it was viewed as a domain calling out for some fresh thinking. The study began by viewing road users as sense-making subjects concerned about their own safety. The study sought to utilise the capacity of road users to support each

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other to improve their appreciation of traffic complexities and thus cope with it better through a process of self-guided learning. The problem became one of designing a support system that would help road users reorient their conduct within the complex and risky environment of the road. It included the idea of making a video documentary depicting some of the interdependent and multi-faceted aspects of the city’s road traffic and using it to trigger and promote observation, reflection, interaction, and learning among traffic users. The objective of the study was to design and test an interactive and replicable process through which groups of traffic users in a city can support each other to bring about a change in their traffic behaviour that is relevant to them. 4.2 The interactive process A four-stage interactive process was used as a basic framework to engage small groups of traffic users in a process of shared reflection: (1) Stage 1: (a) Collect participants’ ideas on the causes of traffic mishaps through a trigger statement, such as this: “In my opinion, the main factors causing traffic inconveniences and mishaps on the roads of Bhubaneswar are . . . ”; and (b) follow a voting procedure to arrive at a shortlist of the ideas considered important by the participants. (2) Stage 2. Screen a video documentary depicting the reality of Bhubaneswar’s road traffic. (3) Stage 3. Facilitate discussion and reflection on the reality of Bhubaneswar’s road traffic with a view to explore convergence and divergence of views. (4) Stage 4. Let each participant announce and clarify one or two traffic-related goals relevant to their own conduct in the traffic system. In a quasi-experimental set-up, five nearly-comparable groups of volunteers were treated with five variations of this process. These groups were tracked for a period of three months to study if the process they went through had any effect on them. Self-reports were collected from them periodically. 4.3 Findings An analysis of the ideas generated (in Stage-1) indicated both commonality and diversity. One common idea, although expressed in different words, was related to poor driving. However, a variety of other ideas related to stray animals on roads, poor maintenance of roads and vehicles, inadequacy of signals, lack of exemplary punishment for violating traffic rules, and inadequate traffic planning and control. A study of the goals set by the participants (in Stage-4) indicated the following: there was a marked difference in the types of goals. Some had chosen very broad and generic goals (e.g. “be a more balanced driver”) whereas some had chosen rather specific ones (e.g. “be more careful in parking”). Some had indicated the final states they wished to reach, whereas some had a sense of path to reach their desired states. Some had focused on their own self-improvement, whereas some had focused on improving others. All respondents reported an improvement in their driving practice. The very fact of going through one of the quasi-experimental group exercises (which were variants of the above four-stage process) seemed to produce some self-reported goal-fulfilment and behavioural change, irrespective of the actual design of the exercise.

All the self-reports turned out to be overwhelmingly positive. As a result, the expected type of comparison between the five variants of the process could not be made. Therefore, it was not possible to conclude whether any one of the process designs was superior in producing meaningful changes in traffic behaviour. Each of the process elements, i.e. idea collection, video screening, facilitated discussion and goal setting, seemed to be independently capable of triggering self-guided learning and behavioural change. Being in one of these shared-reflection groups helped the individual traffic users to observe themselves and the traffic system in a new light. The new observations arising from this triggered reflection, goal-setting, and behavioural adjustment. This process could have been repeated to explore the effects of repeated encounters of this type. However, this was beyond the project’s remit. 5. Interpreting the examples In this paper, both the examples are taken as demonstrating the process of interaction of observers. The interaction happens in a facilitated group setting, where the members contribute to the construction of a collective standpoint, which then modifies the members’ observations. Of course, the collective standpoint adapts itself to the members’ changing observations, in a process of ongoing mutual adjustment. In the first example, i.e. that of facilitating caring communities through sensitivity training, the interactions are designed to make the individual observers aware of their blind spots. The emphasis on the here-and-now serves the function of keeping the interacting observers focused on the shared reality of which they are a part, thus enabling the group to generate observations and hypotheses to explore that reality. The stress on authenticity and empathy during the interactive process encourages the participants to grant legitimacy to their own life spaces and those of others. The overall approach to facilitation used in sensitivity training invites each member to become aware of the realities of one’s life and also take responsibility for the way it might evolve in future. In the second example, i.e. facilitating safe traffic through adjustments in traffic behaviour, the interactions ensure that each member is exposed to different observations of the traffic context. The shared reflection enables the members to recognise areas of commonality as well as divergence within the group. The interactive process reminds the members about the multi-lateral nature of the traffic system and their freedom to act within that system. The goal setting part of the process ensures that a part of that freedom is enacted within safe precincts of the group. However, the results accomplished in these examples seem to be impermanent in nature; their sustainability is rather doubtful. As long as the interactive process is maintained, the results can be monitored and the process revised to keep it effective. If the process is discontinued, there is likely to be a gradual decaying of the results. However, as the example of sensitivity training suggests, there may also be a cumulative effect, round after round, which may become self-sustaining beyond a certain threshold level. The examples reported here have a family resemblance with various small- and large-group interventions now common in the fields of participatory planning and designing, group therapy, collaborative learning, organisational development, and community development. A basic issue that tends to be ignored in this vast literature is the process of observation, especially observation as a human and social process. There appears to be a need to reinterpret participatory planning and designing in the light of interaction of observers and the science-like outcome of that interactive process.

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The science-like outcome may be expressed in terms of the construction of a dynamic object (Gage, 2006), which would last as long as the process of interaction lasts, or perhaps longer, depending upon the circumstances prevailing. In fact, relatively stable and resilient outcomes may emerge and persist over longer periods, even generations, through the emergence of what has been termed in second-order cybernetics as social knowledge (Zeeuw, 2003). From the examples presented in this paper, such social knowledge could be exemplified in inclusive and caring communities or harmonious traffic behaviour. Of course, the stability of the results is not guaranteed by some Nature as in the empirical sciences. 6. Self-observing collective: a dynamic object for design research? In this last section, it now remains to speculate a little on the type of science-like outcome that might be achieved by orchestrating such interaction of observers which proves useful in responding to wicked problems of planning and designing. As the paper already hints, the outcome could be in the nature of a dynamic object – one that might be called a self-observing collective. The idea of self-observation in research is a gift from cybernetics, especially from the work of Heinz von Foerster, where the idea was central to the framework of second-order cybernetics or cybernetics of observing systems (as opposed to first-order cybernetics, which is cybernetics of observed systems). The subject matter of the present paper deals with demonstrating the possibility of coordinating interaction of observers in a group setting so that the group itself acquires the dual status of being an observed system as well as an observing system. Such a group can generate new standpoints or schemata based on the inputs from its members, thus giving rise to new viewpoints. It is to be argued that effective membership in such a group could soften the otherwise rigid link between members and their prior viewpoints, thus paving the way for new observations which support learning, adaptation, and personal growth. Such a group responds to the members, helping them construct and adapt new viewpoints meaningful in their life spaces. Several comparable notions exist in different fields of inquiry, for example self-organising system (in physical sciences), learning community (in education), learning organisation (in management), and self-observing system (in cybernetics). So, the notion of “self-observing collective” is not really new. However, the implication that the notion might be an exemplar for design research is something to be explored further. References Bargal, D., Gold, M. and Lewin, M. (1992), “Introduction: the heritage of Kurt Lewin”, Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 48 No. 2, pp. 3-13. Checkland, P. (2005), “Webs of significance: the work of Geoffrey Vickers”, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 285-90. Churchman, C.W. (1967), Guest Editorial, “Wicked problems”, Management Science, Vol. 14 No. 4, pp. B141-2. Dash, D.P. (Ed.) (2002), “Participatory planning and designing”, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Vol. 19 No. 4, Special Issue.

Dash, D.P. (2005a), “Participating in a self-observing collective: experiential learning in T-group settings”, Here & Now, Vol. 19 No. 3, pp. 6-10, available at: www.ximb.ac.in/ , dpdash/WP_ISABS.htm (accessed 10 April 2007). Dash, D.P. (2005b), “Improving traffic behaviour: exploring a self-guided learning approach”, Indian Journal of Transport Management, Vol. 29 No. 3, pp. 288-305. de Zeeuw, G. (2003), “Discovering social knowledge”, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Vol. 10 Nos 3/4, pp. 150-69. Espejo, R. and Harnden, R.J. (Eds) (1989), The Viable System Model: Interpretations and Applications of Stafford Beer’s VSM, Wiley, Chichester. Gage, S.A. (2006), “The wonder of trivial machines”, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Vol. 23 No. 6, pp. 771-8. Lewin, K. (1946), “Action research and minority problems”, Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 2, pp. 34-46. Pfleiderer, R.H.H. and Dieterich, M. (1995), “New roads generate new traffic”, World Transport Policy & Practice, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 29-31, available at: www.eco-logica.co.uk/wtpp01.1.pdf (see p. 23 of the PDF document) (accessed 10 April 2007). Rittel, H. and Webber, M. (1973), “Dilemmas in a general theory of planning”, Policy Sciences, Vol. 4, pp. 155-69, [Reprinted in (a) Emery, F.E. (Ed.) (1981) Systems Thinking, Vol. 2, Penguin, Middlesex, pp. 81-102 and (b) Cross, N. (Ed.) (1984), Developments in Design Methodology, Wiley, Chichester, pp. 135-144.]. Rosenhead, J. (1996), “What’s the problem? An introduction to problem structuring methods”, Interfaces, Vol. 26 No. 6, pp. 117-31. Ulrich, W. (1987), “Critical heuristics of social systems design”, European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 31, pp. 276-83. Umpleby, S.A. (1990), “The science of cybernetics and the cybernetics of science”, Cybernetics and Systems, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 109-21, available at: www.gwu.edu/ , umpleby/Science_Cybernetics.txt (accessed 10 April 2007). von Foerster, H. (1979), “Cybernetics of cybernetics”, in Krippendorf, K. (Ed.), Communication and Control in Society, Gordon and Breach, New York, NY, pp. 5-8, [Reprinted in Midgley, G. (Ed.) (2003), Systems Thinking, Vol. 3, Sage, London, pp. 1-4.], available at: http://grace. evergreen.edu/ , arunc/texts/cybernetics/heinz/cybernetics.pdf (accessed 10 April 2007). Weisbord, M.R. and Janoff, S. (1995), Future Search: An Action Guide to Finding Common Ground in Organizations and Communities, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA. About the author D.P. Dash was born in India on 25 June 1966. He came in contact with the systems and cybernetics fields in 1991, when he got access to a small library specialised in these subjects. Subsequently, he did his doctoral studies in UK during 1996-1999, working with Michael C. Jackson and Gerard de Zeeuw. This got him interested in second-order research, i.e. studying how research is to be carried out in areas where standard research designs are not feasible. He currently edit the Journal of Research Practice. In his spare time, he play the Indian bamboo flute. D.P. Dash can be contacted at: [email protected]; www.ximb.ac.in/ , dpdash/

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Loughborough University School of Art and Design, Leicester, UK

Simon Downs Abstract Purpose – The paper seeks to serve a dual process, first, to raise awareness of the epistemological weaknesses inherent in the ways that visual communications designers address their own practice, and, second, to suggest that cybernetics has some of the answers to these weaknesses. Design/methodology/approach – These objectives of this paper have been addressed through an examination of the cybernetics, critical theory and visual design theory. A comparison of the points of convergence (often of aims) and those points of divergence (often in its ontological reading of the world) is illuminating, especially when post-structuralist semiotics – as a system of knowledge exterior to both design and cybernetics, yet capable of commenting on both – is used as a point of triangulation. Findings – The literature analysis carried for this paper indicates that in both visual communications design and cybernetics there are areas of overlapping interest (concerns with the cyclic nature of coding and decoding information) and areas that might at first seem divergent but are in fact often complementary (the role of the observer as controller and participant in a system). The paper proposes that cybernetics uncovers principles at the heart of communication that in turn inform visual communication practices, which in a circular fashion informs cybernetics. Practical implications – The paper suggests that new areas for cyberneticians to use in their study of second-order cybernetics may be found in the product of visual communications design. It also suggests areas where designers may begin to search for tools that may be useful in evaluating their working practices. Originality/value – The paper notes that an external investigation of visual communications artefacts presents cybernetics with a potential test-bed on which to test its theories, in practice, on a global scale. Cybernetics has the potential to define and offer constructive guidance to visual communications design in examining its own practice. Keywords Cybernetics, Design, Knowledge creation Paper type Conceptual paper

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1286-1300 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827300

There are certain structural problems with graphic design and the associated visual communication arts, if not in the practice of the subject, then with its theoretical base. These problems may almost be characterized as a hole in the subject’s knowledge base: a hole that stems from our origins, and has been becoming more noticeable as the discipline moves from aesthetically driven artform to evidence-based design. It is almost as if the subject is grounded on sheet ice rather than solid rock. In everyday usage our footing seems solid, but dig-down far enough and everything swiftly becomes distressingly fluid. This intangibility takes the form of a lack of empirical data at the heart of the subject. It is not that the data is truly absent; rather the practices embedded in our common culture mean that we hide the data from each other and from ourselves. We veil our abstracted empirical knowledge as “craft,” “good practice” or “personal style.” We indulge in vague assurances about the mechanics of our practice; assurances whose origins rest firmly within the atelier and not the laboratory[1].

That we find ourselves in this state of affairs is in no way due to intellectual carelessness or a lack of enthusiasm for the scholarship of the subject. Theory in graphics design – or its synonymous disciplines; graphic communications, visual communication, communications design, etc. – is based on a close reflective analysis of visual culture in singular cases, for singular reasons, in response to singular problems in need of resolution: however this level of close scrutiny rarely gets turned back on the subject itself. Graphics, as a culture, does not know what it knows. Aspects of the discipline embody several centuries of what might be categorized as craft ergonomics, the combined working knowledge of how to make text “legible,” “comfortable to read” or even ’invisible”: however, consistent definitions of these terms do not exist. As things stand the subject’s theory base connects weakly both to the humanities’ critical theory cannon and to the communication sciences. Unlike the science and engineering communities we do not, “Show our Working” or generate axiomatic statements to test through our artefacts. We do not as a subject work predicatively in constructing our work, rather we function retrodictively working back from the externalized problem (a product, a piece of information to communicate) to generate a solution. Each piece is crafted individually, and while, we posses a functional system of development and processing, this system is internalized as personal craft rather than explicit knowledge that can be shared. The visual artefacts we produce are our visible output; they require no secondary levels of evidence to demonstrate function (or to malfunction); no working out, no proof that the underpinnings of a piece are “correct”[2]. This is what the subject misses; axioms, formula, generic sets of information and thought tools that can be applied to test the work we do, as we do it. For example, as a subject we speak of (and some of us teach) doctrinal truths that certain properties of human comprehension of text are enhanced by discreet typographic treatments. Centuries of practice and small-scale experiment would tend to indicate that this doctrine holds up well to close examination: at least as a low-level function. This absolutely should not be read, as a case for the existence of a reductionist design science that can be applied in all circumstances to an equal effect. All we can prove is that these design functions operate broadly at a low level, not that they will operate universally at all levels. It has become apparent to me that visual communications design has the characteristics of an emergent system. Corning (2002, p. 7) defines emergence in the following way: Perhaps, the most elaborate recent definition of emergence was provided by Jeffrey Goldstein in the inaugural issue of Emergence (46). To Goldstein, emergence refers to “the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems.” The common characteristics are: (1) radical novelty (features not previously observed in the system); (2) coherence or correlation (meaning integrated wholes that maintain themselves over some period of time); (3) a global or macro “level” (i.e. there is some property of “wholeness”); (4) it is the product of a dynamical process (it evolves); and (5) it is “ostensive” – it can be perceived. For good measure, Goldstein throws in supervenience – downward causation.

As a practitioner, this seems to present a remarkably close reading of how the graphic communications disciplines function. Low level principles that can be observed and axiomatically informed, combined with singular cultural circumstances leading to; “radical novelty,” “coherence,” “wholeness,” “evolution,” and “ostensive” difference

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from that which came before. The “downward causation” is a particular mark of visual communications design, where an initial brief may be modified in the presence of a successful but divergent outcome. Unfortunately, we often have no real idea of how we “did it” and what we might do next to further enhance what we did. It works, but we do not know why. While trying to pin down a broadly-based set of principles to embrace all “Communications” activities, Krippendorff in passing and possibly serendipitously defines this graphic communication dilemma. He draws our attention to the existence of two distinct modes of knowledge: explicit (knowing what we know, in a form amenable to transcription and transmission) and implicit (knowledge that we use but do not know that we know): The distinction between the two types of knowledge is crucial here. For example, the fluency of the native speaker of a language might be said to exhibit his implicit knowledge about the language. But familiarity with a language does not suggest that the speaker is able to explicate the rules of grammar and semantics as well as the content that he expresses according to these rules (Krippendorff, 1969, p. 109).

We, the practitioners of graphic communication, are often so beautifully attuned to the jargon, argot and parole of the visual language that we do not see the active element, or how this active element acts to affect the viewer. For historical reasons, graphic design rests at the uncomfortable edge of the arts envelope. It is a conceptual mutation of commercial art (art by commission) through the demands of industrial usage, a form of practice evolved to materialize ideas through mass production. The subject began as white-collar management of blue-collar technicians, with the objective of creating a visually artistic response to an externally derived set of goals. Masaru Katsumie (Crowley and Jobling, 1997, p. 2) speculated on the nature of the subject: Writing in the Japanese magazine Graphic Design in 1959, (he) underscored the distinction between graphic design, which he regarded as an industrial process, and commercial art, which he associated with hand-drawn illustration.

This distinction, rather artificially, draws a distinction between those that develop or plan the design and those who execute it: more than this the distinction serves to sever the craft applications away from any intellectual underpinnings. The modern panoply of production and broadcast media that a designer might be called upon to work through has only served to muddy the issue. As the range of possible broadcast media expands (from performance art to viral marketing), we have been called to make predictive judgments of how a viewer may respond to a common communication delivered across a variety of media: Because graphic design, in the end, deals with the spectator, and because it is the goal of the designer to be persuasive or at least informative, it follows that the designer’s problems are twofold: to anticipate the spectator’s reaction and to meet his own aesthetic needs (Rand, 1985[3]).

Or “Graphic design isn’t so easily defined or limited, Graphic Design isn’t so rarefied or so special. It is not a profession, but a medium, a mode of address, a means of communication” (Kalman, 1991, p. 136). Even a surface reading shows the subject is confused about its own relation to the arts and humanities, let alone to the sciences. The core ethos that practitioners seem to

ascribe to is communication. However, the cultural artefacts used and the ordering imposed on these artefacts, in order to communicate, owe less to a search for an effective system of communication than to an endless recapitulation of earlier work for stylistic effect. Visual communications has a weakly explicatable model of its internal process from which to work, which inhibits us in our task of mapping the theoretical links we need to connect us to the user. I would like to take issue with this analysis by Krippendorff, but in all fairness I can not: . . . it is fair to say that design, at least the way it is presently taught at professional art institutes and universities and practised in industry, has essentially exhausted its vocabulary of forms. . . Most educational programs include a little bit of everything in what they offer their students. No compelling manifestos exist. Design journals, while proliferating in numbers, have become reproductive of sterile still photography. They advertise products, producers, or designers, and are clearly shrinking in social significance. Consumer research has positioned itself as a judge of designed products, encouraging informed consumption but consumption nevertheless, and marketing is using the word design in order to sell pricier brands (Krippendorff, Intro’ 2006, p. 2).

I believe that we may find answers within the domains of the sciences; in the fields of cognition, cybernetics and HCI research; in its knowledge base, but also in its methods. These subjects have through an interest in human interaction with visual artefacts begun to encroach on graphic design’s traditional turf: visual communication of information through mass media operations, forcing graphics to face up to some of its shortcomings: Sensing the opportunities that new technologies seem to promise, new scholarly disciplines like artificial intelligence, communication science, plus various hybrid professions, cognitive engineering and design management, as well as such technical specialities as computer interface design, have emerged and are blazing trails into territories previously claimed by designers, In this information-rich, fast-changing, and increasingly individualistic culture, contemporary design discourse is no longer compelling. Thus, industrial design finds itself at a critical turning point (Krippendorff, 2006, Intro’ p. 3).

In doing so these scientific disciplines have unwittingly brought to the table research that in places supports the traditional practices of graphics. For example, later in this paper, I will look at a cognitive explanation of emboldened type. What could we discover if we viewed the historic processes and output of visual communications design through the scientific gaze? Perhaps, nothing, perhaps we would find that both knowledge domains, the scientific and the artistic, are perfectly evolved for their own discreet practices: however I suspect not, I think it likely the added scrutiny would benefit both parties. And indeed it has been instructive for me to find that cybernetics, in the form of second-order cybernetics, has recognized that observations of systems without a constructivist’s singular reading of the observer as controller are weakened[4]. I am explicitly not to calling into question the intrinsic values of either knowledge domain or seeking to denigrate the other: however, as noted by Freud “. . . in effect, that we cannot know what we know because our knowledge may be unconscious” (Russett 2003, p. 172), we are constrained by internal models of our own areas of expertise as to how we can think about our practice. Foucault sums this dilemma up quite pithily, “it is not possible for us to describe our own archive (domain of knowledge), since it is

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from within these rules that we speak.” (Russett 2003, p. 173) In this paper, I will examine some of the areas of common knowledge between cybernetics and visual communication: subjects that share a common aim that of mapping human cognition in order to achieve clarity of communication. It might seem that Foucault’s statement that we “describe our own archive” limits the scope of our investigation. Graphic communicators would be trapped within their limiting knowledge domain and cyberneticians – despite Krippendorff’s (Krippendorff, 1969, p. 114) original assertion that cybernetics represents a kind of communications ground state or baseline from which all other sciences or praxiologies of communications can be derived[5] – would have their views constrained by the very testability of their axioms. Indeed, if we believe that we exist in totally discreet and stratified domains of knowledge, Foucault’s statement might be the last word on the subject. However, a pair of parallel epistemologies have emerged that undermine the assumption of privileged status; the post-structuralists in continental philosophy, and second-order cybernetics in cybernetics. An assumption that limits the designer’s range action by placing the Auteur as the sole arbiter of meaning in a creative work (denying multiple semiotic readings of an artefact), and limits the scientist’s room for examining the small scale human actions that escape the dispassionate gaze of the privileged observer. In the field of cybernetics we find von Foerster (1995, p. 2) stating: I present this principle (that of the privileged observer) here, in its most brutal form, to demonstrate its non-sensicality. If the properties of the observer (namely to observe and describe) are eliminated, there is nothing left; no observation, no description. However, there was a justification for adhering to this principle, and this justification was fear; fear that paradoxes would arise when the observers were allowed to enter the universe of their observations. And you know the threat of paradoxes. To steal their way into a theory is like having the cloven-hoofed foot of the devil stuck in the door of orthodoxy.

In the field of philosophy/critical theory, Barthes notes in his essay The Death of the Author, that as soon as an author has presented his work to the public, the reading that the public makes are their own, and not the authors. This applies as truly to visual communications design as it does to literature: We shall never know (speaking of a story by Balzac), for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing. No doubt it has always been that way. As soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins (Barthes, 1977, p. 1).

And, in a similar parallel fashion, alternate views of knowledge arose that celebrated this loss of privileged status and suggested working with other disciplines as a way forward. Deleuze and Guattari proposed a “Rhizomic” view of knowledge, a view that gives us a way of looking sideways, of working in partnership with those whose thoughts and practises run along parallel tracks, and of forging useful conceptual tools that will benefit both parties. Deleuze and Guattari speak out strongly against “trees” and “roots”

as the organizing models of knowledge. They explicitly argue against privileged inside or outside views of the world. “Binary logic and biunivocal relationships still dominate psychoanalysis, linguistics, structuralism and even information science” (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p. 6). Rather they propose a Rhizome as the model: Principles of connection and heterogeneity: any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be. This is very different from the tree or root, which plots a point, fixes an order . . . semiotic chains of every nature are connected to very diverse modes of coding (biological, political, economic, etc.) that bring into play not only different regimes of signs but also states of things of differing status . . . it is not impossible to make a radical break between regimes of signs[6] and their objects (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p. 7-8).

An analogous system was suggested by Krippendorff (1969), he talks of “interdisciplinary domains of inquiry” as a way forward in investigating the ’shapeless Mother Hubbard called “communication” (Krippendorff, 1969, p. 111). He argues persuasively for the value of working outside of a “regime of signs”: But more powerful is the argument for conceiving such inquiries as interdisciplinary endeavours in the sense that knowledge about the process may be utilized in any of the traditional disciplines and freely exchanged among them. . . Interdisciplinary inquiries into communication provide intellectual technologies, so to speak, the theoretical significance, of which is not limited by particular disciplinary boundaries (Krippendorff, 1969, p. 111).

And this for me is entirely the point we the graphic communicators of the world need “intellectual technologies” to help guide our design practice. In this model, the graphic communicators do not need to be able to describe their own archive any more than the cybernetician does: we need only be able to use common toolsets and models framed from outside the archive, but looking in. We become liberated from the conceptual constraints of our academy, no longer isolated from the knowledge we need. We can gain a parallax view through working together. In line with the spirit of the twenty-first Century we need a model of communication that is networked and nodal. What is visual communication? Firstly, as hinted at earlier, graphic communication is not truly a singular domain of knowledge. If you were looking for a demonstration of a rhizomic model of knowledge in action you would be hard pressed to find a better exemplar than graphics. It ranges from the quasi-scientific concerned with issues such as perception and legibility, driven by metrical measure – typography, information design or interaction design, for example – to traditional craft-based activities of book design or illustration, and on to the deeply ephemeral disciplines of advertising or branding. Even then, within each of these fields is a wealth of sub-divisions and overlaps with differing attitudes to their craft; some modernist[7], some post-modernist[8], and many derived from a distinctive personal ethos. Krippendorff notes this structural confusion in graphic design (though in all other aspects his reading of what graphic design is and has been is quite shallow[9]. He seems to have conflated graphics with advertising. A common mistake.): Graphic design, for example has always been concerned with creating two-dimensional messages that inform, compel, or fascinate it balanced its concerns between aesthetics and content – aesthetics as generalization from what large numbers of viewers or readers considered pleasing. . . The new media make the work of graphic artists increasingly

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indistinguishable from that of product designers. Industrial designers in particular have made inroads into graphics by adding the interactivity and informative richness of interfaces to what graphic designers did before. The boundaries between these two design professions are dissolving not by intention but by the recognition of common design concerns and knowledge of what people do with the artifacts they design (Krippendorff, 2006, p. 209).

However, in true rhizomic fashion there are always points of connection, collective nodes and commonalities amongst these divergent craft practices (or Praxiologies of Communication as Krippendorff defines them). Practitioners navigate these collective nodes through one commonality of purpose: “fitness for purpose.” As working axioms go, fitness for purpose is a somewhat relativist rule. In order to understand how the effectiveness of such a relative operation can be judged we must construct a common model. Graphics operates through what Lacan called a “chain of signs.” Chains of signs are when one sign[10] builds on readings extant in a culture to make a new composite sign (that can spark a new link in the chain of signs, ad infinitum), these chains work by forming meaning out of readings of transient cultural relationships (Figure 1). Graphic communicators build and direct the construction of new chains of signs, drawing attention to a particular idea. If we look at these adapted versions of Shannon’s classic model of communication (Figure 2)[11], we can see that as in the original diagram “noise” can affect the end “signal.” But in visual communications “noise” may be nothing more than an unintended conjunction of signs, a weakening of the semiotic “signal.” How might graphics practitioners measure the relative strength of signal and noise? The diagram can be reworked to represent the intended operation of graphic communication, showing how through carefully selecting the presentation of the original signal (which message/signal we send, how we frame it, how it is displayed, etc.) so as to pick up on pre-existing signals (signs) in the environment (which might in other, more traditional contexts be thought of as noise), we can amplify or bend the

A common pair of cultural signs.

Form a new sign

Figure 1. A demonstration of the formation of a chain of signs Additional signs make a new sign...

Forming a Chain of Signs

Intended Visual Communication

Communication Artefact at User's Reading of Reception the Communication

Communication Arteface at Source

Signal

Received Signal

Message

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1293 Message

Figure 2. Shannon’s diagram of a communications system reconfigured for the visual communications arts

Socio-cultural noise (unintended meaning)

signal we send. This process is analogous to – what in political circles is known as – “spin” (Figure 3). It must be noted that an attempt to map the flow of a cultural communication might seem “old hat” to cyberneticians (especially of the second-order variety), the act of formally charting a communications flow is likely be considered an unwelcome and reductionist interference in many designer’s working practice. Despite the role it might have in raising awareness of possible compositions and decompositions of the message in interaction with outside factors, i.e. material considerations, placement, cultural norms at the point of reception, timing, etc. Additional Cultural Signal 'Struggle'

Intended Visual Communication

Communication Artefact at Source

Communication Artefact at User's Reading of Reception the Communication

Signal Message

Additional Cultural Signal 'Triumph'

Received Signal Message

Figure 3. Shannon’s diagram redrawn to address visual communications amplification/alteration of a visual communication

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Any measure of the effectiveness of visual communication across the various parts of the discipline must be external to the sub-disciplines and common to them all. Unfortunately, although we can find support for the existence of common functional system of practice – we all plan, develop, test and deploy – the internal divergences in the discipline work against any simple measures of effect. Typographers will be forming meaning from one set of cultural signs, motion designers another, illustrators yet another. This makes it difficult to internally generate rule sets or guides that hold a common currency. Krippendorff hints at a model for the “fitness for purpose” test by pointing out that praxiologies of communication (which in his scheme contains graphic communication) are retrodictive, in opposition to cybernetics, which is by intent predictive[12]. Within this model the objective of the task being undertaken becomes the measure by which effectiveness of communication can be judged, and in practice this is in line with current graphic communication methodologies. Cybernetics can aid graphic communication by offering tools that can measure both the overall effectiveness of the transmission and indicate the differing levels of effect on a component by component case (Figure 4). In the figure above, we can see that a method of measuring the effectiveness of the transmission would not benefit any particular job. The job would already be complete, but over time might feedback useful information that could be applied in future operations (and indeed measuring that future operation could give extra iterations of feedback that might refine the process further). Even negative information derived from the original operation (i.e. information on processes that failed to help or actively hindered communication) would have value by highlighting weaknesses in the subject’s internal models of its practice. Time Client's Brief Anticipating a Perceived Goal

Process Steps

Anticipation Perceived Goal

Briefing Retrodiction Introspective Operation Planning, Design and Theory.

The difference between the Percieved and Actual Goal gives a measure of communications efficiency

Various Object Constructs in response to the brief [roughs] Client's reading of object constructs Client approved object construct

Figure 4. Graphics task breakdown

Extrospective Operation Actual Materialised Goal Source: Krippendorff's Praxiologies of Communication model

The theory base of the subject as it is currently configured is one driven by (archaic) semiotic readings of the discipline, which say little about the functional limits to interaction between the viewer and the viewed. Lupton (2000, p. 73) notes, “The dominant task of modern design theory has been to uncover the syntax of the language of vision”. In this reading, graphic communicators are not so much “communicators” rather they are positioned as visual linguists in line with a Saussurian structuralist reading of language (a reading that has been replaced by post-structuralists from Derrida and Foucault onwards). It is perhaps unsurprising that this position is regarded with sympathy by the graphics’ status quo. The structuralist linguistic theory finds echoes in our working practice. We both seek to form significance from indivisible units of culture that always carry the same values irrespective of the way they are deployed and the audience that is receiving them. Why is this important to graphics? It can be argued that “it works” and that should be good enough. Considering this question makes practitioners uncomfortable. We believe, often with good reason (based on practice, reception by clients and audience) that we have a good working handle on our practice. The difference in legibility between a good typographer and a passable one is quite stunning to those who know. However, even a good typographer is working with sets of historically and culturally biased information. All visual communications designers work with a kind of culturally averaged data (mass culture), as Krippendorff notes “. . . aesthetics as generalization from what large numbers of viewers or readers considered pleasing” (Krippendorff, 2006, p. 208). For example, we have strong historical data to support serifed type forms as being “easier” to interpret/read at smaller type sizes, and more “comfortable” to read in large bodies of text. Traditionally this has been interpreted as showing that the serifs (the small flanges attached to the ends of the letterform) give greater distinctiveness to the letterform: in much the same way as the diacritic marks on Arabic script act as signposts to the exact nature of the character: Typographers and printers traditionally regard typefaces with serifs as more legible than typefaces without serifs. Authors argue that readers prefer seriffed typefaces, read them faster, recognize them easier and that there could possibly be a higher comprehension rate with material printed in these typefaces. There is also the belief that seriffed typefaces assist in a horizontal movement whilst reading, and that the serifs help to distinguish different letters from each other (De Lange et al., 1993, p. 241).

However, focused studies throw doubt on this reading. Researchers studying on-screen typography find that, “Romans and sans serifs were found to be equally legible, as no significant statistical difference was found between the reading speed, scanning speed, accuracy and comprehension . . . ” (De Lange et al., 1993, p. 241)[13]. Which has, in turn, been interpreted as serifed letterforms being more legible to generations brought up reading printed text matter, whereas a younger generation may be more accustomed to screen-based sans serifed forms[14]. So, are we measuring a generalized difference in legibility or an age-based cultural preference? It is tricky to know. Add in the possibility that other factors in the type form may be affecting the reading (there are huge formal differences in reading of the characteristics of typeforms within the broad categories of serifed and sans serifed ). Now add in the effects of composition, color, contrast ratios, size, ambient lighting, gender, cultural and other factors, all factors that effect reading and the value of the original proposition is severely eroded. We have performed a confirmation holism, i.e. The given typographic treatment always carries

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the same value, except in the following circumstances, or in the variations on those circumstances, and on we go towards an infinite number of variables, that leave us off no better than we were before we knew of the typographic treatment in the first place. As Rehe (2000, p. 101) puts it: The majority of (typographic studies) consist of univariate analysis. . . But obviously, in typography, a variety of variables interact. . . For instance, type size, line width, and leading should always be considered together – since these variables greatly interrelate.

When we are working from such unformed sources of evidence is it surprising that graphic communication has trouble disentangling the historic from the cultural, and the cultural from the technically affective? Cybernetics to the rescue? It would be an appropriate time to consider why cybernetics might be cast in the role of guide to graphic communication and what it might expect to receive in return. The force that shapes cybernetics, according to Krippendorff, is search for testable axioms for communication (of all kinds). In talking about such axioms he states: Such a commitment assumes, implicitly or explicitly, the existence of an abstract theory of communication, the formal extension of which leads to theorems that may eventually have a predictive and even prescriptive consequences (Krippendorff, 1969, p. 118).

He further defines cybernetics relationships to other communications fields in the following manner. He defines cybernetics as occupying a privileged position. Being unconstrained by such things as; utility, fact and consistency: . . . the object-constructs of cybernetics represent possible communication theories for all conceivable worlds among which some may be admitted to science according to a criterion of fact. Hence, cybernetics provides the choices for a science of communication which in turn provides the choices for a praxiology of communication (Krippendorff, 1969, p. 121).

And in this reading of cybernetics and it goals we see that cybernetics explicitly excluded itself from working with anything as bound up with the messy “retrospection” of culture and human desire. However, some in cybernetics recognized the problems of privileged observer status. von Foerster (1995, p. 2), commentating on the origins of second-order cybernetics reported: What appears to us today as being most natural to see and think, was then not only difficult to see, but wasn’t even allowed to be thought. Why? Because it would violate the basic principle of scientific discourse which demands the separation of the observer from the observed. It is the principle of objectivity. The properties of the observer shall not enter the description of his observations. . . Translated into the domain of cybernetics; the cybernetician, by entering his own domain, has to account for his or her own activity. Cybernetics then becomes cybernetics of cybernetics, or second-order cybernetics.

As such the mass communications activities of graphic come squarely within the purview of cybernetics: The differing domains, personal (the inner world of personal experience) and public (behaviour manifest to the outside observer) . . . may be contrasted in terms of two key questions: how do we represent within us, and therefore in our conduct, the physical environment and social milieu which exist outside us? Otherwise expressed, how do we learn

to understand or manipulate the external world and to internalize, come to terms with or reject its codes of behaviour? (Cohen, 1971, p. 37).

Visual designers deal with the internal processing of mass culture. In doing so, we leave a trail of public artifice that could be followed to provide feedback on the transmission of a message. Unfortunately, we lack the tools to conduct such observations, cybernetics does. Cybernetics as a field of study could, I am sure, benefit from as large a data set of human responses to stimuli. Visual communication presents a very large data set indeed. One knowledge domain feeds the other. So, cybernetics uncovers principles at the heart of communication that in turn inform visual communication practices, which in a circular fashion informs cybernetics. For a concrete example of a scientific investigation that directly feeds into a designer’s practice (mine) I would like to briefly reflect on Colin Ware’s Design as Applied Perception. This work suggests the possibility for developing “a kind of perceptual and cognitive ergonomics with guidelines for display design based on a model of sensory processing.” In short Ware is attempting to lay ground rules for how humans as a species respond to visual stimuli, with the express intention of improving visual communication design. Although, he starts with the assumption that “there is such an entity as ‘the human visual system’ . . . ” and that “all humans have essentially the same neural visual architecture.” He is not ignorant of the fact that culture impinges on the purity of any reading of the human neural architecture: The human perceptual apparatus is extremely flexible and adaptive. This brings into doubt the basic assumption of common perceptual machinery. At least it suggests that this assumption may not be particularly useful (Ware, 2003, p. 20).

However, he goes on to say: As a broad generalization it can be reasonably be said that as we move up the processing hierarchy (preattentive to pattern perception to objects) . . . the importance of the machinery diminishes and the importance of socially constructed symbol systems increases (Ware, 2003, p. 20).

We can see a degree of confirmation holism creeping in here, but a study of the global output of visual communications design (across a range of cultures) would strongly contribute to the argument. Ware uses emboldening of type as a case study: Often in information display, we wish to highlight some entity and make it stand out from other nearby visual entities. Because size and line thickness are preattentive, the word “entity” stands out from other words in this section, even if we are looking somewhere else on the page (Ware, 2003, p. 15).

This is a wonderful study for a designer to come across. It speaks both to our daily practice and to our historic theories of type. It also prompts experiment into using some of the other preattentive triggers: color, elements of shape and form, motion and stereoscopic depths. Even exceptions to these guides are informative. We might note that Roman and Cyrillic, Hindi and Chinese all make use to some degree of emboldening to draw the viewer’s attention. But, as far as I can discern, Arabic does not. Why? Perhaps, it is because historically Arabic script forms have been reworked to clarify Koranic pronunciation, and thus the typographic forms are quite culturally resistant to casual adjustment. My surmise may be wrong, but the combination of a

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piece of cybernetic theory, working in a graphic communications context has revealed an intriguing question (and would not it be interesting to investigate?). So, when we find an exception or variance to a cybernetic axiom we have an opportunity both to investigate why, and through graphics create a new test bed. Because even though graphics is cultural, culture is driven by biology, which in turn may be read though cybernetics.

1298 Conclusion But, the flow of information about human communication can be made two-way: Creativity, in every sphere, is a species of information-processing in which, so to speak, the processing by man as transducer contributes far more to the output than the information itself. The creative man makes more and better bricks with less straw. He does not have to plod and search every nook, crevice or cranny. He has the knack of eliminating false trails. In short he has a repertoire of heuristic devices at his disposal (Cohen, 1971, p. 36).

The graphic communication community may not be aware of what it does, but it certainly has “a repertoire of heuristic devices” at its fingertips. It might not understand how they function but they know how to deploy them to sway the heart of a viewer. An investigation of the functioning of these heuristic tools might provide insights into the mental processes of both designer and viewer: One of Visual Communicator’s greatest tricks is to “evoke the user’s engagement.” We deliberately give users partial (culturally based) solutions that they have to engage with, by filling in the blanks. They then identify the product/idea with the rewarding feeling of a task achieved (Oren, 1990, p. 472-3).

And by knowing how to engage the user we can encourage them to participate – in vast diverse groupings, and in different modes – with activities that can be read to provide data to the cybernetician. “Persuasive communication is thus typically embedded in more complex communication processes in reference to which the manipulator attempts to reinforce or modify selected patterns” (Krippendorff, 1969, p. 109). By reading the “more complex communication process” in light of the “selected patterns” we can track and gauge both processes and effects. Graphic communication operates on a mass scale, a scale that offers the world’s biggest cultural laboratory. Visual communications designers produce tens of thousands of mass market, small scale and individually targeted products every month. We commonly have designated targets for our various practices, in many cases we have pre-defined measures of effectiveness: did the sales of a product go up, is this edition of the book more popular than the prior one, did many guests turn up at the wedding and did they find the church easily? The cumulative archive of visual communications culture spans Centuries and continents and in each and every case possesses a semantically explicit context. A context that can be contrasted with both its semantically implicit context and its cultural effect (Did it form a successful communication? Did it inspire other communication? Did it become a cultural standard?) The enterprising cybernetics researcher will find this all available, and ready for inspection. Much could be learnt from a study of the cumulative store of visual communications artefacts, by looking for those commonalities present when other factors have been discarded. As Krippendorff (2006, p. 61) puts it “. . . the effects of

artifacts’ meanings can be observed in the contexts of their use provide that their uses could not be explained by physics, habits, or chance”. If an examination could be made of any residual commonality I suspect that both visual communications designers and cyberneticians would gain from any insight. Notes 1. This is not to say that there are no theoretical underpinnings for graphic design, rather that there are some rather old fashioned uses of Semiotics, modeled on a linguistic structural model and some intermittent attempts at scientific empiricism. However, applications of this theory-base operates at the rarefied, upper-levels of the subject. 2. I should like to produce evidence that graphic communication “works” but we do not seem to formally gather this kind of data. Information as anecdote is frequently swapped. 3. As quoted by Jobling and Crowley (1996, p. 1). 4. The circular processes of second-order cybernetics seem to share some characteristics of Lacan’s “Signifying chain” where each semiotic reading engenders another reading. 5. ’The importance of this stratification (into praxiologies of communications, sciences of communications and cybernetics) lies in the fact that the objectifications of cybernetics, being least restricted in aesthetic decisions include those admitted to a communication science and the objectifications of communication science include those admitted to a praxiology of communication (Krippendorff, 1969, p. 121). 6. A regime of signs is Deleuze and Guattari’s term for a discreet body or system of knowledge, i.e. graphic communication is a regime of signs as is cybernetics. “We call any specific formalization of expression a regime of signs. A regime of signs constitutes a semiotic system” (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p. 123). 7. Here meaning, looking to an early twentieth century model of the Auteur-Engineer as its aspirational principle. 8. Here meaning, looking to a late twentieth century model of the popular-culture scavenger. 9. But again, in the spirit of fairness so has Graphics’ own conception of what its role is, is often equally shallow. 10. In the semiotic sense of a sign being a combination of a signifier, an object, and the signified the cultural meanings and associations imposed on the object. 11. Adapted from Shannon’s (1948, p. 2) paper. 12. I have suggested an alternate set of thought tools that tackle the problem of fitness for purpose in Graphics. It will be published in the Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society. 13. These studies should be read with a degree of caution as they tend to only tend to study the effect of single variants. Font but not size, or size but not spacing, or colour but not alignment, etc. 14. Which are commonly used because there are clear problems with using serifed forms on screen. The detail of the serifs are simulated through shading the pixels against the background in a process called “hinting”. Hinting leads to the serifs getting shaded out and lost amongst the pixels at low point sizes. References Barthes, R. (1977), “The death of the author”, in Heath, S. (Ed.), Image, Music, Text, Hill & Wang, New York, NY, pp. 142-9.

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Cohen, J. (1971), “Creativity, technology and the arts”, in Jasia, R. (Ed.), Cybernetics, Art & Ideas, Studio Vista Ltd, London, pp. 24-40. Corning, P.A. (2002), “The re-emergence of ‘Emergence: a venerable concept in search of a theory’”, Complexity, Vol. 7 No. 6, pp. 18-30. Crowley, D. and Jobling, P. (1997), Graphic Design: Reproduction and Representation Since 1800 – Studies in Design and Material Culture, Manchester University Press, Manchester. De Lange, R.W., Esterhuizen, H.L. and Beatty, D. (1993), “Performance differences between times and helvetica in a reading task”, Electronic Publishing, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 241-8. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (2004), A Thousand Plateaus, Continuum Publishing Company, London. Jobling, P. and Crowley, D. (1996), Graphic Design: Reproduction and Representation Since 1800, Manchester University Press, Manchester. Kalman, T. (1991), “Good history, bad history”, in Beirut, M. (Ed.), Looking Closer 1: Critical Writings in Graphic Design, Alltworth Press and American Institute of Graphic Arts, New York, NY, pp. 25-33, Bad History, design review, reprinted as: Kalman, T., Miller, J.A., Jacobs, K. (1994). “Good history/bad history”. Krippendorff, K. (1969), “Values, modes and domains of inquiry into communication”, The Journal of Communications, Vol. 19, pp. 105-33. Krippendorff, K. (2006), The Semantic Turn, CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group, Boca Raton, FL/New York, NY. Lupton, E. (2000), “Visual syntax”, in Swanson, G. (Ed.), Graphic Design & Reading, pp. 73-7. Oren, T. (1990), “Designing a new medium”, in Laurel, B. (Ed.), The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design, Apple Computers Inc./Addison-Wesley Group, London, pp. 467-81. Rand, P. (1985), A Designer’s Art, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Rehe, R.F. (2000), “Legibility, graphic design & reading”, in Swanson, G. (Ed.), Allworth Press, New York, NY, pp. 97-111. Russett, M. (2003), “Knowledge, K is for knowledge”, in Wolfreys, J. (Ed.), Glossolalia – An Alphabet of Critical Keywords, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 169-79. Shannon, C.E. (1948), “A mathematical theory of communication”, The Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 27, pp. 379-423. von Foerster, H. (1995), “Ethics and second-order cybernetics”, Stanford Humanities Review, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 308-19. Ware, C. (2003), “Design as applied perception”, in Carroll, J.M. (Ed.), HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks, Elsevier Science/Morgan Kauffman, Burlington, MA, pp. 10-26. About the author Simon Downs originally studied illustration, illustration of a particularly traditional school. His working practice drew him into the early days of commercial computer aided animation and multimedia in London. Spending over a decade in design practice has generated a huge number of questions about the function and functionality of visual communication: Loughborough University is kindly letting him seek some of the answers. Simon Downs can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Cybernetics and service-craft: language for behavior-focused design Hugh Dubberly

Cybernetics and service-craft

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Dubberly Design Office, San Francisco, California, USA, and

Paul Pangaro Cybernetic Lifestyles.com, New York, New York, USA Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to describe relationships between cybernetics and design, especially service design, which is a component of service-craft; to frame cybernetics as a language for design, especially behavior-focused design. Design/methodology/approach – The material in this paper was developed for a course on cybernetics and design. Work began by framing material on cybernetics in terms of models. As the course progressed, the relevance of the models to design became clearer. A first focus was on applying the models to describe human-computer interaction; later another focus emerged, viewing cybernetic processes as analogs for design processes. These observations led to a review of the history of design methods and design rationale. Findings – The paper argues that design practice has moved from hand-craft to service-craft and that service-craft exemplifies a growing focus on systems within design practice. It also proposes cybernetics as a source for practical frameworks that enable understanding of dynamic systems, including specific interactions, larger systems of service, and the activity of design itself. It also shows that development of first- and second-generation design methods parallels development of first- and second-generation cybernetics. Finally, it argues that design is essentially political, frames design as conversation, and proposes cybernetics as a language for design and a foundation of a broad design education. Research limitations/implications – The paper suggests opportunities for more research on the historical relationship between cybernetics and design methods, and design research on modeling user goals. Practical implications – The paper offers tools for understanding and managing the complicated communities of systems that designers increasingly face. Originality/value – The paper suggests models useful for practicing designers and proposes changes to design education. Keywords Cybernetics, Design methods, Interaction design, Politics, Service Paper type General review

A history of connections between cybernetics and design The influence of cybernetics on design thinking goes back 50 years[1]. Yet, cybernetics remains almost unknown among practicing designers and unmentioned in design education or discussions of design theory. Designers’ early interest in cybernetics accompanied cybernetics’ brief time in the spotlight of popular culture. First-generation thinking on cybernetics influenced first-generation thinking on design methods[2]. And second-generation design methods[3] has many parallels in second-order cybernetics[4].

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1301-1317 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827319

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Both, cybernetics and the design-methods movement failed to sustain wide interest. One reason is that initially each had limited practical application; in some sense, they were ahead of their times and the prevailing technologies. That may be changing. Particularly in the world of design, cybernetics is newly relevant. Ashby (1957) lists as the “peculiar virtues of cybernetics” its treatment of behavior and complexity. Both topics increasingly concern designers, especially those designing “soft” products, those engaged in interface design, interaction design, experience design, or service design. In these areas, where designers are concerned with “ways of behaving” – with what a thing does as much as what it is or how it looks – here, cybernetics can help designers. Design’s shift to service-craft Over the last century, the arc of development of design practice[5] has been from objects, to systems, to communities of systems. Design practice has moved from a focus on hand-craft and form, through an increased focus on meaning and structure, to an increasing focus on interaction and services – what the authors call “service-craft”. Service-craft includes the design, management, and ongoing development of service systems, the connected touch-points of service delivery. Touch-points are where participants interact with service providers or machines, either in person or through communications networks. For an airline, its web site, check-in kiosk, flight attendants, and seats are some of many touch-points. Evenson (2006) describes service as “the experience participants have as they move through a series of touch-points.” For some people, service still connotes menial tasks, e.g. washing dishes. Yet, service systems are at the cutting edge of consumer electronics, e.g. Apple’s iPod-iTunes-Store system or Nintendo’s Wii-online service. Service systems are also the very definition of e-business, e.g. Amazon, eBay, or Google. Kelley (1994), former editor of Wired magazine put it very well: . . . commercial products are best treated as though they were services. It’s not what you sell a customer, it’s what you do for them. It’s not what something is, it’s what it is connected to, what it does. Flows become more important than resources. Behavior counts.

The leading edge of design practice increasingly involves teams of people (often including many specialties of design) collaborating on the development of connected systems, teams of people collaborating in service-craft. The difference between traditional and emerging design practice may be characterized as shown in Table I.

Table I.

Subject Participant(s) Thinking Language Process Work Construction

Hand-craft

Service-craft

Things Individual Intuitive Idiosyncratic Implicit Concrete Direct

Behaviors Team Reasoned Shared Explicit Abstracted Mediated

Of course, hand-craft has not gone away, nor is service-craft divorced from hand-craft. Hand-craft plays a role in service-craft (just as in developing software applications, coding remains a form of handcraft). While service-craft focuses on behavior, it supports behavior with artifacts. While service-craft requires teams, teams rely on individuals. Service-craft does not replace hand-craft; rather service-craft extends or builds another layer upon hand-craft.

Cybernetics and service-craft

1303 The need for new language in design Service-craft is emerging within the context of larger changes. The shift to a knowledge-service economy and the rise of information-communication technology are changing the way we live. The interplay of the two fuels the growth of both, which continues to accelerate. Another revolution is in the making, as sensors proliferate, e.g. Apple’s iPhone includes at least five sensors: camera, microphone, proximity sensor, motion sensor, and touch sensor. And more things have internet addresses; e.g. soon, you may be able to find your car keys by using Google. These changes create opportunity for new products, new businesses, and new types of human activity. They create opportunity for new areas of design practice, but the approach to design that is efficient for a craftsman making individual objects does not scale for teams developing service systems. To take advantage of the opportunities now opening up, designers must develop new tools, new methods, and new language. Service-craft requires new language – language that is not a part of hand-craft. The need for new language in service-craft stems from at least three sources. First, service-craft takes place in teams. Each team member wants to know what to expect and what others expect in return. Communication is key. Process, goals, and measures must be made explicit to everyone on the team. Designers need new language to talk to each other about complex projects. Hand-craft has no such language. Second, services are largely immaterial. They are manufactured at point of delivery. (Sasser et al., 1978) Their essence is more about relationships than entities. In a sense, services are alive. Feedback and dialog (conversation) take on special importance. Designers need new language to help them discuss behavior and how it changes over time. Hand-craft has no such language. Third, systems often reveal only a few facets at one time. Understanding a whole system can be difficult. In service-craft, the final object of design cannot be viewed directly or in total. It must always be viewed in part, often only by proxy or through mediation. Trying to understand the community of systems that make up an online service such as Amazon is difficult, because we have nowhere to stand, that affords a complete view. Looking at Amazon through a web-browser is like looking at Versailles through a keyhole in a gate in the wall around the garden; you have a sense of a few parts but cannot easily grasp the complete structure. And for most visitors at least, the complex plumbing that powers the fountains remains almost invisible. Making matters more difficult, electronic systems change frequently. Designers need new language to represent dynamic systems. Hand-craft has no such language. A language for thinking about living systems is becoming essential for the practice of design, at least in the world of service-craft. Learning a new language increases our repertoire. New words may enable us to think about new ideas. New language may also lead to new ways of “seeing” or to uncovering new relationships between and among elements of a system.

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More words may enable us to make finer distinctions. Our thinking and communicating become more precise – we become more efficient. We can work at deeper levels and take on more complex tasks – we become more effective. Our view of our work and ourselves takes on greater coherence – we become more integrated.

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Cybernetics as a source for new language in design About 40 years ago, in Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Alexander (1964) described the growing role of modeling in design practice. In the last ten years, much of design practice has come to rely on modeling. Designers have begun to develop language for discussing behavior – ways of understanding dynamic systems and visualizing patterns of information flows through systems. Most models found in design practice are highly specific to the situation at hand. Designers rarely view the situation they are modeling as an example of a larger class and thus rarely draw on broader frameworks as a basis for their modeling. To be sure, designers have developed some conventions for modeling, e.g. site maps, application flow diagrams, and service blueprints. But for the most part, conventions for modeling are still not widely shared or well defined within design practice. In design discourse, most frameworks have been “cherry-picked” from the social sciences and semiotics. For the most part, designers have not established a firm foundation or organized systems for their modeling. Buchanan’s (2001) formulation of design within frameworks of rhetoric – “design as rhetoric” – is a notable exception. The authors propose cybernetics as another rich source of frameworks for design practice, similar to the social sciences, semiotics, and rhetoric. We also propose cybernetics as a language – a self-reinforcing system, a system of systems or framework of frameworks for enriching design thinking. The idea that cybernetics is a language is not new. Many have pointed out its value as a sort of lingua franca enabling members of different disciplines to communicate (Ashby, 1957; Pask, 1961; Mead, 1968). What may be new is the idea that cybernetics is a language of design. The authors agree with the claim that “the homomorphism between the two is such that . . . cybernetics is the theory of design and design is the action of cybernetics” (Glanville, 2007). Cybernetic frameworks for modeling what we design Much of design practice comes down to two models: a model of the current situation and a model of the preferred situation. Alexander points out the need to abstract the essence of the existing situation from the complexity of its concrete manifestation. Abstracting the situation makes it easier for us to consider meaningful changes, to find alternatives we might prefer. He also underscores the need to make models visible, to provide representations for ourselves and others to analyze and discuss (Alexander, 1964). Cybernetics offers conceptual frameworks for understanding and improving the things we design. At the heart of cybernetics is a series of frameworks for describing dynamic systems. Individually, these frameworks provide useful models for anyone seeking to understand, manage, or build dynamic systems. Together, these frameworks offer much of the new language design needs as it moves from hand-craft to service-craft.

In their teaching and practice, the authors have found seven cybernetic frameworks to be especially useful. First-order cybernetic system A first-order cybernetic system detects and corrects error; it compares a current state to a desired state, acts to achieve the desired state, and measures progress toward the goal. A thermostat-heater system serves as a canonical example of a first-order cybernetic system, maintaining temperature at a set-point that is the system’s goal. A first-order cybernetic system provides a framework for describing simple interaction. It introduces and defines feedback. It frames interaction as information flowing in a continuous loop through a system and its environment. It frames control in terms of a system maintaining a relationship with its environment. It forms a coherence in which goal, activity, measure, and disturbance each implies the others. This framework is useful for designers thinking about interfaces. It provides a template for modeling basic human interaction with tools, machines, and computers. It also provides a template for modeling machine-to-machine interaction or the interaction of processes running on computer networks (Figure 1).

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Requisite variety Ashby’s (1957) definition of requisite variety provides a framework for describing the limits of a system – the conditions under which it survives and those under which

1. First-Order Cybernetic System Goal . . . is embodied in

describes a relationship that a system desires to have with its environment

output

input subtracts the current state value from the desired state value to determine the error

. . . has resolution frequency range

System Environment can affect the

. . . has resolution – (Accuracy) frequency – (Latency) range – (Capacity)

affects the

is measured by

a Sensor passes the current state value to Comparator . . . . . . . . . . responds by driving an Actuator

Disturbances

. . . may be characterized as certain types typically falling within a known range; but previously unseen types may emerge and values may vary beyond a known range; in such cases the system will fail because it does not have requisite variety

Figure 1.

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it fails. For example, humans have variety sufficient to regulate their body temperature within a fairly narrow range; if we get too cold or too hot, we will die quickly. This framework is useful because it forces designers to be specific when describing systems. It suggests crisp definition of range, resolution, and frequency for measures related to goals, actuators, and sensors. The framework also enables discussion of the validity of goals. What is the range of disturbances we should design the system to withstand? Is the cost of additional variety in the system warranted by the probability of additional variety in disturbances (Figure 2)? Second-order cybernetic system A second-order cybernetic system nests a first-order cybernetic system within another. The outer or higher level system controls the inner or lower level system. The action of 2. Requisite Variety A regulator achieves a goal (preserves an essential variable) against a set of disturbances. To succeed, variety in the regulator must be equal to or greater than the variety of disturbances threatening the system. If this is so, we say the system has requisite variety. Result = EV Preserved (system succeeds—“lives”) Variety in Disturbance Example: A

Result = EV Destroyed (system fails—“dies”) Variety in Response

Variety in Disturbance

Variety in Response

Example: A (No response)

Example: B

Example: B

(No response)

Example: C

Example: C

(No response)

Figure 2.

the controlling system sets the goal of the controlled system. Addition of more levels (or “orders”) repeats the nesting process. A second-order cybernetic system provides a framework for describing the more complex interactions of nested systems. This framework provides a more sophisticated model of human-device interactions. A person with a goal acts to set that goal for a self-regulating device such as a cruise-control system or a thermostat. This framework is useful for modeling complex control systems such as a GPS-guided automatic steering system. It is also useful for modeling ecologies or organizational or social control systems such as the relationship between insurer, disease management organization, and patient. This framework provides a way of modeling the hierarchy of goals often at play in discussions of “user motivation,” which take place during design of software and service systems (Figure 3). Conversation, collaboration, and learning (participatory system) Pask (1975) defined a conversation as interaction between two second-order systems. This framework distinguishes between discussions about goals and discussions about methods, and it provides a basis for modeling their mutual coordination – or what Maturana (1997) called “the consensual coordination of coordination of behavior.” It also distinguishes between it-directed (control in the cybernetic sense of regulation) and other-directed (conversation). Pask also used the framework in discussions of collaboration and learning. Michael Geoghegan wryly observed, “The mouse teaches the cat . . . Of course,. . . the cat also teaches the mouse” (Geoghegan and Esmonde, 2002). This framework is useful for modeling the larger service systems in which many of the products of interaction design are situated. It provides a basis for beginning to model communities, exchanges, and markets, and interactions such as negotiation, co-operation, and collaboration. The conversation framework suggests a sort of ideal: two second-order systems collaborating. Comparing this model of human-human interaction with typical human-computer interaction (HCI) suggests many opportunities for improvement. Recently, the typical framework for HCI might best be described as a second-order system (a person) interacting with a first-order system (a device). Designing second-order software systems to understand user goals and aid goal formation suggests a new way for people to work with computers (Pangaro, 2000) (Figure 4). Bio-cost The notion of bio-cost grew out of conversations between the authors and Michael Geoghegan. We define bio-cost as the effort a system expends to achieve a goal (Geoghegan and Esmonde, 2002). This framework is useful for evaluating and comparing existing and proposed interaction methods. It may be possible to measure bio-cost and thus make notions of “ease-of-use” more concrete. We speculate that the bio-cost framework may be useful in developing key-performance indicator (KPI) systems for evaluating software usability and service quality (Figure 5). Autopoiesis Varela et al. (1974) introduced the idea of autopoiesis or “self-making” to describe processes by which a system achieves autonomy and maintains itself.

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is embodied in

input is embodied in

input

Environment

Observed System

a Sensor passes the current state value to Comparator . . . . . . . . . . responds by driving an Actuator subtracts . . . has . . . has the current state value resolution resolution – (Accuracy) from frequency frequency – (Latency) the desired state value range range – (Capacity) to determine the error

that a system desires to have with its environment

Goal . . . describes a relationship

affects the

Observing System

to determine the error

a Sensor passes the current state value to Comparator . . . . . . . . . . responds by driving an Actuator . . . has subtracts . . . has resolution the current state value resolution – (Accuracy) frequency from frequency – (Latency) range the desired state value range – (Capacity)

that a system desires to have with its environment

Goal . . . describes a relationship

output

is measured by

An automatic feedback system (first-order) is controlled by another automatic feedback system (second-order). The first system is ‘nested’ inside the second.

3. Second-Order Cybernetic System

Figure 3. output

is measured by

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Disturbances

can affect the

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4. Collaboration and Learning (Participatory System) Conversation about goals and methods Participant A

Participant B

Cooperation to achieve goals Participant A

Collaboration for common goals

Participant B

Participant A

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Participant B

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Participants converse about goals and about methods to achieve them (horizontal loops). Internally, each participant checks for consistency in the conversation (vertical loops).

Participants ask each other to help achieve goals by performing necessary tasks (criss-cross). A’s goals and B’s goals may be different, but each agrees to help with the other’s goal.

Example—A: (Upper left to lower right) Would you Example—A: (Upper horizontal) It’s important that I avoid certain food allergies and minimize cholesterol. mind going to the store for me on your way home? (Lower horizontal) So I buy the ingredients and I need some organic cabbage. prepare nearly all my meals myself. B: Sure. Think you can pick up my cleaning from downstairs?

Participants agree to collaborate on the formulation of goals and agree on methods to achieve them. In this sense, they merge to become a single system of goals and actions.In exchange for losing their individuality, they lower their individual bio-cost. Example—A/B: Let’s decide what to make.Then we can go together to the store to buy whatever ingredients we need.

Figure 4.

5. Bio-cost Bio-cost describes the effort (in energy, attention, time, stress) expended by an organism to reach a goal. Value = Bio-gain – Bio-cost

Goal

Gain +

– Cost

Means

Figure 5.

This framework is useful for discussing organizations and communities – how they form and how they maintain themselves. It holds promise for organizational design, which is often a critical component of service design. (The authors are aware of the disagreement as to whether the original, rigorous biological meaning holds for social

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organizations; we find autopoiesis a unique and powerful metaphor for application to design in any case) (Figure 6). Evolution Geoghegan points out that “all evolution is co-evolution” (Geoghegan and Esmonde, 2002). A population changes in response to changes (disturbances) in its environment. In turn, the new population, behaving in new ways, may provoke changes in its environment. Of course, the idea of evolution by natural selection (or natural destruction) precedes the origin of cybernetics as a science, but framing evolution in cybernetic terms expands the scope and value of the earlier frameworks; for example, requisite variety can be seen as a mechanism of evolution and mutations as changes in variety. In addition, framing evolution in cybernetic terms strengthens the set of cybernetic frameworks, giving the whole a certain completeness. This framework is useful for discussing the evolution of services and businesses – and the process of innovation. It casts markets as shaping organizations and companies, ideas and products, by evolutionary means. Speciation occurs as new ideas are put forth; selection occurs as they are adopted (or ignored) (Figure 7). These seven frameworks are useful in a variety of ways, for example: analyzing existing systems; comparing systems which may at first appear very different; discerning and organizing patterns of interaction; and evaluating the way a proposed design fits its context. These frameworks apply at several scales: simple interaction between human and device; interaction among component sub-systems; interactions among people through devices or services; interactions between people and businesses (in the coinage of internet business models, “consumer to business” or “C2B”) and between businesses (“B2B”); and interactions within markets. These frameworks also provide a way to look forward in design and suggest the kinds of research from which design practice – and development of software applications and 6. Autopoiesis Maturana writes, “ . . . living beings are characterized in that, literally, they are continually self-producing.” They contain a set of dynamic transformations that maintain themselves and their boundary. The two arise together, not in sequence.

maintain themselves and a

Dynamic Transformations (Metabolism)

Figure 6.

Semi-permiable Boundary (Membrane)

creates an environment which supports

Cybernetics and service-craft

7. Evolution (in Terms of Requisite Variety)

A B C

A B C

Organism An organism requires variety to counter disturbances from its environment. With sufficient variety an organism will survive long enough to reproduce.

A B D

1311 A B C

A B D

A B D

B D E

Interaction

X Y Z

Generation n

Its offspring will be similar, but some may exhibit changes in variety—mutations. This new variety may be more (or less) effective in countering disturbances from the environment. Organisms that are more effective will survive longer and reproduce faster.

Interaction

X Y Z

W Environment Y At the same time, the environment may also Z evolve, changing the variety of disturbances it poses. Both processes affect each other. Changes in variety in the organism may affect evolution of its environment, and likewise changes in variety in environmental disturbances will affect evolution W of the organism. Y Z

W Y Z

V W Y

X Y Z

n+1

n+2...

services – may benefit. Of particular interest for design research are systems that model user’s goals, systems that help users model and clarify their own goals, systems that facilitate participation, self-organizing systems, and systems that evolve. Cybernetic frameworks for modeling how we design The previous section described the application of cybernetic frameworks to design practice. It emphasized using the frameworks to model existing situations and imagine

Figure 7.

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preferred situations. It focused on using cybernetic frameworks to model what we design. This section focuses on using cybernetic frameworks to model how we design – to model the design process itself. Another way to approach this subject is to think of designing the design process; that is, adapting the design process to its context. Here again, the authors have found cybernetic frameworks to be useful. Cybernetics offers conceptual frameworks for understanding and improving design processes and thus their outcomes. The seven frameworks we described in the previous section can also model the design process. First-order cybernetic system Design is a cybernetic process. It relies on a simple feedback loop: think, make, test, observe – in Shewhart’s (1939) words, “plan, do, check.” It requires iteration through the loop. It seeks to improve things, to converge on a goal, by creating prototypes of increasing fidelity. In Simon’s (1969) words, “Design is devising courses of action aimed at turning existing situations into preferred ones.” Cooper (1999) has called this process “goal directed.” When we design, we try to achieve goals, often by imagining the goals of people we hope will use our products. A model of design as a feedback process applies equally well to design in the traditional hand-craft mode or in the new service-craft mode. In both cases, the designer relies on feedback. What differs is the nature of their prototypes and the degree to which they articulate their goals separately from their product. Requisite variety Design teams, product development teams, or whole companies (as well as individual designers) have variety; that is, they have a set of skills and experience which they may bring to a project. We can evaluate the fitness of a team or even individuals for a task in terms of the variety they bring. Does the team have the variety required to be successful in this task? Of course, to answer the question, we must understand the goals of the task and possible disturbances. Second-order cybernetic system Engelbart (1992) has described a process he calls “bootstrapping” which involves three nested cybernetic systems. Level 1 is “a basic process.” Level 2 is “a process for improving ‘basic processes.’” And level 3 is a process for improving “the process of improving ‘basic processes’”. Here’s an example. Joe’s team is responsible for producing a new widget – a level 1 process. Joe begins holding weekly meetings (Friday afternoon beer busts) at which his team discusses problems – a level 2 process. Implementing ideas from their meetings lowers the widget defect rate. Management asks Joe to share his improvement and decides to mandate Friday afternoon beer busts for the entire company – a level 3 process. John Rheinfrank pointed out the need for three-level systems in creating sustained quality management and building true learning organizations[6].

Conversation Design is conversation, between designer and client, between designer and user, between the designer and himself or herself. Design involves the consensual coordination of goals and methods. Framing design in terms of conversation has broad implications, challenging the designer’s role as expert and casting him or her instead as facilitator – more about these ideas in the next section, “A constructivist view – design as politics.” Bio-cost Pirsig (1974) has written eloquently about “gumption traps,” ways in which people loose the energy necessary to sustain quality work. A gumption trap is a source of bio-cost in the design process. Minimizing gumption traps and other bio-costs in the design process is a critical component of design management. Autopoiesis One of the great challenges facing the design profession is how it can create sustained learning about design practice. In recent years, several universities have begun to grant PhDs in design, but design research is still young and relatively unformed. The feedback systems necessary to sustain it are not yet in place. Designers need a self-sustaining, learning system whose components make and re-make itself: the curricula must contain “the practice” while also capturing processes that learn while also sustaining those that already exist. Inherent in the seven cybernetic frameworks are mechanisms to make such activities explicit for the design community and for the institutions (schools, consulting studios, and corporate design offices) that support it. Evolution The design process is also a process of evolution – artificial evolution, perhaps. Generating new ideas or variations is a form of speciation; the designer’s ideas compete for selection and for the chance to reproduce as a new set of variations in the next cycle of iteration. One of the values of design is its ability to speed up the evolutionary process, which might otherwise have to take place within the market, at some greater risk or higher cost. A few leading design thinkers such as John Rheinfrank and Austin Henderson have begun to discuss designing for emergent behavior and designing for evolution (Henderson, 2003). Still new is the idea that the product of design practice is not fixed, but rather something that will evolve as others use it and themselves design with it. This change may shift designers’ attention from making to what Evenson calls “the making of making” (Rheinfrank and Evenson, 2004). We believe this idea will grow in importance and become a major trend in design. If that happens, frameworks for modeling evolution will be critical. Designers also lack tools for evolving their tools and processes. Progress is slow; innovation is infrequent. Globalization may put pressure on the current environment and force more rapid change. These seven frameworks are useful for modeling how designers design. They suggest ways of modeling existing design practices, facilitate the sharing of practices, and

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provide a basis for analyzing and improving practices. They support the design of design. These frameworks may also suggest opportunities for research about design practice, for example, analyzing the variety of teams and the variety required to act effectively in various situations, identifying sources of friction in design processes, and increasing our understanding of how to design for evolution.

1314 A constructivist view – design as politics The previous section touched on framing design as conversation and hinted at the broader implications of that framing. This section explores some of those implications. The design process is more than a feedback loop, more than a bootstrapping process, more even than a “simple” conversation. An approach to design that considers second-order cybernetics must root design firmly in politics. It views design as co-construction, as agreeing not just on solutions but also on problems. It recognizes what Rittel (1972) called “the symmetry of ignorance” between designer and constituents of a project and argues both share the same level of expertise or ignorance. It views design as facilitation – as managing conversations about issues. For Rittel (1970), the main thing in design was managing the myriad issues involved in defining what a team is designing. His view led to early work in creating issues-based information systems (IBIS), which provided a foundation for more recent research in design rationale, which is still an on-going area of inquiry (Rith and Dubberly, 2007). Heinz von Foerster pointed out the limitations of defining systems in objective terms. von Foerster (1981) asked, “What is the role of the observer?” Rittel pointed out the limitations of defining design in objective terms. Designers often describe their work as problem solving, but Rittel asked, “Whose problem is it?” He showed that the framing of the problem is a key part of the process. He posited agreement on definition of the problem as a political question. And he noted that some (wicked-hard) problems defy agreement, for example, in modern times, bringing peace to Palestine or creating universal health care (Rittel and Webber, 1969). How remarkable that both von Foerster and Rittel reacted to their milieus in the same way, debunking the notion of objective, detached observation, recognizing the subjective and involved nature of our work. Here, second-order cybernetics and second-generation design methods converge (perhaps by coincidence, for we have not established explicit links as with the original cybernetics movement which can be shown to have affected first-generation design methods). Rittel also noted that if design is political, then argumentation is a key design skill. Here is a design theorist with a background in physics and operations research, influenced by cybernetics, concluding design is not objective but instead political and thus rooted in rhetoric. He comes to the same conclusion as Richard Buchanan, who has a background in the humanities. This link is extraordinary. It is an important connection between two different ways of understanding design. It suggests a foundation for moving forward within design practice and design education. A call for curriculum change Our culture is undergoing a change as profound as the industrial revolution, which gave birth to the design profession. The ongoing shift to a knowledge-service economy

and the continuing growth of information-communication technology will profoundly change the practice of design. Design educators need to respond to these changes. Cybernetics can help designers make sense of the complex new world they face. Cybernetics can inform design on at least three levels: (1) modeling interaction – human-human, human-machine, or machine-machine; (2) modeling the larger service systems in which much interaction takes place; and (3) modeling the design process itself. As the founders of cybernetics and the founders of the design methods movement pass away[7], the risk increases that much of what they learned will be lost to future generations. That would be a tragedy. We urge design educators to radically alter the current approach to design education and to adopt a systems view incorporating in their teaching the language of cybernetics – and rhetoric. Notes 1. Nortbert Wiener lectured at the Hochschule fu¨r Gestaltung Ulm (HfG Ulm). Ulm required students to take a course in cybernetics. Herbert Simon noted the relationship of cybernetics to design in Sciences of the Artificial. Stewart Brand recommended books on cybernetics right alongside those on design theory in his Whole Earth Catalog. 2. Two founders of the design methods movement, Bruce Archer and Horst Rittel, explicitly mention cybernetics in their writing on design. Rittel incorporated cybernetics in his courses on design methods at UC Berkeley. 3. In 1972, Horst Rittel proposed a second generation of design methods in “On the Planning Crisis: Systems Analysis of the ‘First and Second Generations’”. He stressed the difficulty of maintaining an objective view of design, and he presented the second-generation approach as an expert-less argumentative process that is inherently collaborative and political. 4. In a 1972 lecture, Heinz von Foerster proposed second-order cybernetics. He noted the role of the observer in describing systems, and he too stressed the difficulty of maintaining an objective view. 5. While design has many similarities to architecture, architectural practice has a separate history, which we will not cover here. 6. Personal discussion, which took place at CMU School of Design in 2004. 7. Gordon Pask died in 1996; Heinz von Foerster in 2002; Horst Rittel in 1990; and Bruce Archer in 2005. References Alexander, C. (1964), Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Ashby, W.R. (1957), An Introduction to Cybernetics, Chapman & Hall, Ltd, London. Buchanan, R. (2001), “Design and the new rhetoric: productive arts in the philosophy of culture”, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 34 No. 3, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. Cooper, A. (1999), The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High-tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity, SAMS, Indianapolis, IN.

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Engelbart, D. (1992), “Toward high-performance organizations: a strategic role for groupware”, Bootstrap Institute, (AUGMENT, 132811), available at: www.bootstrap.org/augdocs/ augment-132811.htm Evenson, S. (2006), “The future of design? Designing for service”, paper presented at Emergence Conference: Service Design, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. Geoghegan, M. and Esmonde, P. (2002), Notes on the Role of Leadership and Language in Regenerating Organizations, Sun Microsystems, Menlo Park, CA. Glanville, R. (2007), “Try again. Fail again. Try better: the cybernetics in design and the design in cybernetics”, Kybernetes, Vol. 36 No. 9/10, pp. 1173-1206. Henderson, A. (2003), “Design for evolution”, paper presented at the HITS conference at IIT/ID in Chicago, available at: www.id.iit.edu/events/hits/henderson_designevolution.pdf Kelley, K. (1994), Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World, William Patrick Books, New York, NY. Maturana, H. (1997), Metadesign, Instituto de Terapia Cognitiva (INTECO), Santiago de Chile, available at: www.inteco.cl Mead, M. (1968), “Cybernetics of cybernetics”, in von Foerster, H. et al. (Eds), Purposive Systems, Proceedings of the First Annual Symposium of the American Society of Cybernetics, Spartan Books, New York, NY. Pangaro, P. (2000), “Participative systems”, available at: www.pangaro.com/PS/ Pask, G. (1961), An Approach to Cybernetics, Hutchinson & Co., London. Pask, G. (1975), “Introduction”, in Negroponte, N. (Ed.), Soft Architecture Machines, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Pirsig, R. (1974), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, William Morrow and Company, New York, NY. Rheinfrank, J. and Evenson, S. (2004), “Adaptive worlds”, A lecture given at the Interaction Design Institute at Ivrea, available at: www.interaction-ivrea.it/en/news/events/2004/ lectures/rheinfrank/ Rith, C. and Dubberly, H. (2007), “Why Horst W.J. Rittel matters”, Design Issues, Vol. 23 No. 1, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Rittel, H. (1970), “Issues as elements of information systems”, Working Paper No. 131, Institute of Urban and Regional Development, University of California, Berkeley, CA. Rittel, H. (1972), “On the planning crisis: systems analysis of the ‘first and second generations’”, Bedrifts Økonomen., Vol. 8, pp. 360-96. Rittel, H. and Webber, M. (1969), “Dilemmas in a general theory of planning”, Panel on Policy Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Vol. 4, pp. 155-69. Sasser, W.E. Jr, Olsen, R.P. and Wyckoff, D.D. (1978), Management of Service Operations: Text and Cases, Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA. Shewhart, W.A. (1939), Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control, The Graduate School of the Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC. Simon, H. (1969), Sciences of the Artificial, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Varela, F., Maturana, H. and Uribe, R. (1974), “Autopoiesis: the organization of living systems, its characterization and a model”, Biosystems, Vol. 5, pp. 187-96. von Foerster, H. (1981), “Disorder/order, discovery or invention”, in Livingston, P. (Ed.), Disorder and Order, Proceedings of the Stanford International Symposium.

Further reading Lindinger, H. (1991), Ulm Design, The Morality of Objects, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Mager, B. (2004), Service Design: A Review, Ko¨ln International School of Design, Ko¨ln.

About the author Hugh Dubberly and Paul Pangaro co-teach a course, “Introduction to Cybernetics and the Design of Systems” in Stanford’s Department of Computer Science. The course introduces cybernetic frameworks within the context of designing systems for human-computer interaction. Dubberly runs a design consultancy focused on information modeling, interaction, and service-craft. Pangaro consults at the intersection of information technology, marketing, and organizational behavior. Hugh Dubberly is the corresponding author and can be contacted at [email protected]

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The dynamics of design Natalie Ebenreuter Faculty of Design, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

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Abstract Purpose – This paper seeks to develop the argument that a cybernetic framework will enable designers to act as an observer and participant in the process of designing. The dynamic nature of the design process will be discussed in order to better understand how these aspects impact on a designer’s ability to act effectively in design. Design/methodology/approach – A second-order cybernetic framework is offered as a means to facilitate a designer’s capacity to act as an observer-participant in the co-creation of a design solution. It characterizes the design process as a conversation to enhance a designer’s ability to conceptually develop novel design solutions in participative situations. Findings – The significance of the designer in the design process and the design solution is established. A second-order cybernetic framework provides an explanation for a designer’s actions by acknowledging their presence in the design process. This makes possible the collaborative development of a design situation and its solution between various participants in this process through negotiation and mutual understanding. Practical implications – It is envisaged that the value of cybernetic concepts as a means to augment interaction, reflection, mutual understanding, creativity and innovation to facilitate designerly ways of knowing, thinking, and acting, is realized. Originality/value – The main value of this framework is for designers who struggle with finding an appropriate framework to facilitate and rationalize the subjective nature of human-centred design methods and the complexity of design. Keywords Second-order, Cybernetics, Design Paper type Conceptual paper

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1318-1328 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827328

Introduction The nature, purpose and process of design are often represented in literature as highly contentious (Carroll, 2003; Dourish, 2001; Margolin, 1995; Rogers, 2004; Suchman, 1987). Once grappled with, the resulting body of knowledge contributes to and impacts various perspectives and practices in a range of design-related disciplines. Because of this, a variety of approaches are demanded of designers and thinkers in this field to equip them to articulate the nuances required to define, describe and contribute to the understanding of design and its practice. This paper discusses the dynamic nature of the design process. It seeks to better understand the combination of design aspects considered necessary for the ongoing process of actually designing. Subsequently, it addresses how these aspects add to the complexity of design, which impacts on our ability as designers to act effectively in the design process. This paper proposes a cybernetic framework as an approach to better understand the designer’s capacity to act as an observer and participant in the creation of a design solution that embraces the social, interactive, functional and interdisciplinary elements of design. The designer has a role that is integral to the design process and its ultimate solution. Because of this, multiple viewpoints and their implications may be considered via a second-order cybernetics design structure. To facilitate this argument,

conversation theory offers a means to reveal and resolve contradictory ideas through a series of interactions. The expanded knowledge that results using this structure assists with the subjectivity of a designer’s experience, knowledge, creativity and capacity to act in an iterative design process. Obtaining a reflexive account of user and stakeholder needs will further develop understanding derived from discussion and mutual agreement to reflect a constructivist perspective. Before an argument can be advanced regarding the benefits of a second-order cybernetics to the design process, it is important that we understand the complexity of the area of design theory and its attendant practices. In this paper, this complexity is dealt with under a series of headings in an attempt to simplify the area. If we accept that the characteristics of design, the act of designing and the nature of design are all complex concepts, then it is possible to see the benefit of the generation of a framework that supports the designer to negotiate and manage this complexity. Characteristics of design Definitions concerning the nature and practice of design are both widely available and numerous (Atwood et al., 2002). As an example of the multiplicity of views that exist within the field of design, Christopher Jones (in Atwood et al., 2002, p. 126) provides us with a definition of design that serves as a means to “initiate change in man-made things.” Alternatively, Simon (in Atwood et al., 2002, p. 126) regards design as a way to manage the objectives of design by “devising courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” While Ehn (in Atwood et al., 2002, p. 126) regards design as “a democratic and participatory process,” this contrasts with Rasmussen and Vicente’s (in Atwood et al., 2002, p. 126) explanation of design as an approach to “creating complex sociotechnical systems that help workers adapt to the changing and uncertain demands of their job.” If it is accepted that this is a limited representation of the available definitions of design, the consequences of this diversity present design theorists and practitioners with an overwhelming variety of theories and methods that can be called upon for the conception, planning and production of design artifacts. The resulting variation in response to design problems further underpins and adds to the reality that global differentiation is evident in the values, culture and circumstance of its peoples. The diversity in which design is considered and practiced resonates throughout the record of design history as a deliberation of its subject matter (Buchanan, 1992) rather than a delineation of its indoctrination. While there is a need for the articulation of design as a discipline in its own right, this is not the specific intent of this paper. Design contributes to the rich cultural fabric of society in the service it offers to enrich the human experience. For this reason, there is a necessity for design to draw upon a variety of established disciplines, not only to demonstrate the academic intellect and rigor of design practice, but also to enable the integration of knowledge from a range of disciplines to increase the potential for successful design outcomes that have a greater impact on society. In doing so, the interdisciplinary nature of design can be effectively augmented without reducing design to a subset of another discipline or elevating it to a position of preeminence over others. Cross (1999) summarizes the complimentary range of activities designers utilize from a variety of paradigms in design practice as “Designerly ways of knowing.” In focusing on “designerly” ways of knowing, thinking, and acting (Cross, 2001) in a

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much broader sense, it is possible to appreciate the benefit a range of theoretical and practical knowledge can bring to the act of designing. By extending the boundaries of design to encompass scholarship from the arts, humanities and engineering fields, designers may utilize the tools necessary to shape human experiences and address the complexities of design practice. Rittel (in Fischer et al., 1996) characterizes design as the simultaneous evolution and understanding of a design problem and its solution. This view emphasizes the continual challenges designers face in specifying and creating form, whereas Scho¨n (1995) takes a more practical approach to designing and focuses on the aspect of making design artifacts. In doing so, the act of designing becomes an interplay or conversation with the items and subject matter of a specific situation. Similarly, Glanville (2002) describes design as a circular and conversational method of creating innovative concepts and artifacts. These descriptions briefly characterize design in a variety of ways that supply us with an understanding of various viewpoints that inform design practice. Therefore, the perspective we bring to the act of designing influences the way we think about, approach and practice design, which directly impacts the design outcome. In view of the diversity in which design is considered, this research is based upon the premise that design is an integrative or transdisciplinary (Margolin, 1996) process of bringing differences together, for the embodiment of a design outcome that enriches the human experience. While this illustrates the manner in which design can be understood, it is necessary to further identify the central elements of design practice that we need to consider, in order to enhance our ability to act effectively in design. This is because the nature of design and the act of designing are intimately connected to how we think about, practice and evaluate design. The act of designing Successful design relies upon the integration of a variety of dynamic components. Individual, institutional, stakeholder and end-user needs and requirements that embody personal and social values are elements of design that require careful consideration. As such, these variables demand that design responds appropriately to variety and choice. This brings limitation and constraint to the design situation that ultimately results in compromise. Petroski (2003) informs us that there is rarely a design outcome that is faultless to a point where it successfully satisfies an amalgamation of competing objectives. Hence, design is not perfect (2003). With this in mind, it is reasonable to assume that the results of designed objects or products do not attempt to represent a perfect resolution of circumstances in a design situation, nor is it possible. The capability of a designer to achieve an effective combination of these elements and produce an outcome that is appropriate, desirable, functional, and usable is dependent upon the approach taken in the act of designing to address these objectives. Literature from the modern movement of design emphasized the creation of design objects from a scientific perspective based on objectivity and rationality (Cross, 2001). Typically, design involves the creation and organisation of materials for a distinct purpose. It involves the invention and formation of novel structures, whereas science generally concerns the discovery of the components of existing structures (Cross, 2001). In support of this, Jonas (1999) suggests the notion that design could be regarded as the

interface between “what is” and “what could be.” While this underpins the creative and innovative nature of design, the aspect of uncertainty in “what could be,” represents a central issue in the conception and planning of design, that being, the difficulty associated with planning and envisioning the unknown, before a final solution is conceived (Rittel and Webber, 1973). Essentially, they are referred to as a “wicked problems.” For the designer, “wicked problems” are intrinsically complex due to the absence of a prescribed formula or solution to their resolution (Rittel and Webber, 1973). This is because the nature of understanding a problem is related to the approach taken to solve it, where the definition of a problem develops into a specification and resulting methodology that will impact upon the direction in which the solution is derived. Dorst (2006) informs us that the capacity of a problem solver or designer to understand a problem directly influences the nature of its wickedness. Therefore, the resulting varieties in which wicked problems are interpreted and resolved render them indeterminable. With this in mind, a specific design solution cannot be said to accurately or inaccurately embody the competing objectives of a design situation when the perspective of the designer, in the act of designing, is a dominant factor in its outcome. The capacity of a designer to manage the development of a design situation, determine a useful combination of knowledge to support its resolution and devise a suitable course of action to achieve this, will directly impact the success of the design outcome. Buchanan (1990) tells us that there are two distinct components to the practice of design. They involve the appropriate conception and planning of a specific type of product and the ability to elucidate the results of its outcome from reasoning or principles (Buchanan, 1990). Similarly, Rittel understood planning as the simultaneous development of a problem and solution (Atwood et al., 2002). To facilitate this process, argumentation is employed as a method of passing judgment regarding the type of design decisions that should be made (Atwood et al., 2002). Fundamentally concerned with design potentialities, dialogue-based planning processes make a shared process of learning, understanding and negotiation possible (Liedtka, 2004). Furthermore, Rittel and Webber (1973) inform us that testing methods based on scientific evaluation, are not equipped to deal with the uniqueness of design problems or situations affected by the dynamic variables of conflicting objectives. Particularly in situations where the consequences of global differentiation and equity issues are considered, efficiency tests as measures of successful design are deemed inadequate (Rittel and Webber, 1973). Therefore, argumentation or communication that supports design thinking and reasoning can be leveraged to facilitate critical reviews of design concepts at various intervals throughout an iterative design process by supporting the simultaneous development of the design problem and solution. Design practices that involve the elucidation of design results provide a way of thinking that facilitates the production of products or artifacts (Buchanan, 1990). This is referred to as design thinking. At its core, design thinking seeks to address contemporary design problems by combining useful knowledge from the arts and sciences (Buchanan, 1992) to assist the development of appropriate design outcomes. There exist four areas of design thinking that encompass the design of: (1) symbolic and visual communications; (2) material objects;

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(3) activities and organized services; and (4) complex systems or environments for living, working, playing, and learning (Buchanan, 1992, pp. 9-10). While these areas are represented as distinct from one another, knowledge used to support design thinking is not mutually exclusive to these domains of design inquiry. Instead, each area draws on a variety of different disciplines to assist their development, which reflects the transdisciplinary nature of design. As a result of this diversity, Buchanan (1992) tells us that the greatest challenge of design thinking lies in our ability as designers to gain insight from the application of design thinking to a variety of problems and situations that benefit the intellectual development of design practice. To illustrate the application of design thinking, I argue that Pask (1969) provides us with an early example of design thinking whereby the introduction of a systems-oriented approach to architectural design prompted the development of a cybernetic theory of architecture and impacted existing design practices. In The Architectural Relevance of Cybernetics, Pask (1969) describes a shift in thinking during the Victorian era that changed the conceptual design of architectural structures by considering their development within a part of the ecosystem of a human society. This was done to overcome the limitations of existing architectural rules and a lack of a prescribed formula to adequately address the problems of the time (Pask, 1969). By conceptualizing a design situation within the context of a dynamic human environment, a new way of thinking facilitated innovative design techniques and enabled evolutionary practices and novelty to enter the design process (Pask, 1969). Furthermore, Pask (1969) postulated the development of five specific areas as a result of this approach, which included the advancement of computer-assisted design procedures and a variety of disciplines that deal with a broad understanding of “civilization,” “city” or “educational systems.” In establishing the architectural relevance of cybernetics, I argue that Pask provides a way to contextualize design in intellectual culture and that this knowledge can be drawn upon to enhance design thinking and develop effective design practices and outcomes. The nature of design Design is a fundamentally human activity (Glanville, 1988). It is inextricably tied to our actions and how we compose our thoughts (Glanville, 1988). Petroski (2003) explains that because design is an implicit part of our daily lives we are instinctively aware of what it entails. The creative exploration and discussion of concepts, the ability to envision future states and facilitating variety and choice, are all characteristics of design thinking (Jonas, 1999). It is how designers build novel ideas. If we accept that design is a fundamental aspect of how we think and act, then we can begin to understand how design thinking can assist designers to conceptualize and account for the constant change of modern day culture to offer innovative design solutions that shape and enrich the human experience. Therefore, by augmenting Jonas’s (1999) notion of design, it is possible to suggest that in the act of designing, the designer is integral to the interaction between “what is” and “what could be.” Again, the subjectivity of the designer as a significant factor in the design process is emphasized,

whereby the perspective of the designer and their involvement in the act of designing contribute to the outcomes of design thinking and working. Buchanan (1990, p. 78) tells us that there are three basic issues in the nature and practice of design: “the subject matter of design; the methods of design thinking and working, and the purposes or goals sought in design.” Throughout the design process, designers experiment, invent, discuss, argue, review and agree on a set of specific circumstances in a design situation. This involves interacting with various users, to gain an understanding of what the design situation is and collaboratively formulate what a desirable solution could be. In actively formulating the components of a design situation (the subject matter) and proposing an approach for its resolution (the methods of design thinking and working), there is a danger that designers construct arguments and explanations for design outcomes that are well suited to the needs and purposes (the goals sought) of the design situation they create (Rittel and Webber, 1973). As a result, the involvement of the designer in the act of designing and the perspective in which they bring to design are therefore key factors that shape the design process. However, in the act of designing, it is necessary for a designer to obtain an objective account of user needs and requirements. In order to avoid constructing a design outcome that satisfies the goals of a design situation, as perceived by its creator, a designer’s ability to consider these needs from an objective standpoint is vital to the success of the design outcome. Returning to the second element of design practice, argument-based reasoning serves as a means to capture user centered research though an exchange of information between the designer and various stakeholders to reach a common goal (Achmad and Haruo, 2003). In this light, design can be seen as a form of conversation in which elements of the design situation are negotiated between two parties to develop a desirable outcome. Hence, the collaborative development of the design situation facilitates the collective learning of required objectives between the designer and stakeholders through a cyclical process of negotiation and mutual understanding. As a result, design becomes a shared or co-creative process, which must consider the designer’s interaction with the participants in the design process and the individual understanding they each bring to the design situation. In the same way that dialogue-based planning facilitates a shared process of learning, understanding and negotiation, conversation theory developed by Gordon Pask serves to make new knowledge explicit through conversation, learning and mutual agreement. Therefore, disciplines that can be leveraged for their ability to include the designer as an observer and participant in the design process, provide a framework in which a designer’s subjectivity may be better understood (Glanville, 1999). I argue that a second-order cybernetics structure, based on a constructivist perspective can enhance design thinking by providing greater insight into the actions and consequences of designing and the designer’s role in the design process. Furthermore, conversation theory can provide designers with a practical method via which the components of a design situation, through discussion, negotiation and mutual understanding can be formulated. A supportive framework As in design, cybernetics can be thought of in a variety of ways. Cybernetic concepts are utilized by a variety of disciplines, which suggests the nature of its

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adaptability as a conceptual framework. Mead (in Glanville, 2004) regards cybernetics as a common language that communicates among many disciplines, while Von Forster (in Glanville, 2002) suggests that the influence of cybernetics and its successful integration into a variety fields renders its utility therefore unnoticeable. Cybernetic reasoning, in the form of second-order cybernetics, can be applied to an almost infinite range of situations, because of its concern with human qualities of communication, collaboration and knowledge creation. Similarly, design thinking can be applied to any area involving human experiences. The range for its application is vast. However, a specific subject matter for design, neither exists, nor is possible. Design is fundamentally concerned with the unknown. As a result, designers are required to create the subject matter of design from their understanding of a specific set of circumstances. As an approach to developing a subject matter for design, second-order cybernetics and conversation theory offer designers a framework to support and enhance design thinking through interaction, conversation, learning and understanding. Second-order cybernetics is essentially concerned with the extent of our knowledge and the manner in which it is acquired (Pangaro, 2006a). Derived from a constructivist epistemology where the world is invented, objectivity and understanding are a result of interaction, mutual agreement and self-reflexivity. Cybernetics offers a theoretical framework in which human-centered design practices that involve collaboration and participation can be effectively modeled. This is achieved by considering the process of design as conversation (Glanville, 1999). Pask’s conversation theory is a dialectic framework that offers a model for the exchange of information through a looped series of interactions (conversation) to reveal and resolve contradictory ideas. Fundamental to second-order cybernetics is the function of an observer. It concerns the manner in which an observer becomes an accepted participant in the act of observing and allows for the subsequent understanding they derive from such actions (Glanville, 2002). Therefore, during the development of a design situation or its subject matter, a designer is acknowledged and accepted as a mutual participant in the act of knowledge creation. In doing so, the designer becomes a necessary element in the development of the design process, and enables them to act subjectively. By interacting with various stakeholders involved in the design process, understanding is created through conversation and mutual agreement. This involvement is interactive and productive, whereby the designer affects and is affected by the interactions in which they participate. However, it is without control or direction. The interaction is circular and represents the culmination of the participant’s interpretations (Glanville, 2001). In support of this, Jones (1992, p. 73) suggests that: Methodology should not be a fixed track to a fixed destination, but a conversation about everything that could be made to happen. The language of the conversation must bridge the logical gap between past and future, but in doing so it should not limit the variety of possible futures that are discussed nor should it force the choice of a future that is unfree.

Through conversation, multiple viewpoints are expressed and internalized by those engaging in the discussion, the result of which is a shared understanding of what is known from that which was previously unknown. Central to this interaction is that participants enter into the conversation with different perspectives and individual understandings that are distinct from any others (Glanville, 2001). Glanville (2001)

informs us that the basic epistemological position of conversation theory requires this form of diversity in order to facilitate interaction, since without difference there is no basis for discussion among participants or the possibility for the reciprocal understanding of something new. For Pask, it is important that in the course of interaction, understandings are not communicated (Glanville, 2004). They are, however, built collaboratively through conversation in which participants derive meaning from their interpretation of the discussion. This new-formed understanding is then offered to participants for further interpretation and comparison to the original, which eventuates in mutual understanding and agreement. Therefore, it can be said that knowledge is constructed from the interactions we create, in which the product of mutual agreement from conversation provides a foundation for what is known (Pangaro, 2006b). When taken as an approach to thinking and working with the subject matter of a design, a designer’s ability to act subjectively, as understood in a second-order cybernetic framework, is integral to knowledge creation. However, when establishing the purpose or goals sought in design there remains a matter of responsibility, which the designer must consider. To avoid satisfying their own sense of purpose, it is necessary for the designer to appropriately consider the implications of their interpretation of the design situation and the intent behind the actions they propose in developing a suitable outcome. Second-order cybernetics is the cybernetics of observing systems as apposed to systems that are observed passively from an objective point of view. In the course of conversation where differences are identified and considered an awareness of self and identity emerge (Pangaro, 2006b). When a distinction is made between self and other in observation, an observer becomes aware of their own identity which enables them to act autonomously and observe oneself (Glanville, 2002). Accepting this, it is possible to act in a subjective manner that includes the observation and interpretation of not only others but also ourselves during conversation. Therefore, it is also possible to reflect upon and consider the observations and actions we propose from our understanding of a specific situation. As a result, the observer becomes personally responsible for the observations they make, their interpretation of these observations and the resulting actions derived from this understanding (Glanville, 2002). In addition to this, Glanville (2001) makes explicit the qualities necessary for a conversation, as he suggests Pask intended it to occur, in a set of operational and inspirational requirements. These requirements describe elements of the procedure and the necessary attitudes of those participating in conversation as prerequisites, for a conversation to be considered successful. Discussion This paper describes the designer’s relationship in the act of designing as an integral element of the ultimate design solution. A second-order cybernetic framework is offered as a means to facilitate a designer’s capacity to act effectively as an observer and participant in the co-creation of a design solution. This is achieved by characterizing the design process as a conversation in which the role of the designer becomes an observer-participant in the conceptual development of a design situation. As a result, a second-order cybernetic framework provides an explanation for a designer’s actions by acknowledging their presence in the design process. In light of this, designers may better understand the complexities of interaction, the actions derived from interaction and the outcome these actions have in the act of designing.

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As an approach to understanding and mutually agreeing upon users’ needs and requirements, conversation theory can be effectively utilized to enhance a designer’s capacity to conceptually develop novel design solutions in participative situations. Furthermore, it provides a method to enhance interaction in circumstances where information garnered from a reciprocal interpretation of shared understandings can provide a foundation for developing the constraints of a design situation. This knowledge can also be leveraged to establish an appropriate purpose or set of goals for the design situation. Through conversation or the act of designing, we as observer-participants create our own meaning from any given situation. When fully understood, we formulate a suitable response to this situation based on the information available to us. As a result, the outcomes we propose cannot bear a particular correctness or incorrectness either in relation to the understandings we derive from conversation, or to the combination of elements we seek to address and challenge. Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that the process of conversation and design share the common elements of interaction, negotiation, agreement and knowledge creation. This involves: . the designer, various users and stakeholders in the design process or conversation; . the construction of new knowledge that participants mutually create and agree upon during conversation; and . ourselves with the elements of design and materials in a circular process of design iteration. However, developing our own meaning during conversation or the act of designing offers little guidance as to the appropriateness of this understanding or the resulting course of actions taken to develop a design outcome. To enhance this process, I argue that design thinking provides a means to facilitate and inform the meanings we construct. This is achieved by integrating useful knowledge from various fields of inquiry to support the development of new productive practices. When employed effectively, design thinking enables designers to introduce evolutionary and innovative ideas into the design process for the advancement of theory and design practice, as exemplified earlier in reference to the development of Pask’s (1969) cybernetic theory of architecture. Without a means to connect useful knowledge to the context of modern day society, the potential for design to effectively enhance the human experience is reduced. Therefore, as a means to facilitate communication and understanding, a second-order cybernetic framework that utilizes methods of conversation theory has the potential to provide designers with a greater understanding of a design problem and its resolution. To support this, design thinking offers a way to expand the intellectual capacity of design and the development of design outcomes. Designers are then able to draw on interdisciplinary knowledge from the arts and sciences to develop plans with action outcomes. Once developed, these plans will provide better solutions for addressing and managing design problems, and their resolution. While it may appear useful to compare and contrast the benefits of a second-order cybernetic framework and conversation theory against other theoretical approaches and methods, Rogers (2004, pp. 131-2) suggests that to do so is not only untenable but also impossible.

In offering a second-order cybernetic framework to facilitate designerly ways of knowing, thinking, and acting it is envisaged that value of cybernetic concepts as a means to augment interaction, reflection, mutual understanding, creativity and innovation, as essential elements of a human-centered design process, is realized. As a result, this may provide designers with greater insight into the discipline of cybernetics and offer an alternative approach to considering their actions in the practice of designing. de Zeeuw (2001) tells us that conversation theory is not considered a theory in and of itself but rather as the study of interactions, to enhance values. Given this assertion, should conversation theory find greater application in the field of design, the potential and understanding of its application as a model for generating novel design solutions through conversation could be further explored. References Achmad, S. and Haruo, H. (2003), “Evaluating the semantic approach through Horst Rittel’s second-generation system analysis”, paper presented at 6th Asian Design International Conference, Tsukuba, October, pp. 14-17. Atwood, M.E., McCain, K.W. and Williams, J.C. (2002), “How does the design community think about design?”, Proceedings of the Conference on Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques, ACM Press, London. Buchanan, R. (1990), “Myth and maturity: toward a new order in the decade of design”, Design Issues, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 70-80. Buchanan, R. (1992), “Wicked problems in design thinking”, Design Issues, Vol. 8 No. 2, pp. 5-21. Carroll, J.M. (2003), HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks: Toward a Multidisciplinary Science, Morgan Kaufmann, Amsterdam. Cross, N. (1999), “Design research: a disciplined conversation”, Design Issues, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 5-10. Cross, N. (2001), “Designerly ways of knowing: design discipline versus design science”, Design Issues, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 49-55. de Zeeuw, G. (2001), “Interaction of actors theory”, Kybernetes, Vol. 30 Nos 7/8, pp. 971-83. Dorst, K. (2006), “Design problems and design paradoxes”, Design Issues, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 4-17. Dourish, P. (2001), Where the Action is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Fischer, G., Lemke, A.C., McCall, R. and Morch, A.I. (1996), “Making argumentation serve design”, Design Rationale: Concepts, Techniques, and Use, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., Mahwah, NJ, pp. 267-93. Glanville, R. (1988), “Keeping faith with the design in design research”, in Robertson, A. (Ed.), Designing Design Research 2: The Design Research Publication, De Montfort University, Leicester, 26 February. Glanville, R. (1999), “Researching design and designing research”, Design Issues, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 80-91. Glanville, R. (2001), “And he was magic”, Kybernetes, Vol. 30 Nos 5/6, pp. 652-73. Glanville, R. (2002), “Thinking second-order cybernetics”, paper presented at the Cybernetics Society 27th Annual Conference, The Cybernetics Society, London, 14 September. Glanville, R. (2004), “The purpose of second-order cybernetics”, Kybernetes, Vol. 33 Nos 9/10, pp. 1379-86.

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Jonas, W. (1999), On the Foundations of a ‘Science of the Artificial’, http://home.snafu.de/jonasw/ JONAS4-49.html (accessed November 12, 2006). Jones, J.C. (1992), Design Methods, 2nd ed., Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, NY. Liedtka, J. (2004), “Strategy as design”, Rotman Management, Winter, pp. 12-15. Margolin, V. (1995), “The politics of the artificial”, Leonardo, Vol. 28 No. 5, pp. 349-56. Margolin, V. (1996), “Global expansion or global equilibrium? Design and the world situation”, Design Issues, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 22-32. Pangaro, P. (2006a), Cybernetics – A Definition, www.pangaro.com/published/cyber-macmillan. html (accessed July 1 2006). Pangaro, P. (2006b), Cybernetics and Conversation, www.pangaro.com/published/cyb-and-con. html (accessed July 1 2006). Pask, G. (1969), “The architectural relevance of cybernetics”, Architectural Design, Vol. 7 No. 6, pp. 494-6. Petroski, H. (2003), Small Things Considered: Why There is no Perfect Design, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY. Rittel, H.W.J. and Webber, M.M. (1973), “Dilemmas in a general theory of planning”, Policy Sciences, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 155-69. Rogers, Y. (2004), “New theoretical approaches for human-computer interaction”, Annual Review of Information, Science and Technology, Vol. 38, pp. 87-143. Scho¨n, D.A. (1995), The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, Arena, Aldershot. Suchman, L.A. (1987), Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. About the author Natalie Ebenreuter is a PhD candidate in the field of Multimedia Design Research at the Faculty of Design, Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia and a 2006 Fulbright Postgraduate Award in Visual Performing Arts. Under the Fulbright Award, she is developing a prototype application at the Ohio State University’s Dance Department that has the potential to enhance dance literacy. Her research investigates systematic approaches to interface design that may simplify complex computer processes and facilitate the documentation of movement. Natalie Ebenreuter can be contacted at: [email protected]

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How to design a black and white box

How to design a black and white box

Stephen Gage The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, London, UK

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Abstract Purpose – Delight, and the possibility that an observer might continually delight in the same thing, is difficult to deal with in a rigorous way. Very little has been written recently about this subject. The purpose of this paper is to offer insights about this vital subject with reference to design work being undertaken at UCL. Design/methodology/approach – It is the contention of this paper that arguments taken from constructivism and second, order cybernetics can help in this. The cyberneticians who have most significantly dealt with cybernetics and physical architecture are Pask and Glanville. They offer significantly different and contradictory insights. Techniques for conceptualising an interactive performative architecture are discussed, based on work undertaken with postgraduate students at the Bartlett Interactive Architecture Workshop, UCL. Findings – Glanville and Pask can be reconciled. When physical architecture can be considered as contributing to physical performance both sets of insights can exist in a common theoretical frame. Practical implications – Designers should consider creating work that contains rich variety and the cues for observer construction, while also offering the possibility of ambiguity where different distinctions are equally possible. It is possible to utilise the differences that arise from changes in the external environment to manipulate the latter. Originality/value – The paper suggests ways of creating places that offer continual delight to their observers. Keywords Cybernetics, Design Paper type Research paper

Introduction This paper discusses some possible ways of physically constructing the world so that the observers who reconstruct what they experience find themselves delighting in what they have made. Although much of the content of the paper derives from academic investigation into the subject area there is a substantial element that is derived from long experience as a practicing designer and a design tutor where student work includes the fabrication of 1:1 objects that interact with each other and their surrounding environments. The paper is written for an audience of designers and cyberneticians. One of the difficulties that I have found in writing is to avoid stating the obvious in one discipline for the benefit of the other. I have not always been able to avoid this. Some cyberneticians will, for example find my observations about the essentially time-based quality of their subject trivial; they should remember that the paper is also written for those who believe that their craft is the creation of objects that exist in a purely three dimensional world.

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Environments that are continually delightful are more than a luxury in the modern world. There is a high likelihood that the people who live in them will cherish rather than replace where they live. People will stay where they are rather than travel. Repeated new building and unlimited travel both have considerable social and environmental costs. They are unsustainable options in the twenty-first century.

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A philsophical interlude This is Vico (as quoted by von Glasersfeld, 1989): Man, having within himself an imagined world of lines and numbers, operates in it with abstractions just as God in the universe, did with reality.

And this is the shorter OED definition of design: . . . (vt) to formulate the plan of (picture building, book etc) in the mind or on paper as a pattern. . . . (n) Purpose, nefarious intention, mental plan, outline or sketch or groundwork or pattern for work at a different scale or material or elaboration.

I contend that these quotations do not just sound similar, they are similar. According to von Glasersfeld, Vico’s essay is the foundation of modern constructivism and from it subsequent philosophers have argued that it is impossible for us to know that stable external reality exists beyond our understanding. We must return to Vico to see how the concept of abstraction depends on an all seeing God operating on “reality”. The counter argument was thought to be sacrilege and was lampooned in a limerick by attributed to Monsignor Ronald Knox as a pre´cis of Bishop Berkeley: There once was a man who said “ God Must think it exceedingly odd If he thinks that this tree Continues to be When there’s no one about in the Quad Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd: I am always about in the Quad and that’s why the tree will continue to be, Since, observed by. Yours Faithfully, God

When this limerick was written the language that it was written in was a known social construct and the Quad (University quadrangle or courtyard) referred to many similar physical constructs that were equally man made. Only the tree was “natural”. At the start of the twenty-first century even the tree can be genetically engineered – and be equally man made. Most of us live most of our day to day lives in a man made “reality” and this man made “reality” has been “designed” by someone or another at some point in the past. A substitution can now be made in Vico’s statement: Man, having within himself an imagined world of lines and numbers, operates in it with abstractions, just as Man in the everyday world does within Reality.

It is this everyday constructed world that von Glasersfeld urges us to cherish: Throughout the 2,500 years of Western epistemology, the accepted view has been a realist view. According to it, the human knower can attain some knowledge of a really existing world and can use this knowledge to modify it. People tended to think of the world as governed by a God who would not let it go under. Then faith shifted from God to science and the world that science was mapping was called “Nature” and believed to be ultimately understandable and controllable. Yet, it was also believed to be so immense that mankind could do no significant harm to it. Today, one does not have to look far to see that this attitude has endangered the world we are actually experiencing. If the view is adopted that “knowledge” is the conceptual means to make sense of experience, rather than a “representation” of something that is supposed to lie beyond it, this shift of perspective brings with it an important corollary: the concepts and relations in terms of which we perceive and conceive the experiential world we live in are necessarily generated by ourselves. In this sense it is we who are responsible for the world we are experiencing. As I have reiterated many times, radical constructivism does not suggest that we can construct anything we like, but it does claim that within the constraints that limit our construction there is room for an infinity of alternatives. It therefore does not seem untimely to suggest a theory of knowing that draws attention to the knower’s responsibility for what the knower constructs.

This is the world of the practicing architectural designer whose work extends from the designing of places to the making of these places, and it is here that a study of second order cybernetics can help elucidate some apparent contradictions and help designers to formulate some novel propositions. “Black boxes, grey boxes, white boxes and trivial machines” The metaphor of the black box was, according to Ashby, invented by James Clerk Maxwell to describe a mechanism that could only be understood by comparing its inputs with its outputs and inferring a constant relationship (Glanville, 1982). Once this relationship has been established the black box becomes “whitened”. The whitened black box is isomorphic with von Foerster’s (2002) metaphor of a “trivial machine”. Von Foerster has two definitions that sit inside each other: (1) A trivial machine is an explanation of external reality which works every time. (2) A trivial machine is a thing with predictable behaviour in the external reality. In von Foerster’s terms (2) is an embodiment of (1). Designers who go on to make things usually attempt to produce physical “trivial machines”. These machines are usually thought of as being white to their designers, initially black to their observers/users, becoming grey through observation and use. The process of design and making is one of creating something new, from a newly created pattern. It therefore addresses the issue of novelty (and the issue of invention). Glanville (1999) has written extensively about this process and how the designer sets up a conversation (Pask, 1969) between herself and herself to allow for novelty to emerge in a complex process of discovery. Testing I do not intend to discuss the overall nature of this process in this paper. Glanville argues that the subject can only be understood using concepts that sit at the heart of

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second order cybernetics; there are however peripheral issues that arise when a design is “tested” before it is physically realised that are relevant to this paper. This process involves placing hypothetical objects (designs) in a hypothetical world – a construction that describes aspects of the physical world – to see whether the design “works”. There is often a driving need to know. An easy way of envisioning this process is to imagine a three dimensional design proposal (in a computer graphics system) tested by a finite element structural analysis programme. A process analogous to structural evolution can take place “in silico” as the hypothetical structure is refined to accommodate the hypothetical stresses that are placed on it. There has to be a very close match between the behaviour of the hypothetical structure and the “real” as built structure – lives are at stake if something goes wrong. The structural analysis programme contains our understanding of the properties of materials and many concepts from classical physics. Cyberneticians will recognise that this aspect of the design process is analogous to feedback control. Many designers work in fields that are distant from direct human use and occupation. The design of a complex and novel servo mechanism to be imbedded into a submersible robot does not require much reference to human end-users/observers. End-users are very important in architecture. The designer’s hypothetical “white box” is no longer white when hypothetically occupied, because sitting inside it is a black – or at best grey box – called a user. In order to understand how her architecture is going to work, the designer must construct her potential audience, the observer/occupants of a space or building. There have been many, often useful, attempts to describe building users as trivial machines. Some of the most valuable partial descriptions are based on line of sight rules and have come from Hillier and Hanson (1984). These are aggregated under the title “Space Syntax”. Other descriptions are based on operations and anthropometric research (Archer, 1966). These descriptions contain predictions about observer behaviour presented in the form of traditional scientific paradigms. I think that it is plausible that the authors of these descriptors loose sight of the fact that they are often describing the way that particular social constructs operate and forget that these constructs can often be made and remade by the subjects that are being observed, including the authors. It is particularly difficult to construct a trivial machine that seeks to address the issues of delight and wonder that are an essential part of an observer’s enjoyment of architecture (Gage, 2006). As a result most designers use themselves as a point of reference to test whether a hypothetical design is delightful. They are essentially delighting in their own construct and hopeful that others will be able to construct it for themselves and be equally delighted. The hope is that observers will undertake an enjoyable investigation to find the inherent consistencies and abstractions that have been embodied into the physical object, to whiten the black box for themselves. Is there an alternative to this approach? Wonder and delight I have argued elsewhere that the wonder and delight that we sometimes find in architecture is a result of a process of learning, of constructing a trivial machine which “explains” the place that we are inhabiting (Gage, 2006). This is an active process driven by the observer. How might the designer construct the places that facilitate this process?

The process is time based and occurs as the observer builds up more and more clues about the place that she is in. In architecture this can occur as an observer scans a fixed scene – or travels through a scene seeing different parts of it in a sequence – or is presented with a scene that changes. The observer is abstracting what she is sensing. She will start by placing an earlier construct onto the experience to see whether there is a fit. The activity of placing an earlier construct, “one I made earlier” onto current experience both speeds up the abstractive process and allows us to be fooled by illusion (and illusionists). Spatial designers have a lot to learn from stage magicians and perceptual scientists about illusion. Both argue that we visually construct our worlds in predictable ways as a result of common experience (Fitzkee, 1945; Purves and Beau Lotto, 2003). Because we construct our understanding of shape, depth, size and colour in much the same way we can be reliably fooled in certain circumstances. Or to put it another way, if we wish to facilitate the construction of a particular interpretation then we have the possibility of putting a selection of trivial machines derived from stage magic and perceptual science into our tool box. This must be done with caution: Beau Lotto is a vision scientist. He argues that the difference between a genetically embedded and a socially learnt visual construct is not significant in the context of observed behaviour. When we propose to design and make novel things that are parts of novel social constructs this difference is very important. The constructs that we seek to facilitate are part of worlds of cultural interpretation, pattern and social experience. In this context, the “one that I made earlier” is a construct that can be particular to a group of people who are particular in both space and time. These constructs do not necessarily come from the physical experience of other places. They can just as easily be taken from paintings, books, films, video and television. In some situations the designer aims to facilitate a direct process of mapping (Disneyland is a good example). In this context, the designer’s role is to physically construct an illusionary world that is both consistent with itself and with a known set of prior constructs. This is not an easy task when the prior constructs are established by looking at animated movies. Pask It is more usual for the designer to create a place that is not directly related to predictable prior constructs, often as part of a wider performative system (see below). Pask (1971) argues that this type of environment, if it is to be stimulating must offer cues for interpretation. Our question is, how precise should these cues be given that different observers will over time bring different prior constructs to their experience of the place that is being designed? Pask (1975) suggests that the environment we create in these circumstances should result in an “entailment mesh” where all the dependencies are clearly articulated and defined, where the observer can unambiguously reconstruct the designer’s initial construct. Another approach is to enjoy the prospect of ambiguity – creating a construct that can be reconstructed in different ways at different times by other observers.

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Glanville I can find only one cybernetician who enjoys the prospect of ambiguity (Glanville, 1995). Glanville describes how ambiguity can occur as a result when different distinctions are equally plausible. He writes this in the context of design. Many of Glanvilles examples come from Richard Gregory. These are optical “illusions”. It is also possible for a designer to use the effects of natural lighting and weather systems can change appearances to a point where the observer reconstructs the world that they are in on every visit. This is time based ambiguity. Many UK readers will have seen similar effects at the recent Eyes, Lies and Illusions exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. I argue elsewhere that this extends the possibility of delight and wonder in the observer and that a populated continually changing environment is a non-trivial machine in von Foerster’s terms. If Glanville is correct then one of the larger contributions that design could offer to cybernetics is to suggest that environmental systems that can be constructed to be ambiguous are enjoyable and possibly culturally essential in the long-term. Variety Variety offers the possibility of complex construction. Pask (1971) argues that an aesthetically potent environment should offer the observer variety – but that excessive variety will “swamp” the observer. Pask’s variety is different from Ashby’s (1956) requisite variety. Ashby looks to requisite variety in a control system so that environmental perturbations can be controlled. The implication is that environmental variety is undesirable. Pask’s variety is closer to variety in an information transmission system which seeks to maximise the possible range of information that can be carried. In this context, environmental variety is desirable. But Pask’s variety is not quite that either because in his terms the “interpretive cues” suggest that a message is being sent. Pask is talking about difference and novelty – to stop the observer becoming bored. If we look at this type of variety as observers what do we see? I believe that we see complexity rather than ambiguity. Pask would like to offer us the possibility of constructing a complex series of relationships out of what we experience, finding an involved and possibly highly decorative “reality”. I do not consider Glanvillian ambiguity and Parskian complexity to be mutually contradictory. It is a considerable challenge to imagine physical constructs that could be reconstructed by observers in both of these ways although some buildings and landscapes from the eighteenth and nineteenth century suggest that it can be done; their designers made a point of incorporating the “wildness” of nature into the designs which also contained formally arranged and lavishly detailed buildings of considerable complexity. Wild nature was thought to be sublime and the subject of very different individual interpretation. Performance Rosenbluth et al. (1943) described the nascent study of cybernetics in four dimensions, where the fourth dimension is time. However, many architects equate the production of architecture with the production of objects, it is, after all, what they are paid for. An effort of will is required if we are to regard the built environment as part of a time based set of observer experiences, that also include other observers. Once this step is made it is but a short further step to view parts of the built environment as being part

of a wider set for performances. It is the concept of performance that allows us to travel between the ambiguity of Glanville and the rich complexity of Pask. Both are, for example over time possible in the same setting. The interactive architecture workshop The possibility that parts of the built environment could contain inanimate moving elements that change and transform the place that they are in has fascinated many architects and is one of the drivers behind the Bartlett Interactive Architecture Workshop (Gage, 2002). I argue that these elements can enhance architecture that is constructed to be part of a performative system. We can describe many parts of the built environment as performative systems with settings, and movable physical props supporting a social performance. Hospitals, courts, churches, shops and restaurants are all good examples of this. The major players in these systems are people – who are either “active” observers in or “passive” observers of the system. This distinction is discussed in my papers (Gage, 2007a, b). Movable physical props have been around for a long time – since the invention of furniture, doors and curtains. Automata More recently (about 2,000 years ago) spaces were animated by automata usually in the form of fountains. About 500 years ago public and private spaces were animated by automata in the form of clocks with moving figures. There is a very good example in the Old Town Square in Prague. The punched card and metal systems that controlled weaving machines and Babbage’s original calculating engine also drove complex automata and automatic musical instruments in the nineteenth century. The idea that objects can be performative in their own right is not new. Performing objects like performing people can grab a lot of attention; when they are sufficiently large or noisy they can significantly alter an environment. Intelligent objects Over the last 50 years the sophistication with which they can be activated and more importantly controlled has developed exponentially. It is now possible to construct environments containing significant inanimate players that show signs of primitive intelligence. From the observer’s point of view there are two classes of these machines. One class of machines responds to changes in the “environment” – a kind of non-human “natural” world. The other class of machine responds to what people are doing, either directly or indirectly. We can think of the former as “doing their own thing” and the latter as “attending to us as people”[1]. Machines that interact with the environment can be thought of as “picturesque machines”. The simplest machines of this type respond through directly analogue mechanisms. A wax cylinder greenhouse ventilator opener is a good example. When the weather is warm the wax in the cylinder expands, driving a piston that opens the ventilator. Devices that are not much more complex can operate shading devices. Can simple devices like this be seen with wonder and delight? I think that they can be constructed in this way – the mechanism is not significantly different from the

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biological system that drives a crocus to open in the early spring morning sunlight. It is, however, very hard to begin to understand why a crocus opening in the sunlight should be delightful to so many people. What are they constructing? It is plausible to imagine that they are reconstructing their memory of spring days in the past, or their memory of advertisements aimed at children based on the romantic ballets of the mid-nineteenth century, or possibly more recent speeded up documentary films of flowers opening, or a mixture of all of these taken into a delicate dynamic abstraction of coloured stars? Complex environments can be created when performative objects interact with each other, where the signal from one object affects the behaviour and signal from another. Analogue and digital devices of this nature can work without internal feedback generating complex and sometimes chaotic patterns of behaviour. How does the observer view these? Pletts (1997) argues that devices of this nature can only be reconstructed in forms of moment to moment stability – that observing them is rather like gazing into fire or gazing at the sea. Sensors and computation More complex devices rely on sensors and simple computation to ensure that a desired state is reached. Haque (2004) has demonstrated just how inexpensive these digital components can be today. These objects show complex behaviours when they interact with each other. It is not surprising that Gordon Pask’s installation “a colloquy of mobiles” at the ICA in 1968 should contain analogue devices that performed in a similar manner. Observer interaction Pask encouraged observer interaction with his devices, arguing that the observer was entering a discourse with them by modifying the interaction between them. Perhaps, we can simplify and generalise this interaction further. It is impossible to imagine the direct experience of physical architecture without imagining the use of the body as part of an investigative tool, something that moves through, sees, hears and smells the place that it is in (Gage, 2006). When we observe a child scaring a flock of pigeons with a stick we see someone trying to understand a complex moving system by trying to get a reaction out of it. On observing a moving system one of the first questions that we ask is “does it move independently of us?” The child is using his movement as a tool to construct the world that he is in. We often construct dynamic systems where observer intervention is not possible. When these consist of simple linkages, as in the great clock at Prague or in a sequential mime we hope that the observer constructs a narrative. We hope that they will seek to construct personalities in the moving objects that they observe. Some of the most extraordinary recent work in this area has been done by the German Artist, Rebecca Horn. When, as in Pask’s mobiles we can intervene in an interaction between goal seeking objects the possibility of an observer constructing an observed personality is stronger. The observer enters into one-half of a non verbal conversation. The goal seeking object, in sensing the observer and changing its behaviour crudely enters the other half.

Constructing a personality So how does the designer go about making these things? It is clear to me after seeing the work of a succession of Bartlett students that the most effective way of doing this is for the designer to construct the “personality” of the object in the hope that this will be reconstructed by the observer. The constructed personality can be given by an object’s shape and behaviour, especially the latter. Behaviour that is choreographed to resemble the movements of people and pets, both in the structure of the movements and their realtime speed, appears to be recognisable. The scale of objects relative to the observer appears to be significant, with objects at or just larger than human scale commanding respect and distance. Habituation and amplification If there is a problem with this kind of work it is that once we have a working construct about an interactive object in our world we can often ignore it. It is as if the conversation bores us. Of course, if we anticipate a payback from the interaction, for example a learnt skill, we will stay interested for longer. Many effective installations take the interaction one stage further, to a point where the behaviour of the object with which we are interacting significantly affects our perception of the space that we are in. This is a process of amplification. An object that can dim the lights or open the shutters has considerably more power than one that can merely wave its arms. We can see this in spaces where the agency is human. A notable historical example exists in the Picture Gallery at Sir John Soane’s Museum where the action of opening a series of shutters finally constructs a complete transformation of the space and vista. Bartlett student work, especially that of Jason Bruges, Ernie Lew and Luke Olsen suggests that an interactive environmental system can be designed to respond to human presence in a clearly purposeful yet ambiguous manner. It remains to be seen whether it is advantageous to incorporate a definable interactive object (or objects) into this. I think that it probably is a good idea to use objects of this nature to “personalise” space so that it can be constructed in an animist manner. Ranulph Glanville argues that the inversion of a mechanical metaphor is crucial to understanding both second order cybernetics and recent developments in design theory. Cybernetics, especially in its original version, dealt with definable examples which it defined, modelled and then controlled (in the cybernetic sense). It was concerned with clear cut states. Being able to define states and their causal relationships is one way of describing classical physics, and abstracting it to this level is one reason cybernetics is (like maths) both a subject and a meta-subject at one and the same time. This assumption is essentially the assumption in Sulivan’s dictum as sloganised by the modern movement that “Form follows function”. This was one reason that design methods and first order cybernetics were such natural bed fellows, for both wished to use the machine as the metaphor for the animal (to quote Wiener’s sub title): whereas second order cybernetics can be thought of as moving to the metaphor in which the animal stands for the machine. This work has a very serious side. We are, as von Glazerfeld suggests, responsible for the world that we are experiencing. The built environment generates nearly half of the CO2 that is pumped into the atmosphere over the UK each year. Tourism generates a significant additional percentage. It is this author’s view that the twentieth century

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built environment (form follows function) can only, in the most part, be constructed by its observers to be unambiguously dull and boring. No wonder we want to get away from it. The same environment has been designed to incorporate a plethora of homeostats that modulate the consumption of energy in order to maintain local set point environmental conditions. In an attempt to construct and control a mechanistic environment we have constructed something that is unsustainable. I think that we must now construct environments to contain voices that speak for global stability, however silly they may at first appear. I describe some of these in my paper “Edge monkeys” (Gage and Thorne, 2005). We do not have much time. Our overall design challenge is to construct events and places that can be constructed (by their observers) to be sybaritic, interesting and delightful while they consume very limited non renewable resources. This is a considerable challenge and one that can only be met by design and a top to bottom reappraisal of “Control in communication in the Animal (us) and the Machine (us again)”. Note 1. It is also possible to envisage devices that combine aspects of both. References Archer, B. (1966), Activity Data Method: A Method of Recording User Requirements, HMSO, London. Ashby, R. (1956), An Introduction to Cybernetics, Chapman and Hall, London. Fitzkee, D. (1945), Magic by Misdirection, Lee Jacobs Publications, Pomeroy, OH. Gage, S. (2002), “Heinz von Foerster is a member of the Viennese magic circle”, in Spiller, N. (Ed.), Architectural Design: Reflexive Architecture, Wiley, New York, NY, Vol. 72 No. 3, Spiller, N (Ed.), pp. 80-8. Gage, S. (2006), “The wonder of trivial machine”, Systems Research and Behavioural Science, Vol. 23, pp. 771-8. Gage, S. (2007a), “The boat/helmsman”, Technoetic Arts, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 15-24. Gage, S. (2007b), “Constructing the user”, Systems Research and Behavioural Science, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 313-22. Gage, S. and Thorne, W. (2005), “Edge monkeys-the design of habitat specific robots in buildings”, Technoetic Arts, Vol. 3 No. 3, pp. 169-79. Glanville, R. (1982), “Inside every white box there are two black boxes trying to get out”, Behavioural Science, Vol. 12. Glanville, R. (1995), “The cybernetics of value and the value of cybernetics etc”, in Glanville, R. and de Zeeuw, G. (Eds), Problems of Values and (In)variants, Thesis Publishers, Amsterdam. Glanville, R. (1999), “Researching design and designing research”, Design Issues, Vol. 15 No. 2. Haque, U. (2004), “Low tech sensors and actuators”, available at: www.haque.co.uk Hillier, B. and Hanson, J. (1984), The Social Logic of Space, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Pask, G. (1969), “The architectural relevance of cybernetics”, Architectural Design, September.

Pask, G. (1971), “A comment, a case history and a plan”, in Reichardt, J. (Ed.), Cybernetics, Art and Ideas, New York Graphic Society Ltd, Norwalk, CT. Pask, G. (1975), Conversation Theory, Hutchinson, London. Pletts, J. (1997), “Gazing at the sea”, unpublished dissertation, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, London. Purves, D. and Beau Lotto, R. (2003), “Why we see what we do: an empirical theory of vision”, Sinauer Associates Inc, Sunderland, MA. Rosenbluth, A., Wiener, N. and Bigolow, J. (1943), “Behaviour, purpose. and teleology”, Phil. Sci., Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 18-24. von Foerster, H. (2002), “Perception of the future and the future of perception”, Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition, Springer-Verlag New York Inc., New York, NY. Further reading von Glasersfeld, E. (1991), “An exposition of constructivism: why some like it radical”, in Klir, G.J. (Ed.), Facets of Systems Science, Plenum Press, New York, NY, pp. 229-38. About the author Stephen Gage’s professional career spans the design and construction of buildings, academic teaching and research in government, private practice and academic contexts. He currently co-ordinates the technical aspects of design research at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London and is a founder member of the Bartlett Interactive Architecture Workshop. His many published buildings are recognised as leaders in their field. He describes his current research as follows: “My long experience as a designer has sustained an interest in the way that the technology of building can subtly modifying the external environment. My other area of research comes from a long-standing interest into the time-based aspects of architecture that relate to human occupation and building use and takes forward an early interest in cybernetics and building brief writing.” Stephen Gage can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Ray Ison, Chris Blackmore, Kevin Collins and Pam Furniss Open Systems Research Group, Systems Department, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK Abstract Purpose – This paper was written for a special issue of Kybernetes devoted to cybernetics and design. It aims to focus on case studies that are both informed by cybernetic and systems thinking and constitute a form of second-order design praxis. Design/methodology/approach – The case studies exemplify reflective practice as well as reporting outcomes, in terms of new understandings, from an action research process. Findings – The paper describes what was involved in course design, from a cybernetic perspective, to effect systemic environmental decision making as well as developing and enacting a model for doing systemic inquiry (SI), which enabled situation-improving actions to be realised in a complex, organisational setting. The paper lays out the theoretical and ethical case for understanding first-and second-order designing as a duality rather than a dualism. Research limitations/implications – There is a danger that readers from an alternative epistemological position will judge the paper in terms of knowledge claims relevant only to their own epistemological position. Practical implications – The main outcomes suggested by this paper concern the possibility of transforming the current mainstream identity of educators, project managers and researchers to a position that offers more choices through both epistemological awareness (and pluralism) and the design of learning systems, including SI, as second-order devices. Originality/value – The case studies are based on both novel settings and theories in action; the concept of the learning systems as both a design and systemic practice as well as an epistemological device is novel. The paper is potentially of relevance to any practitioner wishing to use systems or cybernetic thinking. It is likely to be of particular relevance to education policy makers and public sector governance. Keywords Cybernetics, Research, Learning, Decision making Paper type Case study

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1340-1361 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827346

1. Introduction This paper is about the design of learning systems for environmental decision making (EDM) and the extent to which these learning systems reflect cybernetic traditions of understanding on the part of the designers. By environment we mean that which surrounds, affects and is affected by an entity, whether group or individual (Blackmore, 2005). Thus, EDM is decision making in which the systemic nature, or pervasiveness, of the environment, is considered along with other factors. In this paper, we use two case studies to exemplify what we mean by the design of learning systems: one from scholarship associated with course design at the UK Open University (OU) (Blackmore and Morris, 2001; OU, 2006) and one from research funded by the Environment Agency (EA) of England and Wales. This research project entailed a systemic inquiry (SI) into the use of social learning (SL) in river basin planning (RBPlg),

which is part of the EA’s responsibility in implementation of the European Water Framework Directive – WFD (Collins et al., 2005). A common design consideration in both cases has been our concern to create the circumstances for capacity building in systemic EDM. As authors a common concern we have is how to design the circumstances for systems practice in situations of complexity, uncertainty, connectedness, conflict and multiple perspectives (SLIM, 2004a). In such situations we are particularly concerned with developing competence for systemic EDM, including managing for emergence. It is a particular type of emergence, experienced as concerted action among multiple stakeholders, which we call SL (Ison et al., 2007; Blackmore, 2007; Collins et al., 2005). Within this framing systemic EDM is a particular form of “systems practice”. In the paper, we begin by describing our history and context, then account for ourselves as “designers” before exploring how starting off systemically in EDM was conceptualised. Our concern for the design of “learning systems” in the case studies and the extent that this has enabled new insights and practices to emerge, is then explored. These reflections enable us to posit new connections between “systems practice” and “design practice” based on cybernetic understandings. We conclude by examining how re-thinking roles as designers of “learning systems” and situations as if they were “learning systems” can enhance systemic environmental decision-making and facilitate SL. 1.1 History and context Both of our case studies are a product of our particular history and context as practitioners/designers. Our setting is different to other, traditional, university settings. The OU is a distance teaching university that has pioneered supported open learning (i.e. open entry, and tutor support for learners). It is a significant innovation in UK higher education and has pioneered the creation of a unique learning experience that combines high quality with low unit cost (Daniel, 1996). Moreover, it has demonstrated that open learning is popular with adults. It is the UK’s largest university with over 200,000 learners; since 1971 it has taught over two million people of whom 325,000 have gained a degree. Currently 27 per cent of all UK part-time higher education students study with the OU. Provision of distance-taught post-graduate courses and PhD provision (in a traditional mode) have expanded since the OU was established. An OU course has traditionally been developed by a multidisciplinary project team costing from £250,000 to over £1 million to produce. Each “course project” is a good example of applied R&D (Ison and Russell, 2000a, b), even though many of the design parameters are preordained. This requires team work and project management skills. Although not yet a common view it can be argued that OU academics are designers and developers of “learning systems” rather than simply producers of courses (Ison, 2000). Our praxis continues to evolve under joint pressures of competition from other providers and new technologies for design and delivery of material and mediation of learning. Just as the OU has embodied changing conceptualisations of learning systems so similar opportunities arise in many public policy contexts. The European WFD is innovative legislation which has created a new basis for managing water (Kaı¨ka, 2003). Within the WFD it is the ecological status of water that is to be managed in a series of three cycles, or iterations, each of nine years starting with characterisation of all

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waterways and finishing with enacting programmes of measures. This contrasts with the historical focus for water management which was on the chemical or physical quality of water accompanied by engineered structures. As we argue elsewhere, just what constitutes good ecological status cannot be known objectively so water and river catchment, or basin, management becomes an arena for a performance between multiple stakeholders, i.e. a design setting characterised by multiple feedback processes and emergence with no simple means of control (SLIM, 2004a). 1.2 Traditions of understanding It is difficult enough in a multi-authored paper, let alone a whole special issue, to take responsibility for articulating the different traditions of understanding out of which we each think and act (Russell and Ison, 2000). Because of our own unique histories our different traditions are inescapable; recognising this we can, however, take responsibility for articulating the intellectual lineages which inform our explanations and practice, recognising that this will never be a full accounting. We make this point because, following Krippendorff (1995, p. 138), we now understand “design” “to be constituted (that is, defined with) in processes of languaging” and “is foremost conceptual and creative of future conditions”. From this perspective: . . . it calls on us to recognize and act in the awareness of how our discursive practices identify us as the experts we are, create the objects of our concerns, and provide us with a vocabulary to communicate or coordinate our actions relative to each other.

Within the OU context “design” and “systems” have a common history; in the founding of the Faculty of Technology in 1970 departments were created around disciplines of synthesis and analysis – the two departments of synthesis were Systems and Design (Maiteny and Ison, 2000). Figure 1 is a depiction of the influences that shape contemporary systems approaches showing the historical lineages to general systems theory, cybernetics (first and second-order), operations research, complexity science and so on. The main point of Figure 1 is to show the notion that when we engage with systems or cybernetic thinking and practice we conserve a lineage, and as argued by Ison (2008), it is the connections we make with this history as part of our unfolding social relations that determine, or not, whether we can claim to be using, or drawing on, systems or cybernetic thinking. The social relations associated with preparing this paper and the special issue testify to this; as Ceruti (1994, p. 6) observes, “one does not belong to a particular tradition, one produces it”. If one is aware of the different systems and cybernetic lineages, the praxes that have evolved, their constituent concepts and the techniques, tools and methods that are used then they all become available for “designing” by a systems practitioner. As authors we have engaged with some, or all, of these systems lineages from original academic backgrounds in agricultural science, environmental science and geography. Our engagement with design lineages is more limited; Klaus Krippendorff, informed by second-order cybernetic understandings, has participated in some of our activities (http://spmc.open.ac.uk). Earlier, Ison (1993) argued, following Coyne and Snodgrass (1991), that design can be characterized as “an involvement in a project that has many players and that translates human culture, technology and aspiration into form”. This concern for design at that time grew from recognition that the future form of Australia’s semi-arid rangelands was more a question of design than the application

General Systems Theory

Mathematics

Parsons Buckley

Anthropology

Physiology

Ashby Weiner Shannon Information First-order theory cybernetics Weaver

Family therapy Von Foerster

Mead Bateson Control theory

Second-order cybernetics Pask

Maturana

Experimental epistemology

McCulloch Engineering

Complexity sciences Ashby

Biology of cognition

Systemic inquiry Applied systems

1343 Systems failure

Information ll systems Stowe er arp H d Woo Spedding Systems Bawden agriculture Systems Buckley approaches Social Vickers systems Ack off Management sciences "Soft OR" Systems analysis

Beer Churchman Operations research Ackoff

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Systemic environmental decision making

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Sociology

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Management learning M acy System dynamics "Whole earth" S.D. Systemic complexity

Source: Ison (2008)

of rationalistic planning or science. This design focus was in part a response to Hooker’s (1992) observation that: The direct consequence of the profound changes in the character and role of organised knowledge is that the future must now be regarded as increasingly a human artifact – an art-in-fact. The future can no longer be regarded as a natural object, a fact already there or objectively determined by present trends. Rather it must be chosen.

What followed from these understandings was concerns, in our teaching and research, for participation in designing (e.g. of research questions; research projects; management plans, EDM, etc.) and more recently processes of deliberative governance, including SL (see below). Our current understanding of design approaches that of Glanville (2002, p. 120) who argues that “all research and all knowing/knowledge is a matter of design”. In recent years the primary vehicle for enacting our understandings of design has been through designing and developing “learning systems” (Ison, 1994, 2000; Ison and Russell, 2000a; Blackmore, 2005), including curricula, and constituent courses, as well as “research-based inquiry” for the “education” of the “systems practitioner” (Ison, 2001; Blackmore and Morris, 2001). Our conception of “learning system” is discussed below. We see it as important to give a partial accounting of ourselves because our perspective is that the designer can never be absent from the design setting. For this reason it seems important to strive to be responsible for the traditions of understanding out of which we think and act.

Figure 1. A model of different influences that have shaped contemporary systems and cybernetic approaches

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1.3 First and second-order design For Blackmore (2005) a learning system comprises interconnected subsystems, made up of elements and processes that combine for the purpose of learning. The placement of a boundary around this system depends on both perspective and detailed purpose. From a first-order perspective the design of a learning system might seemingly involve combining elements and processes in some interconnected way as well as specifying some boundary conditions – what is in, what is out – for the purposes of learning. The specification of learning outcomes (often expressed as aims and/or objectives) in the absence of any real contextual understanding about learners predisposes, or restricts, most OU distance-learning course designs to this approach. However, we and others in the OU, have in our design practice made the shift described by Bopry (2001) as moving from prescription of instructional methods and means to the development of cognitive tools to provide support for the activity of the learner. With this shift we see a “learning system” as moving from having a clear ontological status (e.g. this course) to becoming an epistemic device, a way of knowing and doing (sensu Maturana – see Maturana and Poerkson, 2004). This is consistent with Blackmore’s (2005) claim that appreciative systems (sensu Vickers, 1983) are learning systems suggesting a design perspective that is more organic and observer dependent viz: let us consider this situation as if it were a learning system, or, in Vickers’ terms. “I have found it useful to think of my life’s work in terms of appreciative systems”. Reflecting this turn, Ison and Russell (2000a, b) suggest it is a first-order logic that makes it possible to speak about, and act purposefully to design or model a “learning system”. A second-order logic appreciates the limitations of the first-order position and leads to the claim that a “learning system” exists when it has been experienced through participation in the activities in which the thinking and techniques of the design or model are enacted and embodied. An implication of this logic is that a “learning system” can only ever be said to exist after its enactment – that is on reflection. The second-order perspective is not a negation of the first – they can be understood as a duality. This first to second-order shift also enables a more effective engagement with the difficult concept of “learning”. When learning is referred to it is usually without the theoretical background that would enable a reader or listener to know on what ground learning might be claimed (Ison et al., 2000; Blackmore, 2005). There are many theories of learning (Blackmore, 2007); our preference is those theories that constitute a social theory of learning (sensu Wenger, 1998) where “learning is practice”. Within this second-order perspective Reyes and Zarama (1998) describe their concern with the design of learning systems that move beyond the capacity of a learner to repeat a distinction (first order learning) to one in which they appropriate or embody it, and thus understand it. From their perspective the meaning of a distinction is in the actions it allows us to make, i.e. the distinction can be brought forth as part of a learner’s tradition of understanding. As designers of learning systems this has been our aspiration. Fortunately the OU in general, and the OU Systems Group in particular, have historically developed courses using an active pedagogy in which the design requires concepts, tools, techniques and methods to be grounded in the lifeworld of the student. The challenge for the designer, particularly in the distance teaching setting of the OU is, however, challenging, especially if one accepts the claim that “pupils learn teachers”, i.e. teachers do not transmit content but acquaint their pupils with a way of living (Maturana and

Poerkson, 2004, p. 128). There are also constraints to the extent to which we can learn from our students’ learning in effecting new learning system designs; in part this is structural as the OU slowly transforms itself through phases that Ison (2002) has characterized as: . the linear, one-way, delivery phase (1969-1996); and . the two-way feedback phase (1989-?) to some yet to be realised future in which self-organization is likely to be more prominent. Designing, as with systems practice, or systemic EDM is a practice setting. First-order designing is synonymous with first-order cybernetic understandings, in which goal seeking behaviour is the norm, control is considered possible and designs have a blueprint quality. This parallels systematic, or goal seeking, “hard systems” approaches (Checkland, 1999), rather than systemic practice. Second-order designing arises when the designer acts with awareness that they and their history are part of the design setting. First-order design delivers an output, second-order design delivers a performance. These distinctions can be considered through the metaphor of a symphony orchestra: one reading of the metaphor is that the music is an output of the design of a set of instruments, another is that a musical performance is an emergent property of a set of interacting factors – musicians each with a history, orchestral practice, a score, and audience, etc. In the second-order case it is understood that each practice setting has: . a context in which a performance is enacted; . a person or persons – the practitioner(s); and . tools, techniques, methods, methodologies, etc. There is also a fourth aspect which is not so apparent – each element has a history which can be explored and understood. There is always a history of the context, the practitioners (each is a unique individual and thinks and acts differently even though they may come from similar cultures) and the tools, techniques, etc. (these in particular become institutionalised and create the norms and “rules of the game” in particular settings). There is also a history of performing in a particular way – what is recognised as good practice in one setting may not be the same in another setting. The systemic connections between these elements are important if a performance that is effective is to ultimately emerge. These factors apply to our own practice settings and also to that of a student at a distance. In the latter case the pedagogy and other elements of the practice setting can trigger a first-order response (utilitarian or instrumental learning), or a second-order response – an ability to make the material their own and orchestrate their own evolving praxis. In our own practice we distinguish between systemic and systematic practice arguing that historically these have been treated as either/or, a dualism, rather than a duality. The same understanding can be applied to first and second-order-designing, or first and second-order R&D (Russell and Ison, 2000). Having explored aspects of our context we now address our two case studies.

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2. Case 1 (1996-2007): environmental decision making: a systems approach (T860 and T863) This case concerns a core course in the OU’s postgraduate programme in EDM (http: //edm.open.ac.uk). The course was first presented in 1997 (course code T860) and was replaced by a revised and updated new course (code T863) with the same title in 2006. Both courses are 30 points, where one point is equivalent to about ten hours of study; all courses are presented (i.e. able to be studied) twice a year beginning in either May or November, each presentation being over 23 weeks. After successfully studying 120 points (usually four courses, of which two are core and compulsory) students can claim a postgraduate diploma in EDM; with a further 60 point research course they can gain an MSc in EDM. Conceptualisation of T860 was driven by two concerns: (1) the experience that many mainstream approaches to environmental management were taught and practiced instrumentally (built on a commitment to technical rationality); and (2) that environmental management connoted a particular form of professional and practice. In contrast, our perspective was that everyone was involved in EDM and thus as course designers we chose to see it as a generic competence. Our approach was to move beyond the common conception of environment to take a systemic perspective encompassing, but at the same time transcending, the notion that the environment was just the biophysical world. The course concerned itself with systemic practice in which systems of interest are formulated by someone as heuristic, or epistemological, devices, for learning about situations of complexity and uncertainty and in which there are multiple perspectives on what is at stake. When someone (an individual or group) formulates a system of interest they distinguish a system from an environment and make boundary judgements, i.e. they distinguish a series of relationships – system-subsystem-environment-boundary. Our experiences prior to designing T860 were that much EDM was and remains non-systemic with emergent, unintended consequences (e.g. transport policy in the UK and road building in particular). The original T860 course started with a case study of the highly controversial UK Twyford Down motorway development decision-making process, thereby providing students with a common experience of what Ackoff (1974) describes as a “mess”. We were also mindful of, and encouraged by, claims such as the President’s Council on Sustainable Development (1996), USA that: “The principles underlying education for sustainability include, but are not limited to, strong core academics, understanding the relationships between disciplines [and] systems thinking . . . ”.

In our design considerations we built on prior experience of teaching systems at the OU. For this reason students were introduced to a range of systems diagramming techniques to engage with the case study as this has proven to be one of the most successful ways of enabling students to engage with situations of complexity. Systems diagramming involves making boundary judgements (systems maps) exploring causality and influence (multiple cause, influence and sign diagrams) and revealing

multiple perspectives (rich pictures; metaphors) for exploring the context of environmental issues and formulating problems and opportunities (Figure 2). In conception we were mindful that initial starting conditions determine the phase trajectory of any process, including a decision-making process. Our desire, in the design of the course, was to create capacity to start off systemically in EDM. Our pedagogic approach was to design a theory-informed EDM framework (Figure 2) which: . created a narrative framing for the course capable of orchestrating both individual and group-academic and academic-related staff contributions to course production; . structured the course (the framework became a design heuristic for the layout and organisation of the course materials and the assessment); . structured the student’s own project and the continuous assessment through tutor marked assignments which enables students to prepare a project of their own choosing and which is submitted as the end of course assessment; . provided a tool or heuristic device for students to analyse and evaluate environmental decision-making situations; and . made explicit links with EDM as a form of systemic action research (AR) and experiential learning which students could build into their own praxis (i.e. Figure 2 is not dissimilar from a cycle of explore, plan decide, act common to some AR models).

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By designing a framework with multiple purposes we developed a cognitive tool that was able to facilitate, or mediate, the practices of academics (and other members of the course team) as well as students. The framework thus operated to support the

Create a model

Do some analyses

Formulate problems and opportunities Evaluate and monitor Explore the context of issues

Interpret results

Take action START

Figure 2. The first OU environmental decision-making framework developed and presented in 1997

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organization and exploration of both the designers and students construction of the field of study (Bopry, 2001). Using the Twyford Down case study students’ starting point was to explore the context of issues, recognising that how something became “at issue” was socially constructed and highly sensitive to who participated in the process. We argued that this stage preceded the formulation of problems and opportunities (Figure 2). In this model the process of formulating systems of interest was introduced as a way of formulating problems and opportunities. Starting out systemically, we argued, came from an appreciation that when confronted by a common situation, individuals are likely to recognize different “systems of interest” because they have different perspectives associated with their unique experiential history. From this unique cognitive history it follows that all we have at our disposal is the ability to communicate about our experiences: we never have exactly the same experience. We introduced “perspective” in a particular way that is relevant to how the cybernetic concepts of communication and control could be understood. The Greek origins of “perspective” mean “to see or regard”. But what does it mean to see or regard? An explanation would be “a way of experiencing which is shaped by our personal and social histories” where experiencing is a cognitive act, an explanation coming from the biology of cognition. “Cognition” derives from the Latin cognoscere, or literally “together to know”; i.e. cognition arises in interactions between a living system and its environment, it is not something that just happens in the brain (Capra and Flatau, 1996). In the second-order cybernetic Santiago theory of cognition structural changes triggered in a living system (e.g. a person) during their recurrent interactions with their environment are associated with cognitive acts (involving language, emotions and perception), and thus development is always associated with learning; development and learning are recognized as two sides of the same coin. In the form of systems practice addressed in the course the act of formulating systems of interest, especially as aided by systems diagramming, brings forth new distinctions (perceptions), mediates conversations and potentially enables emotional issues to be publicly expressed. These design considerations are all consistent with what Bopry (2001) describes as the “enactive position” (i.e. we find ourselves through interaction with the world rather than through mental representations that correspond to it – p. 50). This perspective is based on second-order cybernetic understandings which seek to avoid the technical rationality of most course designs. In OU terms T860 has been successful; since first presentation 1,398 students registered, 1,122 completed, an 80 per cent completion rate, and of those completing pass rates have been very good (. 90 per cent). Student feedback in formal course evaluations has been positive (in 2003, 92 per cent were fairly or very satisfied with the quality of the course; n ¼ 36) and the course has had impacts via students in other organisational and policy settings (in 2003, almost 69 per cent had been able to use the knowledge and skills developed in the course in their paid employment; n ¼ 32). Over 75 per cent of students in 2003 joined the EDM course with the expectation of gaining an award, career development and personal development (n ¼ 36). The extent to which the course achieved this can be gauged from 97 per cent of students who felt they had understood new concepts and 91 per cent who felt able to apply the knowledge derived from the course (n ¼ 35).

Currently the OU-course based model has attenuated feedback (in that course surveys are not annual and because the course tutors, called associate lecturers, the people who have most contact with students and who have primary responsibility for “teaching” the course are not full-members of the “course design and presentation team”. More importantly though, when feedback does arrive (via online support conferences; meetings with tutors or surveys) there is usually only minimal capacity within the “design team” to respond, unless the issue is drastic, because of broader organisational structures, including costs. For this reason student numbers is the primary measure of performance – but it is a blunt instrument in terms of design (unless of course, design is simply to produce high population courses). It is also worth noting that in a European context (although not in the developing world), where most of our students come from, the course was experienced by (mature age) students as both innovative and challenging – it preceded the EU’s Aarhus Convention and the now more widespread discourse about stakeholder consultation and participation in EDM and recent concerns about the role of science (Wilsden et al., 2005). By 2003, many of the innovative features of T860, particularly those concerning the shift from consultative to participative approaches, had become mainstream within Europe (EU, 2003). Some students were critical of the course’s systemic focus rather than what they considered “pragmatic practicality” and there were some who felt that power and economics were not covered as much as they should be. Along with many OU courses the amount of material available for the learner was also an issue, i.e. too much material added to complexity. To remain professionally and socially relevant a replacement course had to reflect these changes (OU, 2006). Historically there has been a considerable lag between initiating and presenting a new OU course; in the case of the T860 replacement we started in 2003 for a presentation in 2006. Over the period from 1996 our own understandings (or appreciative settings – Blackmore, 2005) had also changed through our own practices in scholarship and research (SLIM, 2004a) and through feedback on student experience in T860 and other courses. A pedagogic challenge for all contemporary systems teaching is to create the circumstances for epistemological affirmation or shift in the learner (Salner, 1986). This involves the move from seeing systems as “real” (i.e. having some ontological status) to seeing “systems” as epistemological devices for learning about situations of complexity (i.e. “messes”) with a view to changing or improving (transforming) them. Through experience we had recognised that it was a trap to assume that new students were, or were not, systems thinkers and epistemologically aware, or not. Our experience is that for many people systems thinking (ST) is intrinsic though the conceptual language may be missing. We thus start our new course (T863) by attempting to foster a student’s systemic awareness grounded in their own experience. In this limited sense we are inviting students to be co-designers of their learning experience. We proceeded on the basis that systemic awareness comes from understanding: . “cycles”, e.g. between life and death, various nutrient cycles and the water cycle; . counterintuitive effects; and . unintended consequences.

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Unintended consequences, we argued, are not knowable in advance but thinking about things systemically can often minimise them. A focus of the new course is a core set of understandings and skills associated with ST, modelling, evaluating and negotiating (Figure 3). The course text, comprising four books is supported by the development of a separate techniques book and a course DVD. The new course heuristic explicitly operates at two conceptual levels and is designed to provide students with the experience of moving between different levels of abstraction (Figure 3). In T863 there are four main course books: (1) Book 1. Introducing EDM. (2) Book 2. Starting off systemically in EDM. (3) Book 3. Making environmental decisions and learning from them. (4) Book 4. Critical appraisal in EDM. Book 1 introduces the concept of EDM, includes a major case study on aviation expansion and introduces the T863 framework. Pedagogically it sets out to value student prior experience as well as providing a common experience through engagement with the case study. Book 2 discusses the first two stages of the framework, “Explore or re-explore the situation” and “Formulate problems, opportunities and systems of interest”. Book 3 covers the third and fourth stages, “Identify feasible and desirable changes” and “Take actions”. Book 4 reviews the whole framework and the wider context of EDM. Figure 3 shows how the four main course books relate to the T863 framework and how the framework not only describes the stages of a decision-making process but also provides the structure to the course itself.

Formulate problems, opportunities and systems of interest Book 2 Use techniques and develop skills and understanding in: Systems thinking Modelling Evaluating Negotiating

Explore (or re-explore) the situation

Figure 3. The revised OU environmental decision-making framework for the course T863 showing how the course is structured in four books

Identify feasible and desirable changes

Book 3

Book 1

Take actions Book 4

Our aspirations as designers are in part captured by the expectations we have of students for their end of course assessment (Table I) which accounts for 50 per cent of their marks. Conceptually a major aim has been to produce a course able to build capability for systemic EDM as a form of praxis. One ingredient of this, based on our own research, has been to enable a move from participation to SL as a more meaningful policy and governance strategy in EDM situations (SLIM, 2004a, b). As outlined in Table I, students are expected to engage with and use the framework critically and to avoid using it systematically (i.e. in a linear, step-by-step way in which assumptions about the problem/opportunity are reached too quickly or from a limited range of perspectives). This was also a requirement of T860, but we soon realised that students were asked to do this but the course did not cover how to do it. Book 4 in the new course is designed to remedy this situation. It operates at a higher level of abstraction providing both a critique as well as the means to engage in critical thinking. We also recognised that the T860 framework predisposed students towards divergent thinking at the expense of convergent thinking so in T863 we tried to take more account of the convergent stages of weighing up feasible and desirable changes and negotiation (Figure 3). This design innovation in part provides an environment “rich enough to afford reorganization on the part of the learner in pursuit of his or her learning goals” or to begin to become “learner as designer” one of the ten design considerations articulated by Bopry (2001, pp. 52-3) to create an enactive “learning system”. Like any framework, the T863 EDM framework has potential strengths and limitations, depending on how it is used. From our perspective its strengths are that it recognises the following needs:

Investigation and analysis using the T863 framework

Critical appraisal of the T863 framework

This is worth 60 per cent of the total marks Use the T863 environmental decision-making framework (Figure 3) to investigate and analyse the situation you have selected for your project, i.e. your system of interest This will involve: † a detailed investigation of the situation considering multiple perspectives, including your own; † analysis of the situation using the four main framework stages and other relevant concepts you have learnt in this course; † selecting, using and evaluating appropriate techniques (which must include diagrams) associated with ST, modelling, evaluating and negotiating. This is worth 20 per cent of the total marks This will involve: † critical appraisal of the framework as a whole; † critical appraisal of your own use of the framework. A further 10 per cent of the marks will be awarded for the title, summary and conclusions and 10 per cent for structure, coherence and presentation

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Table I. A summary of the designer’s expectations of T863 students for their end of course assessment, a self-selected project from an EDM situation

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for problems, opportunities and systems of interest to emerge from exploring or re-exploring a situation; to use techniques and develop skills and understanding for EDM; and for EDM to be considered as an iterative rather than a linear process.

The framework has been used in many student projects to help question and consider decision-making processes. For example, the teaching supporting the framework explores questions such as: has the situation been considered sufficiently? Have problems, opportunities and systems of interest been allowed to emerge? Will ST, modelling, evaluating and negotiating help? Who has been involved in the processes of exploring a situation, formulating problems, opportunities and systems of interest, identifying changes and taking action and how have they been involved? What have we learnt from the overall process and how can that learning inform future decisions and actions? The framework’s most obvious limitations (which it shares with other frameworks) are that it will not be possible to “fit” every decision-making process to it and all steps in it will not be appropriate for all situations. By way of contrast to a taught course, a more dynamic situation in the design of learning systems is described in our next case study. 3. Case 2. A systemic inquiry into social learning for river basin planning This project drew on understandings from our course developments as well as other research (SLIM, 2004a). It was initiated following growing frustration with existing project management and decision making techniques among a policy and practice community in the EA – the environmental regulatory authority in England and Wales, a public sector statutory organization with c. 12,000 employees. The team responsible for developing the river basin planning strategy (RBPS) for implementing the WFD in England and Wales had become trapped in a cycle of systematic project management using the PRINCE2 method in an attempt to build an integrated approach to RBPlg. In telephone conversations, the EA team revealed that the project approach based on PRINCE2 was clearly unable to deal with the complexity experienced in the project situation, something recognised in similar situations by Winter and Checkland (2003) and Ivory et al. (2006). In desperation, the authors were asked to help the RBP team develop a learning approach to RBPlg to progress the writing of the RBPS. From this request, a series of discussions and preliminary workshops between the authors and the EA team took place to make sense of the situation and establish the main components or themes of a learning system to do RBPlg. The engagement with the EA was agreed to comprise a high-level SI with a number of constituent inquiries used to progress: . learning about the benefits and risks of SL, especially in supporting more effective (RBPlg); . developing a conceptual framing for, and stakeholding in, a “Programme of Measures” project, as required to implement the WFD; . exploring how a new approach to RBPlg could be incorporated into the traditional “business” of the EA; and . learning how SL could be extended to the engagement between EA staff and non-EA stakeholders in RB management.

The focus in SI is situation improvement through changes in understanding and practices; this involved nested activities depicted in an heuristic model by the verbs (actions): . “make sense of situation” (e.g. through use of group-based systems diagramming); . “tease out accommodations” (e.g. by using an understanding of the politics of the situation to design workshops); and . “define possible actions” (e.g. by orchestrating debate about the congruence, or lack of it, between systemic models and what was happening or not). The overall inquiry (system) was monitored, measures of performance articulated against mutually acceptable criteria (the three e’s of efficacy, efficiency and effectiveness) and control action taken (see Collins et al., 2005 for more details). Understood in this way a SI can be seen as a meta-level process for programme, and constituent project, design and managing. The engagement with the EA began in late 2004 and continued until early 2006 (when a new relationship with the EA was established with the designation of a research fellowship). During this period, the researchers convened some six workshops on various aspects or topics relating to RBPlg such as “decision making”; “integration”; convergence (of organisational practices); and “stakeholding”. The exact format, methods and tools utilised in the workshops varied according to the issues under discussion, the audience, the purpose of the event and its duration. In broad terms, the workshops were divided into four main parts. The first part of the workshops aimed to expose differences in understanding among the participants. This was done in activities using nonlinear ways of presenting, using and analysing information (through, for example, developing rich pictures, metaphors, conversation maps). The second part of the workshops helped define the nature of the issue or problem emerging from the earlier discussions. This was often done through plenary discussion and reflection on what had emerged from the first part, with some element of distillation of the core themes. The third part identified a series of activity models to enable participants to gain more systemic understanding of the issues and enable staff to progress the situation. The workshops ended with a plenary, in which proposals for next steps and review of learning and evaluation occurred. The design of the SI meant that the role of the researchers differed from traditional forms of research or consultancy in shaping the work as well as in ways of working. Perhaps, one of the most important framing devices in the project was the emphasis placed on developing a co-researching role in the management and undertaking of the project. The willingness of the EA to accept this framing enabled participants to explore emergent issues as they arose and develop an agreed response as appropriate. This allowed all those involved (including the researchers) to learn our collective way towards progressing the RBPlg project. We also agreed to compile an ethical statement to inform our practices and dealings with each other. The process of developing the ethical statement in itself became a means of building mutual trust and understanding. In practice, the researchers and core EA project staff worked alongside each other to surface our collective understanding about RBPlg during workshops, meetings, and report writing. Examples of activities which emerged from this approach include: agreeing to convene a workshop on a new emergent theme; facilitating a new stream of

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workshops associated with stakeholder engagement; holding a one-off meeting with senior agency staff to assess the implications for the future of the RBP; and providing greater flexibility on budgets and work planning within the project. The researchers usually acted as facilitators of these meetings, but the key design criteria were agreed in advance with the core EA project team who had originally invited the authors to work with them. Additional meetings with the core EA team were convened on a regular basis to assess progress, learning and agree next steps in the light of experiences to date. Each workshop was attended on average by 15 EA staff responsible for drafting or contributing to the RBPS. However, a significant problem was that many participants in each workshop were attending for the first time (in line with the changing “topic” of the workshop), limiting the ability of the core group to progress ideas from earlier workshops. Despite this drawback, the significance of these workshops for the participants can be gauged by some of the remarks made during meetings. During one workshop, a senior manager observed “In the Agency, we use the word integration all the time. But this is the first time we’ve ever sat down and talked about what it means.” Another commented that it was the “most important workshop I’ve attended in years”. For a senior manager in the core RBPlg team, it was “a relief” to realise and admit that the WFD was complex and difficult to progress. The detailed issues that arose during individual workshops and engagement with the RBPlg team are discussed elsewhere (Collins et al., 2005). However, in broad terms, the use of systems approaches and systems diagrams as learning devices to progress understanding of the complexity and messiness of implementing the WFD significantly improved participants’ understanding of the task they faced and meant that ideas could be discussed and progressed rapidly. This more emergent way of working is in stark contrast with the EA’s previous project management system which atomised areas of work from the outset of the project and proscribed ways of working which, in the experience of the EA staff, ensured that they either never gained, or quickly lost sense of “the big picture”. Under the PRINCE2 methodology, in practice, discrete parcels of work became systemically detached and were undertaken in conceptual isolation from each other, leading to general confusion among the project team about the underlying rationale and purpose. This was exacerbated by frequent staff turnover or re-assignment. This confusion was often conflated with uncertainty about what needed to be done in order “to do” RBPlg. From our perspective, the WFD presents a major challenge to the EA’s existing practices: a shift away from “how to do RBPlg” to a focus where there is explicit recognition of the need for “learning how to do RBPlg”. Reaching and articulating this shift through the SI proved to be a major insight, for the EA staff involved, into the nature of the work facing them and opened up new possibilities of re-conceptualising ideas about RBPlg. Staff in the project began to move out of the trap of thinking that the EA should already know how to implement the WFD through RBPlg and therefore could be project managed using existing procedures. In evaluative interviews senior managers expressed relief on realising that RBP was complex, difficult and challenging and therefore needed a systemic, SL approach rather than a systematic project management approach.

Unreflective or unknowing reliance on inappropriate project management tools to deal with messes (complex and uncertain phenomena) is, we would suggest, a precarious position for any public policy organisation. Experiences of using systems practices in the workshops we facilitated with the EA were generally positive and often accompanied by more creativity, insight, clarity and enjoyment. This suggests the skills for ST and practice of key Agency staff could be developed and enhanced so that the advantages and disadvantages of using project management tools are better understood from a systemic perspective. While the above constitute, in our and our co-researchers’ experience, positive outcomes of designing and using systems approaches to EDM, there are some key drawbacks. Perhaps, the most important is the time required to negotiate levels of trust sufficient to allow experimentation within existing organisational cultures. In our work, we were keen to avoid being “consultants” preferring instead to occupy a position of co-researching with EA staff. This methodological commitment was not easy to align to pre-ordained timetables within the wider WFD programme and presented challenges for everyone involved, not least the unending pressure to “dive into detail” about the “how” when the higher order question of “what” was still in abeyance. Because of the small “p” political nature of most engagements and the rapidly changing context each engagement became a novel design setting in process terms; this is challenging as it leaves less time for reflection on action, placing more emphasis on reflection-in-action (Argyris and Scho¨n, 1974). A drawback of using systems approaches to EDM is that it can raise expectations that this approach will “provide” a solution to the problem. In the EA, this expectation, however reasonable or misplaced, can place increased pressure on managers to support and enable the expectations to be realised to some degree or to demonstrate adequately why these cannot be met. Equally, it is important to acknowledge that there will always be reluctance to engage with SL approaches for many reasons. The key to managing both sets of expectations is to demonstrate how SL approaches built on ST and practice can enable staff to do their existing jobs more effectively, even if there are up-front costs in skills investment. In keeping with a learning approach, this would be achieved by enabling staff to experience the techniques and approaches for themselves in a way which does not impose. This is more likely to enable staff to determine the relative merits and disadvantages of the approaches for their own work. 4. Discussion and conclusions What is it that we can claim about our designing and its cybernetic features in the two cases? Both cases have in common a central model of a learning system which is employed heuristically to orchestrate praxis. Bopry (2001, p. 55) describes these as “a cognitive tool used to structure the learning experience” and notes that these are intended to support the thinking processes of learners. In addition in both cases a range of diagramming (or modelling) approaches for engaging with situations of complexity and uncertainty by starting out systemically have been employed. Our experience is that starting out in this manner transforms situations by facilitating or mediating changes in practices and understandings of students or among research participants (SLIM, 2004a). Systemic diagramming can surface different mental models about situations and reveal patterns of influence and causality, boundary judgments and positive and negative feedback dynamics. This happened in our workshops with EA participants;

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evaluative interviews revealed that the approach enabled many to acknowledge the complexity of their situation (for the first time) and to recognise that they had to learn their way to appropriate actions. When situated in contexts which acknowledge participants prior experience and the historicity of the practitioner (decision maker/stakeholder), as well as tools/techniques and situations, we have found that it is possible to create the circumstances for the emergence of SL, understood as concerted action, in situations of complexity. In the EA case the model at the core of our praxis has not been presented to participants overtly as in the OU course examples. In this sense our practice in the EA settings is more attuned to the idea of systems practice being a silent practice, identified in various meetings and workshops of the Systems Practice for Managing Complexity Network (http://ukss.org.uk). This situation seems to be a trap into which those claiming to be using systems approaches have fallen, as the end result is that there is no institutional capital built around ST and thus no demand-pull for new graduates. It also limits the possibility for second-order learning. But as we ourselves know, it takes time to build trust and relational capital (SLIM, 2004c) in situations where many of those present are present more by work-based demand or coercion, than choice. Students in the OU by contrast are there because they have chosen to be there. We see this as evidence that the emotional settings for praxis are critical, as are issues of power. Both cases reflect design settings where on-going practice is influenced by feedback, though the nature and attenuation of this feedback varies significantly between the two cases. Bopry (2001, p. 60) notes a “dearth of material related to scaffolding the teacher’s understanding of the learner’s experience” which based on our own experience we would claim is a very valid observation. Operating within a second-order framework presents challenges for evaluation; in the EA case we have relied on narrative accounts generated through in-depth and semi-structured interviews as well as self reporting following workshops. Similar research with EDM students is in-train but not yet complete (Blackmore, unpublished). Historically the main time for responding to feedback in our role as designers has been the next course, as typified by the shift from T860 to T863 but this too is largely dependent on the conservation and re-building of a community of practice. We made the most of this opportunity; our process was one that tried to take account of our experience and our conceptual blinkers by inviting others into the process at the beginning to gain fresh perspectives and to challenge our starting assumptions. We could have just systematically made changes to the T860 framework (Figure 2) but instead we stood back, took stock of feedback and new starting conditions and imagined our way into the future (a form of backcasting) in terms of professional needs (e.g. re legislation, professional recognition requirements, group working, etc.). We ended up with a conceptual framework that has some similarities (same focuses, e.g. modelling, evaluation) but also quite a lot of differences (different configuration, simplification of what could be perceived as linear stages, etc.). We also took on increased emphasis on issues of power and negotiation needed in mature participatory decision-making processes. In the recent past, OU course-based summer schools were a device that, in cybernetic terms, provided some error correction adapted to individual student circumstances. Summer schools are now rare, because of difficulty and cost of access

for students who are highly dispersed, and it remains unclear how ICT-mediated interactions will fulfil this role, though there are many models now in operation in the OU where it is being tried (it is important to appreciate that where ICT mediation is not an integral and compulsory part of a course design then student use of the ICT rarely exceeds 30 per cent of the total cohort). An OU-wide requirement for the new course (T863) was that we employ the web-based electronic Tutor Marked Assignment submission, marking and monitoring system which has replaced the paper-based system; we also had to be aware of the new virtual learning environment being developed that will be available to all students over 2007-2008. In his analysis of the history of design of OU learning systems Ison (2002) imagined a trajectory towards an OU-based platform for the emergence of self-organising learning systems, made possible by a second-order pedagogy, i.e. where learners were asked to design a learning system for others as a result of their OU study (this could be seen as an extension of the “design studio” described by Glanville, 2002). It remains to be seen if this will come to pass; some of the design considerations we allude to here, as well as those of the open-source movement, could assist such a design. The danger is that new technologies merely continue to mediate only first-order learning systems. On the other hand to effect on-going process designs the EA SI has required constant iteration and has had to be open to the changing context. However, the heuristic model for SI, just like the EDM frameworks, has proven to be robust, and as a conceptual framing has supported our practice well. Despite our efforts it has taken time, and particular circumstances, to build capacity in the EA context for responsible, systemic EDM. Despite four years of funded project activity there is still limited capacity; capacity building is, in our view, a pressing need and part of our current focus of activities with the EA. How we understand the learning systems that we design also affects who we are and, in a way, shapes our identity – what it means to be a teacher or academic. The changes described above for the OU and indeed the EA could thus be conceptualised as an “identity transforming system”. Unfortunately we do not yet have any good systematic evidence as to whether our courses are “identity, or life transforming” although it is clear that of those students in employment, almost 70 per cent were of the view that they were able to apply the skills and knowledge to their paid employment, i.e. the course transformed their practices. Anecdotal and experiential evidence, particularly from moderating student’s EDM projects (Table I), suggest that the transformative potential exists in those students who perform best on the course. We also have evidence that this is the case for some EA staff working with us on an ongoing basis (Collins et al., 2005). Snodgrass and Coyne (2006, p. 257), based on their hermeneutic thesis of design, claim that design is also: . . . an unfolding of self-understanding, since it reveals one’s pre-understandings. It uncovers the preconceptions that are constitutive of the design outcome and at the same time brings to light the prejudices that make up what we are.

Both cases are also exemplars of doing AR in that they meet the four criteria for doing AR outlined by Checkland and Holwell (1998): . the process must be recoverable by interested outsiders; . it must involve the researcher’s interests embodied in themes which are not necessarily derived from a specific context;

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. .

involve iteration, which is a key feature of rigour; and involve the articulation of an epistemology in terms of which what will count as knowledge from the research will be expressed.

One of the advantages of learning system design praxis is that it breaks out of the dualism that some would claim to be at the core of designing, that it is solely an hermeneutic event in which “application is interwoven with and inseparable from interpretation and understanding” and not an epistemological event (Snodgrass and Coyne, 2006, p. 50). From our perspective within an epistemology of second-order cybernetics these constitute a duality in which all knowing is doing (Maturana and Poerkson, 2004). Forester (1999) emphasised the need for practices which attempt to remake our common future. On the basis of our experience we suggest that a praxis shift towards the design of learning systems in domains such as education and the public sector offers the possibility of strengthening a deliberative and reflexive society that is better able to engage with the many situations of complexity, uncertainty and conflict that we now face. A praxis in which first and second-order designing, as well as systemic and systematic practice is realised would seem to meet the ethical dictum of von Foerster (1992) of: act so as to maximise choices. Perhaps, inevitably, given our institution’s design, we would observe that in maximising choices, new spaces are opened up for novel forms of learning. References Ackoff, R.L. (1974), Redesigning the Future, Wiley, New York, NY. Argyris, M. and Scho¨n, D. (1974), Theory in Practice. Increasing Professional Effectiveness, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Blackmore, C. (2005), “Learning to appreciate learning systems for environmental decision making – a ‘work-in-progress’ perspective”, Systems Research and Behavioural Science, Vol. 22, pp. 329-41. Blackmore, C.P. (2007), “What kinds of knowledge, knowing and learning are required for addressing resource dilemmas? – a theoretical overview”, Environmental Science and Policy, Vol. 10 No. 6, pp. 515-25. Blackmore, C.P. and Morris, R.M. (2001), “Systems and environmental decision making – postgraduate open learning with the open university”, Systemic Practice and Action Research, Vol. 14 No. 6, pp. 681-95. Bopry, J. (2001), “Convergence toward enaction within educational technology: design for learners and learning”, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Vol. 8, pp. 47-63. Capra, F. and Flatau, M. (1996), “Emergence and design in human organizations: creative tension ‘at the edge of chaos’”, Complexity and Management Papers No. 9, Complexity and Management Centre, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield. Ceruti, M. (1994), Constraints and Possibilities. The Evolution of Knowledge and the Knowledge of Evolution, Gordon & Breach, New York, NY. Checkland, P.B. (1999), “Soft systems methodology. A thirty year retrospective”, in Checkland, P.B. and Scholes, J. (Eds), Soft Systems Methodology in Action, Wiley, Chichester. Checkland, P.B. and Holwell, S. (1998), “Action research: its nature and validity”, Systemic Practice and Action Research, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 9-21.

Collins, K.B., Ison, R.L. and Blackmore, C.P. (2005), River Basin Planning Project: Social Learning (Phase 1), Environment Agency, Bristol, available at: http://publications. environment-agency.gov.uk/epages/eapublications.storefront/461d27cd009bdf4e273fc0a 80296067e/Product/View/SCHO0805BJHK&2DE&2DE# Coyne, R. and Snodgrass, A. (1991), “Is designing mysterious? Challenging the dual knowledge thesis”, Design Studies, Vol. 12, pp. 124-31. Daniel, J.S. (1996), Mega-Universities and Knowledge Media. Technology Strategies for Higher Education, Kogan Page, London. EU (2003) Common Implementation Strategy for the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) Guidance Document No. 8, Public Participation in Relation to the Water Framework Directive, European Commission, European Union, Brussels. Forester, J. (1999), The Deliberative Practitioner. Encouraging Participatory Planning Processes, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Glanville, R. (2002), “A (cybernetic) musing: some examples of cybernetically informed educational practice”, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Vol. 9, pp. 117-26. Hooker, C.A. (1992), “Value and system: notes toward the definition of agriculture”, Proceedings of Centenary Conference, Agriculture and Human Values, UWS-Hawkesbury. Ison, R.L. (1993), “Changing community attitudes”, The Rangeland Journal, Vol. 15, pp. 154-66. Ison, R.L. (1994), “Designing learning systems: how can systems approaches be applied in the training of research workers and development actors?”, Proceedings of International Symposium on Systems-oriented Research in Agriculture and Rural Development Vol. 2. Lectures and Debates,Vol. 2, CIRAD-SAR, Montpellier, pp. 369-94. Ison, R.L. (2000), “Supported open learning and the emergence of learning communities. The case of the Open University UK”, in Miller, R. (Ed.), Creating Learning Communities. Models, Resources, and New Ways of Thinking about Teaching and Learning, Solomon Press, Brandon, VT, pp. 90-6, available at: www.creatinglearningcommunities.org/book/schools/ ison.htm Ison, R.L. (2001), “Systems practice at the United Kingdom’s Open University”, in Wilby, J. and Ragsdell, G. (Eds), Understanding Complexity, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, NY, pp. 45-54. Ison, R.L. (2002), “The design of ‘Learning Systems’: experiences from the Open University, UK”, paper presented at ‘Towards an Information Society for All 2 – New Pathways to Knowledge’ Conference, Berlin, 8-9 March. Ison, R.L. (2008), “Systems thinking and practice for action research”, in Reason, P. and Bradbury, H. (Eds), Handbook of Action Research, 2nd ed., Sage, London (forthcoming). Ison, R.L. and Russell, D.B. (2000a), “Exploring some distinctions for the design of learning systems”, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Vol. 7 No. 4, pp. 43-56. Ison, R.L. and Russell, D.B. (Eds) (2000b), Agricultural Extension and Rural Development: Breaking Out of Traditions, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 239. Ison, R.L., Ro¨ling, N. and Watson, D. (2007), “Challenges to science and society in the sustainable management and use of water: investigating the role of social learning”, Environmental Science & Policy, Vol. 10 No. 6, pp. 499-511. Ison, R.L., High, C., Blackmore, C.P. and Cerf, M. (2000), “Theoretical frameworks for learning-based approaches to change in industrialised-country agricultures”, in LEARN (Ed.), Cow up a Tree. Knowing and Learning for Change in Agriculture. Case Studies from Industrialised Countries, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) Editions, Paris, pp. 31-54.

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Ivory, C., Aldermann, N., McLoughlin, I. and Vaughan, R. (2006), “Sense making as a process within complex projects”, in Hodgson, D. and Cicmil, S. (Eds), Making Projects Critical, Palgrave Press, Basingstoke, pp. 316-34. Kaı¨ka, M. (2003), “The Water Framework Directive: a new directive for a changing social, political and economic European framework”, European Planning Studies, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 299-316. Krippendorff, K. (1995), “Redesigning design; an invitation to a responsible future”, in Tahkokallio, P. and Vihma, S. (Eds), Design – Pleasure or Responsibility?, University of Art and Design, Helsinki, pp. 138-62. Maiteny, P.T. and Ison, R.L. (2000), “Appreciating systems: critical reflections on the changing nature of systems as a discipline in a systems learning society”, Systems Practice & Action Research, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 559-86. Maturana, H. and Poerkson, B. (2004), From Being to Doing. The Origins of the Biology of Cognition, Carl-Auer, Heidelberg. OU (2006), T863 Environmental Decision Making: A Systems Approach Book 1 & Book 2, Open University, Milton Keynes. President’s Council on Sustainable Development (1996), Sustainable America. A New Consensus for Prosperity, Opportunity and a Healthy Environment for the Future, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. Reyes, A. and Zarama, R. (1998), “The process of embodying distinctions – a re-construction of the process of learning”, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Vol. 5, pp. 19-33. Russell, D.B. and Ison, R.L. (2000), “The research-development relationship in rural communities: an opportunity for contextual science”, in Ison, R.L. and Russell, D.B. (Eds), Agricultural Extension and Rural Development: Breaking out of Traditions, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 10-31. Salner, M. (1986), “Adult cognitive and epistemological development in systems education”, Systems Research, Vol. 3, pp. 225-32. SLIM (2004a), “SLIM framework: social learning as a policy approach for sustainable use of water”, p. 41, available at: http://slim.open.ac.uk SLIM (2004b), “Guidelines for capacity building for social learning in integrated catchment management and the sustainable use of water”, SLIM Policy Briefing No. 7, p. 4, available at: http://slim.open.ac.uk/objects/public/FrameworkSocalLearningJune04.pdf SLIM (2004c), “Developing conducive and enabling policies for concerted action”, SLIM Policy Briefing No. 5, p. 4, available at: http://slim.open.ac.uk/objects/public/slimpb7final.pdf Snodgrass, A. and Coyne, R. (2006), Interpretation in Architecture. Design as a Way of Thinking, Routledge, New York, NY. Vickers, G. (1983), Human Systems are Different, Harper & Row, London. von Foerster, H. (1992), “Ethics and second-order cybernetics”, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Vol. 1, pp. 9-19. Wenger, E. (1998), Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Wilsden, J., Wynne, B. and Stilgoe, J. (2005), The Public Value of Science. Or How to Ensure that Science Really Matters, DEMOS, London, p. 66. Winter, M. and Checkland, P. (2003), “Soft systems: a fresh perspective for project management”, Civil Engineering, Vol. 156 No. 4, pp. 187-92.

About the authors Ray Ison is a Professor of systems in the Systems Department at The OU (UK) and currently on sabbatical as a Visiting Professor at the Melbourne Water Research Centre, University of Melbourne, Australia. He was foundation Director of the Postgraduate Program in EDM and is also foundation Director of the Open Systems Research Group (OSRG) comprising 20 researchers (http://systems.open.ac.uk), with research foci on ST and practice, information systems and sustainable development. He was an author-member of both courses reported in this case study. Ray Ison is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected] Chris Blackmore is a Senior Lecturer in environment and development systems within the OU Systems Department and OSRG. Her research concerns systemic understandings of learning systems and communities of practice. She was course team chair of the first OU course in “Environmental decision making: a systems approach” and an author member of its replacement course. Kevin Collins is a Research Fellow in the Systems Department and OSRG who has been researching systemic approaches to SL and water issues since 2001. He contributed as an author to the second course in EDM reported here. Pam Furniss is a Senior Lecturer in environmental systems with a background in water technologies. She was course team chair of the second “Environmental decision making: a systems approach” course and is the current Award Director for the EDM Postgraduate Programme.

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Research through DESIGN through research A cybernetic model of designing design foundations Wolfgang Jonas School of Arts and Design, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany Abstract Purpose – The paper seeks to make a substantial contribution to the still controversial question of design foundations. Design/methodology/approach – A generic hypercyclic design process model is derived from basic notions of evolution and learning in different domains of knowing (and turns out to be not very different from existing ones). The second-order cybernetics and evolutionary thinking provide theoretical support. Findings – The paper presents a model of designerly knowledge production, which has the potential to serve as a genuine design research paradigm. It does not abandon the scientific or the hermeneutic or the arts & crafts paradigm but concludes that they have to be embedded into a design paradigm. “Design paradigm” means that “objects” are not essential, but are created in communication and language. Research limitations/implications – Foundations cannot be found in the axiomatic statements of the formal sciences, nor in the empirical approaches of the natural sciences, nor in the hermeneutic techniques of the humanities. Designing explores and creates the new; it deals with the fit of artefacts and their human, social and natural contexts. Therefore foundations for design (if they exist at all) have to be based on the generative character of designing, which can be seen as the very activity which made and still makes primates into humans. Practical implications – The hypercyclic model provides a cybernetic foundation (or rather substantiation) for design, which – at the same time – serves as a framework for design and design research practice. As long as the dynamic model is in action, i.e. stabilized in communication, it provides foundations; once it stops, they dissolve. The fluid circular phenomena of discourse and communication provide the only “eternal” essence of design. Originality/value – “Design objects” as well as “theory objects” are transient materializations or eigenvalues in these circular processes. Designing objects and designing theories are equivalent. “Problems” and “solutions” as well as “foundations” are objects of this kind. This contributes to a conceptual integration of the acting and reflecting disciplines. Keywords Design, Cybernetics, Evolution, Learning, Research, Knowledge management Paper type Research paper

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1362-1380 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827355

1. Introduction: problem statement and motivation The paper is motivated by the still controversial issue of (lacking) design foundations. They can neither be found in the axiomatic statements of the formal sciences (logic, mathematics, etc.), or the empirical approaches of the natural sciences (physics, biology, etc.), nor in the hermeneutic techniques of the humanities (language, literature, history, etc.). Available theories about the foundations of designing evoke the impression of Babylonian confusion (Jonas and Meyer-Veden, 2004). Reasons for this mess may be found in the “non-fit” of theories and their subjects (Glanville, 2005).

There seems to be a comparable interface problem in theory-building as in designing itself. Designing explores and creates the new; it deals with the functional and symbolic fit of artefacts and their human, social and natural contexts of use. Therefore, foundations for design should be based on the processual and generative character of designing itself, which can be regarded as the human activity that made and still makes primates to humans. Design has become a profession, mainly rooted in arts and crafts traditions, and – later in its development – an academic discipline. More recently design has been discovered as a central driver of social and economic innovation, which now has to clarify its position in the university context. If disciplinary autonomy, inter-disciplinary acceptance and social effectiveness is to be achieved, then this cannot be done with reference to the sciences (as mentioned above), or to the equally inappropriate arts and crafts tradition. Findeli and Bousbaki (2005) proposed three historical stages in design research: aesthetics, referring to object-centeredness, logic, referring to rational process models, and ethics, referring to user experience in their engagement with the designed environment. In this most recent perspective, the aesthetic or functional object cannot be in the focus any more, but rather the processes of generation and use. Regardless of these changes, the improvement of “quality of life” may still be considered as design’s ultimate purpose. Modernist design claimed to meet people’s needs by means of nineteenth century scientific approaches. Solutions were conceived by simple mechanistic answers to seemingly “real” needs, which had been determined by means of statistical methods. Ideological bias guided the determination of these needs; enthusiastic misinterpretations of the potential of the sciences lead to expectations of boundless progress. A striking example is the use of simplified and misinterpreted concepts of purpose-oriented evolution, leading to ideological positions as the notorious “form follows function” which has been impressively analyzed by Michl (2002). This modernist “belief in science” applied to major parts of the design methods movement (DMM) of the 1960s. And it still applies to parts of the current “Design research movement” (DRM, my own term, W.J.), which started in the 1980s. The paper outlines an alternative foundation/substantiation (maybe a constructivist position has to content itself with “substantiation” of a theory instead of “foundation” of a discipline). 2. Guiding ideas in design research: for users and/or for design itself? Because of the hybrid nature of design research (looking for knowledge þ aiming at real world improvements) the DRM addresses two related issues: (1) internally, regarding the disciplinary status: how can design become a respected academic field of knowledge production? and (2) externally, regarding design’s benefit for society: how can design contribute to human-centred innovation? The adoption of scientific standards immediately contributes to design’s academic respectability. Nonetheless, this strategy has a price, since it fails to substantially contribute to tackling practical issues of social and economic innovation and human well-being. Two reasons are: (1) The failure of de-contextualized scientific approaches to handle the systemic complexity of real world situations. For an early programmatic statement see

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Weaver’s (1948) concept of organized complexity, for an account of the inherent problems in analysing/controlling/designing social systems (see Luhmann 1984, 1997). (2) The failure to deal with future states of real-world systems. Design is involved in proposing the new, which, by definition, is not predictable. Early futures studies were still aimed at prediction, today there are projective and evolutionary approaches, which explore multiple futures and take the methods rather as learning devices than as forecasting tools. This demands us to reconfigure and conjoin the two questions into one and ask: How can design establish its own genuine research paradigm (independent from the sciences, the humanities and the arts) that is appropriate for dealing with purposeful change in ill-defined (therefore called “complex”) real-world situations?

The discussion is embedded in ongoing debates about shifting modes of knowledge production in the sciences and in society at large. Nowotny et al. (2001) claim that science enters the “agora” and explicate “Mode-2” knowledge production, which is contextualized and which must be “socially robust” rather than “true”. Science is increasingly involved in projects of socio-cultural and technological change, and this can be interpreted as “science approaching designerly ways of knowledge production” (Jonas and Meyer-Veden, 2004). Knowing how becomes equally important as knowing that (Polanyi, 1966). Therefore, I will step away from essentialist “theories of what” and have a closer look at process models or “theories of how” to design. Doing this from a systemic and evolutionary perspective leads to a cybernetic process model, which appears to be constitutive of any attempt at theory-building in design. Concepts such as “research through design” (Frayling, 1993, going back to Archer), or “project grounded research” (Findeli, 1997), or, although semantics-focussed, “science for design” (Krippendorff, 2005) offer promising starting points. But little has been done since to operationalize these concepts in a coherent model. 3. An anthropological assumption: designing as the essence of being human The ability to design and to be conscious about this (i.e. to be retrospective and projective regarding one’s own position in the surrounding world) seems to be the essential human characteristic, distinguishing us from the rest of the living world. The construction of models of the human position and ability of acting in relation to nature is one of the essential and unresolved challenges of modernity. According to Latour (1998) and Jonas (2000) Boyle’s Invention of the Laboratory and the scientific community as factory for the production of facts concerning nature adds to the transcendence of naturalised nature the immanence (feasibility) of socialised nature. Hobbes’s Invention of Leviathan as representative of the unpredictable mass of citizens, seduced by their passions, adds to the immanence (mundane chaos) of the social the transcendence of a scientifically substantiated eternal order. It is thus, that the three paradoxical constitutional guarantees of modernity (Latour, 1998) arise: (1) even when we construct nature, it is as if we did not; (2) even when we do not construct society, it is as if we did; and (3) nature and society must remain absolutely separate; the work of purification must therefore remain separate from the mediation work.

Design cannot take part in the scientific endeavour of purification since it has to ignore the modern separation of nature and society. The conception and realization of projects necessarily includes natural and social components. Even Simon (1996, pp. 139-67), one of the protagonists of rational cognitive process models of designing argues that design, seen as a socio-cultural phenomenon, follows evolutionary patterns and has no final goals. The intentional transfer of system states into preferred ones (or: state 1 ! state 2) opens up the hybrid field of the “Sciences of the artificial”. Management philosophy (Hayek, 1967) has argued that the separation of natural and artificial is insufficient. There are systems (Table I), which are the outcomes of human activities, but not the results of human purpose. And of all things it is these delicate hybrid systems, which are the actual subjects of management and design interventions; appropriate tools for these “semi-artificial” systems are still missing. According to Rittel (1972), these “wicked problems” can only be overcome by opening up the closed algorithmic problem solving process (1st generation methods) and initiating a process of argumentation and negotiation among the stakeholders instead (2nd generation methods). In other words: he suggests a change from 1st order observation to 2nd order observation: not systems are observed, but systems observing systems (von Foerster, 1981). Under conditions of 2nd order observation, we have to account for the fact that the problem itself is not “given” but will be designed by the stakeholders. In consequence, problems are changing their character in the course of the solution process. No information is available, if there is no idea of a solution, because the questions arising depend on the kind of solution, which one has in mind. One cannot fully understand and formulate the problem, before it is solved. Thus, in the end, the solution is the problem. Therefore, Rittel argues for the further development and refinement of the argumentative model of the design process and the study of the logic of the designers’ reasoning, where logic means the rules of asking questions, generating information, and arriving at judgements. Given this situation Rittel (Cross, 1984, p. 326) states slightly ironically:

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All of which implies a certain modesty; while of course, on the other side there is a characteristic of the second generation which is not so modest, that of lack of respect for existing situations and an assumption that nothing has to continue to be the way that it is. That might be expressed in the principle of systematic doubt or something like it.

Systems which are results of human design/planning Systems which are not results of human design/planning

Systems emerging without human activity

Systems as results of human activities

–

Artificial (mainly technological þ simple social) systems ! “constructivist”

Natural systems (solar system, crystals, organisms)

Complex social systems (family, economy, ethics, culture, . . .) ! “evolutionary”

Source: Hayek (1967) and Malik (2000, p. 158)

Table I. The generation of systems by human design/activities

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The second-generation designer also is a moderate optimist, in that he refuses to believe that planning is impossible, although his knowledge of the dilemmas of rationality and the dilemmas of planning for others should tell him otherwise, perhaps. But he refuses to believe that planning is impossible, otherwise he would go home. He must also be an activist.

Jones (1992) puts it more general and metaphoric, when emphasizing the necessity of designing the design process itself. A considerable part of the design capacities has to be re-directed from the problem to the process. The designer as “black box” (the artist) as well as the designer as “glass box” (the follower of 1st generation methods) have to change their attitude towards a self-conception of designer as “self-organizing system” who is observing the evolving artefact plus her/himself observing the evolving artefact. 4. Inherent patterns: circularity and autopoiesis Circularity as a characteristic of problem-solving and purposive design processes is showing up. We know DO-loops as instructions for iterative processes in formal languages in software-programming. We know the Test – Operate – Test – Exit-scheme (TOTE-scheme) from cognitive psychology (Miller et al., 1960) as the prototypical pattern for dealing with iterative heuristics and feedback in design methods. Most of these design methods consist of linear sequences of steps of specific subtasks plus TOTE cycles for the necessary feedback. Opaque systems, called “black-boxes” are rendered “white” and manageable by means of circular feedback-models. Human agents act as detached operators of these “machines”. Systems have been typically treated mechanistically as open (for matter, energy and information), and in interaction with their context, transforming inputs into outputs as a means of creating the conditions necessary for survival. Changes in the environment are seen as input stimuli, to which the system must respond in defined manners. The concept of autopoietic closure in living and meaning-based systems is essential for the further argument concerning design processes. Autopoiesis characterizes the self-referential logic of self-(re)producing systems. Maturana (1985) argues, that living systems are organizationally closed, i.e. without any input or output of control information. Operations only refer to themselves and the system’s internal states. The impression, that living systems are open to an environment, results from attempts of outside observers to make sense of their observations. If at all, “black boxes” can only temporarily be “whitened” by means of an interaction of observer and observed (Glanville, 1982). The aim of autopoietic systems is ultimately to maintain their own identity and organization. A system cannot enter into interactions that are not specified in the pattern of relations that define its organization. In this sense, the system’s environment is really a part of itself. The theory of autopoiesis thus admits that systems can be recognized as having “environments” but insists that relations with any environment are internally determined; systems can evolve only along with self-generated paths. The theory of autopoiesis encourages us to understand the transformation of living systems as the result of internally generated change. Rather than suggesting that the system merely adapts to an environment or that the environment selects the system configuration that survives, autopoiesis places principal emphasis on the way the total system of interactions shapes its future and evolves. Autopoiesis presents a modification of Darwinian Theory: while recognizing the importance of system variation and the retention of “selected” features in the process of evolution, the theory

offers different explanations as to how this occurs. Changes are eventually induced, but not directed by means of perturbations from outside. The emphasis is shifting from adaptation of a system to its environment towards co-evolution of autonomous systems. Morgan (1986, p. 245) was one of the first to apply the biological concept of autopoiesis to a design-related field, namely organization theory:

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When we recognize that the environment is not an independent domain, and that we do not necessarily have to compete or struggle against the environment, a completely new relationship becomes possible. For example, an organization can explore possible identities and the conditions under which they can be realized. Organizations committed to this kind of self-discovery are able to develop a kind of systemic wisdom. They become more aware of their role and significance within the whole, and of their ability to facilitate patterns of change and development that will allow their identity to evolve along with that of the wider system.

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This is probably a step forward with respect to the problems of organizations. But it still neglects the fact that the environments of autopoietic systems consist of various other, equally stubborn autopoietic systems. Luhmann (1984) has formulated this radical generalization of biological autopoiesis, applying it to mental and social systems as well. His theory provides more delicate instruments for a composed deconstruction of unfounded expectations in design theory. Organizations, as described by Morgan, are one of several sub-categories of communicative/social systems, all of which are operationally closed, autopoietic systems: Living systems act in the medium of life, mental systems in consciousness, and social systems in communication. Both mental and social systems operate with language and meaning. Communication cannot happen without presupposing consciousness and vice versa, nevertheless both are closed, without any transfer of information. Language, which Luhmann calls a “variation mechanism of socio-cultural evolution” is the ultimate instrument for coupling mental and social systems. This strange, fuzzy, non-causal coupling, called interpenetration, seems to be a powerful driver of human evolution and, eventually, learning. 5. Evolutionary thinking as the basis: recognition and explanation A Darwinian view of natural and cultural processes and design is deliberately adopted here, since there is not the least evidence that socio-cultural processes as a whole follows a kind of plan or design. Not even complexification seems to be a general characteristic of evolution. The concept of evolution appears to be promising for the sake of theoretical support and methodological progress. Evolution theory relieves us from assuming an Intelligent Artificer at some mysterious point of origin. Utter undesignedness, pure chaos was the starting point, no more conditions, no foundations are required: A designed thing, then, is either a living thing or a part of a living thing, or the artifact of a living thing, organized in any case in aid of this battle against disorder (Dennett, 1995, p. 69).

A good design theory, as a designed artefact, should be able to explain its own emergence. And so far, Darwinian thinking, in close combination with operational epistemology (von Foerster, 1981), provides the only descriptive model, which satisfies this self-referential requirement. Any other explanation would be either a vicious circle or an infinite regress.

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The epistemic characteristic of design can be assumed as a learning process. This process can be considered as biologically grounded in the need of organisms to survive in an environment. The aim cannot be final “true” representation of some external reality, but rather a process of (re-) construction for the purpose of appropriate (re-) action. The history of biological evolution suggests similarities of the way the material world is structured and the way we think of it. Yet Aristotle suspected that the recognizability of the world must rely on the fact, that there is a kind of similarity between the “particles” of the world and those in our senses. Evolutionary epistemologists (Campbell, 1960) argue that the Kantian transcendental apriori has to be replaced by the assumption of an evolutionary fit between the objects and the subject of recognition. The evolutionary model of knowledge production provides a scheme with structural identity from the molecular up to the cognitive and cultural level (Riedl, 2000). The basic structure reveals a circle of trial (based upon expectation) and experience (leading to success or failure, confirmation or refutation), or of action and reflection. Starting with passed cases, the circle consists of an inductive/heuristic semi-circle with purposeful learning from experience, leading to hypotheses and theories and prognoses about how the world works, and a deductive/logical semi-circle, leading to actions and interventions, which result in the confirmation or refutation of theories due to new experiences, etc. Internal or external perturbations (called ideas, creativity, or accidents, environmental changes, etc.) influence the circle, leading to stabilizations (negative feedback) or amplifications and evolutionary developments (positive feedback). Only very recently in the cultural evolution this general scheme was split into the “ratiomorphous” (the term was coined by Konrad Lorenz) systems of recognition and the rational systems of explanation/understanding, with its most extreme form: the logical positivist dualism of “context of discovery” (acting) vs “context of justification” (thinking). While the ratiomorphous process of recognition has a high potential in dealing with complex, evolving phenomena, it is not always useful for causal explanations, and vice versa. But this “dilemma” is not inherent in the nature of knowledge production, but rather a consequence of the dualistic concept, which we have imposed on the process. Toulmin (2001) traces it back to the mid-seventeenth century and distinguishes rationality from reasonableness, the latter loosing authority in the sciences. The path from recognition to explanation is continuous and circular, sometimes with dead ends. Language is too much locked in the “black&white” tradition for the beautiful transitory shades of “grey” between the poles (Table II). The argument of naturalized epistemology appears in various forms. Dewey (1986) argues that processes of circular action, driven by intention, are the essential core of knowledge generation. The separation of thinking as pure contemplation and acting as bodily intervention into the world becomes obsolete; quite the reverse: Thinking depends on real world situations that have to be met. Thinking activity is initiated by the necessity to choose appropriate means with regard to expected consequences. The active improvement of an unsatisfactory, problematic situation is the primary motivation for thinking, designing, and, finally – in a more refined, purified, quantitative manner – for scientific knowledge production. According to Dewey, knowing is a manner of acting and “truth” is better called “warranted assertibility”. To come back to design: Scho¨n’s (1983) epistemology of “reflective practice” can be

Recognition (Erkennen)

Explanation (Erkla¨ren/Verstehen)

Networks, many causes Simultaneous (simul hoc) Four Aristotelian causes considered Only local validity, context is crucial Allows no experiments, mostly irreversible Prognosis is projection Correspondence of organism/artefact in a milieu Reaches into high complexity Fitness, “truth” means strong design Is labelled “pre-scientific”

Linear cause – effect relations Sequential (propter hoc) Only causa efficiens considered Global validity claimed, context excluded Relies on experiments, mostly reversible Prognosis is forecasting Coherence of elements inside a system Reduces complexity “Truth” means correct causal relations Is labelled “scientific”

Source: Riedl (2000, pp. 53-5)

regarded as the design-related description of these concepts. It is this special unspecific (generic) pattern, which Cross (2001, p. 54) characterizes as “designerly ways of knowing”: The underlying axiom of this discipline is that there are forms of knowledge special to the awareness and ability of a designer, independent of the different professional domains of design practice.

Evolutionary epistemology uses the most basic generative mechanism to explain learning in the living world, thus explaining the ongoing production and re-production of both artefacts and knowledge, finally of design and science as dynamic forms. This is the “essence” and there is no need for any specific nature of knowing in design. The theory of socio-cultural evolution seems to be a useful framework to denote the unpredictability of design developments and project outcomes, thus the limits of causal explanations, in a scientific manner. This is not to deny that designers/planners/people are able to intentionally design and manufacture a new teapot, a new aircraft, or a new constitution. But these designs are temporal interventions into evolutionary processes. Design interventions are episodes in the process of evolution. Most of the results disappear, a few are integrated into the further process. Failures as well as successes become part of the socio-cultural archive of mankind. Variation – selection – re-stabilization form the basic pattern of development (Luhmann, 1997; Jonas, 2005). 6. Variation – selection – re-stabilization: the basic pattern of socio-cultural evolution and design Autopoietic systems show a high independence from internal and external perturbations (negative feedback compensates for the irritations). Furthermore, it is one of the insights of chaos theory, that circularity in simple mathematical models can cause so-called deterministic chaos. Minimal differences in initial conditions of the system parameters can cause completely different outcomes; so that predictability of final states is lost (positive feedback amplifies perturbations and triggers evolutionary change) (Figure 1). Natural evolutionary patterns of development, with their sequence of stable phases and sudden variations seem to be based on an interplay of negative and positive feedback mechanisms. The evolution of artefacts shows similar patterns (Figure 2).

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Table II. Recognition vs explanation

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0.8

0.6

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x 0.4

0.2

0 2.6

3.2 3.4 3.6 3.8 4.0 r Notes: Simple feedback processes, as e.g. in the logistic equation xn+1 = r xn (1-xn) show the tendency to produce bifurcation cascades and deterministic chaos logistic equation (2007) 2.4

Figure 1. Simple feedback processes

2.8

3.0

Telegraphy

Telegraphy Telex Telegraphy Telegraphy Telegraphy Telegraphy

Telex

Telegraphy

Photo Telephony Telephony Facsimile Telephony Sound Sound

Telex Data Photo Facsimile Facsimile Telephony Stereo hi-fi sound

Medium-speed data Low-speed data

Colour television

Stereo hi-fi sound

Mobile telephony

Colour television

Photo Facsimile Facsimile Telephony

Mobile telephony Paging

Figure 2. Bifurcation patterns in the evolution of artefacts

1847 1877 1920

1930

1960

1975

Telex Packet-switched data High-speed data Circuit-switched data Telemetry Facsimile Teletex Facsimile Videotex Telephony Videoconference Stereo hi-fi sound Colour television Stereo television Mobile telephony Paging

1984

Telegraphy Telex Broadband data Packet-switched data Circuit-switched data Telemetry Teletex Text facsimile Facsimile Colour facsimile Electronic mail Telenewspaper Videotex Speech facsimile Telephony Hi-fi telephony Telephone-conference Videoconference Videotelephony Stereo hi-fi sound Quadrophony Colour television Stereo television High-definition television Mobile videotelephony Mobile telephony Mobile text Mobile facsimile Mobile data Mobile videotex Paging

2000

Source: Graham and Marvin (1996, p.16)

Hybs and Gero (1992) describe artefacts as entities struggling for the survival of the fittest in the hostile environment of the market; but the approach is still sub-complex. We seem to know where we come from, but we do not know, where we are going. At least we know the ancestors of our current artefacts, which means some interpretation capacity for design history. Nevertheless, we normally do not know the influences that acted upon the bifurcation situations and resulted in exactly this and no other development. Representations of design processes reveal these patterns too, which

may indicate some kind of similarity of ontogenetic and phylogenetic processes in designing (Figure 3). The nicely cut branches after the bifurcation points suggest that there is a rational means to overcome the indeterminacy, to take a decision, which provides more than a random chance, that the decision is viable in the future. Rittel (1972, pp. 48, 54, translation W.J.) comments this laconic:

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Constrictions are not “natural conditions” but deliberate restrictions of the variety of solutions, mostly implicit signs of resignation . . .

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In reality there is no opposition/sharp conflict between an . . . intuitive approach to solve a problem and . . . a controlled, reasonable and rational approach. The more control one wants to exert, the more well-founded one wants to judge, the more intuitive one has to be.

Planning

Tasks Selected task Overall function Sub-functions (function structure to meet the overall function)

Conceptual design

Solution principles and/or building blocks for thd sub-functions Selected solution principles and/or building blocks Combinations of principles to fulfil the overall function

Embodiment design

Selected combination of principles Concept variants (rough dimensioned sketches or layouts) Solution concept Dimensional layout Improved layout Selected assemblies

Form design variants of assemblies

Detail design

Optimum assemblies Final layout Detail design of components

Production documents (drawings, parts lists, instructions) Source: Roozenburg and Eekels (1991, p.110)

Figure 3. Bifurcation cascades in the design process

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The endpoints in the more and more ramifying tree of causal explanations are always spontaneous judgements.

These evident analogies in the processual patterns of natural and artefact evolution confirm the application of evolutionary concepts to the design of artefacts. No one-to-one analogies are sought; of course, variation in a meaning-based context is different from variation in organisms. It is not necessary to stick too closely to the biological concepts or to “translate” every feature of biological evolution to the socio-cultural field. Thus, if we are aiming at new descriptions and tools for the design process, we have to identify the elements and processes of natural evolution, which can be transferred to the evolution of artefacts. Luhmann’s (1997) social theories are closely related to evolutionary epistemology. In his main oeuvre he started to work out the concept of social evolution. Evolution theory is based upon the system/environment distinction; it is this difference, which enables evolution. Evolution theory does not distinguish historical epochs, but the circular sequence of variation, selection, and re-stabilization. It serves for the unfolding of the paradox of “the probability of the improbable”. Evolution theory thus explains the emergence of essential forms and substances from the accidental, relieving us of attributing the order of things to any form-giving telos or origin. It simply turns the terminological framework of world-description upside-down. Evolution theory is not a theory of progress, and it does not deliver projections or interpretations of the future. Autopoiesis, as outlined above, enforces a revision of the concept of “adaptation”. Adaptation is a condition, not the goal or outcome of evolution: on the basis of being adapted it is possible to produce more and more risky ways of non-adaptation – as long as the continuation of autopoiesis is guaranteed (Figure 4). The three separated processual components of evolution can be related to the constituent components of society, conceived as a communicative system (Luhmann, 1997): (1) Variation. Varies the elements of the systems, i.e. communications. Variation means deviating, unexpected, surprising communication. It may simply be questioning or rejecting expectations of meaning. Variation produces raw material and provides further communicative connections with wider varieties of meaning than before. In design this means new artefacts, conceived as materialized communication. (2) Selection. Relates to the structures of the system. Structures determine the creation and use of expectations that determine communication processes. Positive selection means the choice of meaningful relations that promise a value for building or stabilizing structures. Selections serve as filters to control the diffusion of variations. Religion has been such a filter. Truth, money, power, as symbolically generalized media serve as filters in modern societies. In design this may be phenomena such as fashion, taste, etc. var. 1

Figure 4.

sel.

re-stab. 2

Note: This figure represents variation - selection - re-stabilization as the basic pattern of socio-cultural evolution, transferring a system from state 1 state 2

(3) Re-stabilization. Refers to the state of the evolving system after a positive/negative selection. It has to take care of the system-compatibility of the selection. Even negative selections have to be re-stabilized, because they remain in the system’s memory or archive. In design this is the long-term viability of an artifact, in a functional as well as in a semantic sense.

Research through DESIGN through research

There is the relation to Langrish’s (2004) memetic concept of recipemes, selectemes, explanemes. And, more pragmatically, to Sanders (2006), who refers to the concept of usable/desirable/useful. She argues that we are quite good in designing usability, make progress in designing desirability, and are still weak in designing usefulness. I agree with her diagnosis, but – before the evolutionary background – I am highly sceptical as to substantial progress regarding desirability or even usefulness (Table III).

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7. A generic design process model: designing as a learning process within the overall evolutionary pattern An important step forward towards an integration and more precise differentiation of the concepts of design and evolution consists of the argument, that human designing comprises just the variation phase of socio-cultural evolution as introduced above. Designing, as a sometimes highly rational endeavour (bringing a man to the moon may include certain trial and error components, but cannot be considered as trial and error overall) is embedded in an overall trial and error process (Figure 5). Although design activities desperately try to consider selection- and re-stabilization, they are necessarily de-coupled from these phases. There is no causal relation between variation – selection – re-stabilization. Bringing a man to the moon may turn out as the first step into the universe, or as a singular historical event of the second half of the twentieth century. So state 2 (the “preferred one”) should better be labelled state 20 leaving 2 for the actual future state, which cannot be determined. Design is about what is not (yet). This statement expresses the main epistemological problem/paradox the

Variety generation Selective filtering Systemic re-stabil.

variation 1

1

Luhmann (1997) (process steps)

Langrish (2004) (information units)

Sanders (2006) (success criteria)

Variation Selection Re-stabilization

Recipemes Selectemes Explanemes

Usable Desirable Useful

selection

re-stabil.

design process A "true"

evolution 2

P "ideal"

S "real"

design 2'

Table III. Evolutionary concepts with different authors

Figure 5. The conscious design process as part of the evolutionary trial and error process

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discipline has to face in order to construct an own paradigm. Although designing happens now, it tries – by means of various methodological approaches – to include future developments. This issue has been addressed more philosophically by Nelson and Stolterman (2003), who argue that design is an inquiry into three domains of knowing: the true, the ideal and the real, with incompatible ways of reasoning. I have proposed the process model of ANALYSIS – PROJECTION – SYNTHESIS, which can be considered as a more pragmatic and operationalized version of the true/the ideal/the real (Jonas, 1996) (Figure 6). The well-known circular design process models, as for example the one of the Institute of Design in Chicago (research – analysis – synthesis – realization), relate to a different origin. They seem to be adoptions of Kolb’s (1984) “learning cycles”. The latter, in turn, seems to be an adoption of the very basic cybernetic OODA (2007) model of the USAF (Figure 7). If we combine the macro model of ANALYSIS ! PROJECTION ! SYNTHESIS (domains of knowing) and the micro model of research ! analysis ! synthesis ! realization (the learning phases) we obtain a hypercyclic generic design process model (Hugentobler et al., 2004) (Figure 8). Hypercycles (Eigen and Schuster, 1979) are models of the basic process patterns at the transitory stage between chemical and biological evolution, in other words: explanations of the “origin of life” out of non-living material. The design argument becomes highly methaphoric here: hypercyclic processes produce autopoietic closure. Simple circular feedback cycles describe prototypical learning processes of autopoietic systems. They produce patterns of deterministic chaos and evolutionary development, macro 2' A

Figure 6. ANALYSIS – PROJECTION – SYNTHESIS: the macro cycle of the design process

1 S A

P S P micro

realization A

research P S

Figure 7. Research – analysis – synthesis – realization: the micro cycle of the design process

analysis synthesis

which supports the suggested link between cybernetic and evolutionary patterns. Natural and artificial evolution follows comparable processes. All this supports the concept of conscious design as necessarily embedded in evolutionary processes. Only the variation phase of artificial evolution is fully conscious and controllable. This is what we call design. That means most of the time the “watchmaker” is actually blind (Dawkins, 1986). He experiences some rare enlightened moments in an eternity of blindness (Table IV). If we switch the mode from the metaphoric concept to operation, then we can interpret the hypercyclic scheme of the design process as a toolbox of three rows and four colums. Each of the 12 compartments that represent the complete process contains methods and tools for the respective process steps: for example, the ANALYSIS/SYNTHESIS compartment provides methods about “How to understand the situation as a whole? ! worldviews” which can be, for example, systemic modelling techniques. If we assume ten methods per compartment and 12 process steps, then we arrive at 1012 different paths/processes. Each path is a legitimate roadmap of the design process, transferring state 1 ! state 20 . The scheme is open for various “flavours” of design research: technological, cultural, user-centred, semantic, systemic, etc. It is just one possible model of a process, the validity of which has to be debated elsewhere. The model allows individualized sequences/design processes. The distinction of design and research becomes fuzzy. The more one limits the inquiry to single domains of knowing or even to single process steps, the more it becomes possible and important to match the standards of scientific research. On the other hand, processes covering several boxes or even the whole process necessarily have to creatively deal with knowledge gaps (Jonas and Meyer-Veden, 2004).

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8. Research through design through research: re-contextualizing the scientific paradigm Success of designing depends on the variation phase of the evolutionary process. The following phases (selection, re-stabilization) are causally de-coupled. I.e. the quality of the design process is essential. Scientific contributions may improve the probabilty of successful design, to a certain degree. The field of HCI, as an increasingly design-related activity, is facing similar problems. Fallman (2005) tries to clarify the role of design in HCI research and argues that “it makes more sense to regard HCI as a design discipline rather than as a more traditional academic research discipline.” This is remarkable, and even a bit bizarre, since the design discipline on the other hand, is on macro/micro 2' 1 1 A

S

res.

anal.

synth.

real.

A P S 2'

P

Figure 8. The combination of macro- and micro cycle provides a generic, hypercyclic model of the design process, which can be linearized into a tabular scheme

Table IV. The design process in the form of a toolbox: categories of design methods/tools, questions and outcomes How to get data on the situation as it IS? ! data on what IS How to get data on future changes? ! future-related data

How to make sense of this data? ! knowledge on what IS How to interpret these data? ! information about futures

How to understand the situation as a whole? ! worldviews How to get consistent images of possible futures? ! scenarios

How to present the situation as IS? ! consent on the situation How to present the future scenarios? ! consent on problems/goals How to evaluate these How to design solutions How to present the How to get data on the SYNTHESIS “the solutions? ! decisions data? ! problem, list of of the situation as it SHALL real” how it is about “go/no go” problem? ! design requirements BE ! problem data tomorrow solutions COMMUNICATION How to establish the process and move it forward? How to enable positive team dynamics? How to find “the driver” balance between action/reflection? How to build hot teams? How to enable equal participation? ! focused and efficient teamwork

ANALYSIS “the true” how it is today PROJECTION “the ideal” how it could be

Steps of the iterative micro process of learning/designing Analysis Synthesis Realization

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Domains of design inquiry, steps/components of the iterative macro process of designing

Research

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the same road, but heading into the opposite direction, towards scientific research. Fallman distinguishes design and research in HCI as two poles of a continuum and coins the terms of “research-oriented design” and “design-oriented research” which can immediately be related to the present concepts of “research through design” and “design through research” (Table V). Research within the “DRM-mindset” assumes that the “swampy lowlands” of uncertainty (Scho¨n, 1983) will be subsequently replaced by well-grounded knowledge. But exclusively scientific research is unable to fully recognize the implications of acting in a space of imagination and projection, where design criteria only become apparent after the outcome has been designed. Therefore, the “knowledge base position” needs to be complemented by the “unknowledge base position” (Jonas et al., 2005) or by the competencies to deal with not-knowing (Willke, 2002). It is not science as a method, but science as a guiding paradigm for design, which is being called into question. Examining design as processes in the course of socio-techno-cultural evolution will reveal more clearly what is impossible and will enable us to identify the stable islands of reliable knowledge. This view adopts the circular and reflective “trial & error” models of generative world appropriation, as put forward by Dewey (1986), von Foerster (1981), Glanville (1982), Scho¨n (1983) and Swann (2002) and many others. Furthermore, the hierarchical separation of basic/applied/clinical research does not make sense in this conception of design. Basic research for real needs has to be closely related to real-world situations. I.e. basic research, in order to be basic, has to be embedded/applied in clinical situations. The idea of research through design is based upon a generic structure of learning/designing, which has been derived from practice. Design process logic, according to the argument in this text, is a cybernetic logic of creating the objects of the world. Relevant design knowledge is not knowledge of the objects, but knowledge for the creation of the objects (Glanville, 2006). Every design process (more or less) follows this generic structure, making use of the various (scientific) methods provided for each of the steps. The inherent fuzziness of the process model is able to bridge the causality gaps occurring between the different, often incompatible, scientific contributions. Design ˆ Fallman (for HCI)

Research-oriented design Design is driven by research within a larger design process, aiming at the real, by means of judgment and intuition, judged by the client

Jonas (for design)

Research through design Covering the whole situation/process, building design as an institution for human-centred innovation and supporting design as a discipline.

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! Research Design-oriented Research Research is driven by design within a larger research process, aiming at the true, by means of Analysis and logic, judged by academic peers. Design through research Focussing on isolated questions, producing knowledge for/about (?) design.

Table V. Design and research in HCI and design, according to Fallman (2005) and Jonas

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The proposed paradigm of design research means that it is the generic design process and not the scientific process that guides design research. Other than Fallman, who just distinguishes the two approaches, I suggest a clear design-orientation: The scientific paradigm has to be embedded into the design paradigm: † research is guided through design process logic; and † design is supported/driven by phases of scientific research and inquiry. References Campbell, D.T. (1960), “Blind variation and selective retention in creative thought as in other knowledge processes”, Psychological Review, Vol. 67, pp. 380-400. Cross, N. (1984), Development in Design Methodology, The Open University and John Wiley, London. Cross, N. (2001), “Designerly ways of knowing: design discipline versus design science”, Design Issues, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 49-55. Dawkins, R. (1986), The Blind Watchmaker, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY. Dennett, D.C. (1995), Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. Evolution and the Meanings of Life, Penguin Books, London. Dewey, J. (1986), Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, IL. Eigen, M. and Schuster, P. (1979), The Hypercycle. A Principle of Natural Self-Organization, Springer-Verlag, Berlin. Fallman, D. (2005), “Why research-oriented design isn’t design-oriented research”, Proceedings of Nordes: Nordic Design Research Conference, Copenhagen, Denmark, 29-31 May. Findeli, A. (1997), “Rethinking design education for the 21st century: theoretical, methodological and ethical discussion”, Design Issues, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 5-17. Findeli, A. and Bousbaki, R. (2005), “L’E´clipse de l’objet dans les The´ories du Projet en Design”, Proceedings of EAD06, available at: http://ead06.hfk-bremen.de Frayling, C. (1993), “Research in art and design”, Royal College of Art Research Papers, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 1-5. Glanville, R. (1982), “Inside every white box there are two black boxes trying to get out”, Behavioral Science, Vol. 27, pp. 1-11. Glanville, R. (2005), “Appropriate theory”, paper presented at Futureground, DRS International Conference, Melbourne, November 2004. Glanville, R. (2006), “Construction and design”, Constructivist Foundations, Vol. I No. 3. Graham, S. and Marvin, S. (1996), Telecommunications and the City. Electronic Spaces, Urban Places, Routledge, London. Hugentobler, H.K., Jonas, W. and Rahe, D. (2004), “Designing a methods platform for design and design research”, paper presented at futureground, DRS International Conference, Melbourne, November. Hybs, I. and Gero, J.S. (1992), “An evolutionary process model of design”, Design Studies, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 273-90. Jonas, W. (1996), “Systems thinking in industrial design”, Proceedings of System Dynamics ’96, Cambridge, MA, 22-26 July. Jonas, W. (2000), “The paradox endeavour to design a foundation for a groundless field”, paper presented at International Conference on Design Education, Curtin University, Perth, Australia, December.

Jonas, W. (2005), “Designing in the real world is complex anyway – so what? Systemic and evolutionary process models in design”, paper presented at European Conference on Complex Systems Satellite Workshop: Embracing Complexity in Design, Paris, 17 November. Jonas, W. and Meyer-Veden, J. (2004), Mind the Gap! – on Knowing and Not – Knowing in Design, Hauschild-Verlag, Bremen. Jonas, W., Chow, R. and Verhaag, N. (2005), Proceedings of EAD06, available at: http://ead06. hfk-bremen.de Jones, J.C. (1992), Design Methods. Seeds of Human Futures, 2nd ed., Van Nostrand Reinhold/Wiley, New York, NY/London. Kolb, D.A. (1984), Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Krippendorff, K. (2005), The Semantic Turn. A New Foundation for Design, Taylor&Francis Group, Boca Raton, FL. Langrish, J.Z. (2004), “Darwinian design: the memetic evolution of design ideas”, Design Issues, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 4-19. Latour, B. (1998), Wir sind nie modern gewesen. Versuch einer symmetrischen Anthropologie, Fischer, Frankfurt/M., French original 1991. Logistic Equation (2007), available at: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistische_Gleichung (accessed 3 January 2007). Luhmann, N. (1984), Soziale Systeme, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M.. Luhmann, N. (1997), Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M.. Malik, F. (2000), Systemisches Management, Evolution, Selbstorganisation, Bern Stuttgart Wien, Verlag Paul Haupt, Aufl, 2. u¨berarb. Maturana, H.R. (1985), Erkennen: Die Organisation und Verko¨rperung von Wirklichkeit, Braunschweig, Vieweg. Michl, J. (2001/2002), “Form follows what? The modernist notion of function as a carte blanche”, available at: www.art-omma.org Miller, G.A., Galanter, E. and Pribram, K. (1960), Plans and Structure of Behaviour, Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies, New York, NY. Morgan, G. (1986), Images of Organization, Sage, Newbury Park, CA. Nelson, H.G. and Stolterman, E. (2003), The Design Way. Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World, Educational Technology Publications, Englewood Cliffs, CA. Nowotny, H., Scott, P. and Gibbons, M. (2001), Re-Thinking Science. Knowledge and the Public in the Age of Uncertainty, Polity Press, Cambridge. OODA (2007), available at: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA-Loop (accessed 3 January 2007). Polanyi, M. (1966), The Tacit Dimension, Doubleday & Co., Garden City, NY. Riedl, R. (2000), Strukturen der Komplexita¨t. Eine Morphologie des Erkennens und Erkla¨rens, Berlin Heidelberg, Springer, New York, NY. Rittel, H.W.J. (1972), “Zur Planungskrise: Systemanalyse der ‘ersten und zweiten Generation’”, Ders. Planen, Entwerfen, Design, 1992 S (Original 1971/1972), pp. 37-58. Roozenburg, N.F.M. and Eekels, J. (1995), Product Design: Fundamentals and Methods, Wiley, Chichester. Sanders, E. (2006), “Design research in 2006”, Design Research Quarterly, Vol. I No. 1.

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Scho¨n, D.A. (1983), The Reflective Practitioner. How Professionals Think in Action, Basic Books, New York, NY. Simon, H.A. (1996), The Sciences of the Artificial, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Swann, C. (2002), “Action research and the practice of design”, Design Issues, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 49-61. Toulmin, S. (2001), Return to Reason, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. von Foerster, H. (1981), Observing Systems, Intersystem, Seaside, CA. von Hayek, F.A. (1967), “The results of human action but not of human design”, in von Hayek, F.A. (Ed.), Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Chicago, IL. Weaver, W. (1948), “Science and complexity”, American Scientist, Vol. 36, p. 536. Willke, H. (2002), Dystopia. Studien zur Krisis des Wissens in der modernen Gesellschaft, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M.. About the author Wolfgang Jonas was born in 1953, he studied naval architecture during 1971-1976 at the Technical University of Berlin, research on the computer-aided optimisation of streamlined shapes, PhD in 1983. During 1984-1987 consulting engineer for companies of the automobile industry and the German Standardisation Institute. Since 1988 teaching (CAD, industrial design) and research (system theory and design theory) at the University of Arts Berlin and at the University of Wuppertal. In 1994 lecturing qualification (Habilitation) in design theory. During 1994-2001 Professor for “process design” at the University of Art and Design Halle/Burg Giebichenstein. During 2001-2005 Professor for “design theory” at the University of the Arts Bremen. Since, 2005 Professor for “system design” at the School of Art and Design, University of Kassel. Focus of interest: design theory as meta theory, design methods in a systemic perspective, scenario planning. Numerous publications on theoretical and practical aspects of ¨ berlegungen zu einem designing, for example “Design – System – Theorie: U systemtheoretischen Modell von Designtheorie” (1994) and “Mind the gap! – on knowing and not-knowing in Design” (2004), also publications on the history of naval architecture in Nordfriesland (1990) and on the aesthetics of modern ships (1991). Wolfgang Jonas can be contacted at: [email protected]

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The cybernetics of design and the design of cybernetics

The design of cybernetics

Klaus Krippendorff The Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

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Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to connect two discourses, the discourse of cybernetics and that of design. Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes a comparative analysis of relevant definitions, concepts, and entailments in both discourse, and an integration of these into a cybernetically informed concept of human-centered design, on the one hand, and a design-informed concept of second-order cybernetics, on the other hand. In the course of this conceptual exploration, the distinction between science and design is explored with cybernetics located in the dialectic between the two. Technology-centered design is distinguished from human-centered design, and several axioms of the latter are stated and discussed. Findings – This paper consists of recommendations to think and do things differently. In particular, a generalization of interface is suggested as a replacement for the notion of products; a concept of meaning is developed to substitute for the meaninglessness of physical properties; a theory of stakeholder networks is discussed to replace the deceptive notion of THE user; and, above all, it is suggested that designers, in order to design something that affords use to others, engage in second-order understanding. Originality/value – The paper makes several radical suggestions that face likely rejection by traditionalists but acceptance by cyberneticians and designers attempting to make a contribution to contemporary information society. Keywords Cybernetics, Sciences, Design Paper type Conceptual paper

Cybernetics in the dialectic between science and design The mathematician Wiener (1948) coined the word cybernetics near the end of World War II, during which a variety of new phenomena emerged that seemed to be complex, adaptive, autonomous, and shared a circular form of organization. In retrospect, such forms have a long history. As early as 10-70 AD, Heron of Alexandria noted a peculiar mechanism that kept the flame of oil lamps stable. A structurally similar mechanism appeared in James Watt’s steam engine, which literally fuelled the industrial revolution. Watt’s regulator kept the RPMs of the steam engine stable under varying loads. At Wiener’s time, servomechanisms in industry, target-seeking missiles in the military, and problems of coordinating the war effort, not to forget the emerging mechanization of computation, demanded new vocabularies to understand them. Although Wiener taught at MIT, a university dedicated to advancing technology, with the enlightenment project still in charge of academia, it was no surprise that Wiener defined cybernetics as a science, the science of control and communication. A science defines its subject matter with the aim of developing theories and laws that explains it – excluding the inquiring scientist from these explanations. The Macy Conferences, which put cybernetics on the map, began by theorizing circular causal

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mechanisms – A causing B causing C causing A – which adjust themselves as their components respond to their own actions. Participants in this conference found such circular causalities in nature, in living organisms, and in society and began to challenge numerous orthodoxies of science. However, because it was engineers who were the first to problematize such phenomena, they also were the first to embrace cybernetic theories and principles as a way to extend their ability to design them. Since, design is the focus of this issue of Kybernetes, it is important to highlight the differences between what scientists and designers do constitutively. Whereas scientists: . describe what can be observed, hence exists, designers, by contrast create something new, something not yet observable and measurable; . celebrate generalizations, abstract theories for example, designers propose artifacts that must end up working in all of their details, not in the abstract; . insist on causal explanations, excluding themselves as causes of the phenomena they explore, designers intend to cause something by their own actions, something that could not result from natural causes, defying causal explanations in effect; and . say they seek knowledge for its own sake, value-free and without regard to their utility, designers value knowledge that improves the world, at least in the dimension they attend to. These contrasts are telling. Regrettably, the extraordinary celebration of enlightenment science and its scientists has rendered professions that make things happen – artists, designers, engineers, managers, and agriculturalists – into practitioners of a craft, mere consumers of “pure” science, physics, for example. Simon (1969) sought to overcome the disparity of pure versus applied science by proposing a science of the artificial. Unfortunately, his proposal did not go far enough and did not manage to change this inequity. He defined design as an effort to improve a system – technological or social – but limited his concerns to rational, not human-centered choices among alternatives. I would cast the net for design more broadly and equate design, at least to start, with any effort to shape if not invent the affordances for new practices of living, forms of organization, and even languages to arise. Abstractions, by definition, are removed from everyday practices of living and can therefore easily mislead people into undesirable ventures and cognitive traps (Stolzenberg, 1984). The cybernetician Ashby (1956) adopted a less philosophically committed definition of cybernetics. While acknowledging the circularities that are inherent in numerous phenomena – from the realization of purpose to the emergence of self – he defined cybernetics as the study of all possible systems, which is informed by what cannot be built or evolve in nature. He thus put designers and observers on an equal footing and right into the domain that cybernetics is to explore. His definition also applied the very theory of information it advanced – reducing uncertainties by experiencing constraints on possibilities – to itself, here to systems that are imaginable but reveal themselves as unrealizable. Much of Ashby’s work can be characterized as exploring the epistemological difference between synthesis and observation, between what can be designed and what can be learned from using a design without knowing its internal structure, intentions or origin.

He took the notion of a “black box” that hides its makeup from its observer or experimenter as a metaphor for exploring brains, self-organizing systems, and large social phenomena such as the stock market. For example, he gave his students the task of figuring out the behavior of a non-trivial machine he had devised. As a machine, it was determinate, but its internal structure made it not obviously predictable from the relationship between its inputs, which the experimenter could set, and its outputs, which that experimenter could observe. The concept of a black box gave brain research a practical methodology as the interior of a working brain is hardly accessible and what one knows about cognition must be deduced from what the brain does. It also became a paradigm for social research, hoping that the complexities of social phenomena can be ignored in favor of overarching regularities. Ashby certainly cared for his use of language and always acknowledged the role of designers and experimenters (observers) of the systems he explored, but he never looked into the role of language and communication in conceptualizing the systems he studied. The latter was introduced by the anthropologist Mead (1968), also a participant in the Macy Conferences, who suggested that cyberneticians apply cybernetic principles to themselves, a suggestion that von Foerster (1974) coined “second-order cybernetics” and defined as the practice of including the observer in the observed. I prefer second-order cybernetics not to be limited to observers, spectators or theorists. As already mentioned, Ashby derived many cybernetic insights by exploring to the extent possible the dialectic between what designers of mechanisms know and what scientific experimenters with such mechanisms can find out without that knowledge. Second-order cyberneticians need to embrace this dialectic. Mead went much further, calling on cyberneticians to systematically explore how societies organize themselves around cybernetic ideas and to be reflective of what the language of cybernetics brings forth and does, including to their own role – in effect treating cyberneticians more as designers than as scientists. Second-order cybernetics – in von Foerster’s terms “the cybernetics of cybernetics or the control of control and the communication of communication,” and in my terms, the cybernetics of participating in systems under continuous reconstruction by their constituents – is my entry point to a conception of design whose practitioners participate in creating the affordances of desirable practices of living with artifacts of technology, communication, and organizations. I call my approach to design human-centered, in contrast to, technology-centered design. The latter proceeds from functional requirements to objective tests of whether these requirements are met, which excludes the conceptions that the stakeholders in a design bring into it (Krippendorff, 2006a). Second-order cybernetics and human-centeredness From the perspective of second-order cybernetics: Worlds arise in sensory-motor coordinations.

It suggests that the worlds as we know them cannot exist without human involvement. They are brought forth when recognizing stabilities in the circularity of acting and sensing the consequences of one’s actions in return. Stabilities of this kind enable us to draw distinctions among them and to rely on them selectively. This is the conclusion of von Foerster’s (1981) recursive theory of eigen-behaviors.

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Consistent with the above, the first axiom of human-centeredness states: In human use, artifacts are manifest in the form of interfaces.

It mentions artifacts, not objects, as they arise in the experiences of sensory-motor co-ordinations, not separate from them. They are constructed by those involved and account for their experiences under conditions of recursively stable and hence reliable interactions. Thus, what we ordinarily call objects are artifacts indeed, made up, enacted, and afforded. Incidentally, the word “fact” derives from the Latin factum, something made. Hence, artifacts are crafted skillfully. Artifacts may come about materially by design, conceptually by re-cognition, and interactively in the form of interfaces, which can be distinguished along the lines of less reliable interactivity. When an interface works as expected, one can say with Gibson (1979) that the artifact in question affords the construction that a user has of it; and when it does not work as expected, one can say that the artifact objects to being treated the way it is, without revealing why this is so. I like to interpret the noun “object” as referring to something that will object to certain kinds of uses. Incidentally, this interpretation applies also to the German word for object, “Gegenstand,” literally standing up against, resisting. Gibson’s conception of affordance is important in that it admits no privileged knowledge of the objects of an external world other than how one conceives of them and interacts with them. There is no implied truth, only affordances or their absence. Today, interfaces are most familiar to computer users. They are designed as the medium between users’ abilities and the work that a computer does, solely to exhibit the relevant consequences of one’s actions. The user interface with an artifact is all that matters to its user. The remainder is a black box of conceptually irrelevant and often unknown makeup or structure. Indeed, as ordinary users of computers, we tend to have no clue as to what is going on inside them when opening a file, editing a document or discarding it, yet experience no problems with conceiving what we do in these ordinary and non-technical terms. Human-centered design does not limit itself to human-computer interfaces, however. The steps one walks up on is an interface; the chair one sits on amounts to an interface; holding a cell phone to one’s ear, listening to the sounds it reproduces and speaking into it constitutes its interface; and the steering wheel of a car and its controls has to be seen as an interface as well. Save for the simplest kinds – handling a spoon, writing with a pencil, and using a pair of scissors – most interfaces shield the user from the incomprehensible complexities or ignorable materialities that support them. Different people may interface rather differently with the same artifact. What is a screwdriver for one person, maybe an ice pick, a lever to pry a can of paint open, and a way to bolt a door for another. Not only do different computer users do different things with their machines, they may also use entirely different tools to accomplish the same task. Given the complexity of contemporary artifacts, it is unlikely indeed, that someone could explore all its possibilities, let alone facing the occasion of applying them. Moreover, using an artifact is a different activity than designing it, assembling it, installing it, and repairing it. It is tempting to think that computer engineers, having designed the computer, are the only ones who really know that machine “inside out.” When it comes to understand where a particular file is kept, however, nobody really knows, and when it comes to using a computer, expert users may invent ways that designers had not dreamt of. The point is, whatever different people do with an artifact,

neither can claim to have privileged access to what the artifact “really” is. There are only interfaces. Human-centered designers must realize that they interface with their artifacts in anticipation that the result of their interactions affords others to meaningfully interface with their design – without being able to tell them how. An interface consists of sequences of ideally meaningful interactions – actions followed by reactions followed by responses to these reactions and so on – leading to a desirable state. This circularity evidently is the same circularity that cybernetics theorizes, including what it converges to, what it brings forth. In human terms, the key to such interactions, such circularities, is their meaningfulness, the understanding of what one does in it, and towards which ends. Probably most important to human-centeredness is the axiom: Humans do not respond to the physical qualities of things but act on what they mean to them (Krippendorff, 2006a).

This axiom acknowledges the second-order cybernetic insight that humans experience reality only through detailed conceptions, models, and narratives they create within their discourse community. Physics, it must be pointed out, is but one discourse within which the community of physicists constructs its own objects (causal theories of a natural uni-verse, without human beings). Biology is another discourse (realizing theories of living organisms, explaining how their parts serve to preserve the identity of the whole). What describes the world as human-centered is a discourse as well. It addresses how artifacts are consensually (sensed in each other’s presence) experienced and describes these experiences in relational terms, as interaction sequences, in which humans and machines participate but in different ways. Physics leaves no place for humans in their constructions. Hence, the physical properties that physicists theorize have nothing to do with how humans experience them, make sense of them or use them in their constructions of everyday reality. This is the reason for asserting the primacy of meanings in human-centered conceptions. It is important to emphasize that meanings are not entirely subjective. They reside in the expectation of afforded interactions much like Gibson suggested. Equally important is that artifacts for one discourse community may have entirely different, even incommensurable meanings for members of another discourse community. Indeed, it is a well known phenomenon that, when artists, architects, or industrial designers make the extra effort to go into the field and inquire about how their artworks, designs or buildings are perceived by others – by connoisseurs, users, critics, even fellow designers – they often are surprised to learn how different their designs are seen from what they thought to be obvious and clear to everyone. Unlike what semiotics conceptualizes, from a cybernetic perspective, artifacts do not “carry” meanings from designers to their users. They do not “contain” messages or “represent” meanings. Meaning cannot be inscribed in material entities nor do such entities have agency as proposed in actor network theory (Latour, 2005). There are only alternative ways of seeing (Wittgenstein, 1953, p. 154). Taking one way of seeing in one context or by one community as leading to another way of seeing at a changed context or by a different community, is the basic idea of meaning in the course of interfacing with the world (Krippendorff, 2006b). For example, the meaning of a button is what pressing it sets in motion: ringing an alarm, saving a file or starting a car. The meaning of a soccer ball is the role it plays in

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a game of soccer and especially what its players can do with it. The meaning of an architectural space is what it encourages its inhabitants to do in it, including how comfortable they feel. The meaning of a chair is the perceived ability to sit on it for a while, stand on it to reach something high up, keep books on it handy, for children to play house by covering it with a blanket, and staple several of them for storage. For its manufacturer, a chair is a product; for its distributor, a problem of getting it to a retailer; for a merchant it means profit; for its user, it may also be a conversation piece, an investment, a way to complete a furniture arrangement, an identity marker, and more. Typically, artifacts afford many meanings for different people, in different situations, at different times, and in the context of other artifacts. Although, someone may consider one use more central than another, even by settling on a definition – like a chair in terms of affording sitting on it – it would be odd if an artifact could not afford its associated uses. One can define the meaning of any artifact as the set of anticipated uses as recognized by a particular individual or community of users. One can list these uses and empirically study whether this set is afforded by particular artifacts and how well. Human-centered design Taking the premise of second-order cybernetics seriously and applying the axioms of human-centeredness to designers and users alike calls on designers to conceive of their job not as designing particular products, but to design affordances for users to engage in the interfaces that are meaningful to them, the very interfaces that constitute these users’ conceptions of an artifact, for example of a chair, a building or a place of work. Taking moreover seriously the above-mentioned experiences that different people may bring a diversity of meanings to a design, meanings that are especially different from how designers conceptualize their designs, calls on designers to apply considerable cultural sensitivity to different users’ epistemologies. Designers who intend to design something that has the potential of being meaningful to others need to understand how others conceptualize their world – at least in the dimensions that are relevant to their design. Understanding users’ understanding is an understanding of understanding and qualitatively different from the kind of understanding that is required to handle the material artifacts of one’s world. I call the understanding of understanding “second-order understanding” (Krippendorff, 1996, 2006a) and suggest it to be fundamental to human-centered design: To design artifacts for use by others requires second-order understanding.

The difference between first- and second-order understanding is the difference between understanding something that is conceived of as incapable of understanding, for example nature from the perspective of physics or functional artifacts from the perspective of engineering, and understanding human interfaces with technological artifacts, which unfold according to how users understand what they are facing and what they afford them to do. Technology-centered designers, it must be noted, typically object to the need for this distinction, insisting that they too take into account that their design needs to be understood in order to be used. However, such designers tend to measure others’ understanding relative to their own expertise, for instance, regarding lay understanding as inherently simplistic if not flawed. Witness frequent claims that

“they do not understand” my design, my building, my artwork, my intentions or how it is meant to be used. Privileging one’s expert knowledge is also evident in the insistence on intended uses, and when this turns out to be difficult, in efforts to train users in what is correct and efficient. Technology-centered design, it should be noted, originating during the industrial era. This era was dominated by engineering, which provided the paradigm for functional architecture, social engineering, and, of course, industrial design. The industrial design profession served as industry’s arm into the then emergent consumer culture. Although some industrial designers saw themselves as advocates of users, industry had the power to determine what was produced and where and how their products were to be employed. Technology-centered design is still appropriate in engineering whose artifacts need to function according to technical specifications that do not need to consider diverse users’ conceptions. It is practiced in the military where soldiers can be trained to handle their equipment properly and in bureaucracies where workers serve clearly delineated functions. Technology-centeredness also underlies the science of ergonomics, studying human operators in terms of objective performance measures. However, intended uses are hardly enforceable in an information/market driven society whose members care less of others’ intentions, have far more choices, and exercise them intelligently with information that is readily available in their environment. Understanding users rather than insisting on one’s authority and objectivity is a radically new social situation, which requires a radically different kind of approach to design. In contrast to taking one’s own expertise as a measure of the abilities of others, human-centered designer must regard others’ understanding with respect, regardless how sophisticated it may be. They listen to the stories users tell them about how they conceive their world and themselves in it and what they prefer to do, are willing to learn, have reasons to acquire, make them feel comfortable or excited, etc. Such efforts to understand others’ understanding also includes an understanding of the motivations that bring users to a particular artifact, to which ends it may be employed, what they are willing to explore on their own, and how serious disruptions of their interfaces are taken. For designers to respect the conceptual abilities of others means, ideally, not judging whether they are right or wrong but finding ways to afford whatever abilities potential users bring to a situation. Developing artifacts that accommodate users’ conceptions is the challenge for human-centered designers. At the same time, human-centered designers do not need to be at the mercy of prevailing and often conventional practices. They can make newness attractive to potential users, encourage learning, and compel seeing things differently. But they have also choices to afford or not to afford particular user conceptions. For example, designers may not want to enable children to open the medicine bottles of their parents, prevent the use of handguns by unauthorized persons, and make it difficult to delete computer files accidentally. Therefore, human-centered designers do not need to merely serve the conceptions of others; they can and should take the opportunity to lead where possible. But this too requires second-order understanding, having a sense of what conceptions their design may be facing, conceptions that, when enacted, could lead their beholders to succeed or into fatal accidents. Human-centered design is greatly facilitated by various forms of cooperation between designers and the users of their design – from focus groups to hiring them as consultant to a development. Listening to what users have to say generates

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second-order understanding and supporting how they think and live is second-order understanding in action. While it requires extra efforts to be fair to the conceptions that a community of users brings to a design, the fluidity of modern markets, the democratization of everyday life, and the variability of the information society makes second-order understanding a necessity for contemporary designers. In view of the above, two prominent concepts need to be questioned. Both are leftovers from the design discourse of the industrial era. The first is the concept of THE user. THE user is a convenient prop for designers who are unwilling to face the challenge of the multiplicity of existing user conceptions that a design needs to afford. As a designer’s construction, THE user does not speak, has no conceptions other than granted by its creator, and cannot make creative contributions to a design. THE user does not exist in a reality of many, who have their own and often unexpected approaches to reality, know about what they are doing, can process information, make intelligent choices, have the ability to form user groups, advocate the positions they hold, and may act in support or against a design. Human-centered designers need to acknowledge this diversity, but must moreover recognize that the design they are proposing needs to be realized by many: by clients who need to employ their workers; financiers who want their investment to bear fruits; builders who need to see some benefit in producing a design; advertisers who need to find good arguments for promoting its use; sales people who need to make a profit from it; critics who need to be impressed; repair persons who need to know what to do when it fails; recyclers who need to be able to separate reusable components from trash; and ecologists who see the need to protect the ecosystem from its side effects and waste. All of these professionals are essential for a design to succeed and constitute its stakeholders. Stakeholders have an interest in a design or a particular technology, resources to promote it or prevent it from happening, and act accordingly. They can influence each other, form alliances or oppose each other. They are also creative in what they are doing. Users are stakeholders of one kind, and so are designers. I am suggesting that the concept of THE singular user be retired in favor of a multiplicity of stakeholders. We can thus say that: Human-centered design takes place within networks of stakeholders,

which is to say that design essentially is a social process, one in which many interconnected agents play different roles in bringing a design to fruition. While designers like to conceive of themselves as playing the key role in what happens to their design, in fact, they never are the only ones who drive the process of its realization. In some cases, designers merely modify a design that then passes through a well-institutionalized network of stakeholders. In other cases, a design could become the core of a reorganization of all those interested or opposed to its realization. Marketing research is likely to derive the criteria of a design from buyers, not necessarily users. Users differ in the role that an artifact plays in their lives. Regarding some designs, users spent far more time with an artifact than their designers and producers, for example with a building. Once a house is built, it may stay there for a long time. Regarding other designs, users spend comparatively little time with them, for example a prescription drug. A pill takes a second to swallow, maybe a day to have effects, but years to develop. Stakeholder networks are varied, self-organizing, not easily generalizable, and difficult to track down. Because artifacts cannot come to

fruition without supportive stakeholders who approve of a design and make their know-how and resources available, designers cannot afford to ignore such networks – or be at the mercy of them. A second concept that stands in the way of conceptualizing human-centered design is the idea that designers design products, architects build buildings, and engineers create mechanisms. This conception may have been closer to the truth during the industrial era than it is now. When industry reigned supreme, designs, once approved or authorized, left little choices to those who had to turn them into products. The process occurred within a hierarchically organized manufacturer. The connection between a worked out design and the product it specified was therefore far more direct than it is now. However, even in the industrial era, designers never literally created products. They made drawings, built models, and wrote specifications for products to be realized by others. This is true today as well, except that the connection between a design and its realization has shifted from obedient employees to complex networks of stakeholders. What designers pass on to other stakeholders in a design are proposals. Proposals occur in language. Whether these proposals utilize drawings, models, video presentations, and more or less detailed suggestions, the products of designers are essentially communicative and their sole purpose is transmission to those who matter. If designers work within a network of stakeholders, which can make or break a design, their proposals need to enroll them into the project of a design. Without the authority that stems from being allied with a powerful institution, the only way that designers’ proposals can succeed in a market driven, democratic, information-based society is by being compelling communications. Successful proposals: . survive in networks of conversations among stakeholders; . reveal a passionate commitment to a future that would not come about naturally; . build on what is variable, changeable; . identify if not create relevant resources for the realization of a design; . enroll other stakeholders into the project of a design, providing empirically grounded arguments that open possibilities to realize what interests them; . enable these possibilities to be communicable to successive stakeholders, energizing cooperation within the emerging network of stakeholders; and . acknowledge the risks and assume responsibilities for failures. The emphasis on possibilities chimes with von Foerster’s (1981, p. 308) ethical imperative: “Act always so as to increase the number of choices,” here, however, considered less an issue of ethics but the motivating condition for human communication (Krippendorff, 1989), for conversations that coordinate the activities of different stakeholders in a design, ultimately converging on its realization. Indeed: Human-centered designers create possibilities for others.

Thus, human-centered designers participate in processes of realizing (making real) affordances for others that are under continuous reconstruction by its constituent stakeholders.

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The design of cybernetics To me, the shift from first-order to second-order cybernetics is not merely a matter of putting the observer in the observed. The latter is familiar since Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, known as observer effects in social science methodologies – although stated there as a limit to detached observation. It is at home in quantum physics, ethnography, ethnomethodology, hermeneutics, and various therapies. Actively participating in system under continuous reconstruction by its constituents brings second-order cybernetics closer to design – except that design tends to focuses on something other than itself, the affordances of others’ practices of living. Second-order cybernetics, by contrast, concerns also the discourse that defines cybernetics and cyberneticians by what they do. Nevertheless, if second-order cybernetics has something to offer to design, the ideas of design have something to offer to second-order cybernetics. To me, first on the list and the only aspect I wish to discuss here is the recognition that language does not merely describe the world. Its use changes the world in the direction of its description (Rorty, 1970, 1989; Wittgenstein, 1953). It follows that theories, which are stated in language, can change their validity in the process of their communication and right in front of the theorist’s eyes, especially social theories that may reach those theorized therein. Self-fulfilling prophesies are well known, but considered unscientific and to be avoided by traditional scientists. Instead of facing the challenges that self-fulfilling theories pose to the paradigm of scientific inquiry, traditional scientists prefer to theorize subject matters that have less of a chance of being affected by theories about them, so-called natural phenomena, for example. In effect, as already suggested above, scientists, treating language as merely representational, have no place for design as a way of understanding the world in the process of being made and remade. Scientists prefer ontology to ontogenesis. The idea of including observer effects in theories about a subject matter that is profoundly influenced by acts of observation – in quantum physics as well as in the social scientific uses of interviews and other so-called obtrusive measures, for example – goes only half way. It preserves the enlightenment idea of language as a system of representations and of understanding by observation. From the perspective of human-centered design, what cybernetics needs to embrace is the circular process of designing affordances and observing the practices of living they enable. Taking my own suggestion to heart, I am suggesting that theorizing, describing, explaining or simulating something should not merely acknowledge their effects but be undertaken in view of creating effects that are desirable to their stakeholders, that is, they should be viewed as acts of designing, of introducing changes in the world, not as acts of exploring what allegedly exists. It means assuming responsibilities for what one’s theories and their communication can bring forth. From this perspective, enlightenment science appears as an irresponsible illusion, the illusion that that language is neutral and knowledge, stated in its terms, would somehow enlighten the otherwise dark world. I feel the need to add that design is a basic human activity and far more common than the search for abstract propositions. When someone arranges her furniture at home, she designs the arrangement. When someone makes a promise to someone else, a relationship is created. When someone customizes his computer, he designs a world he can work in. Selecting clothes to wear is to identify oneself in the world of others.

Design is indispensably human, if not a basic human right. I would venture to say that, in everyday life, scientific propositions are not taken for their truths but for what they enable, what one can do with them. Preventing people from designing their world, whether by requiring them to wear a uniform, putting them on an assembly line, or forcing them to merely look at the world, the prisoners in Plato’s Cave or television addicts, robs them of what is essentially human. Second-order cybernetics, defined as the cybernetics of participating in systems under continuous reconstruction by its constituents, is necessarily cognizant of what its discourse shapes – by design or evolution – and sees its contributions to be essentially participatory and inevitably social. It elevates design to be a narrative that is more embracing as that of science, a way of realizing oneself in coordination with others. It favors democratic practices (circularities) where God’s eye views (top-down hierarchies) dominated. It creates alternatives (variety and information) that can motivate others to participate in the practices of cybernetics. It applies cybernetic principles (parts of the discourse of cybernetics) to how cyberneticians engage each other in conversations. And finally, by rendering constructions of worlds relative to one’s own engagement with others, it causes individual or cultural differences to be cherished rather than ignored. It seems to me that the cybernetics of design and the design of cybernetics are worthwhile projects to be enrolled in as one of its stakeholders. References Ashby, W.R. (1956), An Introduction to Cybernetics, Chapman and Hall, London. Gibson, J.J. (1979), The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA. Krippendorff, K. (1989), “On the ethics of constructing communication”, in Dervin, B., Grossberg, L., O’Keefe, B.J. and Wartella, E. (Eds), Rethinking Communication: Paradigm Issues, I, Sage, Newbury Park, CA, pp. 66-96. Krippendorff, K. (1996), “A trajectory of artificiality and new principles of design for the information age”, in Krippendorff, K. (Ed.), Design in the Age of Information, A report to the National Science Foundation (NSF), Design Research Laboratory, School of Design, North Carolina State University, 1997, Raleigh, NC, pp. 91-5. Krippendorff, K. (2006a), The Semantic Turn; A New Foundation for Design, Taylor & Francis/CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL/New York, NY. Krippendorff, K. (2006b), “The dialogical reality of meaning”, The American Journal of Semiotics, Vol. 19 Nos 1-4, pp. 19-36. Latour, B. (2005), Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Oxford University Press, New York, NY. Mead, M. (1968), “Cybernetics of cybernetics”, in von Foerster, H. et al. (Eds), Purposive Systems, Spartan Books, New York, NY, pp. 1-11. Rorty, R. (1970), The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Rorty, R. (1989), Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY. Simon, H.A. (1969), The Sciences of the Artificial, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Stolzenberg, G. (1984), “Can an inquiry into the foundations of mathematics tell us anything interesting about mind?”, in Watzlawick, P. (Ed.), The Invented Reality, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY, pp. 257-308.

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von Foerster, H. (1974), Cybernetics of Cybernetics or the Control of Control and the Communication of Communication, Biological Computer Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL. von Foerster, H. (1981), “Objects: tokens for (eigen-) behaviors”, Observing Systems, Intersystems Publications, Seaside, CA, pp. 274-85. Wiener, N. (1948), Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Wiley, New York, NY. Wittgenstein, L. (1953), Philosophical Investigations, Blackwell, Oxford. About the author Klaus Krippendorff PhD is the Gregory Bateson Term Professor for Cybernetics, Language, and Culture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. He is a Fellow of AAAS, ICA, NIAS (The Netherlands), SSDS (Japan) and others. He has published widely on communication theory, cybernetics, systems theory, social science methodology, and design. He authored several books, most recently: The Semantic Turn, A new Foundation for Design (2006) and Content Analysis (2004/1980); earlier Information Theory (1986); A Dictionary of Cybernetics (1986); and edited Design in the Age of Information, a Report to NSF (1997). Currently he pursues projects in cybernetic epistemology, critical scholarship, social constructions of reality, and discourse theory. Klaus Krippendorff can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Design and prosthetic perception Ted Krueger

Design and prosthetic perception

School of Architecture, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, USA Abstract

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Purpose – The paper aims to consider competing accounts of perception and to examine their potential to support design activity that seeks to extend and enrich perception using interface technologies. The interfaces will enable the direct perception of electromagnetic phenomena that are not now considered to be directly available to humans. Design/methodology/approach – Two models are considered. According to one, the standard view, perception is of an external world known by means of information flowing into an organism from it as conditioned by the organism’s biological sensory modalities; according to the other, the enactive view, perception occurs by means of learning to differentiate oneself from the world by undertaking activities, by learning and mastering sensorimotor contingencies. Findings – The paper presents preliminary results of design work based on enactive cognition and argues that the results, in turn, re-inform and reinforce the theory by the introduction of novel perceptual phenomena that cannot be accommodated within the standard view of perception. Practical implications – The project, rather than seeking an instrumental utility, though this may occur, instead strives to enable the bringing forth of a richer world. Its objective is epistemic rather than pragmatic. Originality/value – The paper presents a reflection on the role of design in the construction of theory. Keywords Design, Cybernetics, Perception Paper type Research paper

I am designing and building devices that will enable my phenomenal world to be perceived with additional dimensions, ones that now lie outside my awareness. This project unites design thinking and perception in a framework that is consistent with second-order cybernetics. It is, in fact, that framework that allows for a shift away from traditional object making as the goal of design to focus on the experiential. Design typically concerns itself with the development and construction of objects that form the context for human interaction. But, when the objective of the design work lies in the experiential realm, the nature of the object becomes secondary and new ways of understanding one’s the relationship to the world are required. Simon (1969) proposes that design is a science of the artificial. That is, it does not attempt to describe, “what is” but to develop “what could be.” This position is commonly held in the design fields. Although, Simon advocates the development of a design science, the turn from the natural sciences to the sciences of the artificial is a fundamental shift from the descriptive and analytical to synthetic modes of thought. While design practices vary across disciplines in their focus, methods, histories and in the rhythm of their execution, they are all projective, and aim to make changes in the world. Perhaps, in some sense then, they are fundamentally optimistic. This emphasis on intervention, realization and the properties of the object are fundamental to the architectural world-view. For this reason, Glanville (2006) notes the difficulty that designers have in considering frameworks that are not objectivist. Perhaps, some portion of the difficulty comes from the fact that when attention is on the object and its physical environment an

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objectivist perspective functions adequately within our culture at the architectural scale. One can speak of things in this way and useful analyses result. However, the objectivist perspective hides a fundamental and, for design, critical understanding – that the processes of design simply are specialized variants of the process of perception. Glanville (2006) shows that a constructivist epistemology is directly related to design methods – that the world that each of us inhabits is “designed” by us. He also notes that the designs that we make are dependant on our ability to externalize and perceive our own ideas. This fundamental circularity unites a way of constructing the world and a way of operating within it and suggests that there is another understanding of the purpose of design activity. By including the observer’s perspective in the goals of design activity, one begins to redefine the task. There is a shift away from a focus on objects and their properties to the crafting of experience. Structuring the nature of experience, what might be considered the “qualification of space” in architectural terms, rather than its quantification, becomes an explicit goal. This shifting of perspectives has been structured in Umpleby (2006) based on von Foerster’s epistemological triangle – world, cognitive processes and descriptions. If one considers that syntactics are a relation between a world and its descriptions and symantics between descriptions and the cognitive processes of an organism, then between those cognitive processes and the world are pragmatics. Pragmatics in this formalization is determined by an organism’s perceptive potential. Pragmatics privilege action and tend to neglect description. Much of what happens in the design fields occurs here. It is, as well, the realm of one view of perceptual activity, that of the skill-based theories of perception. Another understanding of perception is that it is fundamentally an information processing or semantic approach. This paper considers these two accounts of perception and examines their potential to support a particular kind of design activity; one that seeks to extend and enrich perception using interface technologies. The interface in question will enable the direct perception of electromagnetic phenomena that are not now considered to be directly available to humans. Two models will be considered. In what, Thompson and Varela (2001) call the “standard view” the goal of perception is to represent the state of the world in the mind of the viewer. In what they term the “enactive” approach, perception occurs by means of learning to differentiate ones self from the environment by actively engaging with it. In this way of understanding perception, reality is not perceived but “brought forth” or constructed by an active and engaged organism. The standard view of perception In the “standard view” of perception, “to perceive the world is to represent it by means of the senses” (Lopes, 2000). Here, several entities are posited – a world, senses, representations and a perceiver. While each is independent, they are linked by the inflow of information about aspects of the world that are represented to the perceiver through the conduit of the senses. In this account, the senses are “avenues” for information about physical states of a world that is external to the central nervous system (Keeley, 2002). This information is conveyed through a system that is analogous to an electronic device consisting of a sensor, wiring and a processor, which receives the information and undertakes the task of perception, the building out of a veridical model of the external world. There is an inflowing causal vector in which the outside world is apprehended by means of the organism’s perceptual and cognitive systems.

This account of perception rests on assumptions about each of the constituent elements of the perceptual model. In each instance, contemporary research in perception raises questions about those assumptions. Hughes (1999) notes that the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is perceived by humans is to the negative 35th power. Despite this trivial proportion, perceived reality caries an experiential density that is completely convincing under normal circumstances. Although the world appears to us to be the way that it “actually is,” we experience almost none of it. Other organisms have sense modalities that we do not. Those senses that we nominally share with other animals, vision for example, access different spectral ranges than theirs (Varela et al., 1991). Even within the framework posited by the “standard view,” our experience is partial and varies between organisms. In addition, human experience can vary dramatically between individuals, though the habit is to speak of a standard or perhaps statistically normative individual. The “standard view” of perception is an information-processing model. As such, it focuses on the transfer of some indication of the physical state of the world into a cognitive state of the perceiver. The quality of a perception is given by the degree to which it is an accurate index of the world. But within this model, little is made of the perceiver. The operation of vision is understood to be equivalent across observers. By focusing on the mode, the model does not account for the organism, its environment and their mutual history. The environment includes not only the physical conditions external to the organism but will also include other organisms and the cultural conditions in which they are embedded. Perception from the traditional perspective is supposed to be a conveyance of neutral physical facts uninfluenced by the volition and activities of what is essentially a static and passive organism. There is a uni-directional inflowing causal relationship of information to realization that happens by means of a biological conduit. The perceptual system is posited as automatic and inevitable. Information must be detected and conveyed to the brain and so information theoretic models are founded on the notion of modular senses each responsive to specific physical phenomena, each with its own nerve pathways and a corresponding cortical processing area. Recently, this understanding of the senses has come under increasing criticism. Shimojo and Shams (2001) note that, the biological evidence does not bear out the modularity of the senses. While much of the scientific investigation of the senses interrogates them individually and in isolation, there is significant interaction between sensory modes in the production of a perception. Brain imaging investigations that are not restricted to a single sensory mode of input find that there is significant activation of what were once thought to be modal-specific cortices by simultaneously arriving input from other modes; that sound, for example, also activates the “visual” cortex and may alter the perception of visual phenomena (Shams, et al., 2005). Elements in the sensory flux are not combined arithmetically nor is there a fixed hierarchy of modes, rather, there seems to be a system of combination in which the most reliable sense, given the circumstances, is weighted more heavily than the others (Ernst and Bu¨lthoff, 2004). Additionally, the connection between a biological sensor and areas of the brain is not intrinsic but adaptive as shown by studies of neurogenesis (von Melchor et al., 2000) and neuroadaptation (Bavelier, et al., 2001). While there are brain areas in which nerves from biological transducers terminate, the function of large areas of the brain is developed in response to the properties of signals

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conveyed to them (Kahn and Krubitzer, 2002). In addition, areas throughout the mid-brain and cortex respond to input from several senses suggesting that this is the normative condition and bringing into question any notion of a strict modularity (Gallese and Lakoff, 2005). Within the “standard model” of perception, the development and maintenance of representation is not only a necessary part of the process, but also its objective. Change blindness experiments in which significant portions of the visual field of the subject can be changed with out notice including, in some cases, the person with whom one is conversing (Simons and Levin, 1998), suggests that the degree of detail contained in models or representations of the world is slim and impermanent. “The world is its own best model,” as Brooks (1990) would have it. There may be no advantage to building an internal model of a world that is typically experienced as having (barring the unsuspected experimental psychologist) substantial stability. Taken as a system, the process of perception described by the “standard view” is linear and mechanistic. Information input causes perceptual output. This model allows for an equivalency between humans and computational systems as they are both symbol processing machines instantiated in different substrates but essentially operating according to the same principals. However, cognition is not symbolic computation (Harvey, 1997) and nerves are not wires (Bach-y-Rita, 2003). The experience of the world is one of solidity, permanence and constancy, but the “information” produced by the senses is intermittent, fragmentary, dynamic and ambiguous. The information then cannot account for the perception. The inherent ambiguity of the “information” given by a single sense requires the participation of the sum of the sensory flux to clarify. But, it also requires intuition, knowledge, experience and creativity in order to invent probable patterns to account for the experiences. If one were to attempt to use the “standard view” of perception as the basis for the design of perceptual prosthetics, one would be developing a new sense modality. In doing so, the principal tasks that need to be accomplished are the extraction of salient features of the world, their encoding into a neural language, the identification of an area of the cortex where they will be processed and the crafting of appropriate connections. Techniques enabling the direct linking of technological devices to neurological tissues are under development. Semiconductors and nerves operate on different principles. Of particular difficulty are the interaction of micro-electronics and micro-ionics in regard to both spatial and temporal resolution (Fromherz, 2005). If this technology can be developed eventually, it is clearly not adequate to the task now. However, questions remain as to the nature of the signals that should be used to encode the information on both sides of the electronic/ionic interface. It is not clear at present how neuron-signals are structured. Both temporal and rate (frequency) encodings have been suggested. There is an assumption within information models that the salient activity is a signal passed neuron-to-neuron while, in fact, a more global network phenomenon may be important (Rodriguez, et al., 1999) in which case the problem of how and what to encode becomes even more obscure. Perhaps, the biggest challenge to face is the selection of a suitable sensor. The difficulty here is finding a product that can encode “reality.” At best, we will find a technological device that varies in a relatively systematic way with some physical condition and within certain ranges. Manufacturers typically provide this kind of information about their products. Alternatively, the device may be tested against

equipment calibrated to certain standards. Both of these activities are a simple regress of the central problem that reality cannot be captured in such a device, nor in a biological one as noted above. We can attempt to find a sensor that co-varies in a systematic way with the other information that we have – to attempt to find a system of mutual calibration in which each individual product is operating in synch with the other products, techniques and systems that we have at our disposal. This strategy is inconsistent with the desire to link to an objective and verifiable external reality but it is entirely compatible with the alternative description of perception – the “enactive view.” The enactive view of perception In an “enactive” view of perception, the dynamic sensorimotor coupling between an organism and its environment links changes in the sensory flux to the dynamics of the body and relies on the integration of afferent and efferent nerve activity. The organism in this case is active and exploratory; willfully engaging its environment, and by doing, so generating a portion of its sensory dynamics (Thompson and Varela, 2001). It is the element of willfulness that suggests that the objective of perception is the understanding of conditions in the world rather than the maintenance of representations. This direct linking between the activity of living and perception is in stark contrast to the abstraction into information and representation in the “standard view.” The organism must be able process a vast array of nerve activity that has no a priori structure into patterns that become identified with the self and the external world. But in addition, objects in the world, their perceptual attributes and spatial locations must also be derived. In the same way, the organism has a spatial disposition in relation to the external and its own set of properties and potentials. Philipona et al. (2003) claim that they investigate the “radical hypothesis” – that brains calculate statistical regularities in the sensory flux in order to characterize it with a small number of parameters. This is in some sense similar to the claim that dogs solve differential equations as they run to catch a stick (Peterson, 2000). It seems unlikely that the brains of either humans or dogs do these kinds of formal mathematical processes, which after all, are symbolic and cultural operations rather than biological phenomena. Their paper presents no evidence for this kind of activity, but what it does clearly show is that with statistical techniques, it is possible to derive those regularities in the flux that correspond to the sensors, the degrees of freedom, and spatial and object properties in the presumed external world. Their work suggests that pattern recognition capabilities, whatever their basis, may be capable of extracting, in principle, invariants in the sensory flux from which self, world, objects and properties can be inferred. In a similar kind of study, Choe and Bhamidipati (2004) implemented a learning algorithm that had as it objective the maintenance of perceptual invariants by means of the activity of an agent. They suggest that it is the activity of the agent that grounds the “meaning” of the neural dynamics. By definition, invariants are only possible and can only be realized under conditions of variation. In the case of perceptual phenomena, the word invariant must be understood as a relative rather than absolute term. The organism varies tremendously over the course of its lifespan and objects and environments undergo changes but remain identified. The organism must be active and engaged in order to perceive.

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O’Regan and Noe¨ (2001) use the term “sensorimotor contingency” to describe the systematic variations in sensor states that arise from the active engagement of an organism with its media. They assert that these contingencies give sense modalities their respective qualities. Vision is not the sense of light striking receptors in the retina as traditionally understood, but a mode of exploration mediated by distinctive sensorimotor contingencies. Therefore, vision does not depend upon the eye or optic nerve but on the active engagement of an organism and its environment. Sensory substitution devices There is perhaps no better evidence for embodied cognition and the sensorimotor contingency theory of perception than the tactile vision substitution system of developed by Bach-y-Rita (1972) and colleagues during the last four decades. For the blind, these devices replace vision by means of tactile stimulations of the surface of the skin. Tactile vision substitution devices typically consist of a video source mapped onto the surface of the skin by vibrotactile or electrotactile means. But, sensory substitution does not happen automatically and is not due solely to the presence of appropriately designed technological artifacts. Recorded video images if applied to the skin would result only in the perception of an irritation on its surface and not of objects located in space. Spatialization is dependent upon coupling changes in the video image to the volitional movements that cause them. Bach-y-Rita (1972) reports that a subject wearing a head mounted camera coupled to an abdominal output array will initially reach for an object at waist level, but with hours of experience of moving about an environment, will correctly perceive the object location relative to the head-mounted camera. With the ability to move the video camera at will, the perception on the surface gradually fades from consciousness and the perception is of an object located externally in space. This only happens when sufficient time has been invested in using the system, usually some 15 hours. Significantly, the subject remains able to distinguish sensations occurring on the site of the interface based on intention. Scratching to relieve an itch beneath an awkward apparatus would not result in a bizarre perceptual event but would be understood quite normally, without spatialization, because the information about intent and activity is integrated with the stimulus. Spatialization, an indicator of perception in this case, occurs only with movement and learning. Experiments have been undertaken using a highly restricted technological apparatus, a photo sensor fixed to the index finger coupled to a small vibrating tactor. The apparatus is equivalent to a single pixel at a depth of one bit (on-off). By allowing only certain movements, the conditions under which externalized spatial perceptions arose could be tracked with precision. The experiment showed that with free movement in three dimensions comes a “spectacular ability to recognize forms . . . accompanied by an exteriorization of the percepts, which become objects located in space” (Lenay et al., 1997). The availability of externalized perception in these reduced conditions places restrictions on the mechanisms responsible for perceptual activity. Both volitional movement and learning are required. These experiments are evidence that the sensorimotor approach to perception is a viable explanation. Perception is intimately bound up with action and thereby to intention. These experiments and those with sensory substitution devices clearly support the hypothesis that perception is a

skill rather than an innate capacity. They also show that technological devices are capable of altering the world of lived experiences. Perceptual prosthetics An enactive understanding of perception allows – perhaps even asserts that the reality of our lived experience can be altered, shaped and enriched by technologies (Stewart et al., 2004): (Changes in the dimensions of structural coupling) can occur through design, in the intentional use of prosthetic means that create new dimensions of interactions for an organism which thus become new sensory domains for them (Maturana, 1997).

The present effort to expand human awareness by design asserts that the understanding of the process of perception and its developmental trajectory will allow for the design of specific devices that are able to include spectra that are not normally available to human perception. It is suggested that this can be accomplished by means of technological devices that facilitate a structured relation between the output of the interface and volitional movements conditioned on the opportunity to develop these skills over time. We have experimented with devices to allow for the direct perception of magnetic fields. Magnetic fields were chosen because they are available at a variety of scales relative to the body and so present the opportunity to investigate the role of different kinds of movements with respect to the phenomena. Large-scale magnetic fields, such as that generated by the earth itself, are immersive and so the relevant movements will be locomotive. The fields generated by magnetic materials are typically smaller and the corresponding movements may be at the scale of the arm or hand. Fields generated by electrical transmission, appliances and equipment may be intermediate in scales. While the focus of the work is primarily theoretical, concerns about the impact of these fields on physiological processes lends a pragmatic justification to the research. A device fabricated by the author and colleagues[1] at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was based on an eight direction automotive compass and took the form of a belt in which information about the orientation with respect to the earth’s magnetic field is conveyed by means of small vibrating motors such as those used as alerts in mobile communications. This device was tested in the field and was found to be, under certain conditions unreliable as an orientation aid. This was due to the prevalence of large magnetic fields surrounding power transmission lines and the fields generated by the large electric motors of suburban trains. The difficulties in using this device were not due to its unsuitability as an instrument for perceiving magnetism, but to its designation as a device for a specific purpose – navigation and orientation. That this decision was made with intellectual knowledge of the prevalence of magnetic fields in industrialized cultures but without an understanding or experience of their ubiquity, strength or dynamics illustrates the thesis that there is much of the world that remains beyond our experiential apprehension. Despite this difficulty, there has been some interest from the blind community in further developing this device for use in navigation. It seems appropriate that devices inspired by sensory aids may have their initial application in such a task (Figure 1). Another wearable device was developed to perceive the smaller more intense fields generated by a complex composition of rare earth magnets. It takes the form of a probe

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Figure 1. Compass belt

built into the body of a pen. The device was designed to take advantage of culturally conditioned experience with these artifacts and is a direct small-scale magnetic implementation of a blind person’s cane. Indeed, we are “blind” in relation to magnetic fields. With active exploration, the device allows for a “focal awareness” of the strength and location of magnetic fields. The quality of the experience is not unlike the awareness that one has in using other probing instruments but is not conveyed by the resistance of physical objects to movement (Figure 2). An example of a slightly different interface can be seen in the third example. It consists of a glove that contains a fingertip sensor that picks up fluctuating electric fields by induction. These signals are amplified and applied to the back of the finger by a vibrotactile transducer. While, the vibrations are applied to the skin that on the back of the fingers is relatively insensitive to location, the vibrations are also conducted by the bone, that lies immediately below. This makes the vibration difficult to localize precisely. In something akin to a tactile ventriloquist effect, a tingling is felt about the fingertip; sensation is thrown to the point of focal awareness. Like a bone conducting headphone, where the sound is conveyed by bone conduction without interfering with normal hearing, this vibration does not mask the tactile sensations from the fingertip (unfortunately, in the prototype shown the glove does that). The glove is intended to provide tactile feedback on the orientation, strength and frequency of the fields, which the left index fingertip explores. The laws of sensorimotor contingencies can be developed through repeated use. The experience of these fields will be integrated into the full range of other senses in the context of

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Figure 2. Pen interface

normal activities. While preliminary results are quite promising the glove is presently undergoing testing and evaluation (Figure 3). The development of these prototypes is an initial step toward an enrichment of human perception by devices producing a parallel technologically-mediated prosthetic perception. I have no intention of using or analyzing the results of these experiments in isolation from the remainder of the sensory flux produced by the body. Indeed, it is only in concert with them, and through them, that this stimulus might be incorporated into the invariant patterns that become identified as objects and properties. I hope that the results of these experiments might be fed back into the enactive theory of perception as evidence for the ability of the organism to structure its world out of the interaction between the strands of its sensory flows.

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Figure 3. Electric field glove

Perception and design The “enactive view” of perception posits an organism actively bringing forth and sustaining a world that is inextricably related to the structure of the knower (McGee, 2005). Stewart et al. (2004) categorize the ways in which technical artifacts participate in the process of sensorimotor coupling that forms the basis for enactive perception. The environment may be deliberately modified in order to simplify or facilitate certain activities. Clearly, the traditional design professions participate in this kind of activity. Language and communications technologies constitute “semiotic artifacts” that lead to the coordination of activity at the social scale. And finally, tools and sensory instruments constitute “extensions to the body.” The work proposed in this paper falls within this last category. Perceptual prosthetics alter the structure of the knower, in McGee’s terms, and so alter the worlds that might be brought forth by the organism. The role of design is more central to our lived experience that is traditionally accepted. Lenay et al. (1997) claim that: . . . all technical artifacts are enactive interfaces that mediate the structural coupling between human beings and the world that they live in and hence bring forth a particular world of lived experience.

Design activity then is not only a process that is parallel to and mirrors a constructivist epistemology, but also at several scales, directly intervenes within the structural couplings of humans and their environments and so actively participates in the construction of reality. Design is not the configuration and construction of objects that populate an objective reality, but the building out of the conditions of body and of environment from which our reality is derived. While design activity is often justified in terms of the physical capabilities it provides or the functions that it performs, this pragmatic perspective must be complemented by recognition of its epistemic functions.

The project to build perceptual prosthetics is motivated principally by the epistemic. The devices shown are simply steps to an extensive range of augmentations that can in principle be provided (Bach-y-Rita, 1972). A theory of perception is nothing more than the development of a pattern that organizes what we know about it into a coherent whole. I have considered two accounts of perception, the first attempts to derive perceptual functioning from a description and interrogation of structure; the other, from a consideration of dynamics and interaction. I am not claiming that the enactive approach is a better description of the perceptual process for to do so would be to reject the objectivist account but accept its goals. The development of an account of perception is no less an act of construction than is the perceptual act itself. Therefore, it must be admitted that accounts of perception may be constructed differently. Instead, I am pointing out that the enactive perspective allows one to see a way to intervene in the perceptual process technologically and from this activity to gather new experiences on which to more forward in the development of this pattern. Because the goal of the investigation is driven by a desire to enrich perceptual repertoire, the activity of coming to understand perception was motivated by will and activity. Like the change that occurs in perception under active as opposed to passive conditions, theories appear differently with different intents. The relationship of the output of such an interface device to an objective reality has been avoided; however, there remain still strict limitations to which it must respond. The goal of the project is to add to and integrate with and enrich the ongoing sensory flux in such a way that the newly derived patterns cohere with those already established. Latency and lawfulness will be of paramount importance, but weight, comfort, social appropriateness and battery life cannot be ignored Note 1. Mason Juday, Rafael Varela, Sean Fagans, Seth Cluett and Alexandr Prusakov have assisted in the development of prosthetic perception devices in the Human Interface Lab. A research grant from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute provided initial funding for these devices.

References Bach-y-Rita, P. (1972), Brain Mechanisms in Sensory Substitution, Academic Press, New York, NY. Bach-y-Rita, P. (2003), “Seeing with the brain”, International Journal of Human Computer Interaction, Vol. 15, pp. 285-95. Bavelier, D., Brozinsky, C., Tomann, A., Mitchell, T., Neville, H. and Liu, G. (2001), “Impact of early deafness and early exposure to sign language on the cerebral organization for motion processing”, Journal of Neuroscience, Vol. 21 No. 22, pp. 8931-42. Brooks, R. (1990), “Elephants don’t play chess”, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Vol. 6, pp. 3-15. Choe, Y. and Bhamidipati, S. (2004), “Autonomous acquisition of the meaning of sensory states through sensory-invariance driven action”, in Ijspeert, A., Murata, M. and Wakamiya, N. (Eds), Biologically Inspired Approaches to Advanced Information Technology, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3141, Springer Verlag, Berlin, pp. 176-88. Ernst, M. and Bu¨lthoff, H. (2004), “Merging the senses into a robust percept”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 162-9.

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Fromherz, P. (2005), “Semiconductors with brain”, in Neher, E. (Ed.) 2nd XLAB Symposium, Go¨ttingen 2005, available at: www.hss.de/downloads/FromherzVortrag.pdf (accessed February 18, 2007). Gallese, V. and Lakoff, G. (2005), “The brains concepts: the role of the sensory-motor system in conceptual knowledge”, Cognitive Neuropsychology, Vol. 21, pp. 455-79, available at: www.unipr.it/ , gallese/PCGNSIOBA9.pdf (accessed January 28, 2007). Glanville, R. (2006), “Construction and design”, Constructivist Foundations, Vol. 1 No. 3, pp. 103-10. Harvey, I. (1997), “Cognition is not computation; evolution is not optimization”, in Gerstner, W., Germond, A., Hasler, M. and Nicoud, J. (Eds), Artificial Neural Networks – ICANN97, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, pp. 685-90, available at: www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/users/ inmanh/CogCompEvOp.pdf (accessed January 28, 2007). Hughes, H. (1999), Sensory Exotica: A World Beyond Human Experience, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Kahn, D. and Krubitzer, L. (2002), “Massive cross-modal cortical plasticity and the emergence of a new cortical area in developmentally blind mammals”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Vol. 99 No. 17, pp. 11429-34. Keeley, B. (2002), “Making sense of the senses”, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 99 No. 1, pp. 5-28. Lenay, C., Canu, S. and Villon, P. (1997), “Technology and perception: the contribution of sensory substitution systems”, paper presented at Second International Conference on Cognitive Technology (CT ‘97), Aizu, pp. 44-53. Lopes, D. (2000), “What is it like to see with your ears? The representational theory of mind”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 60 No. 2, pp. 439-53. McGee, K. (2005), “Enactive cognitive science. Part 1: background and research themes”, Constructivist Foundations, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 19-34. Maturana, H. (1997), “Metadesign”, available at: www.inteco.cls/articulos/metadesign.htm (accessed February 18, 2007). O’Regan, K. and Noe¨, A. (2001), “A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 939 -1031. Peterson, I. (2000), “Calculating dogs”, Science News, Vol. 169 No. 7, available at: www. sciencenews.org/articles/20060218/mathtrek.asp (accessed January 25, 2007). Philipona, D., O’Regan, J. and Nadal, J. (2003), “Is there something out there? Inferring space from sensorimotor dependencies”, Neural Computation, Vol. 15 No. 9, pp. 2029-49. Rodriguez, E., George, N., Lachaux, J., Martinerie, J., Renault, B. and Varela, F. (1999), “Perception’s shadow: long-distance synchronization of human brain activity”, Nature, Vol. 397, pp. 430-3. Shams, L., Iwaki, S., Chawala, A. and Bhattacharya, J. (2005), “Early modulation of visual cortex by sound: an MEG study”, Neuroscience Letters, Vol. 378, pp. 76-81. Shimojo, S. and Shams, L. (2001), “Sensory modalities are not separate modalities: plasticity and interaction”, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, Vol. 2001 No. 11, pp. 505-9. Simon, H. (1969), The Sciences of the Artificial, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Simons, D. and Levin, D. (1998), “Failure to detect changes to people during a real-world interaction”, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, Vol. 5, pp. 644-9. Stewart, J., Khatchatourov, A. and Lenay, C. (2004), “Enaction and engineering”, paper presented at the on-line Conference on Enaction, available at: www.interdisciplines.org/enaction/ papers/7/version/original (accessed March 30, 2007).

Thompson, E. and Varela, F. (2001), “Radical embodiment: neural dynamics and consciousness”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 5 No. 10, pp. 418-25. Umpleby, S. (2006), “Unifying epistemologies by combining world description and observer”, unpublished paper prepared for the American Society of Cybernetics 2007 Annual Meeting, available at: www.gwu.edu/ , umpleby/recent_papers/2007_ASC_Unifying_ Epistemologies.pdf (accessed March 30, 2007). Varela, F., Thompson, E. and Rosch, E. (1991), The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. von Melchor, L., Pallas, S. and Sur, M. (2000), “Visual behavior mediated by retinal projections directed to the auditory pathway”, Nature, Vol. 404, pp. 871-6. Further reading Maturana, H. and Varela, F. (1980), “Autopoiesis and Cognition: the Realization of the Living”, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science No. 42, D. Reidel Publishing Co, Dordecht. About the author Ted Krueger is an Associate Dean and Associate Professor of architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he directs the PhD Program in the Architectural Sciences. He was educated in both the social sciences and in the professional practice of architecture. He has exhibited, lectured and published internationally for several decades. He presently is undertaking a PhD in Architecture at RMIT University in Melbourne under the supervision of Ranulph Glanville and Leon van Schaik. Ted Krueger can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Christopher Kian Teck Kueh Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia Abstract Purpose – This paper seeks to apply a systemic approach to study human-map-space interactions that will benefit the design of a wayfinding map. Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents a case study that was based on Van Bockstaele et al.’s sociocybernetic theory as a research framework to map study. Van Bockstaele et al.’s theory suggests that an individual’s behaviour derives from a cognitive system that consists of latent (background thinking process) and patent (amplified language or action that communicates with the public) action. To observe and understand an individual’s action, the observer must also consider cognitive systems. Applying this theory, the process of individuals using maps to solve wayfinding tasks within the City of Fremantle, Western Australia was observed. The study involved observing 30 international students who use three maps, each of which presents iconic, symbolic, and iconic and symbolic representations, to locate four destinations in the city. Findings – Findings suggest that external systems such as maps and the actual environment affect an individual’s latent and patent actions, while their behaviour affects the way they perceive the external systems. Research limitations/implications – This paper addresses the complexity of systems involved in the process of an individual using maps to solve wayfinding tasks in the actual environment. Practical implications – This study provides graphic and information designers with a substantial understanding of human-map-space interactions based on systemic perspectives. Originality/value – The application of sociocybernetics is uncommon in map studies. This paper provides a link between the two disciplines. Keywords Design, Research, Cybernetics, Feedback, Information research, Sociocybernetics Paper type Research paper

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1406-1421 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827382

1. Introduction Wayfinding refers to the activities and processes of individuals navigating and finding their ways in an environment (Golledge, 1999, p. 24). A wayfinding map therefore is a map that assists individuals in solving wayfinding tasks. The design of effective wayfinding map has always been a challenge for graphic and information designers. Disciplines such as cognitive science, geography, cartography, and graphic/information design are involved in the studies of designing effective wayfinding maps (Allen, 1999; Casakin et al., 2000; Correa de Jesus, 1994; Darken and Peterson, 2001; Levine, 1982; Miller and Lewis, 2000; Passini, 1984, 1996; Talbot et al., 1993; Tversky, 2000; Zipf, 2006). However, findings about the usability of maps is still inconclusive (Wood, 1993). This paper approaches the usability of wayfinding maps by studying people-map-space as a social system. A social system is considered in this paper not as a social organisation, but it refers to the process and structure of the ways individuals respond to maps and built environment while solving wayfinding tasks.

Sociocybernetics provides a systemic perspective in understanding the learning process of an individual solving wayfinding tasks in a given built space by using a wayfinding map. The application of sociocybernetics is currently uncommon in map reading and wayfinding studies. The integration of sociocybernetics into map design is beneficial because it provides broader perspectives on how individuals function with maps and the actual environment. This insight will assist designers in designing more effective maps. This paper presents a case study that applies a sociocybernetic framework to investigate people-map-space interactions. Based on Van Bockstaele, et al.’s (2000) framework, the study investigated the relationships that individuals make between external systems (actual space and maps) and internal cognitive systems (latent and patent actions). Outcomes recognise that external systems such as maps and the actual environment affect individual’s latent and patent actions while their behaviour affects the way they perceive the external systems. 2. Background: complexity of wayfinding and map systems In this paper, a map is both an object and process that represents map user’s understanding of the actual environment. It is an object because the user recognises it as a physical form that contains information that he/she needs; it is a process because the user develops her/his own understanding of the map by interacting with it, constructing meaning from it, while relating its meaning to the actual environment. Therefore, investigation into the understanding and improvements of the ways individuals use map is a complex process that involves the relationships between individuals’ internal and external representation of space. Such understanding is significantly important for designers to acquire and apply to the design of maps that assist individuals to solve wayfinding tasks in built environments. The issue facing the effectiveness of wayfinding map design is the lack of studying and understanding of people-map-space interaction as a whole. Maps play an important role in representing the built environment via visual information to assist individuals, especially novice user of spaces, in better understanding and navigating their surroundings. However, the effectiveness of current map design is challenged by the following situations: . The body of knowledge that relate users’ responses towards the map design of actual environments is underdeveloped and this contrasts with the increasing opportunities provided by new technology in designing and presenting wayfinding maps (Haraguchi et al., 2003; Kray et al., 2003 (online); McCarthy, 2005; Takase et al., 2003 (online). . There is insufficient research and studies directed at map design (Miller and Lewis, 2000; Talbot et al., 1993). . Research and findings from cognitive science (Casakin et al., 2000; Golledge, 1999; Tversky, 2000) and cartography (Ottoson, 1987) are not being adequately applied in current map design. . There is a lack of unified theory that could underpin the design of more effective maps. Although inter-disciplinary issues to individuals’ wayfinding behaviour have been raised in the disciplines of design research (Correa de Jesus, 1994) and

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architecture (Passini, 2002), the applications of theories are not explicit in the practice of wayfinding map design. The above issues suggest that a more holistic approach is needed to build stronger links between research in those disciplines and the design of wayfinding maps. Sociocybernetics provides systemic understanding to the learning process of a person solving a wayfinding task in an environment using a wayfinding map. The processes and systems involved in the use of map to solve wayfinding task are complex. Classically, the major processes involved in a wayfinding task are: . decision making and the development of a plan of action to reach a destination; . decision execution, transforming the plan into behavior at the appropriate place(s) along a route; and . perception and cognition (information processing), providing the necessary information to make and execute decisions (Passini, 2000, p. 88). Each of the above processes involves high-level interactions among individuals, their mental models, their external “memory aids” (the maps), and their internal perceptions of the environment. The external system refers to the real world environment and wayfinding system while the internal system refers to individuals’ understanding of map and the actual environment. External and internal systems are inseparable in a wayfinding process. In relation to individuals’ internal system, the notion of cognitive mapping is an important aspect of the study. It refers to the image of the actual environment that individuals conceptualise in their own minds (Allen, 1999; Casakin et al., 2000; Downs and Stea, 1977; Golledge, 1999; Portugali and Haken, 1992; Robinson and Petchenik, 1976; Tversky, 1992). The study of cognitive maps started during 1930s in the discipline of psychology and was concerned with animal’s learning and orientation abilities (Csanyi, 1993, p. 23). As the research developed, Tolman (1948) recognised the image of the spatial environment that humans structured in the mind as a “cognitive map”. The concept showed that animals are capable of representing the actual environment as image in the brain. Downs and Stea (1977, p. 6) further defined cognitive mapping as: . . . an abstraction covering those cognitive or mental abilities that enable us to collect, organize, store, recall, and manipulate information about the spatial environment . . . Above all, cognitive mapping refers to a process of doing: it is an activity that we engage in rather than an object that we have. It is the way in which we come to grips with and comprehend the world around us.

The concept of cognitive mapping therefore is a metaphor of the image that individuals construct, in their minds, of the environment. Studies in cognitive science have generated challenges and changes in the concept of individuals understanding the actual environment by constructing images in their minds. Tversky (1992, pp. 131-8) recognised that there was no one single cognitive map that could capture individuals’ knowledge about a map or an environment. She discussed that cognitive organising principles such as hierarchical organisation, cognitive perspective, and cognitive reference affected the ways individuals understand the environment. These principles explain that the ways individuals

arrange spatial information, position themselves in the environment, and interact with spatial elements (such as landmarks and buildings) changed their impression of the environment. Tversky (1992, pp. 135-7) also recognised that the rotation and alignment of spatial elements (in individuals’ mind) were the results of individuals’ perceptual and conceptual processes when they interacted with map or the environment. These discussions depict various cognitive dimensions that contributed to the ways individuals interacted and understood the actual environment. The “externalisation” of individuals’ internal representation of the surrounding has been proved valid. For example, city planners and developers have adopted cognitive mapping to the field of urban design. To understand spatial elements of city that are the most distinct to people, Lynch (1960, pp. 47-8) conducted studies on three American cities (Los Angeles, Jersey City, and Boston) that investigated the image that city dwellers made out of the given cityscapes. By asking people to sketch rough maps of the cities, he found out that people identify a city by recognizing five main elements. They were, respectively, paths, landmarks, nodes, edges and districts. These findings are important as they depicted the recognition of these spatial elements (in city and town environments) that are of help in constructing the impression, or the “image” of the built environment. People’s interaction with the actual environment involves much interpretation and recognition of spatial elements. In-depth understanding of these ideas is critical for the design of functional maps. Similar to Lynch’s emphasis on the relevance of visual elements in urban spaces to city and town design, Bentley et al. have published a book that functions as a manual for planners and developers in the design of urban environments. The authors identify and compared between appearances of different elements of buildings and cityscapes that are important to the design of urban environments. The appearance of elements such as windows, pillars, corners and edges of spaces, private and public areas, have impact on the ways individuals respond to the built space. According to Bentley et al. (1985, p. 9), the design of places affected individuals’ behaviour in many ways, such as: (1) it affects where people can go, and where they cannot: the quality we shall call permeability; (2) it affects the range of uses available to people: the quality we shall call variety; (3) it affects how easily people can understand what opportunities it offers: the quality we shall call legibility; (4) it affects the degree to which people can use a given place for different purposes: the quality we shall call robustness; (5) it affects whether the detailed appearance of the place makes people aware of the choices available: the quality we shall call visual appropriateness; (6) it affects people’s choice of sensory experiences: the quality we shall call richness; and (7) it affects the extent to which people can put their own stamp on a place: we shall call this personalization. Bentley et al.’s seven aspects of individuals’ responses to the built spaces draw attention to the fact that the appearance and structure of space can affect individuals’ movements. The points also show that urban spaces are environments which allow individuals to make their own choices and decisions based on individual’s experiences.

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In other words, urban spaces are designed for individuals to function within them but they need to be able to accommodate individuals’ subjective responses to these spaces. 3. Sociocybernetics and wayfinding The design of wayfinding maps has an emergent dimension going beyond simply providing information to map users. Wayfinding maps provide “an opportunity for efficiently choreographing human interactions with the built world . . . ” (Correa de Jesus, 1994, p. 36). They can be used to shape social behaviour, such as to influence where, when and in what order individuals will visit places. The alteration of such social behaviour derives from the complex interaction between individuals’ internal and external representation of the actual environment. The application of sociocybernetics as an investigation framework is appropriate in observe the complex systems involved in the ways individuals use maps to solve wayfinding tasks in a built environment. Sociocybernetics concerns about the observation of social systems and has been applied to investigate various social activities. For examples, the study of organisations and firms as systems (Biggiero, 2001); exploring the relationships between computer-mediated spaces and society (Paetau, 2003); and the application of self-referential social system to address environmental crisis (Connell, 2002). These studies successfully address issues and phenomena within different social systems. In relevant to observing individuals’ wayfinding and map-reading behaviour, this paper applies Van Bockstaele et al.’s (2000) sociocybernetic methods developed to observe action in situ. The authors emphasised on action-actor relationship as a core observation point to effectively understand individuals’ action. Van Bockstaele et al. (2000, p. 19) recognised that individuals’ action derive from their internal cognitive system. This requires the observer to observe individuals’ cognitive system as the generator of such action. The authors hypothesise that there are two aspects of cognitive system: latent action and patent action. According to them, “a latent action is the set of background processes that silently prepare for a patent action and amplify cognitive activation so as to shape a public language” (Van Bockstaele et al., 2000, p. 22). This theory suggests that individual’s behaviour and actions derive from a set of cognitive system that is embedded and functioning in the mind. The application of such knowledge is relevant to the design of an effective map because it allows designers to understand how individuals derive at solving wayfinding tasks, and from there to further determine the roles and configurations of maps. Applying Van Bockstaele et al.’s framework to the study of wayfinding and map-reading, the case study addressed in this paper focused on the following interrelated and complex sub-system processes: (1) external system: . the map as a system and representation; . the wayfinding system of which the map is a part; and . the real world environment as a system. (2) internal system: latent action . the individuals’ internal systemic representations of map, wayfinding system, real world environment and relationships between them; and

(possibly, where individuals involved are in double-loop learning) the individuals’ meta-level mental model of and reflection on, their systemic understanding of map, wayfinding system and real environment. (3) internal system: patent action . individuals’ behaviour in solving wayfinding tasks as derives from reading map and exploring the real environment. .

The application of this framework to a case study will address the issue of complex systems involved in a map-reading and wayfinding process. 4. Research methods 4.1 Observer – researcher As the researcher, I have conducted all the studies and observed the ways participants used maps and solved wayfinding tasks. I have observed two relationships throughout the studies: action-actor relationships and observed-observer relationships. The observation on action-actor relationships provided me data on the relationships between individual’s external and internal system while the observation on observed-observer relationships allowed me to observe the ways I document participants and their behaviour. 4.2 Actors – participants As Van Bockstaele et al. (2000, pp. 13-14) mentioned that observation on action in situ requires observer to analyse the actor’s interaction with internal and external systems, the selection of appropriate actor in my observation is important. The study involved 30 international undergraduate and postgraduate students, aged between 18 and 35 years, living in Perth (Western Australia) metropolitan areas, for not more than five years. Not being local to Perth meant that they have not acquired the spatial knowledge of the city through consistent interaction with it. They needed to learn about and navigate in the built environment of Fremantle depending on the use of given wayfinding maps. The participants were considered here as the actors of the system as they determine the ways they were to relate map information to the actual environment, and to decide how they were to navigate and explore the city. Observations on the participants’ response towards wayfinding maps and the actual space allowed me to learn about the relationships between external systems and internal systems (both, latent and patent actions). 4.3 External system I – places This study focused on the relationships that individuals made between external systems (actual environment and maps) and internal systems that generate both latent and patent actions. The built environment is an important entity to the investigation of the system in people-map-space interaction. The study required participants to find four places within the City of Fremantle. These places were namely the Western Australian Maritime Museum, the Round House, Fremantle Market, and Fremantle Prison. These places were selected because of their locations that covered the main corners of Fremantle. This situation offered significant input for investigating the relationships in people-map-space interactions because it required participants to explore most parts of the city.

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It also allowed observations to be made on how participants relate map information to large-scale actual environment. 4.4 External system II – wayfinding maps Map representations are important elements that could generate different cognitive actions. Three wayfinding maps were selected for this study based on iconic and symbolic representations. The reason of selecting maps with different representations as study materials was that these representations are commonly used in wayfinding maps for built environments. Observing the ways individuals create meaning and respond to these map representations would generate in-depth understanding on the relationships between individuals’ latent and patent actions based on different map representations (external system). The first map was an iconic map that presented the city in elevated illustration (Figure 1). It included the physical appearances of buildings as well as the visual presentation of the spatial structure of the city. Second map was a symbolic map that presented the City of Fremantle in simplified cartographic interpretation (Figure 2). Places in the city were presented only by words. The third map was a map that presented both iconic and symbolic representations (Figure 3). It depicted important landmarks in illustrations while positioning them against a cartographic map. The three maps offered clear distinction in map representations. This allowed observations to be made on the different ways that individuals responded to these representations. CITY OF FREMANTLE

Figure 1. The iconic map presents information of the configurations of buildings and important landmarks within the built environment of Fremantle

1 Fremantle Trainstation

5 Round House

9 Fremantle Market (opens weekend)

2 Ferry to Rottenest Island

6 Shipwreck Museum

10 Fremantle Oval

3 E-Shed Market

7 Cicerello's Restaurant

11 Fremantle Prison

13 Fremantle Council Tourist Centre Myer 14 Shopping Centre

4 Fremantle Maritime Museum

8 Esplanade Hotel

12 Multipel Storey Carpark

15 Open carpark

Source: Schoknecht (2003)

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Figure 2. The symbolic map presents a simple configuration that depicts spatial information in words and symbols Source: First Fremantle n.d

4.5 The procedure A total of 30 participants were asked to use three wayfinding maps in the study (ten participants for each map). Each journey in the study involved one to two participants (mostly one in each study). Every study required participant(s) to draw a sketch map of the City of Fremantle, based on her/his previous experiences in the city, before the journey required for the study. Observations were made on the way participants drew the first sketch maps. At the completion of the journey, he/she would be asked to draw a post-journey sketch map as a representation of the way he/she had understood the built environment of Fremantle after using the given wayfinding map to explore the city. The collection, analysis of sketch maps and observation on the ways participants drew them provided insight into participants’ latent action before and after using a wayfinding map. Participants who were on their first trip to Fremantle were not required to draw the pre-journey sketch map. Each participant was given a wayfinding map, and told to use it to locate four recommended places in the city (Western Australian Maritime Museum, the Round House, Fremantle Prison, and Fremantle Market). Each participant was told that

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Figure 3. The wayfinding map that depicts both iconic and symbolic representation of the City of Fremantle Source: Fremantle Shopper and Visitor Map (2003)

he/she was to take the trip as a relaxing journey. He/she could end the trip anytime, and could choose to not find any of the suggested places. I followed the participants and conduct observations and conversations during the trip to document the reasons each participant conducted particular actions. Notes were made on the ways participants turned the map, pointed at the map, relating street names and/or appearance of buildings from the map to the actual environment, participants’ emotion in different situations (lost or comfortably walking from one place to another), and participants’ comments on the maps and the actual environment. The combination of observation and conversations with participants provided understanding on how they relate external wayfinding systems to their internal cognitive systems, and vice versa. 5. Findings The outcomes of the research suggested that participants learn about the spatial structure of Fremantle by interacting continuously with the given wayfinding maps and the actual environment. This interaction required participants to relate internal cognitive systems with external environment and wayfinding system. These complex learning processes are presented in two learning stages: (1) Stage one. Observations on how participants responded to different map signs and the actual environment. These two learning processes took place simultaneously on the same stage of a wayfinding process.

(2) Stage two. Observations on the ways participants relate different map signs to the actual environment, and how they apply their understanding of the actual environment to comprehend better with the map. 5.1 Stage one Participants were observed to start their wayfinding activities by interacting separately with the given maps and the actual environment before they make relationships between the two entities. They were found to be engaging in cyclical learning processes in both cases. It was obvious that maps and the actual environment played important roles in structuring participants’ latent actions that later led to the projection of patent actions. This was observed as participants behave differently when they were given different maps and based on their own previous experiences with the actual environment. 5.1.1 Cyclical learning on map signs. The observations showed that participants interacted with the given maps by continuously constructing their own meanings via looping processes. Participants were found to manipulate the order of map information to suit their needs in understanding the map and to solve wayfinding tasks. They pointed and drew on the given map to mark on the map information that they considered as important to make it more dominant than other map information. By pointing on the map, participants created a “pointer” that allowed them to focus on only one part of the map interface. This action also allowed them to temporarily disregard other map information that was not relevant to them at that moment. By drawing on the map, the participant emphasised and made obvious the places that were important to her/him, thus creating her/his own hierarchy of reading the map. Observations revealed that participants drew circles and marked the places that they wanted to visit, and they pointed on the routes that led them towards these places. These acts indicated that the participants required clear and distinct indications of the information to be displayed on map interfaces. Also, by pointing and drawing on maps, participants were internalising map information to their cognitive system. Participants’ behaviour of pointing and drawing on map interfaces differed among different map representations. No participant was found drawing on the illustrated iconic map while four of the ten participants who used the symbolic map drew on the map. This indicated that participants required obvious indications and hierarchy of information displayed on the highly symbolic map. The symbolic map was highly schematic and presented only words, shapes, and lines to represent spatial structure of the city. There was no difference (in visual forms) between the indication of Maritime Museum and the Round House. Participants needed to emphasise map signs that represented places that were important to them. The illustrated iconic map, on the other hand, depicted distinctions, visually, among different buildings. Participants were able to identify different buildings and places presented in the map. This situation allowed participants to recognise different places (on the map) without the need of drawing on the map to make the buildings/places more obvious than the others. The above observations suggested that individuals engage in different cognitive systems in response to different map representations. 5.1.2 Cyclical learning on the actual environment. The study found that participants understood the built environment based on looping learning processes that involved current encounters and their own experiences (prior to the study) with the City of Fremantle.

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Participants’ memories and experiences played important role in the ways they responded towards the appearances of spatial elements within the City of Fremantle. One participant stated that he/she had recollections of the “look” of some of the places that he/she wanted to go but did not know the exact ways to reach the destination. Another participant explained that he/she recognised the appearance of the Round House based on the memory of her/his visit one year ago as a tourist. Two other participants explained that they recognised the physical appearance of the Western Australian Maritime Museum because they were told that it was the Maritime Museum when they were on a ferry trip from Fremantle to Rottenest Island. The above observations show that an individual’s understanding of a built environment is developed through continuous looping process of current and previous experience. This further explains that the relationships between individuals latent and patent action is a cyclical process. Their understanding of the environment based on trips prior to the study was latent action that formed the base for patent action of exploring the environment. 5.2 Stage two Participants’ second stage of spatial learning processes was two-fold: exchanging the spatial knowledge learned from maps to those from exploring the actual environment; and exchange of external system and internal cognitive actions. The two aspects were interrelated and cannot be discussed separately. The findings on the ways people relate external and internal system are therefore needed to be discussed within the ways people relate map to the actual environment and vice versa. 5.2.1 Relating map to the actual environment. Participants responded differently to iconic and symbolic map representations that shaped their internal understanding of the actual environment. About 70 per cent of the participants who used the iconic map related the map to the actual environment by referring mainly to the appearances of landmarks as referencing elements, while 80 per cent of the participants who used the symbolic map were relating symbolic information from the map to the actual environment. This reflected that the representations of spatial elements presented on wayfinding maps had direct effect on the ways participants related the map to the actual environments. Among the ten participants who used the symbolic map, four of them were found to mentally “replace” the symbolic representation depicted on the map (such as the label of a place in words) with imaged appearances of the place that they knew. They were mainly using their memories of landmarks’ appearances from their previous trips to Fremantle. Only then, they related the mental images of the places to the actual environment. One of the participants who used the symbolic map said that he/she recognised the appearances of some places based on her/his experiences from previous trips. He/she referred to symbolic indications based on learning about the street names from the map. He/she explained that he/she incorporated the identification of both appearances and symbolic indications to assist her/him locating the destinations. The different relationships that the participants made between themselves and iconic or/and symbolic representations were obvious in the observation of the participants who used the wayfinding map that presented both iconic and symbolic representations. The study found that when participants were given both iconic and symbolic representations, they related iconic representation better to the actual environment.

All of the participants referred to iconic representation as means of relating the map to the actual environment. Four of these participants also referred to symbolic representation but they used this as only secondary information to the iconic representations. Four of the participants who used the symbolic map explained that they made associations between map and the actual environment by identifying the character of the spatial elements, such as the corners and curves of streets. These observations suggested that curves of the streets and junctions were important spatial structure that assisted participants to effectively relate map information to the actual environment. This shows that external built environment is important forming individual’s internal cognitive systems. 5.2.2 Relating the actual environment to map. Despite the differences in the ways participants responded to iconic and symbolic representations, the study found that participants did as well learned about the actual environment by interacting directly with it, and to apply such understanding to comprehend better with the given map. It was recognised that participants experiences of the City of Fremantle prior to the study were important latent action that later generate their patent actions in reading maps and solving wayfinding tasks. Participants were found to respond especially well to street names and landmarks as a means to relate the actual environment to map signs. About 86.7 per cent of the total participants related street names from the actual environment presented to the maps while 70 per cent of the participants took landmarks as main referencing points between the built space and the maps. The participants who used the symbolic map were found to be referring to street names as means of associating the map interface to the actual environment. All ten participants in this group used street names while 20 per cent of them were referring only to street names to relate map signs to the actual environment. This situation showed that the depiction of street names and streets on the map were understood and used by participants mainly as symbolic representation. This also indicated that among the spatial elements presented in symbolic representation, participants responded effectively towards the depiction of street names and street on the map. Landmarks were found to be important referencing points for participants to relate to iconic map signs. The Fremantle Port Authority building, the shoreline, and the E-shed Markets had been the most recognisable spatial elements. These were the landmarks that they made association with to locate the Maritime Museum. Observations and conversations with the participants suggested that the location of the Maritime Museum was clear on the map but not in the actual environment. This situation reflected that the iconic map signs present clear impressions on the appearances of landmarks but was not effective in communicating the complex spatial structure. This also shows that map representations and interfaces have influence on the construction of meaning in the feedback learning process between map and space. The participants who used the map that presented both iconic and symbolic representation had the most numbers of individuals using both street names and landmarks as means of relating map information to the actual environment. Nine of these participants were referring mainly to street names and landmarks throughout. Observation and conversations with the participants indicated that the participants related street names on the map to the streets in the actual environment by understanding their symbolic representation (words indicating streets), while

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participants who related landmarks to the physical buildings/places were apprehending with the depictive value (appearances) of these places. Individuals had the ability to construct hierarchy in understanding the actual environment by relating wayfinding map information to the actual space. One of the participants who used the map with iconic and symbolic representation explained he/she referred first to the coastline, secondly the landmarks, and thirdly street names, as elements that s/he related the map information to the actual environment. He/she further explained that the coastline gave her/him the general impressions of her/his approximate location within the city, while the spatial relationships between landmarks assisted her/him to identify her/his bearing accurately. The association between street names presented on the map and those posted in the actual environment enabled her/him to identify her/his exact location. Participants were referring to other spatial elements as a means of relating the wayfinding maps to the actual environments. The group of participants who used the symbolic map had the highest number of individuals referring to spatial elements other than street names and landmarks while participants who used the iconic map had only one person used roundabouts and junctions as referencing points other than street names and landmarks. This observation indicates that the participants who used the symbolic map required more visual clues from the map for them to relate to the actual environment. This also suggests that because the symbolic map was highly schematised and simplified, participants needed more information for them to relate with, and understand, the actual space. In this situation, the omitted information from the map is replaced by additional information that individuals can find. This shows that an individual learn about the built environment by internalising multiple external systems, in which this case, relating map to the actual environment and vice versa. 6. Conclusion The lack of understanding in people-map-space interactions as a whole is a major issue in the research and design of wayfinding map. This requires investigation to be conducted to understand how individuals respond to map and built space as a system. Underpinned by a sociocybernetics framework that focuses on the relationships between external systems and individual’s internal cognitive systems, the field study presented in this paper demonstrated that the processes of knowing the environment were not linear. Their wayfinding activities were underpinned by continuous exchange of information between external systems (maps and the actual environment) and internal cognitive systems (latent and patent actions). In other words, participants’ knowledge of the city was informed by their map reading process, while their ability of understanding the map was informed by the conceptualisation of the built environment. This suggests that the system of people-map-space interaction is a circular process rather than a linear one. Participants’ wayfinding processes were found to have a main system: people-map-space interactions, that consists of three sub-systems: maps and the actual environment as external system, individual’s cognitive process as latent action (as a part of internal system), and individual’s behaviour in solving wayfinding task and reading maps as patent action (as a part of internal system). Each of these sub-systems are looping systems that continuously providing feedbacks and allow individuals to construct meaning between in maps and the actual environments.

Individuals responded to different map representations differently. The study found that the pattern of individuals reading and making relationships between different map representations and the actual environment are the same. However, individuals require lesser looping and feedback process on the map representations that they can relate more effectively with the actual environment. In the case of this study, participants required lesser loops while interacting with iconic map signs, in comparison with symbolic signs. As conclusion, the application of sociocybernetic framework in wayfinding map studies has generated valuable in-sights that reveal the complexity of individuals’ navigation activities. The design of map is recognised here as a system that fits in a broader system that consist of the actual environment and individual’s cognitive systems. The study presented in this paper therefore informs the designers on how individuals learn about the actual environment via interacting with map and space. References Allen, G.L. (1999), “Spatial abilities, cognitive maps, and wayfinding – bases for individual differences in spatial cognition and behavior”, in Golledge, R.G. (Ed.), Wayfinding Behavior – Cognitive Mapping and Other Spatial Processes, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, pp. 46-80. Bentley, I., Alcock, A., Murrain, P., McGlynn, S. and Smith, G. (1985), Responsive Environments: A Manual for Designers, The Architectural Press, London. Biggiero, L. (2001), “Are firms autopoietic systems?”, in Geyer, F. and van der Zouwen, J. (Eds), Sociocybernetics: Complexity, Autopoiesis, and Observation of Social Systems, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, pp. 125-40. Casakin, H., Barkowsky, T., Kpippel, A. and Freksa, C. (2000), “Schematic maps as wayfinding aids”, in Freksa, C., Brauer, W., Habel, C. and Wender, K.F. (Eds), Spatial Cognition II: Integrating Abstract Theories, Empirical Studies, Formal Methods, and Practical Applications, Wender Springer, Berlin, pp. 54-71. Connell, D.J. (2002), “Multiple constructions of the environmental crisis: a sociocybernetic view”, Journal of Sociocybernetics, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 1-12, available at: www.unizar.es/ sociocybernetics/Journal/dentro.html (accessed 3 April 2007). Correa de Jesus, S. (1994), “Environmental communication: design planning for wayfinding”, Design Issues, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 32-51. Csanyi, V. (1993), “The biological bases of cognitive maps”, in Laszlo, E., Masulli, I., Artigiani, R. and Csanyi, V. (Eds), The Evolution of Cognitive Maps: New Paradigms for the Twenty-first Century, Gordon and Breach Publishers, Luxembourg. Darken, R.P. and Peterson, B. (2001), “Spatial orientation, wayfinding, and representation”, in Stanney, K. (Ed.), Handbook of Virtual Environments: Design, Implementation, and Applications, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 493-518. Downs, R. and Stea, D. (1977), Maps in Minds – Reflections on Cognitive Mapping, Harper & Row, New York, NY. First Fremantle (n.d.), Fremantle. Fremantle Shopper and Visitor Map (2003), City of Fremantle Commercial & Property Services, Fremantle Shopper and Visitor Map, Fremantle. Golledge, R.G. (1999), “Human wayfinding and cognitive maps”, in Golledge, R.G. (Ed.), Wayfinding Behavior: Cognitive Mapping and Other Spatial Processes, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, pp. 5-45.

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Haraguchi, Y., Shinohara, T., Niwa, Y., Iguchi, K., Ishibashi, S. and Inakage, M. (2003), “The living-map-a communication tool that connects real world and online community by using a map”, paper presented at 6th Asian Design International Conference, Tsukuba. Kray, C., Laakso, K., Elting, C. and Coors, V. (2003), Presenting Route Instructions on Mobile Devices, available at: http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/610000/604066/p117-kray. pdf?key1 ¼ 604066&key2 ¼ 4017495601&coll ¼ GUIDE& dl ¼ GUIDE&CFID ¼ 13013645&CFTOKEN ¼ 14004940 (accessed 12 October 2003). Levine, M. (1982), “You-are-here maps”, Environment & Behavior, Vol. 14 No. 2, pp. 221-37. Lynch, K. (1960), The Image of the City, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. McCarthy, T. (2005), “On the frontier of search”, Time, 5 September, pp. 34-6. Miller, C. and Lewis, D. (2000), “Wayfinding in complex healthcare environments”, Information Design Journal, Vol. 9 Nos 2/3, pp. 129-60. Ottoson, T. (1987), Map-reading and Wayfinding, Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, Goteborg. Paetau, M. (2003), “Space and social order: the challenge of computer-mediated social networks”, Journal of Sociocybernetics, Vol. 4 No. 1, pp. 23-5, available at: www.unizar.es/ sociocybernetics/Journal/dentro.html (accessed 3 April 2007). Passini, R. (1984), Wayfinding in Architecture, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York, NY. Passini, R. (1996), “Wayfinding design: logic, application and some thoughts on universality”, Design Studies, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 319-31. Passini, R. (2000), “Sign-posting information design”, in Jacobson, R. (Ed.), Information Design, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 83-98. Passini, R. (2002), “Wayfinding research and design: an interdisciplinary approach in the development of design knowledge and its application”, in Frascara, J. (Ed.), Design and the Social Sciences: Making Connections, Taylor & Francis, New York, NY, pp. 96-101. Portugali, J. and Haken, H. (1992), “Synergetics and cognitive maps”, Geoforum, Vol. 23 No. 2. Robinson, A.H. and Petchenik, B.B. (1976), The Nature of Maps: Essays toward Understanding Maps and Mapping, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Schoknecht, D. (2003), City of Fremantle, City of Fremantle, Perth. Takase, Y., Sho, N., Sone, A. and Shimiya, K. (2003), “Automatic generation of 3D city models and related applications”, available at: www.photogrammetry.ethz.ch/tarasp_workshop/ papers/takase.pdf (accessed 23 April). Talbot, J.F., Kaplan, R., Kuo, F.E. and Kaplan, S. (1993), “Factors that enhance effectiveness of visitor maps”, Environment & Behavior, Vol. 25 No. 6, pp. 743-60. Tolman, E. (1948), “Cognitive maps in rats and men”, Psychological Review, Vol. 55, pp. 189-208. Tversky, B. (1992), “Distortions in cognitive maps”, Geoforum, Vol. 23 No. 2. Tversky, B. (2000), “Some ways that maps and diagrams communicate”, in Freksa, C., Brauer, W., Habel, C. and Wender, K.F. (Eds), Spatial Cognition II: Integrating Abstract Theories, Empirical Studies, Formal Methods, and Practical Applications, Springer, Berlin, pp. 72-9. Van Bockstaele, J., Van Bockstaele, M. and Godard-Plasman, M. (2000), “Observing action in situ”, Journal of Sociocybernetics, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 13-25, available at: www.unizar.es/ sociocybernetics/Journal/dentro.html (accessed 3 April 2007). Wood, M. (1993), “The map-users’ response to map design”, The Cartographic Journal, Vol. 30 No. 2, pp. 149-53. Zipf, A. (2006), “User-adaptive maps for location-based services (LBS) for tourism”, available at: www2.geoinform.fh-mainz.de/ , zipf/ENTER2002.pdf (accessed 27 March 2006).

Further reading Darken, R.E. and Sibert, J.L. (1996), “Wayfinding strategies and behaviors in large virtual worlds”, paper presented at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Vancouver. Mikulas, W.L. (1974), Concepts in Learning, W.B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia, PA. Reffat, R.M. and Gabr, M.M. (2003), “Wayfinding design as an approach for hotels and resort areas development”, available at: www.arch.usyd.edu.au/ , rabee/publications_ files/94ReffatGabrUSA.pdf (accessed 27 June 2003). About the author Christopher Kian Teck Kueh received his PhD in 2006 from the Department of Design (Faculty of Built Environment, Art, and Design), Curtin University, Western Australia. His doctoral thesis developed a user-centred design model that contributes knowledge for information/graphic designers in designing effective wayfinding maps for city and town environments. His research interests are on issues in contemporary design, and the relationships between new media and the built environment. Christopher Kian Teck Kueh can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Complex built-environment design: four extensions to Ashby

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BEAD, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia, IEED, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK and UNIDCOM, IADE, Lisbon, Portugal, and

Terence Love

Trudi Cooper Faculty of Education and Arts, Centre for Social Research, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia Abstract

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1422-1435 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827391

Purpose – This paper sets out to report on research by the authors into the development and application of four extensions to Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety (LoRV) that increase its utility in the arena of unplanned changes in hegemonic control of designed complex socio-technical systems/digital eco-systems in the built environment that are structurally dynamic or emergent. Design/methodology/approach – Research on which the paper is based focused on exploration of classical systems approaches to the design of complex socio-technical systems in which ownership, power, control and management of structure and benefit generation and distribution are distributed, dynamic and multi-constituent. Support for development of these four extensions to Ashby’s Law comes from observation of four decades of socio-technical systems development along with critical thinking that combined systems analysis theories with theories and findings from fields of hegemonic analysis, design research, management, management information systems, behaviour in organisations and sociology. Findings – The paper outlines application of four new extensions to LoRV in relation to unplanned changes in distributions of power, ownership, control, benefit generation and benefit distribution in complex socio-technical systems/digital eco-systems in the built environment that are emergent or have changing structures. Three of these extensions have been outlined earlier in relation to the design of learning object-based e-learning systems. The fourth extension builds on these via application of Coasian analysis. The paper also describes a suite of five guidelines to assist with the design of complex socio-technical systems derived from the four extensions to Ashby. Research limitations/implications – The four extensions of Ashby’s Law that underpin the design guidelines in this paper are deduced from observation and critical analysis rather than being “proven” empirically. They are derived from observation of the behaviour of real-world complex systems together with critical analytical thinking that integrated theory and research findings from a range of disciplines where each informs understanding of hegemonic aspects of emergent complex socio-technical systems involving multiple, changing constituencies, and evolving system structures. Practical implications – A design method is derived comprising five design guidelines for use in pre-design and design of complex socio-technical systems/digital eco-systems in the built environment. Originality/value – The paper describes the application of four new extensions to LoRV that extend the analytical role of Ashby’s Law in diagnosis of changes in power relations and unintended design outcomes from changes in the generation and control of variety in complex, multi-layered and hierarchical socio-technical systems that have multiple stakeholders and constituencies. From these, a suite of five new design guidelines is proposed. Keywords Design, Cybernetics, Social environment, Control, Man-machine systems Paper type Research paper

Introduction The paper describes four extensions to Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety (LoRV) developed by the authors. These extend the cybernetic contribution of LoRV in the design of complex socio-technical systems to situations involving design issues relating to social relations, power, hegemony, politics, the taking control of systems, and the use of changes in designed system structure to gain advantage in the manipulation of system outcomes. These four extensions were derived as provisional findings during ongoing design research exploring the application of classical systems analysis tools in the design of complex socio-technical systems. The four extensions to Ashby’s LoRV described in this paper provide the basis of a new outcomes-based suite of design methods for complex socio-technical systems that support designers to include significant political and economic design considerations not currently adequately addressed by other design approaches. This new suite of design methods is expected to be of broader utility than in the built environment and likely to be of value in the design of: . Civil complex socio-technical systems involving multiple competing stakeholders/constituencies (e.g. infrastructures; built environment with complex socio-environmental behaviours; software development; socio-technical electronic systems such as ticketing, payment and information access systems); . Military socio-technical systems that involve multiple players (anti-terrorism, situation control and war-faring systems); and . Politically-driven socio-technical systems involving multiple competing interests (e.g. international standards setting and conformance processes; treaty writing such as European Union and similar international agreements; processes for implementing multi-lateral technical, economic and political agreements; and technology-transfer systems). The design approach described here aligns approximately with the social cybernetic schema outlined by Umpleby (2001). It contrasts with the conventional use of LoRV as an analytical method to model and understand systems that include human aspects (Heylighen, 1997; Powers, 1992; Stockinger, n.d.) and to identify potential improvements in technology support for design activity (Glanville, 1994). In design terms, complex socio-technical digital eco-systems in the built environment are characterized by multiple constituencies. The four extensions of LoRV below assume that different constituency groups have different orientations of interest, differences in attributes, power, control and other influences on a system, and that different constituencies benefit differently from their involvement depending on the structural and dynamic properties of the system. The concept of “constituency” used in this paper follows its application in market orientation and constituent orientation analysis (Tellefsen, 1995; Tellefsen and Love, 2003). “Constituency” more comprehensively includes all those affected by and affecting a system, in contrast to the concept of “stakeholders” which here follows its more fundamental use to refer to those who have an investment stake in system outcomes. Constituency groups involved in the design of complex socio-technical systems include designers, project sponsors, users, project constructors, those directly and indirectly affected by the system, and those directly and indirectly affecting the design and operation of the system, etc. For an example of the

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breadth of potential constituencies involved in design activity, see Tellefsen and Love (2002). Four extensions to Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety To date, corollaries and extensions to Ashby’s LoRV primarily have been developed from a purely functionalist perspective. This has excluded human subjective considerations central to the design of complex socio-technical systems, e.g. issues of hegemony, management control, distribution of power, constituency orientations, struggles for control and ownership, ethical management and the evolution of human aspects of systems. The four extensions to LoRV described below were identified by the authors via observation of four decades of real-world complex socio-technical systems development along with critical thinking that integrated systems analysis theories with theories and research findings from fields of hegemonic analysis, design research, cybernetics, management, management information systems, behaviour in organisations and sociology. Each of these fields contributes understanding, research findings and theory of social and hegemonic aspects of emergent complex socio-technical systems involving multiple, changing constituencies and evolving system structures. Since, these extensions of Ashby’s Law are deduced from observation and critical analysis rather than being “proven” empirically, their utility at this stage is limited to providing the basis for design knowledge about relative changes in size and direction of system behaviours rather than deterministic quantitative modelling of system changes. The four extensions to Ashby’s LoRV are: (1) For complex, layered and hierarchical systems involving multiple constituencies in which the distribution of variety generation and control is uneven across the system, THEN the differing distributions of generated and controlling variety result in a structural basis for differing amounts of power and hegemonic control over the structure, evolution and distribution of benefits and costs of the system by particular constituencies. (2) For complex, layered and hierarchical systems that have a variety of typical stable states of system structure, THEN the structural system state that the system will evolve will depend on the relative locations of subsystems generating variety and the control subsystems able to use variety to control overall system variety. (3) Where differing sub-systems of control are involved in the management of a system and some sources of control are able to increase their variety to accommodate a shortfall of requisite variety in other control systems, THEN the overall distribution of control between sub-systems and constituencies will be shaped by the amount and distribution of transfer of control to the accommodating control system. (4) In complex systems in which multiple sources of variety generation and variety control interact, THEN the relative effect of different forms of system variety and control variety on system behaviour and system control are typically dependent on their relative transaction costs.

The reasoning behind the extensions is straightforward. It presumes a complex socio-technical system with multiple interrelated and interdependent subsystems with a large number of constituencies and stakeholders that “own”, affect, and are affected by, the functioning of the system in ways that are not simply distributed (i.e. not a simple one-to-one mapping onto sub-system elements). In other words, it presumes complex interdependencies between system elements, system structure and ownership by multiple constituencies with different perspectives. First, the ownership of the differing system elements that provide controlling variety gives the “owning” constituencies at least partial control over the system and subsystems and system outcomes. The relationships are direct though not necessarily linear. Increased ownership over increased levels of control variety provides increased amounts of control over the system. Second, ownership of controlling variety over the processes of constructing or managing system structure is directly related (again not necessarily linearly) to the power to change the structure of a system, and change the balances of control and system variety at different points and times in the system. Third, the location, amount and timing of application of elements that provide controlling variety within a system influence the relative ability of the “owner” of that controlling variety to influence system structure and outcomes. For example, the real world control effect of the use of standards in software development depends on where in the software/hardware spectrum they are applied and at what stage in software evolution (Love and Cooper, 2007). Four, if the amount of controlling variety is insufficient, and if the system remains functioning, it does so by other system elements being able to increase their controlling variety. This implies a shift in the balance of power towards the owners of the system elements that increase their control variety. The constituencies “owning” system elements that increase their controlling variety increase their power and control over the structure of the whole system and its future. By implication, they also increase their control over system outcomes and the management of future distribution of value created by the system. Finally, the logic of Ronald Coase would be expected to apply to all transactions within a system. Following the implications of the Coase Theorem, the system design and evolution would be likely to tend to minimise overall transaction costs across constituencies in relation to physical considerations (Coase, 1960) and informatic considerations (Agre, 2000). The following sections explain the conceptual context and implications of these four extensions of Ashby’s LoRV for the design of complex socio-technical systems focusing on the design of complex socio-technical systems in the built-environment. Airport infrastructure will be used as an example to demonstrate their practical application in design activity and the types of useful system design knowledge that emerge. Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety The cybernetic work of William Ross Ashby has widely influenced researchers involved in systemic analysis and system design to the present through his contributions to systems thinking, cybernetics, control theory and operations research, particularly through his law of requisite variety. LoRV is perhaps the only “Law” that is held true across the diverse disciplines of informatics, system design cybernetics, communications systems and information systems (Heylighen and Joslyn, 2001). This law is stated in short form in many different ways, e.g. “only variety can destroy variety”

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(Ashby, 1956, p. 207) and “every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system” (Conant and Ashby, 1970). More fully, Ashby’s Law states that to control any system, the amount of variety (i.e. the number of possible states) of the controlling process has to be at least the amount of variety (number of states) that the system is capable of exhibiting. Variety in a system comprises anything about that system that can be different or changed. Systems attributes that can have variety include: information; organisational structure; system processes; system activities; inputs; outputs; functions; participants; control mechanisms; ownership and control; opinions, judgments and emotions. In complex socio-technical systems such as digital eco-systems in the built environment, control and system variety elements are distributed across the system and across constituencies. Different elements of system and controlling variety are “owned” or controlled by multiple different constituencies. The distribution of variety and the control of variety may change over time. The four extensions to Ashby’s LoRV focus on the consequences, in terms of power and value distribution, of the effects of dynamic shifts in the different forms of variety and its ownership in ways that over time change the structure of a designed socio-technical system and its locus of control. Ashby’s LoRV provides a significant reference point for system designers to understand whether the design of a complex system is likely to be manageable, stable and viable. The origin of Ashby’s LoRV is in communication theory and cybernetics. To date, Ashby’s LoRV has been primarily applied to analysis of systems that can be represented in information terms. Where the LoRV has been applied to human systems, the focus in research to this point has remained on representing the human systems informatically with its rationalist limitations that preclude the inclusion of subjective considerations. In contrast, the research described in this paper extends the application of Ashby’s LoRV into human subjectively influenced realms. The four extensions to Ashby’s LoRV paper described above provide a significant change in the application of the LoRV in several dimensions of the design of complex socio-technical systems: . multiple constituencies of ownership, control, operation, interest and learning; . design of variety distribution over time to influence system evolution; . hegemonic control changing outcomes and the distribution of system-generated value; . hegemonic shifts of control of systems structure; . designed management of power shifts resulting from failures of system design; . hegemonic basis for the dynamics of change between alternative stable system structure and functioning states; and . potential for quantitative assessment of likely influence of change factors on system evolution via transaction cost. Digital eco-systems in the built environment In this paper, the roles of these four extensions to Ashby’s LoRV as design methods are described in terms of complex partly computerised systems in the built environment.

These are increasingly, regarded as digital eco-systems. A typical definition of a digital ecosystem is that of Hussain et al. (2007): An open, loosely coupled, domain clustered, demand-driven, self-organizing agent environment, where each agent of each species is proactive and responsive regarding its own benefit/profit but is also responsible to its system.

Some examples of types of digital eco-systems in the built environment are: . “Intelligent” buildings including automated security, energy management, environmental management, surveillance, advertising, entertainment, shopping, etc. smart homes. . Automated access management systems that utilise personal identification and security access management through access to an individual’s e-portfolio containing their work and travel histories, permissions, status and certifications. For example, a system to control access to dangerous areas involved in lift maintenance might check to see that the person wishing to have access had valid certification of qualification in lift repair. . Intelligent systems used in the management of flow of pedestrians, vehicles and goods. These range from traffic control systems and turnstiles to automated road toll collection and logistic systems. . Automated stored value management systems that charge depending on users’ access, e.g. to roads, rooms and other resources. . Automated management of dynamic building elements, e.g. automated room-divider and lighting changes based on timetabled use of a room or building. . The automated management of business inventory, storage and supply logistics including robotised selection, transport and replacement of inventory and its storage systems. . Automated management of ambient building conditions. . Automated surveillance systems to manage traffic or building use dynamics. Examples include the UK’s integration of national public-space, road and petrol station surveillance cameras with a number plate recognition system to map individual driver behaviour and position for crime detection and traffic management purposes; the integration of mobile phone location information with traffic management systems to intelligently predict traffic behaviour from identifying the behavioural characteristics of individual traffic “agents”. In design terms, digital eco-systems may be better regarded as “digitally-integrated building and infrastructure eco-systems” and as a natural development in the trajectory of increased attention to integrating computer systems and real-world human systems and organisations. By echoing natural systems, these combined real-world and computer systems are intended to gain the benefits perceived to accrue to natural living eco-systems: system stability, system transformation over time, system evolution, improved systemic functioning, improved interaction between digital eco-system members and digital eco-system ecological environment, etc. The main criteria of a digital ecosystem include (Love and Cooper, 2007):

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its elements are networked; individual system elements consume resources and provide resources; participants vary in their scale, roles, purposes and expertise; participants have differences in needs and the resources they can supply; there is autonomous activity in the system; and the system manages human and technical collaboration and competition in such a way as to preserve system integrity and to encourage growth in positive outcomes system-wide.

Cybernetics, systems and design The role of cybernetic and systems-based design methods is primarily in the pre-design realm; after problem setting and before conventional design processes are commenced. Pre-design methods identify which regions of a solution space of potential designs are likely to be more optimal and worthy of more design effort and why. The design application of the four extensions to Ashby’s LoRV described in this paper was identified as part of a larger research program reviewing the potential of systems and cybernetic approaches in design of complex socio-technical systems. The focus has been on Ashby’s LoRV, system dynamic (SD) modelling and viable system modelling (VSM). Each provides design insights in the conceptually difficult terrain of complex socio-technical systems dynamics and control (Hutchinson, 1997; Maiden and Jones, 2005). SD modelling identifies multiple causal loops and counter intuitive relationships between design elements (Ford and Sterman, 1997; Forrester, 1998; Wolstenholme, 1990). VSM identifies structural and informatic design characteristics necessary for system viability (Beer, 1972, 1988; Espejo and Harnden, 1989). Both, SD and VSM are based on Ashby’s LoRV. Together, they provide the design basis for: . assessing whether potential designs for complex socio-technical systems are likely to be viable; . understanding the design outcomes in terms of hegemonic power effects on systems design, development and evolution; . optimising designs in terms of managing complexity and longer term interoperability; . design of key information pathways between complex socio-technical system elements and their environments; . identifying factors and configurations that shape the balance and locus of power, control, complexity and standardisation in the design of complex socio-technical systems; . predicting pathologies inherent in specific designs of complex socio-technical systems and designing changes necessary for restoring or creating viability; and . understanding the power, control, complexity and standardisation issues related to complex socio-technical systems in the built environments. Five-design guidelines The above four extensions of Ashby’s LoRV provide the basis of a variety-based design approach that helps designers visualise potential outcomes resulting from the

integration of social, environmental and ethical factors in socio-technical system design in the built environment. The design approach consists of a suite of five-design guidelines: (1) identify relative distributions of variety generation and variety management across a design; (2) identify all constituencies and their ownership, power and influence over the design and management of the proposed system; (3) identify the levels and types of benefits that constituencies are likely gain from the system over time and because of different system configurations; (4) identify how system configuration and changes to it are influenced by constituencies, how constituencies can change the distributions of variety, the relative loci of control and the distribution of value to constituencies; and (5) assess the relative “transaction cost” for constituencies to design and change system and control variety. Design the system to take into account that constituencies’ actions are likely to tend towards minimising transaction cost in a Coasian manner. Taken together, these design guidelines offer the basis for designers to gain increased understanding of the ways that hidden structural factors shape the locus of control of complex socio-technical systems in the built environment. These hidden structural factors in turn change in response to changes in the balance of variety between constituencies such that they redirect benefits between constituencies as these systems evolve and change. The above five-design guidelines, along with the four extensions to Ashby’s Law described earlier, provide additional information for those designing complex socio-technical systems/digital eco-systems in the built environment to maximize the likelihood that designed systems will evolve to function as intended. Airports: an example of digital ecosystem in built environment Airports are a typical example of a complex socio-technical digital eco-system in the built environment. They are complex systems. They involve people and technology. They have multiple subsystems, many of which overlap and are capable of fulfilling similar roles. For example, passengers and guests can be directed round the buildings and environs by ticket staff, security, signage, building structures, etc. Airport systems have multiple constituencies with differing amounts of power distributed over a large number of interdependent subsystems. Distributions of power and constituencies change over time. Airport systems involve a combination of intelligent, active and passive electronic, physical, human and animal (quarantine and security checking) systems with many processes crossing system and subsystem boundaries. Sub-systems can be outsourced so that control of some sub-systems (and intention to locally sub-optimise) potentially lies outside the system in focus. System characteristics, functions and loci of control are both changing and emergent. This latter can perhaps best be seen in times of civil unrest in which a range of external agencies (e.g. army, police, medical experts, engineering systems designers and information systems designers, security experts) that are relatively independent of each other and of the airport system can strongly shape internal system functioning

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and structures in ways that can shift the locus and balance of power and the ways benefits are distributed to constituencies. When designing a new airport or new airport systems, design teams apply what they perceive to be the requisite variety to control the design and construction of an airport with its subsystems. The choices that result in requisite variety are based on design decisions intended to ensure the airport is commercially viable, safe, can be constructed as specified, and will function as intended. Typical variety-controlling activities used by design teams include using well tested design processes, applying design checking and validation, utilising construction and engineering research and experience, market research, prototyping and user testing to ensure the intended design outcome. Any outstanding variety, however, relating to the airport and its systems after these activities will be accommodated through alternative variety control mechanisms such as in-construction design modifications, post-completion rework, repairs, building and infrastructure design modifications (often incorporated into a later “refurbishment” schedule), and litigation leading to compensation. These latter methods “mop up” excess variety of possible system states uncontrolled by the requisite variety provided in the design stages in order to result in the intended output of an airport system that functions in the ways expected by all constituencies, particularly the stakeholders.. Each time variety is “mopped up” in an unplanned way through sub-systems outside the design process, the intended balance between constituencies in control of the system is changed. Power becomes transferred to other constituencies in different ways than those planned during the design process. During the design process itself, unmanaged distribution of control of variety across the system can result in primary design decisions being taken outside the official design process and design outcomes being shaped primarily by factors other than those explicitly agreed between sponsors and designers. Changes to the distribution of system, environmental and controlling varieties in a built environment change the distribution of the strength and position of loci of control of among participating sub-systems, constituent individuals and organisations. These include changes involving those constituencies who provide services to manage internal information flows and internal services that directly support the system’s infrastructure. Extension 1 to Ashby’s Law The distribution of variety and controlling variety across constituencies shapes power relationships and distribution of benefits.

Airports are organisationally complex with a wide range of services being voluntarily and involuntarily available and used on the site. These are usually associated with specific constituencies, each with their own internal management. They include: ticketing; passenger, luggage and freight logistics; general security; plane-related (anti-terrorism) security; quarantine services; retail and food services; parking services; customs services; immigration management; building services; engineering services relating to airport and environs; health and safety; medical services provision; religious services; engineering services relating to aircraft; engineering services relating to flying infrastructure; coordinating management groups and air traffic control. As the system evolves or is subject to internal or external changes, the amount and

distribution of generated variety changes. Planned or unplanned, controlling variety dynamically changes to match the amount and distribution of generated variety. System regulation always occurs, regardless of the provision of explicit control variety and its locations. The system functions in whatever way it functions unless failure is catastrophic. The necessary implicit unintentional controlling variety results from multiple sources including relative transaction costs, system constraints, timing and sequencing issues, unplanned aspects of system structure, etc. Thus, the provision of control variety does not necessarily occur in a rational way in which there is a matching between new generated variety in an area for which a sub-system is responsible and the provision of new control variety in that subsystem. For example, if there is a security problem and internal security cannot respond sufficiently, then it becomes a matter for other security systems such as police or the military. Other changes in the distribution of variety may be more prosaic. For example, if retail processes began to dominate an airport’s commercial activity then the constituencies associated with retail activity would likely increase their controlling variety and in parallel, there would be a shift in the power balances. If, however, the additional controlling variety were to be supplied by another constituency or group of constituencies, e.g. those charged with expediting passenger movement to planes or those responsible for minimising carry on luggage (both of which impact on retail activity), the outcomes and balance of power relations are likely to be different. In both cases, the benefits to passengers and other constituencies are likely to change. Extension 2 to Ashby’s Law In a system that can have multiple stable configurations/structures, the relative location in the system of variety generators and suppliers of control variety will influence the choice of system structure.

In airports, management of access is a key issue for many constituencies. Access control crucially depends on accurate identification and information. The physical control of access after the usual processes of personal identification and information gathering is most easily done with physical restraints such as walls and doors. Choice of information gathering technology dominates access design. For some of the constituencies involved in access management, their primary controlling variety is related to direct inspection of an individual for identification and for gathering information about them. For other constituencies, control variety can be exerted via surrogates such as identity cards, radio frequency identification devices, luggage smell (via dogs) and uniforms. Airports can manage access in several ways. The choice of configuration is dependent on the relational positioning and ability of constituencies controlling variety to use their control variety to influence overall system variety. An example of this is the way that airlines are now managing passenger variety associated with check in processes by moving these processes earlier in the system timeline. In some cases, it is possible to “check in” for the flight before leaving a hotel or “check in” “online” at home or at the airport. This is possible because airlines’ contact with the variety-generating passenger is closer to the start of processes. In turn, these control variety interventions shape overall system configuration in terms of managing luggage and security and the distribution of space and logistics round the site. Contrast, for example, some small European provincial airports in the 1980s with all

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luggage handling, customs, and security management happening on the tarmac next to the plane. Another contrasting example is the now defunct People’s Express Airline, which managed ticketing variety issues by selling tickets in flight and dealing with payment defaults using the police and conventional legal processes on landing, rather than controlling access to passengers before take off.

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Extension 3 to Ashby’s Law Where shortfall in controlling variety by one constituency group or sub-system is accommodated by increase in controlling variety by another constituency/sub-system then power and control tends to be redistributed to the constituency(ies)/sub-systems(s) providing the necessary additional controlling variety.

An example already mentioned is when one security constituency is limited in the control variety it can provide to respond to a security problem and the additional generated variety is “mopped up” by increase in control variety of other security constituencies. Alternatively, the mopping up of excess variety can occur through actions of other constituencies. For example, the additional variety from techniques of plane hijacking was matched by engineering services increasing their controlling variety through their design of secure cockpit doors. In these cases, there is an increased access to power and control of the distribution of benefits and to shaping the system structure by the constituencies providing the additional controlling variety. Another example is airport design process. The more variety is controlled in the earlier stages of airport system design, the more the outcome is likely to be similar to what was conceived and intended. If the system variety exceeds the variety provided by the controlling sub-systems in the design processes, and if the outcome is to be controlled, it must be done so by the application of additional variety later. Experience from many large-scale infrastructure design contexts indicates later unplanned application of control of variety tends to be ad hoc, inefficient, have knock-on adverse outcomes, and may offer unexpected opportunities for stakeholders and constituencies outside the system to take whole-of-system control. Extension 4 to Ashby’s Law Relative effects of elements of controlling variety are dependent in a Coasian sense on their relative transaction cost.

Recently, it was proposed that security personnel who have national security clearances (e.g. FBI, CIA staff) should have expedited passage through airport security systems because their provenance has already been checked by a higher level security agency (Schneier, 2006). In this case, the additional generating variety individuals arriving with different security status and needing security clearance can be matched by several modes of controlling variety. There are several possibilities. For example, personnel with national security clearances could be security checked the same as anyone else. They could be given free passage. They could have a special process that took into account that their clearance must be especially well checked because it is of more value to falsify. Alternatively, they could be given additional privileges and authority over and above existing airport security staff in respect of their national security clearances. In terms of systems outcomes, all of these appear to make good sense. Viewing the choices in terms of “transaction costs” however, factors

in the “costs” of establishing and running the alternative systems along with the potentially significant additional costs associated with failure of the security system (e.g. if a terrorist obtained airport security privileges by obtaining or falsifying national security identification). In real life, the outcome was that all personnel have to pass through the standard system of airport security and undertake normal passenger security assessment regardless of their other security clearances. The reason is relative transaction costs. The current system minimises transaction costs overall. The situation contrasts with an alternative in which passengers can elect to be security checked by an approved external private security organisation and given an individual security threat assessment and a “registered traveller” ID that enables them to bypass the initial airport security assessment processes (New York Times News Service, 2006). This reduces a passenger’s time spent in security assessment processes at the airport by about 90 per cent, with a cost to the traveller of around $80 per year. The alternative security assessment processes, both remote and within airports, are expected to be undertaken by approved external organisations. The reasons for the viability of this change also depend on changes to transaction costs. The balance of transaction costs has shifted with the changes in the variety mix. Participating passenger’s shoulder some of the transaction costs. There is a redistribution of benefits via reduced costs for the existing security providers at the airport. “Registered Travellers” benefit by jumping the security queue. There are slightly reduced queue lines for regular passengers; and there is a new revenue stream for the constituencies providing the new security services. There are also likely variety changes in relation to management of airport space and passenger logistics. Again, in terms of the variety underpinning system design, all of these changes are likely to affect the relative balances of power and control in an airport ways described by the three earlier extensions to Ashby’s Law. Conclusions This paper has reported the application of four extensions to LoRV and the development of a suite of five new design guidelines to improve pre-design and design of complex socio-technical systems/digital eco-systems in the built environment. The paper demonstrated the use of the four extensions in exploring the shifts in the balance of power, control, use-value and benefits via an example: airport design. References Agre, P. (2000), “The market logic of information”, Knowledge, Technology, and Policy, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 67-77. Ashby, W.R. (1956), An Introduction to Cybernetics,Vol. 2, Chapman Hall, London. Beer, S. (1972), Brain of the Firm, The Penguin Press, London. Beer, S. (1988), Heart of Enterprise, Wiley, Chichester. Coase, R.H. (1960), “The problem of social cost”, Journal of Law & Economics, October. Conant, R.C. and Ashby, W.R. (1970), “Every good regulator of a system must be model of that system”, Int. J. Systems Science, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 89-97. Espejo, R. and Harnden, R. (Eds) (1989), The Viable System Model: Interpretations and Applications of Stafford Beer’s VSM, Wiley, Chichester.

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Ford, D.N. and Sterman, J.D. (1997), “Dynamic modelling of product development processes”, System Dynamics Review, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 31-68. Forrester, J.W. (1998), Designing the Future, Universidad de Sevilla, Seville. Glanville, R. (1994), “Variety in design”, Systems Research, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 95-103. Heylighen, F. (1997), “The economy as a distributed, learning control system”, Communication & Cognition-AI, Vol. 13 Nos 2/3, pp. 207-24. Heylighen, F. and Joslyn, C. (2001), “The law of requisite variety”, available at: http://pespmc1. vub.ac.be/REQVAR.html Hussain, F.K., Chang, E. and Boley, H. (2007), “Dynamic self-organized digital ecosystem architecture”, available at: www.ieee-dest.curtin.edu.au/2007/DEBIITutorial.pdf Hutchinson, W. (1997), Systems Thinking and Associated Methodologies, Praxis Education, Perth. Love, T. and Cooper, T. (2007), “Digital eco-systems pre-design: variety analyses, system viability and tacit system control mechanisms”, in Chang, E. and Hussain, F.K. (Eds) paper presented at the Inaugural IEEE International Conference on Digital Ecosystems and Technologies, Cairns, Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE, 21-23 February, pp. 452-7. Maiden, N. and Jones, S. (2005), “Creativity in the design of complex systems”, in Johnson, C. (Ed.) paper presented at Workshop on Complexity in Design and Engineering, 10-12 March, University of Glasgow, Glasgow. New York Times News Service (2006), “Airport security: buy ID card and forget the line”, New York Times News Service. Powers, W.T. (1992), “Control theory psychology and social organizations”, in Powers, W. (Ed.), Living Control Systems II, New View Publications, Chapel Hill, NC. Schneier, B. (2006), “Screening people with clearances”, Crypto-gram, October 15. Stockinger, G. (n.d.), “The role of variety in the evolution of information society”, available at: http://kaneda.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/stockinger/fis.htm Tellefsen, B. (1995), “Constituent orientation: theory, measurements and empirical evidence”, in Tellefesen, B. (Ed.), Market Orientation, Fagbokforlaget, Bergen, pp. 111-56. Tellefsen, B. and Love, T. (2002), “Understanding designing and design management through constituent market orientation and constituent orientation (presentation slides)”, Paper presented at the Common Ground. Proceedings of the Design Research Society International Conference at Brunel University, London, September 5-8. Tellefsen, B. and Love, T. (2003), “Constituent market orientation and ownership of virtual marketplaces”, Journal of Logistics and Information Management, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 8-17. Umpleby, S.A. (2001), “What comes after second order cybernetics?”, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 87-9. Wolstenholme, E.F. (1990), System Enquiry: A System Dynamics Approach, Wiley, Chichester. About the authors Terence Love is a research fellow at Curtin University, Western Australia. His research interests are multi-disciplinary involving social, ethical, environmental and technical factors in the design of complex systems. He has researched in the areas of design and innovation processes, design of complex socio-technical systems, information systems (IS) design, optimisation, engineering design, organisation design, and doctoral education. He is a Fellow of the Design Research Society, a visiting fellow in the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development at the Management School, Lancaster University, UK, a visiting Professor and member of the Scientific Council at UNIDCOM Institute of Design and Communication Research at IADE in Lisbon,

Portugal, professional member of the ACM, and member of the management panel of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in Western Australia. Terence Love is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected] Trudi Cooper is a senior Lecturer in the School of International Cultural and Community Studies at Edith Cowan University. Her research and teaching interests include critical analysis of systemic interactions between hegemonic ideologies, formal and informal power structures, and professional ethics within community organisations. In 2006, she gained an Australian Carrick citation for outstanding contribution to student learning through development of portfolio and e-portfolio learning approaches.

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The magic of three Johann van der Merwe Faculty of Informatics and Design, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, South Africa

1436 Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to combine several modes of thought based on systems organization and observing systems in order to construct a model for a “designerly way of thinking”. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is to regard design as a “groundless field of knowledge” that may source methodological insights from cybernetics, systems theory, cognitive studies and complexity theory, among others. Findings – The focus of this research is to model an adaptive frame-of-reference that design students may use in order to construct their own autopoietic identity systems. The semantic question “How does a student obtain information about design?” is changed to a structural question “How could students acquire a structure enabling them to operate innovatively in a modern design environment?” With the backing of cybernetic principles, it is apparent that this process is not only feasible but also preferable. Practical implications – While the practical use that can be made of any design theory is not within the remit of this paper, it is nonetheless the goal of theory to enhance the individual’s analytical and communicative skills. Originality/value – This paper suggests an autopoietic model-for-becoming that can have the virtual potential of bringing one to understand the grey areas of human-object relationships. Keywords Autopoieses, Cybernetes, Constructivist, Identity, Inter-relational Paper type Conceptual paper

A cyber prescript, yet to be concluded So, what’s this magic of three stuff?

The most difficult aspect to teaching “design” is that it does not exist, yet. To help in the construction of what can be termed “design” we have to establish a team of at least three (a cybernetic triad): you (the designer), the user, and. . . and then we run into trouble, for we cannot talk about the (real) object you call design (not yet, anyway). I believe that cybernetics is in the same conceptual boat, and following Latour’s (2005)[1] example I would hope that you would not make either design or cybernetics apply to anything. You can’t be serious . . .

I am being serious. This is a design theory class, where we talk about being human, and how people communicate. But, we also have to talk about the third member of the “design team”. I’m not interested in practical design . . . You simply cannot be serious . . .

Why not? What were you looking for? In this class, we talk about design . . . Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1436-1457 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827409

So teach me about design and stop this . . .this nonsense.

I can only agree that it makes no sense to you, now, because I cannot teach you anything, but I could ask you what it is that you want from life.

Oh, for heaven’s sake, is this a philosophy or a design class? If you don’t want to teach me about design I might as well leave.

I did not say that I did not want to teach you, but that I could not “teach” you about design, which is not quite the same thing. The only thing I can do is to ask transformational questions, much like Socrates demonstrated to his young friend Meno, who asked, “. . . but what do you mean by this idea that we don’t learn anything, and that what we call learning is just remembering?” By way of a demonstration, Socrates had Meno call over one of his young slave boys, and after what seemed like a good start to the process, said, “You see, Meno? I’m not teaching him anything. All I’m doing is asking questions” (Plato, 2005). You, on the other hand, seem to want me to supply you with some sort of easy formula for practical design, but for you to learn anything you must avoid copying me as the teacher, and for you to learn about a designerly way of thinking and about design innovation you must learn to avoid copying the designs in those books you got from the library. Now I know you’re joking – what other way am I going to learn about design? I heard you saying that nobody starts from scratch, from a blank page, so what on earth am I to do if I can’t ...?

If you can’t do what? Is there nothing else you can do besides simply copy what you see and hear? What if you try copying yourself? Now you’re really being facetious.

I’m sorry if it sounds that way, but that is where you have to start, so let’s begin . . . Introduction That defining moment of recognition, of who and what we are, begins with the admission that we are not alone – if we really want to act as homo sapiens we have to question what it means to be wise and knowledgeable, to be able to judge. Formative moments of recognition enable us to act as sapient beings and knowledgeable selves capable of learning. We make a mistake, however, in thinking we can do so unaided, when pragmatism shows that we learn precisely because we are not alone. There are always the minimum of three elements at work in education, and in any environment that contains people and designed objects: the observer, the observed, and the result of that observation. It is the latter that I called the third member of the “design team” (above), an as if member at best, it being a virtual construct, but a result of the observer interacting with the observing system nonetheless. Glanville’s (1997a) description of the characteristics of Pask’s Conversation Theory is applicable here, in that the process of learning is described as “a process of conversation about and with Topics” and the fact that “any one Topic entails at least two others” a triad that engenders meaning. I see the observer and the observed as acting the roles of two Topics in conversation, which, by their very interaction, engenders the becoming of the third, and virtual, Topic. Design students, it has to be said, find this a problem, since they are expected to find ways of dealing with their individual creative input contextualized by socially communal creative inputs, aka a social stock of knowledge. The first thing that often happens to them is that they fall prey to the dreaded scourge of plagiarism, and although you can teach students the mechanics of technical and legal plagiarism, the question of what that really means, in practice, is not as easily understood by a first

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year who has no idea of how to deal with a “normal” mixture of individual and communal input. Speaking about formative moments of recognition, seemingly based on other peoples’ work, appears to be nothing short of a ridiculous contradiction in terms. I teach (I should really say I tutor) design theory, a third year industrial design class that is supposed to be based on, and extend, the previous two years of design history, stretching from the Assyrians to the Alessi’s of the design world. However, I have never been very good at following rules, especially educational rules. Perhaps because of the fourth year of art history that I attended as a (mature) student, a course that did not deal with just another year of history, but asked questions about the very existence of art objects, I have felt increasingly uncomfortable in teaching the design history course as outlined by my predecessor. Students surely have had enough of the factual history of design by the third year, and the need is surely for asking, what on earth do we do with this knowledge? What is it good for? There is only one answer: theory for practice, and immediately I have to qualify this: the focus of my research and my teaching is on theory creation, not on practical application. Coupled to this way of thinking is the notion of introducing, from the first year, principles of design research that will enable students to enhance their communication and presentations skills, in other words, to help them become critical and analytical thinkers. I do not “teach design” as such, and I do not teach theory-for-practice that is unproblematically applicable to practical design problems. I teach systemic thinking skills, using elements of contemporary social design problems as vehicles, and I can only do so successfully by adapting cybernetic principles of observing systems to suit a design educational environment. That is the only claim I can make, and this work will not attempt to either define the original cybernetic principles, or to justify a definition of practical design work. What it does attempt to do is follow Friedman’s (2003) guidelines for theory construction in design research: Critical thinking and systemic inquiry form the foundation of theory. Research offers us the tools that allow critical thinking and systemic inquiry to bring answers out of the field of action. It is theory and the models that theory provides through which we link what we know to what we do.

This paper is thus an attempt at addressing the quite problematic learning situation in any design school where innovation and creativity is highly sought after, but where, at the same time, difficult social constructivist questions must be investigated and answers tried out “on the shop floor” as it were. How can a young person understand the formation of an individual and “new” (design) identity when the necessary academic and practical design knowledge can only come from someone and somewhere else? It is undoubtedly a question of the requisite combination of the “I” and the “other” that causes the problem, and that is something that students have to be taught, along with the idea of how anybody can learn anything at all. I have only one answer, and that is the use of systems thinking (you may prefer the term systemic thinking), which, like design, is everything and nothing at the same time, and already and always elsewhere. I will thus weave a story that combines what I see as the viable characteristics of both design and cybernetics as if they were one discipline, because I do not wish to distinguish between the two ways of knowing. Design, like cybernetics, can and must act as an agent for transformation and change. Based on Heidegger’s notion of a phenomenological ontology in pursuit of

uncovering or disclosing the processes of coming-into-being, this systemic and circular mode of investigating human ontological understanding can be compared to Maturana and Varela’s concept of autopoiesis (auto-production as applied to social systems, cf. below), which I regard as another form of disclosive phenomenological ontology. In this paper, I will focus on what emancipatory and transformative moments of recognition entail, and how students of design can construct their identities, and that of their discipline, by using cybernetic principles adapted to a design conversation. In my class, I require students to construct what amounts to models of design inquiry, based on a model of their personal identity construct. But first, why should systemic thinking be called for in design education? The state of design education The prevailing notion of design (and hence how design is taught) still seems to be based on a linear cause and effect process that relies on logic, rationality and scientific rigour, a very orderly practice that guarantees control and defined outcomes. Unfortunately, this can result in fixed structures protective of design “truths” and hence restrictive of thought patterns, and by concentrating on what is being designed and not reflecting on why these objects are being designed, we seem to have created a design crisis in self-conception. Design education still concentrates on styling and form-giving, but a curriculum that does not challenge students, one that makes it easy to move from logical idea to the logic of the finished form, is not conducive to development and innovation. Despite the increase in the complexity of social, economic and political structures on a world-wide scale, and the consequent increase in the complexity of designed objects, we have inherited design as an effect of the machine age c. 1851, and as a guild-oriented arts and crafts activity, something the modern world simply does not recognise anymore. Design, both as an activity and as education, must be approached from fresh vantage points to rethink and to broaden its character, and to do so a new educational structure is required. Not only do we need an understanding of the objects we design, we also need this same instructional understanding of the users of those objects and the contexts within which both function (Beucker, 2004; Formosa and McDonagh, 2005; Gedenryd, 1998; Jonas, 1999; Kapustin, 1998; Kolko, 2005; Michl, 2002; Pombo and Tschimmel, 2005; Restrepo et al., 2004). This does tend to paint a bleak picture, and of course, not all design education curricula hold to this type of outmoded view, and one of the new design trends today is to focus on process instead of product, but the mere fact that these observations can still be made is cause for concern. “Perhaps design today is a reductionist parody of what should be a truly systemic activity” (Broadbent, 2005). To rectify this situation, design education will need to concentrate on the learning process itself, which means un-learning conditioned and uncreative habits, moving towards authentic, competent and cognitive design processes and practices, generic and holistic skills and understanding, and the promotion of life-long learning and development. New educational models must allow students to construct their own learning capabilities, thus structuring their own modes of knowledge acquisition, in order to liberate themselves from programmed knowledge[2] and, instead, allow for emergence as a creative input (Albers et al., 2004; Basadur in Van Patter, 2002; Beucker, 2004; Dowlen and Edwards, 2004; Gedenryd, 1998; Giaccardi and Fischer, 2005; Overbeeke et al., 2004; Pombo and Tschimmel, 2005).

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Is the educational landscape really in need of all this? Michael Fielding (2006), a Professor in Educational Innovation (University of Sussex), seems to think so: We currently face a significant contemporary crisis, not just of student voice but of compulsory schooling and the social and political contexts that shape it . . . [we need to] encourage approaches to student voice that take seriously the education of persons, not merely the thin requirements of an overly instrumental and ultimately diminishing schooling. . .

Bannister et al. (2001) highlight the problems students entering higher education face in terms of self-managed learning, since they are not prepared for this at school. Given the increasing scarcity of resources, teachers are expected to do more with less, which inevitably means a greater student/staff ratio. If the aim is to produce self-confident students who can increasingly take responsibility for their own learning styles and processes, then attention needs to be given to this facilitation process from (tutor and content) dependence to independence. With this type of suggested design education in mind, it comes as no surprise that Bruce Nussbaum, a previous editorial page editor for Business Week, has written an article that questions the integrity of many contemporary designers, especially when it comes to a question of (a lack of) sustainability, and he further asks the question, “how do you switch gears from designing for to designing with?” We may not agree with all he has to say, but the following has great resonance with a number of people[3]: Maybe the object of design is not a finished product . . . In fact, design has evolved from a simple practice to a powerful methodology for Design Thinking that, I believe, can transform society. By that I mean Design, with a capital D, can move beyond fashion, graphics, products, services into education, transportation, economics and politics. Design can become powerful enough to be an approach to life, a philosophy of life. But it can only do so when Design by Ego ends and Design by Conversation begins (Nussbaum, 2007).

How can any design education succeed in persuading a design student that design by conversation not only is design learning, but can become a worthwhile approach to a sustainable life? Again, my only answer is to adopt systemic thinking and adapt cybernetic principles for design usability, since even Gordon Pask called cybernetics “an art, or a philosophy, a way of life” (Beyes, 2005). How then could cybernetics enhance a designerly way of thinking? Cooperative voices in conversation Cybernetics and system theory both started out as ways of investigating the complex behaviour of systems, with a view to regulating their organization, with modern cybernetics expanding from a first-order, deterministic approach based on control and prediction, to a second-order, sociologically applicable analysis of human, hence variable, structures. Systems thinking followed the same path, dividing into a “hard” approach that studies observed systems, and a “soft” approach that studies living, observing systems, including observers of that system. From the various descriptions of second-order cybernetics and soft systems methodology, it seems the aims and methods are similar enough (Geyer, 2000; Heylighen and Joslyn, 1999; Heylighen et al., 1999; Warren and Ragsdell, 2002), for the purposes of design, to use both as if they were a collective way of constructing:

. . . a conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and tools . . . to make the full patterns [of a complex life] clearer, and to help us see how to change them effectively (Senge, 1990).

The magic of three

It follows that, what I simplistically call systems thinking for design, is: . . . [a] methodology for tackling real-world problems [and] for exploring social reality . . . the latter is not a ‘given’ but is a process in which an ever-changing social world is continuously recreated by its members (Checkland, 1981).

Peter Checkland’s description of soft systems methodology could have been written for design, and it is thus understandable why Susan Szenasy (2003), the editor of Metropolis, calls cybernetics/systems thinking “the very basis of sustainable ethics, aesthetics, and processes” in design. Furthermore, and using language that agrees with both Checkland and design theory, Banathy (1996) sees systems methodology as different from the methodologies usually employed by fully described (and, really, operationally and environmentally closed) disciplines: In system inquiry . . . one selects – from a wide range of approaches, methods, and tools that best fit – the type of system, the purpose and nature of the inquiry and the specific problem situation.

In that sense, then, and as a conceptual framework for tackling real-world problems, I use both systems thinking and cybernetics, combined with design thinking, as teaching tools to engender new ways of seeing, much like Shotter’s (1994) “practical” way of knowing that can “call out” not simply responses and reactions, but also a “stance toward our own construction of our own abilities”. In this way, design theory can function very much like theories of social structuration in building up a shared stock of knowledge, and, provided it remains useful in everyday reality (theory for practice), this integrated stock of knowledge can be enhanced from many different fields of knowledge, thus, in effect, agreeing with Jonas (2004) who describes design as a groundless field, of necessity sourcing what it needs from many other contextually relevant fields of knowledge (Banathy, 1996). Consequently, I can only regard both cybernetics and design as tools of perceptual/conceptual investigation, and, for the most part, as one conceptually blended (new) image schema that affords (you, me, any student) the opportunity to cover new ground, and on this “new ground” (which I will investigate as a spacetime fitness landscape, below) you can find amazing new constructions not noticeable before. The simplest example I use in class is to take off my glasses – without them (technology to aid “vision”) I am divorced from much of the information available in my (classroom) environment. I might be “aware” of this information, but in such a way that I cannot react to or act on this information in an optimum way. One of the main points I try to make in my constructivist classroom is that “Considering the implications of seeing the world through cybernetic lenses can have a devastating effect on our traditional view of knowledge and the nature of things” since we have to rethink our certainties about what we can know, about the very nature of existence, and (theory into practice) how we manage to get anything done (Dooley, 1995). By deliberately performing an action (putting on my glasses), after making an informed decision, I restore my “way of seeing” (extending my natural abilities through technological innovation) which enables me (literally and figuratively) to engage with the possibilities in the environment and to “see” new things. Normal life is lived

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without “cybernetic lenses”, without the aid of some enlightenment, but, given the “technology” (any addition to what you think is the total) of cybernetics and design, the “new” becomes inevitable. For that reason, I will use the term (cybernetics þ design) cyberdesign, an expanded groundless field of knowledge that, by making me look differently through (and not just at) the descriptive problem space, removes the (logical) gaps “between one’s current state and the goal state” (Ohlsson, quoted in Langley and Jones, 1988). The construction of one’s goal state Boje and Al Arkoubi (2005) see the need to move beyond open systems theory, which they equate with second-order cybernetics, to a version of Bahktin’s heteroglossia (a term used to denote both the social/multi-voiced and individual use of language, the latter through appropriation), or dialogics (the new third-order cybernetics). One claim that drew my attention is that “dialogism overcomes binary opposition of signifier/signified, text/context, self/other . . . ”, meaning that this is an evolving narrative taking its meaning from those spaces to be found “between bodies (physical, political, social, bodies of ideas, etc.)”. This viewpoint seems to agree with David Bohm’s version of Dialogue, which stands for an image of a “river of meaning” flowing around and through people (Bohm et al., 1991); this is a description of social structuration that engenders the construction of meaning. Using the concept of Dialogue, designers can “explore the individual and collective presuppositions, ideas, beliefs, and feelings that subtly control their interactions”. No surprises here then, and calling this open systems or second-order cybernetics amounts to the same thing: a democratic and inclusive way of appreciating the situation that you, as designer/manager, have been asked to help transform from the current state to the proposed goal state, although I much prefer Herbert Simon’s description of design as devising “courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones” (Blevis, 2006). “The third order cybernetic revolution in system theory brings us in touch with dialogic forces” Boje and Al Arkoubi (2005) maintain. What they refer to are the language forces of heteroglossia, namely the opposing centrifugal (deviation-expanding) and centripetal (deviation-counter-acting) forces. What I disagree with is that second-order cybernetics can be simplistically equated with an open system that only promotes “deviation-amplification, known as Law of Requisite Variety”, while a first-order cybernetics promotes deviation-counteraction. According to Beer (1979), Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety is still poorly understood, a statement proven by the example above, in that Ashby’s Law contains both variety (deviation) “amplification” and “counteraction” thereby, by default, giving second-order cybernetics (my interpretation of Stafford Beer’s work) the same goal as Bahktin’s heteroglossia, and removing the need for a third revolution. Ashby (1956) made it quite clear that not only are the principles of cybernetics applicable to biological systems as well as to mechanical ones, but also the very complexity of human life makes it the ideal system to be investigated by the “peculiar virtue of cybernetics”. Ashby described his Law of Requisite Variety as intuitively obvious, and used the example of a press photographer (regulator) using a camera; if this regulatory system (photographer) wishes to “control” (more correctly, regulate) the variety in another system, in this case, say, 20 subjects each requiring different (focal) lens settings, then

the means to do so is to increase the regulatory system’s own variety capacity, and being all too human, the photographer does so by extension – the camera he uses has to be capable of 20 lens settings (in modern day situations this variety amplification is extended even further and taken care of by a software programme in the digital camera). Ashby was of the opinion that cybernetics could appreciably deal with complex systems, and that “the subject of regulation is very wide in its applications, covering . . . most of the activities . . . of science and life”. My particular application, used in a social constructivist design classroom, is based on an adaptation of Beer’s notion of the Muddy Box recursive and regulatory principle: Our adaptation has the adjuster (feedback and organizer) and the manager as being one person – the teacher. While the muddy box (classroom þ students þ questions) produces variety as a matter of course, it is the task of the feedback adjuster (teacher) to manage the system via the feedback loops, both for immediate feedback in real time, and for “delayed feedback” in terms of re-planning the input, thereby reducing operational variety, but at the same time the task of the teacher is to not-manage in the sense of being an adjuster organizer, whose task it is to induce organizational variety, adjusting the viability of the box to progress from structured solvable problems to dealing with ill-structured wicked problems. [In this classroom] Scho¨n’s Law (the least amount of control) has to include – in the light of the above – the notion of the regulatory process of intrinsic control, which “sees to it that Ashby’s Law is automatically obeyed; therefore there is no loss possible in balancing the variety equations (Beer, 1979; Van der Merwe, 2005).

Now, there are two notions here that need to be addressed, in design terms. Firstly, there is the cybernetic construction of the Black Box (Glanville, 1997b), a description in opposition to Beer’s notion of the Muddy Box, and, I believe, Maturana and Varela’s notion of an autopoietic structure. The only way I can make sense of what is undeniably a difficult matter, namely communication by means of conversation between at least two parties, or cybernetic systems, is to envisage the interface or space between them as a space of emergence, a potential space, that cannot be either black or transparent, but much closer to a muddy or grey colour. Something emerges from a space of hiddenness that yet cannot fully declare itself until appropriated and used, since it is something new consisting of a blend of inputs from the self and the other. My argument is that a Black Box cannot function as an interface, unless one is satisfied with only dealing with the old-style design thinking that favours the object above all else. Design thinking in terms of user experience minimizes the role of the object – the computer’s innards, the console with buttons, the latest phone/camera/networking device – and rather concentrates on the real interface design, namely the use that the person who deals with the hardware/software combination puts that object to. Here we have another triad consisting of self, other, and a space for emergence: the magic of three. The only reason I used the Muddy Box notion for a classroom is exactly because one can then envisage this construct as outside both the observer and the observed. If you encounter a real Black Box situation it is shown you deliberately, like the fraudulent Enron case demonstrated, or you are attempting to “see” inside another person’s mind, which we all know is impossible, hence the difficulty with so-called “ordinary” communication. The Black Box should not be placed over the signal, even though it is only a metaphorical construct. Do not follow the signals to their

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reception-point, because you cannot truly follow, even with imagination, but, rather, watch the signals come out again, as they must (assuming some form of communication is taking place), changed, but recognisably signals. Again, the self-observer cannot be sure of an exact interpretation of these changed signals, but that is not quite the point, because in this “interface space” is where new meaning is being constructed, by the self (with reference to its original signal sent), in conjunction with the other’s re-broadcasting of that signal (the other’s interpretation of the self’s original signal), and the new emergent meaning: the virtual meaning in the virtual space of becoming between the self and the other. You see, the Muddy Box is, in fact, the interface of design education. I can readily accept each personal construct (each individual autopoietic system) as being a Black Box, even to the self who supposedly inhabits that emptiness. There is nothing there. But out here in the virtual constructs of interfacing, that is where we “are” or more correctly, where we are continually becoming. “The interface is observing. Where observing is, in the space between, is where the interface is” (Glanville, 1998), and in my adaptation of cybernetic principles, the Black Box can only be mistakenly constructed “When we assume the interface is ‘as if’ it were on the Object of our observing, [and] we give no space to that Object to help form that interface” (Glanville, 1998). If we mistake the interface as if it were synonymous with the Object, then “within first-order cybernetics the observed object is interpreted as a black box that does not disclose its mode of operation” (Glanville, quoted in Beyes, 2005). I rest my case. Which brings me belatedly to the second notion that needs to be addressed in design terms. Glanville (1990) states “that a distinction cannot cleave a space” but he also states that “The distinction’s purpose is itself: its own becoming”. In his preface to the second half of Autopoiesis and Cognition, Beer (1980) wrote, regarding Maturana’s notion of freedom from the ego, that this forms a natural contradiction of autopoiesis. “It” survives, as it must, but what is this it? Self-preservation is the ultimate goal of any being, but this then means that the ego/id cannot be formed in complete isolation from that which it depends on – the other. Freedom from it/the ego would mean freedom from a self-centred interpretation that does not allow dialogue or that does not take others into account. Making distinctions is “making” the self; the self’s (distinction’s) purpose is itself: its own becoming, and yet it cannot accomplish this without an “external other” – a paradox for both cybernetics and design. If we can accept that the self is this very fundamental cybernetic distinction, then the self as it – as distinction - has to “cleave a space” for becoming: the triad of self, other, and virtual space where we can “observe” our distinctions-in-the-making, as it were, communicating and bartering for meaning. Compare, then, this interactive space, this interface to Glanville’s (1997b) Black Box construct, and you will see that the observer (which Glanville rightly says includes the designer) cannot either determine the relationship between the input and output signals, nor control the Black Box situation, since the designer is always part of a triad, that magical number three: you (other/user), me (designer/self), and the product, as long as we remember that it is not the product (for itself) that forms the third element of the triad, but rather the interface design (the virtual entirely not there space) that plays the role of the third member of the triad. And yet, “The observer controls the Black Box . . . [which] equally controls the observer . . . The control . . . is circular” (Glanville, 1997b).

It is this (controlling) view of cybernetics, I presume, that allow Kenny and Boxer (1990) to come straight to the point and claim that the framework of second-order cybernetics does not allow us the freedom to think and act that is necessary if we (and the problematic of self-reference) are to move beyond its paradoxical circularity. The observer (designer) does not control any box, and all the boxes in the world cannot control the observer, as an autopoietic system: change can only happen as an internal structural event, and not be forced from the outside. The “control” that is circular should be equated with everyday organizational management (and it is this absolutist view of the term control that I dislike, cf. below), and the “control” in machined systems can retain the original meaning, but “control” in human systems needs another term. Let us have another look at Beer’s formulation of the Muddy Box notion: our constructivist classroom (the scene for the Muddy Box construct) has the feedback adjuster and the adjustor organizer as the same person, who also manages everyday occurrences (dealing with real time problems in the real world). In terms of re-planning, the classroom input (derived from the signals re-broadcast by the other), this self reduces operational variety (otherwise chaos can result because of too much variety/playfulness/noise, as in too much information), but at the same time the task of this self is to not-manage in the sense of being an adjuster organizer, whose task it is to induce organizational variety, adjusting the viability of The/Space/Box to progress from structured solvable problems to dealing with ill-structured “wicked” problems. In this classroom, the notion of the regulatory process of intrinsic control must hold sway, which “sees to it that Ashby’s Law is automatically obeyed; therefore there is no loss possible in balancing the variety equations” (Beer, 1979). Replace the term control with regulate, and the original meaning of cybernetics (steersman) shall be closer to the truth of human life than a mechanistic and absolutist view. A steersman denotes a boat; that boat floats, and we can ask, floats on what? You steer from the back, with some “control” of course, but that which you float upon (depend upon) has more control in the long run than the self. Design’s cybernetic boat floats on the shared stock of social knowledge we each can have access to; this substance, as the collective other of design, has more “controlling” power than any individual can handle. There is no black box, only as-yet unknown associations and newly possible combinations of variables: these can be regulated and innovated by means of this notion of variety, but still, each self has to struggle with this process, “alone” as it were, which can be a frightening thought to a student of design. For that reason, I can agree with Kenny and Boxer’s (1990) statement that the self-referential paradoxes of second-order cybernetics “can generate much anxiety, especially as the observer recognises that there is no solid ground upon which he may stand in order to make definitive pronouncements”, but for the purposes of design education that is exactly what is required. No solid ground, no definitive pronouncements. Listen to others, conceptually blend what you know with what you experience, and only then find the ground to stand on. Second-order cybernetics does not and cannot give you the freedom to think and act in this way, but as a thinking tool, as a conceptual instrument, cyberdesign can induce this way of seeing that leads to “solid ground”, at least until the next problem comes along: The ambiguity surrounding observing systems begins to dissipate when we realize that SOC [second-order cybernetics] is not so much about an observer as about a self-observer . . . [which is] the study of his/her interaction with the world, of which they are a part ( Julia`, 2000).

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In that sense, Kenny and Boxer’s anxiety should be read as necessary cognitive dissonance (Duit and Confrey, 1996), a notion similar to what Scho¨n (1987) expects the student (designer) to experience in the “indeterminate zones of practice – uncertainty, situations of confusion and messiness where you don’t know what the problem is”. You cannot teach design by rote, and neither by “good example”, for that will only take you so far. The truly cybernetic principle is self-steering, but to get to that point (of departure) you need to unlearn, in the sense of Socrates asking Meno: So by making him [the slave boy] feel baffled . . . we haven’t done him any harm, have we? . . . At any rate, this should have helped him towards discovering the truth. Since, now he will be happy to try and find out what he doesn’t know (Plato, 2005).

In searching for design solutions, you should not look at the object but at the process (of design, of which you – the self – is the beginning part). Designers should use a paradoxical way of seeing turned into a way of knowing, and enquire about that which they do not know by looking at that which they do know, only not directly at but through what they know (Van der Merwe, 2002). However, what I most disagree with is Kenny and Boxer’s claim that second-order cybernetics “mistakenly assumes an identity between the observer and the observing process”, leading them to call for a third-order cybernetics to solve this self-referential circularity paradox. von Foerster (1991) did not say we could not go on to third-order cybernetics, merely that an external-to-second-order cybernetics action would not create anything new. By immersing yourself in the creative circularity of second-order cybernetics, “One has stepped into the domain of concepts that apply to themselves”, a cybernetic endorsement of autopoiesis and consequential self-discovery. The spacetime fitness landscape that is created by cyberdesign thinking relies on observers (designers) being able to, ontologically, re-design, as it were, their new identities, and consequently that of their discipline, because change in an autopoietic system is only possible as a renewal of the internal structural dimension/s of the system, while this very change/transformation/evolution is only possible because of something external to the system itself (Van der Merwe, 2005), this possibility of an “identity”/identification between the observer, the observing process, and the (virtual þ real) environment. The hidden order that this scenario presumes is acknowledged by Scott (1996) in quoting the work of Gotthard Gunther (1972): “Cybernetics . . . will only attain its true stature if it recognises itself as the science that reaches out for that which is hidden”, and Scott’s rephrasing of Gunther’s First Law as: “There is an exchange relation between knowing and being” strengthens my argument that the creation of an own identity as well as the identity/ontology of a design discipline is exactly this: the relationship between Heidegger’s Dasein (everyday man) and Being (what we can become) is the same relationship between the design process (inclusive of the observer) and an evolutionary ontology-in-the-making. The “space” of the spacetime landscape corresponds to the idea of “place” (mental as well as physical space) which Heidegger (1969) reminds us used to have the same meaning as the word end (still used today, i.e. Forster’s novel Howards End, and one of farmer Brown’s fields called Bottom’s End), and this correspondence has the sense of a continuous movement. Consider your own situation: when anything (normally) ends, it means it is finished, but you (the self)

cannot end your coming-into-being in this way, you can only find your self in a space or place, from which to move on, again. “Self-reference (or better, self-referring) constitutes not so much an end – an accomplishment to be formalized or simulated – as a beginning” ( Julia`, 2000). If an ending constitutes a beginning, and we can see that end thus connotes place (space from which to begin) it can be appreciated that convergence leads to divergence, echoed in Bohm and Peat’s (1989) notion of enfoldment and unfoldment, or implicate and explicate order. They maintain that there is no separation between the two concepts of order that would have any lasting meaning, thus what is implicit in the enfolded convergence of abstracted order is available and explicit in the unfolded divergence of “natural” order – or “reality” as we remember it (Van der Merwe, 2000). What is implicit in the “end” of anything is the explicit possibility of a new beginning, a moving from place to place, moving, continuously, from Dasein to Being, from now to then, with no separation that should make any difference. Not only is there an exchange relation between your (now) old self and your (then) new self, but this same exchange relation between knowing and being “moves” you to re-construct/re-construe the fitness landscape of spacetime, but, before continuing, I must outline what this strange phrase refers to, and what that has to do with cyberdesign. The fitness landscape of spacetime Design, as a human activity – of thought – does not have a beginning nor an ending, proper, but it does deal with a continuous becoming. It is not the landscape of our material existence that has to change, but the complexity fitness landscapes of our own ontological and metaphysical landscape that we have to recognise as changing, because as autopoietic systems we change continuously. Furthermore, when Kauffman (1995)[4] says that “we need to paint a new picture” when discussing the relationship between self-organization and selection, I would interpret that as an injunction to re-design the relationship between self-organization (autopoiesis/inside) and selection (non-equilibrium/outside). We need to discover that there is no outside, and neither is there, really, an observable inside. The complex answer to who we are is to redesign, to rethink, how we become, and that happens nowhere, and it happens here-and-now, but not as we are used to. Not only is consciousness a wonderfully complex phenomenon, normal human beings manage to perform the most complex tasks without thinking. To imagine our new possibilities, our new selves, it is not implausible to think: . . . that life emerged as a phase transition to collective autocatalysis once a chemical minestrone, held in a localized region able to sustain adequately high concentrations, became thick enough with molecular diversity (Kauffman, 1995).

So the question is, when are the circumstances just right for a phase transition, this autoreproduction, to take place – i.e. when do you reach the point when external triggers have done enough “triggering” to begin the autoproduction process, and is it this simple? What we have to ask is what happens just before, during, and immediately after this phase transition? What did you think you were capable of before this phase transitional design conversation, what did you begin to perceive during the conversation, and who are you now? This type of cyberdesign conversation is a journey of discovery that concentrates mainly on crossing a gap between the now and

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the yet-to-be, allowing us to “gain a foothold at another shore of reality” (Polanyi, 1962). The floating pattern of behavioural action we use as support base is the “meeting-place” where teacher and student may co-produce meaning from the environment (Van der Merwe, 2000). If we intelligently use this environment, the “hidden aspects of the unknown” can be seen as simply the known data turned pattern, clues and pointers to the so-called unknown solution (Polanyi, 1962). Based on the here-and-now, triggered by the not-yet, this meeting-place is Luhmann’s nowhere conversational speech bubble, the communication that speaks to communication (Metcalf, 1999). A fitness landscape of spacetime looks somewhat like a wavefunction (which is science-speak for all the information available from a context), although Kauffman uses a patchwork quilt to illustrate this point. What he calls a patch procedure (Kauffman, 1995) is visually quite simple: imagine the space, all the space, that can constitute your life-world. Imagine it as a patchwork quilt, with each patch the parts of a non-serial, difficult-to-solve problem (much like life, really). He is talking about spacetime, in equilibrium, a space that contains nothing, a flat quilt with no colour and no pattern but nevertheless, there, a something that we use as yardstick. The minute we add things, like gravity, movement (time), attractors, then the quilt starts to react, or rather, the quilt is drawn upon, warped, becomes a landscape that is trying to change (transform) itself into a fitness landscape, but the problem is that all the patches, the squares that make up the quilt, are trying to do the same thing. “Each patch climbs toward fitness peaks on its own landscape, but in doing so deforms the fitness landscape of its partners” (Kauffman, 1995), and this happens because finding a solution or part of a solution in one patch will change the nature of the problem for another patch, through the act of networking or interconnection: we are all part of this crazy quilt spacetime landscape we call social reality. Each fitness landscape adjusts itself to the adjacent one in the patchwork quilt of spacetime. As Kauffman (1995) states, “Patches, in short, may be a fundamental process we have evolved in our social systems . . . ” and if the analogy holds, then adjacent fitness landscapes, trying to accommodate individual fitness peaks that are not all precisely the same, collectively seen as the whole landscape, and seen as the spacetime landscape, means that the fabric of this landscape stretches/deforms – unlike the quilt with its individual patches, this spacetime quilt does not ruck up, taking away from one patch if another patch reaches a high-fitness peak and pulls towards itself more of the spacetime fabric. The social process of fitness landscaping/spacetiming manufactures more fabric, as it were, because it stretches and leaves the surrounding areas untouched but at the same time enriched. This is working with probability existence, not material existence, and if scientific spacetime creates the conditions for gravity, then any body large enough to deform spacetime is an attractor – any person or idea that is deemed important enough acts as an attractor in the social spacetime and gravitates towards itself other ideas and influences, quite probably proving Dawkins (2006) correct, only he reminds us that mere ideas can be these attractors, since they act as patterns of information, the new replicators he calls memes, further suggesting that they mutate through propagating. Price (2004) calls this a process of self-organized emergence that is fed by a discourse that contains the cultural replicators called memes, and that these carry the schemata for a complex social order in the making.

In order to manage life we abstract and simplify, but the crucial point is, complexity does not disappear in the process, it is the bedrock upon which we build the simplified structures of everyday organizational management (I dislike the word control, since the term denotes an inflexibility foreign to design thinking). Seen this way, social complexity, as does the cyberdesign process, goes as far as is needed for the (local) system to work properly, and no further, yet, until change is necessary, or until existing (but not used) connections need to be activated between local and global systems. Correlation with biology is again possible, because evolution through complex adaptive and autocatalytic systems means that, following Kauffman (1995), we can admit that complexity and creativity not only are linked, but that they are naturally ubiquitous, that they form the crazy quilt fabric of social spacetime, the vital ingredients for an ontology of, not only individual identity, but also that of design as a discipline. Relating and exchanging What we understand and what we ultimately “see” depends on what we are prepared to exchange (give something to get something else), using the social spacetime landscape. It is here that the self creates fundamental cybernetic distinctions, – where the self can “cleave a space” for becoming. It is here that the triad of self, other, and virtual space communicates and barters for meaning. However, this is still a social and virtual construct, an entirely not there space, and Scott (1996) reminds us of Gunther’s notion of cybernetics as a science that needs to make contact with that which is hidden, or as yet unseen. To Heidegger (in Dreyfus, 1991), the concept of truth was associated with the Greek term aletheia, equating truth with unforgetting, and when one unforgets, something is brought forth from a space of hiddenness, thereby equating truth with discovery. In that sense the truth of our daily phenomenal encounters can be discovered anew, every day: it simply means that the possibility of a learning interpretation-of-disclosure is available to anyone, and as design teachers we must bring this to the attention of students. Yet Scott (2000) questions the “constructivist epistemologies of second-order cybernetics” (quoting von Foerster, 1982) by focusing on Stewart’s call for a third domain, that of “observer valued impurities” or “how observers construe themselves as observers” (quoting Kenny and Boxer, 1992). Again quoting Gunther, Scott emphasizes that there is an exchange relation between epistemology and ontology, and that the existing cybernetics worldview is inadequate to deal with these problems. If we can imagine the fitness landscape of spacetime and its fitness peaks as these observer valued imparities, then there is no question that second-order cybernetics can deal with these problems of complexity, and that there is no need for another outside viewpoint, because there is no “out there”. As Maturana and Varela (1980) state, a description of absolute (outside) reality is impossible, because that would imply the observer is capable of describing an interaction with this outside reality, and the facts are that the image we would receive from this description would be mediated by the autopoietic nature of the observer’s system, making it not an accurate and absolute description of “out there”. How observers construe themselves as observers is determined by the self-conscious and self-observing behaviour of the observer, and this cognitive reality is relative to the observer (Maturana and Varela, 1980).

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Yes, there is an exchange relation between “out there” and “in here” – as long as you realise that neither exists as objective realities, but are virtual constructs. Any “out there” will be a construct of your individual autopoietic system created by uncovering a space of hiddenness, in Heidegger’s sense. “Elements are elements only for the system that employs them as units and they are such only through this system” declared Luhmann (1995), but in the domain of epistemology, even if this were true, you will not find any common ground with any other “out there” (Luhmann, 1995). Observers inevitable create “impurities” but only in relation to someone else’s observations. Biologically speaking, there is no modernist metanarrative (third-order cybernetics) to neatly deal with problematic constructivist epistemologies, only postmodernist multinarratives that have to be dealt with via a completely different view of the world and of culture. Perhaps that is what Bateson (2000) had in mind when he suggested (1972) “that an entirely new epistemology must come out of cybernetics and system theory, involving a new understanding of mind, self, human relationship, and power”. I do not pretend to have a definitive answer, but I am convinced that a form of autopoietic cyberdesign can prompt, at least, some sense of what it means to be a truly observant system among other living systems. It is here that we encounter multiple realities, and yet multiple “out there” perspectives can be dealt with through the notion of autopoiesis, a truly cybernetic approach to human understanding, because, as Bateson (2000) believes, as societies we form complex cybernetic networks, and that every “human body is a complex, cybernetically integrated system”. Maturana and Varela (1980) “claim that the notion of autopoiesis is necessary and sufficient to characterize the organizations of living systems”. Life in the form of human beings is autopoietic, which means that autoproduction takes place: we reproduce ourselves as ongoing and constantly evolving products – we are at the same time the product and the producer (Dimitrov and Ebsary, 1997; Mariotti, 1996): .

Maturana and Varela introduced the idea of autopoiesis as a form of system organisation where the system as a whole produces and replaces its own components in an ongoing structural coupling with the surrounding environment . . . (Dimitrov, 1998)

This is a conscious interaction with the environment, while the changes sought by a living system are only possible in its internal structure. This makes an autopoietic system both open and closed at the same time, with a unique boundary that both suspends and renews the system’s relationship with its environment (Dimitrov, 1998; Maula, 2000). Heidegger (1969) called cybernetics the new fundamental science that: . . . corresponds to the determination of man as an acting social being. For it is the theory of the steering of the possible planning and arrangement of human labor. Cybernetics transforms language into an exchange of news.

In terms of design education this is news, for the system (student), about its environment (the integrated cybernetic networks), and seeing that we can perceive only differences, when Bateson (2000) says that information equates with news of difference, we can argue that living systems depends on the exchange of differences.

Alienating everybody Luhmann (1995), in his description of what amounts to an exchange of news (information), warns that “every observation must hold to difference schemata” or, to put it a different way, students of cyberdesign must learn to dissociate themselves, from themselves, a form of necessary self-alienation. Geyer (1994) believes that a certain degree of alienation in today’s complex society is inevitable, but also that the relationship between alienation and participation is not that of simple opposites. Maturana and Varela (1980) turns the question “How does the organism obtain information about its environment?” into “How does it happen that the organism has the structure that permits it to operate adequately in the medium in which it exists?” Dissociation, or alienation, from so-called reality can, through a fitness landscape of one’s own desire, uncover what real participation should mean, and reveal the relationship between the two. Teachers of design should follow Maturana & Varela’s method of changing semantic questions into structural ones, and, instead of asking, How does a student obtain information about design, they should ask, How could students acquire a structure enabling them to operate innovatively in a modern design environment? Cyberdesign is all about structure, and the structure (of understanding) that forms the spacetime landscape corresponds to the idea of “place” (above), an “end” to the old self and the acquiring of the new structure. Luhmann (1995) puts it very well in positing a structural relationship between the I and its world as congruent but endless at the same time: you can find the new structure you need in this spacetime landscape, but there are no limits and no boundaries. The circularity paradox of an observer’s self-referential moment of recognition is precisely what is necessary in today’s world of multi-level complexity. The other I that Luhmann (1995) says is required by reflection – translated by me as the other I that can deal with the news of difference, news of alienation – is a you (another I of the same type) that prevents any “ontological self-fixation”. Commenting on the (then) new trend in university education of regarding students as products fashioned by the institution to better serve industry, Blacker (1993) steers away from this modern “cult of efficiency” and focuses instead on the intrinsic value of education itself. In defending what he calls a somewhat old-fashioned direction, he bases his reasoning on Gadamer’s appropriation of the interpretive tradition of hermeneutical exegesis, which, in design educational terms, I would translate as the explanation that teaches. In line with his stance against the “narrowly utilitarian” view of education, Blacker supports Gadamer’s claim that education uses us, and furthermore, that “education as Bildung eludes us when we obtrude too severely on its proper sphere”. If we wish to follow Heidegger into his landscape of Dasein’s possibilities and prevent Luhmann’s ontological self-fixation, we cannot but agree with Gadamer’s positioning of education as this worldedness within which Dasein can find what it needs to find, but only if it surrenders – more properly, offers itself up – to this potential world-in-waiting, thereby allowing “education to use us”. Heidegger (1962) states “that the entity which in every case we are, is ontologically that which is farthest”, meaning, in effect, that we will never fully attain this (doubtful) goal of irretrievably becoming, should, indeed, not want to finally end this quest for Being.

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A cyber postscript, still not concluded So, what’s this magic of three stuff, again?

I could give the frivolous answer: you, me and baby make three, and hope you see that it is anything but a joke. Remember, we said that the most difficult aspect to teaching design is that it does not exist, yet, until you and the user (your other-self or other-designer, however, you might wish to describe it to yourself) communicate-into-being the real essence of design’s purpose. What on earth are you talking about? I can see the design right there . . .

That object you refer to is not design proper, but the outer styling/giving of form that engenders the experience. I believe that cybernetics is in the same conceptual boat, and like Latour (2005), I would hope that you would not make either design or cybernetics apply to anything concrete. Let me remind you, firstly, that Latour treats human actors and designed objects (as non-human actors) as equal partners in the communication event, and secondly, that Actor Network Theory focuses on the interface created by this communication event. Even when dealing with designed objects directly, we should look beyond their physicality and realise the third and important member of the cyberdesign triad is the interactive space wherein the new meaning can be found. Even when dealing with physical objects they only represent the designer’s understanding of the effects of designed objects on the user, and so we have roughly the same triadic formula: you, me and the new baby, the emergent solution/answer/understanding. You as the user of an object and/or system, me as the designer, represented by my designed object/designed system, and the third, most important cyberdesign element: a space for possibility . . . You can’t be serious . . .

Why not? What were you looking for? In this class we talk about design . . . So teach me about design and stop this . . . this nowhere nonsense.

You do remember that I stated that I cannot teach you anything, but I could only ask you what it is that you want from life, as a designer. I also said that in this design theory class I require you to construct what amounts to models of design inquiry, based on a model of your personal identity construct . . . What? This is just getting worse . . .

Hold on. Richard Boland and Kalle Lyytinen, two Information Systems researchers at Case Western University, has made out a case for using identity, process and narrative as a basis for a renewal in their discipline, since disciplinary questions “are fundamentally misdirected because they ask about the things that should be part of our identity rather than the process through which we should construct it” (Boland and Lyytinen, 2004). These two researchers, as designers of themselves and their discipline, believe that this new way of understanding: . . . leads to a questioning of the structurational processes in which researchers are, at the same time, both representing the socio-technical world (it is our medium) and shaping it through our knowledge generation (it is our outcome).

Oh, for heaven’s sake, is this a philosophy or a design class? If you don’t want to teach me about design I might as well leave.

You’ve already said that. I did not say that I did not want to teach you, but that I could not “teach” you about design the way you seem to expect. Design understanding is not copying the other, although what you come to understand about yourself depends very much on this other of the self . . . Now you’re just contradicting yourself – what other way am I going to learn about design?

I am very much afraid that the only answer I have is that you should you try copying your (new) self, through a questioning of your own structurational processes. Now you’re really being facetious.

I’m sorry if it still sounds that way, but that is the only place you can start, so let’s go back to the beginning . . . Notes 1. Bruno Latour is one of the best known theorists in Information Systems dealing with Actor Network Theory, and the relationship between what he calls human- and non-human actors (people and designed objects). 2. Revans (1985, p. 11) calls learning a social process; we learn with and from each other, and thus programmed knowledge (book learning) can become inauthentic learning. 3. For a response to Nussbaum, see NextD Journal’s special issue Beautiful Diversion at www. nextd.org/02/index.html 4. Stuart Kauffman is a member of the Santa Fe Institute, a research body that investigates the complexities of natural, artificial and social systems. Kauffman is one of the leading figures on self-organization.

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Geyer, F. (1994), “Alienation, participation and increasing societal complexity”, Kybernetes, Vol. 23 No. 2, pp. 10-34. Geyer, F. (2000), “What is sociocybernetics?”, available at: www.unizar.es/sociocybernetics/ whatis.html Giaccardi, E. and Fischer, G. (2005), “Creativity and evolution: a metadesign perspective”, Design-system-evolution, Proceedings of the 6th International Conference of The European Academy of Design, EAD06, 29-31March, Bremen, Germany. Glanville, R. (1990), “The self and the other: the purpose of distinction”, available at: www.univie. ac.at/constructivism/paper.html Glanville, R. (1997a), “Gordon Pask”, available at: http://projects.isss.org/Main/GordonPask Glanville, R. (1997b), “Behind the curtain”, available at: www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/paper.html Glanville, R. (1998), “Acts between and between acts”, available at: www.univie.ac.at/ constructivism/paper.html Heidegger, M. (1962), Being and Time, Harper, New York, NY, Trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson. Heidegger, M. (1969), “The end of philosophy and the task of thinking”, available at: http:// hudsoncress.org/html/library/western-philosophy/Heidegger%20-The%20End%20 of%20Philosophy.pdf Heylighen, F. and Joslyn, C. (1999), “Second-order cybernetics”, available at: http://pespmc1.vub. ac.be/SECORCYB.html Heylighen, F., Joslyn, C. and Turchin, V. (1999), “What are cybernetics and systems science?”, available at: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CYBSWHAT.html Jonas, W. (1999), “4 August. Re: a theory of design! DRS discussion list”, available at: www. mailbase.ac.uk/lists/design-research Jonas, W. (2004), “The paradox endeavour to design a foundation for a groundless field”, available at: www.verhaag.net/basicparadox/fartikel.php?ID ¼ 9&lang ¼ e&version ¼ lang Julia`, P. (2000), “Observer or self-observer in second-order cybernetics?”, Kybernetes, Vol. 29 Nos 5/6, pp. 770-86. Kapustin, P.V. (1998), “Designing versus decision-making: reflective analysis of ontological notions in some theoretical oppositions”, Hermeneutics in Russia, Vol. 2 No. 4, available at: www.tversu.ru/Science/Hermeneutics/1998-4.html Kauffman, S. (1995), At Home in the Universe, Oxford University Press, New York, NY. Kenny, V. and Boxer, P. (1990), “The economy of discourses: a third order cybernetics?”, Human Systems Management, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 205-24. Kolko, J. (2005), “New techniques in industrial design education”, Design-System-Evolution, Proceedings of the 6th International Conference of The European Academy of Design, EAD06, 29-31March, Bremen, Germany. Langley, P. and Jones, R. (1988), “A computational model of scientific thought”, in Sternberg, R.J. (Ed.), The Nature of Creativity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Latour, B. (2005), Reassembling the Social, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Luhmann, N. (1995), Social Systems, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA. Mariotti, H. (1996), “Autopoiesis, culture and society”, available at: www.oikos.org/mariotti.htm Maturana, H.R. and Varela, F.J. (1980), Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, Reidel, Dordrecht.

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Maula, M. (2000), “The senses and memory of a firm – implications of autopoiesis theory for knowledge management”, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 157-61. Metcalf, G.S. (1999), “A critique of social systems theory”, available at: http://hypernews.ngdc. noaa.gov/hnxtra/Metcalf_paper.html Michl, J. (2002), “On seeing design as redesign”, Scandinavian Journal of Design History, Vol. 12 No. 7. Nussbaum, B. (2007), “Are designers the enemy of design?”, BusinessWeek, available at: www. businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/03/are_designers_t.html Overbeeke, K., Appleby, R., Janssen, I. and Vinke, D. (2004), “Nine competencies, six units: industrial design eduaction at TU/e”, Proceedings of the 2nd International Engineering and Product Design Education Conference, 2-3 September, Delft, The Netherlands. Plato (2005), Protagoras and Meno (trnsl. Beresford, A.) Penguin, London. Polanyi, M. (1962), Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Pombo, F. and Tschimmel, K. (2005), “Sapiens and demens in design thinking – perception as core”, Design-system-evolution, Proceedings of the 6th International Conference of The European Academy of Design, EAD06, 29-31March, Bremen, Germany. Price, I. (2004), “Complexity, complicatedness and complexity: a new science behind organizational intervention?”, E:CO Special Double Issue, Vol. 6 Nos 1/2, pp. 40-8. Restrepo, J., Rodriguez, A. and Martinez, J.F. (2004), “The axiological and epistemological foundations of a PDE program”, Proceedings of the 2nd International Engineering and Product Design Education Conference, 2-3 September, Delft, The Netherlands. Revans, R.W. (1985), “Action learning: its origins and nature”, in Pedler, M. (Ed.), Action Learning in Practice, Gower, Aldershot. Scho¨n, D. (1987), “Donald Scho¨n’s presentation: ‘educating the reflective practitioner’”, available at: http://euphrates.Stanford.edu/other/schon87.htm Scott, B. (1996), “Second order cybernetics as cognitive methodology”, available at: www. thehope.org/Bernard_Scott/Cognitive.html Scott, B. (2000), “The cybernetics of systems of belief”, Kybernetes, Vol. 29 Nos 7/8, pp. 995-8. Senge, P. (1990), The Fifth Discipline, Doubleday/Currency, New York, NY. Shotter, J. (1994), “Knowledge of the third kind”, available at: http://therapy.massey.ac.nz/ 175771/shotter/3rdkind.html Szenasy, S. (2003), Editorial. Metropolis, available at: www.metropolismag.com/html/ sustainable/case/susancranbrook.html Van der Merwe, J. (2000), “The innovative principle of a design language”, Proceedings of the Conference, Design (plus) Research, May 18-20, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy. Van der Merwe, J. (2002), “Sawu Bona: systems theory in design”, Proceedings of the 7th International Conference of the UK Systems Society, Systems Theory and Practice in the Knowledge Age, July 7-10, University York, York, Great Britain. Van der Merwe, J. (2005), “The construction of a dancing, dangling conversation”, Proceedings of the 6th International Conference of the European Academy of Design, design . system . evolution, March 29-31, University of the Arts, Bremen, Germany. Van Patter, G.K. (2002), “Innovation: teaching how now! A conversation with Min Basadur”, NextD (2), Journal of the NextDesign Institute, available at: www.mextd.org/02/01/01/ sidenav.htm

von Foerster, H. (1991), “Ethics and second-order cybernetics”, available at: http://grace. evergreen.edu/ , arunc/texts/cybernetics/heinz/ethics.pdf Warren, L. and Ragsdell, G. (2002), “Improving systems intervention in SMEs: reflections on systems boundaries in practice”, in Ragsdell, G., West, D. and Wilby, J. (Eds), Proceedings of the conference Systems Theory and Practice in the Knowledge Age, Kluwer Academic, New York, NY.

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1457 About the author Johann van der Merwe is the Head of Department for Research, History and Theory of Design. He is currently reading for a doctorate in design education that should produce a cyberdesign model of learning based on the grammatopology of design knowledge. Johann van der Merwe can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Anja Pratschke Department of Architecture and Urbanism, University of Sa˜o Paulo, Sa˜o Carlos, Brazil Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to draw on current research in public policy, and more specifically about a collaborative design process for a poor suburban community in Sa˜o Paulo, Brazil and its relation to social cybernetics as the “science of effective organization.” The research project in public policy, online-communities, has been financed by the state-sponsored agency FAPESP since 2003, and involves four research groups from the Architecture and Computer Science Departments at the University of Sa˜o Paulo, and various public and non-governmental organizations under the coordination of Nomads.usp Research Center (Center for Studies on Interactive Living, www.eesc.usp.br/nomads). Design/methodology/approach – The design methodology includes three premises: an organization of the team which considers multidisciplinary and multicultural aspects; the involvement of potential users as creators of the virtual community and of its concrete space; and the concern that the process will be organized so that autonomy and evolution take place. Findings – Special interest in the comparison of architectural methods and cybernetics is to understand how information and communication are dealt with using a design process to promote active exchange of knowledge and competences, and to improve interaction and conversation in a local context of large social differences, affected by lack of opportunities and regulating structures. Practical implications – Owing to its constant questioning of viability, adaptability and recursion, cybernetics should be able to make the designer team constantly revise the proposal to change conditions during its process of implementation and later autonomy. Originality/value – The paper discusses the actual relevance of the use of the cybernetic theory as a way to improve information and communication between designers and the population in poor communities. Keywords Cybernetics, Public policy, Brazil, Design, Sociocybernetics, Economic cooperation Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction (. . .) No one should be interested in the design of bridges – they should be concerned with how to get to the other side (Price, 1984).

We are actually at a turning point, obliged in a certain way to question traditional design methods and evaluate their relevance, at a time where circulating information Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1458-1470 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827418

This paper shows partial results of the research project in public policy: Online_communities, under the general coordination of Dr Marcelo Tramontano, and relates them to ongoing research about complexity, collaborative design process, and social cybernetics, being developed in Nomads.usp. The author extends special thanks to Dr Rodrigo Firmino, Fernanda Borba Janua´rio and Jane G. Coury for revising and providing useful comments.

and especially various forms of communication, helped by different kinds of media and computer technologies, lead us to live in a so-called global dimension, a hybrid state formed by global and local dimensions, which considerably alter the social and cultural relations, as well as ways of life. The research project Online_communities, located at the most distant neighborhood of Sa˜o Paulo, called Cidade Tiradentes has been developed since 2003 under the coordination of Nomads.usp Research Center (Center for Studies on Interactive Living, www.eesc.usp.br/nomads). It was, in fact inspired by the understanding that architecture has to be more than the projection of architectural objects or solutions in order to improve the quality of life of a community living in extremely poor conditions. These conditions in a city district of Sa˜o Paulo, which was chosen for the project, were the results of a “large-scale peculiar ‘imbalanced’ urban development” (Price, 1984). In a society largely affected by poverty and imbalanced urban development, the quality of life is something related to conditions as fundamental as food supply, public security issues, health assistance, to name but a few. However, our experience shows that the expected external government intervention in these cases does not bring about the necessary changes to break established dysfunctional structures. The attitude of passively supporting difficult living conditions, found commonly in the local population, comes from a long-time colonial and populist heritage, fixed in a mentality based on colonization roots, by hoping that the “mother government” takes care of problems. How do we break these behavior roots? How do we motivate the population to change? How do we promote access and circulation of information, and how do we transform this into knowledge enabling people to act inside an unequal situation and promote tools for acting actively? By believing that information and the way of communication can alter perceptions of life situations radically, how do we give a voice to the inhabitants by implementing a collaborative communication network? How do we connect a society, which is a priori a “community without propinquity?” Which information and communication technologies should we choose based on low-cost and low-tech principles in order to ensure the system functions properly and that there is interaction and exchange in the community? Which educational and promoting objectives should we have and how do we stimulate the population to participate in activities related to improving local life qualities? Who should design the system and who should maintain it, after the research team retreats? Which methodological strategies and emergent concepts should be used? These are some of the questions which motivated the researchers to integrate the multidisciplinary project team. 2. Start: Online_communities The district of Cidade Tiradentes has become a target of attention, from Sao Paulo local authorities since 2001, for presenting critical socio-economic conditions as one of the lowest Human Development Index in the city, interrupting a long-time absence and negligence of the local government in this part of the city, trying to get control again over a zone known for its high crime rates. The studies, which chose Cidade Tiradentes as a privileged area for intervention, highlighted its characteristic as an area in great need concerning three aspects: social issues, housing and urban matters (Usina, 2003). Chosen to house the first telecenter in Sao Paulo in 2001, Cidade Tiradentes occupies an area of 15 km2 and has many social housing apartment blocks, which were mainly developed in the 1970s, when 40,000 units were gradually built by the government.

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Figure 1.

The estimated population living in the apartment blocks is about 150,000 people. Apart from the legal social housing blocks, slums and illegal squats are also found in the district inhabited by a population of an estimated 70,000 people. Cidade Tiradentes is also made up of huge empty areas in the middle of a built-up environment which are inappropriate for living and most of them are owned by the municipality. Located in the east of Sao Paulo, most of its population commutes daily to the central regions of the city. The area is even deprived of proper connections to mass transportation such as trains or the underground. On the other hand, positive aspects are that the district is located on the border of national parks, and that there is a large amount of inhabitants who have been there since the beginning with a real interest in obtaining better life conditions and building up their neighborhood. In Cidade Tiradentes, there is only one official job per 398 inhabitants. The situation of local unemployment is demonstrative and partly due to the planning of the district as a “dormitory-district.” There are few industrial, commercial and service establishments and not even one bank branch there. Most of the jobs are done on an informal basis and governmental social programs only reach 20 percent of the population in terms of financial help. The network of health services is made up of four basic health centers, one emergency ward and 23 teams from the family health program. These figures (Figures 1-4) related to Cidade Tiradentes (Usina, 2003) show the selected city district and some strategies of the proposed project, reacting to the precariousness of the services offered to the population re-affirming the low quality of living standards in the area. It is worth mentioning that, there are hundreds of entities and associations and NGOs sponsor

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Figure 2.

Figure 3.

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Figure 4.

many kinds of projects in the district, which attempt to minimize the absence of government support. Urban violence is part of the every-day life of the population. The initial proposal of the project Online_communities in 2003, previewed the constitution of a local virtual community to counterbalance violent reality happening in concrete space, fostered by advanced ICT’s. The aim of the project was to provide new possibilities to foster dialogue and debates, to broaden social interactions, to improve new services which were set up, and to encourage more income and cultural activities as well. It also intended to evaluate the effects of the technological mediation of social relationships, both inside and outside the community, as well as within the physical urban space such as in the housing inner space. The local communication network previewed initially a wireless system using the local telecenter as an internet provider. About 300 access points would have been available for free, using set-top boxes connected to television sets: 220 of them in apartments, 50 in small shops, and 30 in public services and NGOs in the neighborhood. High schools, a children’s day-care, a small library, a family healthcare centre, football teams and various associations were listed among possible users. The software to be used had to be open source based, allowing its users to do experiments concerning design and content. Various examples of associative and collaborative interfaces were studied in order to set up a virtual place of communication which could be accessed by illiterate people. Among them, we can mention the excellent work of the MIT Sociable Media Group in the US, the V2’s DataCloud versions in The Netherlands, the Electronic Shadows’ I-skin in France and the SecondTime.zone project by Claire Petetin and Philippe Gre´goire. The network

system to be designed was initially based on the use of mnemonic structuring and organization, a research we initiated during our PhD. As mentioned before, among the various objectives of setting up a virtual community in Cidade Tiradentes, is the inclusion of people from this area in the telematics universe, making it possible to have new ways of sociability and community interaction. Furthermore, facilities and new tools are made available to these people and they can establish new forms of communication within the community. Ideally, the citizen who lives in Cidade Tiradentes will interact in a virtual environment not only as one who benefits but also as the author and contributor. Moreover, what we are looking for is a way to communicate and exchange information which may be impossible by other means and that could be useful on a personal basis in the field of communitarian action. The structure, which is the anchor for this virtual community, is called “network.” In this context, the proposed “network” intends to be the way in which both the concrete-and-virtual community of Cidade Tiradentes organizes itself and in which it is articulated. In spite of not fulfilling action research, the various aspects mentioned-above show that setting up virtual communities involves being concerned with distinct areas of knowledge, which are clear both in the multidisciplinary sense as well as the compatibility of procedures that it presupposes. These are, in short, the countless specifications which involve an experiment of this nature and that guide, step-by-step, its systemization and structuring (Tramontano and Santos, 2005). Initially, the multidisciplinary team consisted of four research groups from the University of Sa˜o Paulo: Intermidia, Nutau, LSI and Nomads.usp, and the participation of two main public partners: Sao Paulo Metropolitan Company for Housing and e-Gov Division. Currently, Sao Paulo Metropolitan Company for Housing, in partnership with Sao Paulo local government, (through its e-Gov Division) is constantly encouraging telecenters to be set up in the same areas as its housing complex estates. A desirable outcome of this research in terms of public policies would be to encourage telecenters to be set up and re-qualified to act as a server for the neighborhood to connect. However, apart from these aims, the objective of this policy is to plan and connect all the apartments, public services, shops and local associations using internet connection, becoming part of the priorities, such as water and electricity, of the future projects to be developed by Sao Paulo Metropolitan Company for Housing, and to transform the telecenters into informative and supportive facilities. The aim is that this practice of conceiving housing on large-scale involving equipment, services and space, on a concrete basis as well as in a virtual environment, can go towards establishing new standards of sociability. It is expected that the results of this research, on a broad scale, can be incorporated into the housing estates produced every year by the company, benefiting thousands of residents in Sao Paulo. 3. From top-down to bottom-up design strategies It was not from the beginning of the project that we embraced social cybernetics as a possibility to improve organization for a system which was becoming increasingly complex. There is little proof of architects having used these methods in Brazil from the 1960s to nowadays, which does not mean that it is irrelevant. It was the constant revising of the research project, confronted by implementation reality and ongoing restrictions, as well as parallel research on complex theory and the use of diagrams in the design of complex systems, which introduced us to cybernetics. After having read

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the book from Beer (1975): Platform for Change and learnt about the Cybersyn project in Chile, 1973, it became important to us to highlight the possibilities of using cybernetics as a design strategy in public policy for the specific situations which we encounter in South America and in Brazil. The project Online_communities required a team of architects, designers, and computer scientists rethinking the way of intervening and projecting life facilities. In fact, there were initially no buildings previewed in the project, and no urban physical interventions. The design activity understood as architecture is the projection and implementation of a complex communication system in a mixed reality scenario, responsible also for proposing technological solutions to create a virtual collaborative network, and to support activities of interaction towards encouraging user participation. In the future, this system needs to be open and self-sufficient, independent from its designer team and able to evolve. The complexity forced us to leave behind the traditional role of the architect as top-down manager, and obliged us to work more effectively and in a more horizontal way (bottom-up) with the different people involved in the design process. Convinced that the “less is more” motto that typifies the most of contemporary designer creation is a false response to the growing complexity of our society, we argue that designers must be bold researchers, exploring new frontiers of interacting within a multidisciplinary realm, amplifying the understanding of what is design and proposing innovative solutions to different contemporary problems. In the search for design criteria, we constantly need a method which promotes a predictive power to develop a self-organizing system of a reactive and adaptive environment, “with which the inhabitant cooperates and in which he can externalize his mental processes” (Pask, 1969). Based on the idea that: . . . architects are first and foremost system designers, who have been forced, over the last 100 years or so, to take an increasing interest in the organizational [i.e. non-tangible] system properties of development, communication and control (Pask, 1969).

designers should be in fact qualified to design such systems, closely interacting with human beings and societies, and required, according to Pask, to be dynamic rather then static entities. Interaction, participation and understanding of the user constitute vital elements of the success of the proposal. Regarding the project in Cidade Tiradentes, what helped us design a complex system, was the understanding and interrelating of, as Edgar Morin points out: the “whole” with its “parts” the city governmental with the local, in a restless coming and going. As he explains: Consider a contemporary tapestry. It includes linen, silk, cotton, woolen yarns in a variety of colors. To know about this tapestry, it would be interesting to know the rules of fabrication and the principles governing each of these types of yarn. Nevertheless, the sum of the knowledge of each of the yarns used to fabricate this tapestry is insufficient, not only to know this new reality which is the fabric (that is, its qualities and the properties of each texture), but also to help us to know its form and its configuration. The first step of complexity: knowledge of the elements does not help us to recognize the properties of the whole. A banal statement which has not so banal consequences: the tapestry is more than the yarns which constitute it. A whole is more than the sum of the constituent parts. Second step: the fact that a tapestry exists means that this or that yarn cannot express itself fully. They are inhibited or virtualized. The whole is thus less than the sum of the parts. Third step: this presents a

problem for our understanding and for our mental structure: the whole is simultaneously more and less than the sum of the parts (Morin, 1990).

The possible articulations between the whole and its parts seen in this example could be used, by analogy, to understand the practice of architecture as the relation between the design process, the system and its context (Ribeiro et al., 2005). By accepting that the whole is simultaneously more and less than the sum of its parts, the design team needed to reconsider the dynamics of the design process, by moving from the “less is more” to a “more is more” attitude, including being multidisciplinary (and not only consulting) with other disciplines in the different parts of design involved. “There is the discovery,” Gregory Bateson writes, “that man is only a part of larger systems and that the part can never control the whole” (Bateson in Nichols, 1988). However, at the same time, the cybernetic dialogue may offer freedom from many of the apparent risks inherent to direct encounter; it also offers the illusion of control. This is especially interesting in the case of Cidade Tiradentes, where people, afraid of street violence, do not converse much, even with their neighbors. According to Nichols: . . . the use of cybernetic systems give form, external expression, to processes of the mind (through messages-in-circuit) so that the very ground of social cohesion and consciousness becomes mediated through a computational apparatus. Cybernetic interaction achieves with another (an intelligent apparatus) the simulation of social process itself.

“But there is a risk,” argues Jean Baudrillard, that: “Instead of facilitating communication, it (information, the message-in-circuit) exhausts itself in the staging of communication. This is the gigantic simulation process with which we are familiar” (Baudrillard in Nichols, 1988). 4. The relevance of cybernetics and system theory in complex design Two projects by Cedric Price: Potteries Thinkbelt and Japnet, have aspects in common with Online_communities: . . . [the] generic ideas about new ways of making environments responsive to the needs and desires of their users (Frazer in Hardingham and Price, 2003).

Both projects deal with information and communication. The former is done in a context of distributed learning and education facilities, as well as opportunities, whereas the latter (in collaboration with Gordon Pask) is a proposal for a communication network for Kawasaki, Japan. The English architect, Cedric Price used cybernetics as part of his design process as early as 1961, embarking on an enquiry into information technology, examining the relationships between location, communication and information. By integrating disciplines which were not traditionally parts of the process, the projects were conceived by considering the possibilities of activities and their pathways and the flexibility of movement to define the spatiality rather than a predefined program of functionalities. Among the drawings produced by Price (1984) to explain the projects, what calls our attention are conceptual drawings and diagrams, indicating activities and flows related to architectural space, which are both flexible and changeable: “Standard forms, elevations and perspectives mean little in terms of Price’s work: his plans are kits of parts and circuit diagrams, his details are catalogue specifications.” By presenting a complete and conscious reversal of current procedure, he disposes of the

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“traditional constraints of the pre-electric age and strips architecture down to a service with servicing. Problem solving within the context of user choice, the freedom from environmental constraints and the general improvement of life are his main concerns. In the case of Potteries Thinkbelt, various similarities to our project were observed from the beginning. Situated in the economically depressed English Midlands, in 1964 Cedric Price proposed higher educational facilities by proposing a rather unconventional network of learning facilities distributed over a 100 miles2 along the railway, criticizing vehemently the centrality tendencies of the cherished establishment premises of higher education at that time. By decentralizing the facilities, the network would be “indeterminate, flexible and extendable, allowing the educational facilities to spread over and integrate into the area” (Price, 1984). He also relied on the stimulation and support of the local population, who were not directly involved in the institution, considering that: The housing of a major activity such as education should be viewed in architectural terms as a demand to increase the availability of such a service on a national scale, though its dispensation may through necessity require a limited locale [. . .] An activity that will increasingly occupy a large proportion of everyone’s life should be in contact with areas near and far where the rest of life is to be spent. and he continues: Education, if it is to become a continuous human-servicing service run by the community, must be provided with the same lack of peculiarity as the supply of drinking water or free teeth (Price, 1984).

Like Price, we believe that the access to information and the promotion of conversation and as a result a better organization of activities and opportunities should be integrated into the part of basic supplies. What called our attention in this specific project was the physical context, which was similar to Cidade Tiradentes, as it was a decaying area. Price’s proposal was a clear statement against the majority’s opinion, suggesting a distributed education system to replace a traditional university campus. In Cidade Tiradentes, the ideas of technological decentralization and the reconfiguration of the use of systematically implemented Telecenters in Sa˜o Paulo since 2001 as public spaces for interacting and communicating are going against the current common use of these facilities as supervised and restricted places of access to information. Similarities could also be traced by the proposal to distribute the facilities along railway tracks, which in the case of Cidade Tiradentes would mean a virtual distribution system, accessible by the individual dwellings, combined with Telecenters. Another aspect is a proposal to design an “operation system” which includes content, such as knowledge and teaching. As a result, an optimized system based on existing resources for a sustainable broad output and little investment is proposed. The tendency to create education facilities along the railway or subway is observed in several metropolises across the world, even in Brazil. However, in Brazil unlike inclusive proposals, they are just limited to commercial initiatives, profiting from the infrastructure. As being private, most of them are as exclusive and inaccessible as the cherished establishments, criticized by Price, far away from the innovative and inclusive educational scheme of the proposed Potteries Thinkbelt project. Much later, in the early digital era, Price and Gordon Pask formulated a complex feedback system of communication and information for a city in Japan in the Japnet project (a competition for student housing in Kawasaki), introducing a:

. . . vast grid of spheres [as multidirectional receptors, receivers and transmitters of mixed-media], spread over the site and layered to form varying levels of exchange in the form of advanced information (Hardingham and Price, 2003).

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Diagrams produced by Pask map the flow of information in the space and the representation of a concept. By using the idea of a village place as an intelligent plaza and making information exchange available in a socio-municipal level for random access and use, he introduces the role, as he calls:

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. . . the invisible postman’ underlining that the proposal of so-called fundamental elements, in combination with others “should represent the thoughts of the city and a computer-animated image of the built structure will evolve,”

producing an architecture of knowledge (Hardingham and Price, 2003). Our techniques progressed, as well as our media. By using scientific organizational methods such as cybernetics in the architectural design process, we are only recovering what was lost sometime ago, replacing the once assumed truth of “less is more” by “more is more.” This includes the comprehension of the potential of the computer as a medium to foster conversation: With the recent – and quite sudden – emergence of mass-appeal internet centered applications, it has become glaringly obvious that the computer is not the machine whose main purpose is to get a computing task done. The computer, with its attendant peripherals and networks, is a machine that provides new ways for people to communicate with other people (Winograd and Flores, 1986).

5. Re: vise Online_communities Dwelling is not sleeping on an immobile bed, but to live in a familiar environment. Home is not a fixed place, but the point of support trustworthy (Vile´m Flusser).

The project is now in its third year and since the beginning it has seen a lot of changes. The two public government partners, Sao Paulo Metropolitan Housing Company and e-Gov Division were of little help for our proposal, because of political discrepancy and priorities. Today our main partner is a NGO called the Pombas Urbanas Institute, or in English: Urban Pigeons, founded initially by the theatre director Lino Rojas in 2002. Since, then its mission is, in the words of its coordinators: . . . to develop activities in the social, artistic, educational, environmental and health prevention fields, together with low income communities, constructing the strength of local cultural identity and the understanding of the people about their needs and potentialities, to promote the growth of their human capacities and solve common problems in a collective way (Nomads.Usp, 2005).

There are many convergence points concerning the interests and objectives between the institute and the Online_communities project. First and foremost, both are researching a place to create strategies for social inclusion which not only focus on professional capacity and how to generate income, but also on the integrity of the person and their consciousness as a citizen and part of a larger collective. Their large physical space is integrated with a new telecenter, which has enabled us to look at the use of this facility as a place for organizing and capacitating its users for collective creativity. It will integrate the server of the “network” which will connect the

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users of the physical space with its district neighbors, and then hopefully, with the community as a whole, its institutions and organizations, and parallel to the city, the country and the world. The team also recruited new specialists in order to organize activities in meta-recycling, which are the cooperatives: Cooper Jovem and Metareciclagem.org. They are responsible for promoting classes and professional ability in the use and conception of open source software and putting together of meta-recycled computers. This was a way of qualifying the local youngsters to include them in the process and to help make the network grow and give support to the community, as well as a way of creating local jobs. The concern for low cost and low tech made us change from our initially technological choice of set-top boxes to connect through televisions to meta-recycled computers, which were initially put together by obsolete computers donated by the University of Sao Paulo. We are currently testing the collaborative interface from the inhabitants’ homes in co-operation with them, providing a meta-recycled computer and a commercial internet connection until the end of the project. The so-called focus group previews 100 apartments. At the same time, we are planning various activities with the Pombas Urbanas Institute and the population to encourage people to use the computer and understand the “network” as a meeting place for communication, education, and exchanging information and knowledge in a decentralized and recursive way. The hopes are that this initiative will not stop with the research, but that it will have the power to survive through its users, without the research team, and be a potential place to include the excluded. 6. Final considerations: cybernetics as a way of inclusion The main contribution of cybernetics in the current stage of our project was that through systemic understanding we are now able to have an analytic view about what was done, and to revise all the work for the third stage of the project, which will start in May 2007. It is mainly due to the new partners taking part in the project and a synergic superposition of interests with the Pombas Urbanas Institute, from which derives the strength of the community to change its destiny. Questions concerning the viability, recursion and decentralization in relation to technological choices, infrastructure and the virtual network are central issues to ensure the participation of the inhabitants of this poor district. The three levels of the project’s preliminary conclusions are: (1) The network must be designed as a very flexible structure which can be both altered and filled with personal or collective-created content. The use of free open source software gives the opportunity to make changes in collective workshops, and moreover it helps to develop professional capacities in computer programming. (2) For the inhabitants, putting their own content online has a double goal: to transform users activities with media into a very personal experience which will become part of their narratives, and to foster their critical view about the information they generally encounter on the net. (3) Equipment production, repairing and upgrading can be done by recycling obsolete computers, discarded by private enterprises and governmental divisions. Similarly to the activities of software programming, recycling can produce knowledge and bring funds to the community. As additional results, it

will make the users more familiar to the universe of computers by gathering people in technical workshops. In order to stress the cultural aspect of these actions, it is desirable to have a local organization already established in the neighborhood to play the role of gatekeepers by housing the workshops physically and presenting collective activities. Non-governmental organizations, communal halls or public telecenters can extend their schedule with new organized activities, but they can also enrich the already planned ones. The following results are expected to: . adjust information for the community’s practices and needs, and not the contrary; . stimulate a new sociability among residents of a specific urban fragment, and also between them and internet users in general; and . encourage individual behaviors of change by stimulating their participation in the community life by the recognition of oneself as a member of a collective body, and by the understanding that this collectivity is a part of the society. Creativity in an uncommon combination of research, experimentation and practices, and an in-depth knowledge of the local culture will hopefully overcome organizational difficulties in order to ensure information as control, as Beer points it out in relation to the Cybersyn project (Beer, 1975). Control is understood here as a form of freedom to change structures and policies. Although these strategies are being experimented in a poor Brazilian community, their guiding principles refer as a critic to the actual individualistic use of the internet, which can be found in different social levels in different parts of the world. References Beer, S. (1975), Platform for Change, Wiley, Chichester. Hardingham, S. and Price, C. (2003), Opera, Wiley, Chichester. Morin, E. (1990), La complexite´ et l’entreprise in Introduction a` une pense´e complexe, ESF, Paris, pp. 113-24. Nichols, B. (1988), “The work of culture in the age of cybernetic systems”, in WARDRIP-FRUIT, N. and Montfort, N. (Eds), The New Media Reader, MIT-Press, Cambridge, pp. 627-41. Nomads.Usp (2005) Technical Report, FAPESP, Sa˜o Paulo. Pask, G. (1969), “The architectural relevance of cybernetics”, Architectural Design, September. Price, C. (1984), The Square Book, Wiley-Academy, Chichester. Ribeiro, C., Pratschke, A. and La Rocca, R. (2005), “Inbetween and through: architecture and complexity”, International Journal of Architectural Computing, Vol. 3, pp. 335-54. Tramontano, M. and Santos, D.M. (2005), “Online_communities, collaborative interface for social inclusion”, Proceedings ECAADE, Cd-Rom, Lisbon. Usina – Centro de Trabalho para o Ambiente Habitado (2003), Plano de Ac¸a˜o Habitacional e Urbano: Cidade Tiradentes, Internal document for restricted use, Sehab, Sa˜o Paulo. Winograd, T. and Flores, F. (1986), “Understanding computers and cognition: a new foundation for design”, Ablex Publishing, Norwood.

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Further reading Montort, N. (2003), The New Media Reader, MIT-Press, Cambridge, pp. 335-54. Price, C. (2003), Re: CP, Birkhaeuser, Basel. About the author Anja Pratschke has lived in Brazil since 1991. She became an Architect DPLG at the Ecole d’Architecture de Grenoble, France and she did her Master’s in architecture and PhD in Computer Science at the University of Sa˜o Paulo. Since, 2001, she has worked as a Lecturer and full-time Researcher in the Department of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Sa˜o Paulo. She co-ordinates an education laboratory for computing and the research group Nomads (www.eesc. usp.br/nomads). Her research interests are in design of knowledge spaces, mixed reality applications, design and communication processes using mnemonics, cybernetics, system theory and complex theory. Anja Pratschke can be contacted at: pratschke@ sc.usp.br

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Drawing a live section: explorations into robotic membranes Mette Ramsgard Thomsen

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Centre for Information Technology and Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to discuss the conceptualisation, design and realisation of a robotic membrane. Presenting research taking place between the cross-over among architecture, technical textiles and computer science, the paper seeks to explore the theoretical as well as the practical foundations for the making of a dynamic architecture. Design/methodology/approach – The project employs an architectural design method developing working demonstrators. The paper asks how a material can be described through its behavioural as well as its formal properties. As new materials such as conductive and resistive fibres as well as smart memory alloys and polymers are developed, it becomes possible to create new hybrid materials that incorporate the possibility for state change. Findings – The paper presents the first explorations into the making of architectural membranes that integrate systems for steering using traditional textile technologies. This paper presents a series of architectural investigations and models that seek to explore the conceptual, computational and the technological challenges of a robotic membrane. Originality/value – The paper presents original thinking and technical innovation into the making of textile spaces. Keywords Cybernetics, Design, Robotics, Textiles, Architecture Paper type Research paper

Introduction This paper discusses the thinking of a robotic membrane. Holding together the concepts of morphogenesis with a material reality, the paper will present and discuss a series of design investigations undertaken in the cross over of architecture, textiles and computer science. The paper asks how a material can be described through its behavioural as well as its formal properties. As new materials such as conductive and resistive fibres as well as smart memory alloys and polymers are developed we become able to create new hybrid materials that incorporate the possibility for state change. This paper presents a series of architectural investigations and models that seek to explore the conceptual, computational and the technological challenges of a robotic membrane. Context In December 2006, I arranged the cross disciplinary symposium Finding Fluid Form at The Faculty of Arts and Architecture, University of Brighton. The symposium invited practitioners and theoreticians from the fields of digital art and architecture, robotics, cognitive science and biology to discuss concepts of morphogenesis and was undertaken in collaboration with Jon Bird from the Centre for Computational

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1471-1485 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827427

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Neuroscience and Robotics at University of Sussex. Our aim was to enable a discussion of how the embodied, the formed and the physical, could be understood as a result of the constant interactions between an organism and a dynamic interactive environment[1]. In the process of preparing the symposium, Jon introduced me to the electro-chemical devices of cybernetician Gordon Pask. These devices were able to grow not only a capacity to sense the world beyond, but also to create emergent logics through which responses are reinforced or deterred (Pask, 1960; Cariani, 1993; Bird et al., 2003). Most famously, Pask devised an “ear” that learnt to distinguish between two frequencies. The ear exists in a solution of acidic metal-salts and as different levels of current are passed through, it grows a network of ferrous threads allowing the device to become sensitive to the sound of the surrounding environment. The device explores the making of a generative artificial intelligence, which is steered by changes in its containing environment. As a designer and architect, these experiments were in many ways staggering to me. Whereas, the concept of morphogenesis has in many ways informed a new digital practice in architecture, these are have taken place in the drawn worlds of computer generated logics (Kolaveric, 2003). These form worlds remain ephemeral and beguiling, rendered in high-gloss transparencies, until realisation where a whole other set of technologies have been invented to find ways of implementing them in steel, glass and concrete. Pask’s electro-chemical experiments present a possibility for a direct linking between a logical realm of emergent relationships and physical realm of hard matter. What is exciting is that the relationships form over time, generating not only its responsive behaviours but also physical manifestation, its form or embodiment. Moreover, this process remains in flux dissolving forgotten connections while affirming others. For Pask, the formed becomes a fluid construct, continually morphing with the changes that occur in its situated environment, assembling, dissolving, flexing with the curvatures of action and reaction. The following paper presents a series of experiments seeking to find ways of engaging this indeterminacy while confronting an architectural scale. Whereas, growing a building might be utopic, these experiments seek to find a material realisation for a space that is in a constant act of becoming, adapting to and changing with it context, finding its own learnt presences. Defining a question: shaping a behaving architecture To our eye, in our perception of time and scale, the material world around generally us seems stable. The slow oxidation of steel, the rot of wood, the densifying of stone is imperceptible to us. Our body grows through childhood, evolves and becomes our adult selves and despite age and illness it seems to us as a stable being, formed and finite in its manner of perceiving and acting in the world. We draw our relationship to the world as constant and our language and semantics depends upon this sense of continuity. What changes is our interpretation of the world beyond us, but it itself remains unchanged. It is through this stability that we can share our experiences that artefacts and events can be recognised and recalled before our minds eye, can be named and discussed as common cultural references. However, the last decades has seen a challenge to this cultural construct. Rather than finding ourselves outside a stable world of cognisable objects, we have become

tied to our containing environment. Departing from a Cartesian segregation of the subject and environment, the concept of embodied cognition sites the self as an integral part of the containing environment (Dreyfus, 1972; Winograd and Flores, 1986; Zahorik and Jennison, 1998; Hayles, 1999). Here, integrated sense-acts lead to the reinforcement of a sense of agency particular to the environment. The organism is the design of a dynamic system through which the embodied is constructed both as a functioning system of operation, of actions and reactions, but also as a shaped presence. It is through the interactions of this dynamic system, and its leakage towards its containing environment, that the organism comes to define its own recursive rules of engagement. As the neurophysiologist Maturana (1980) defines: . . . a dynamic system that is defined as a composite unity is a network of productions of components that (a) through their interactions recursively regenerate the network of productions that produced them, and (b) realise this network as a unity in the space in which they exist by constituting and specifying its boundaries as surfaces of cleavage from the background through their preferential interactions within the network, is an autopoietic system”.

What is here defined is a system of emergent behaviours. The organism comes into being through its interactions with the space in which they exist. As we learn to act and be within our containing environment, we form our knowledge about the environment, as well as our knowledge about ourselves. As such, the space of perception, of cognition and presence is opened up to a temporal dimension. We are sited in a process of learning, of adapting and adjusting to the continual changes that occur both within our own complex biologies as well as in the spaces that we occupy. This position becomes that which is inherently fluid, shifting and becoming. Our physical presence, or embodiment, is a result of this continual change, apparently stable, but in fact continually morphing, mutating, relearning how to be and act in an unstable world. When posited in the realm of architecture, these ideas challenge the core of our practice. If architecture is to retain its fluidity, we have to redefine the way we think its construction as a reactive system as well as, the engagement and inhabitation of its cavities and the structure and erection of its material presences. To conceive of an indeterminate architecture we need to establish architecture as an interface, that allows communication and exchange between edifice and environment. We need to think architecture as having an awareness of its context and means by which to adapt and change. This challenges the solidity of the edifice. Rather than thinking the built as a finite form, we need to devise means by which we can shape the rhythms of its interactions. Could space attain its own habits or tendencies, could it gain its own inherent movement patterns? Could these calcify or thicken like a callous growing slowly under the pressure of a shoe? Shaping architecture as an open system also changes the way we understand the relationships to its occupation. How does function and the architectural term programme, meaning how architecture in part enables and in part is formed by the social and cultural activities that take place within it, change as architecture becomes capable of redefining its presence? If architecture becomes open to its context, how do we as users, or inhabitants, become present to its being?

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Thinking a robotic membrane In architecture, the embedding of responsive systems has consequence on how we imagine the experience and occupation of the architecture edifice. In classical and modernist architecture alike, the building is conceived as an independent body. Here, the building is designed to engage the inhabitant, offering views and guiding the occupant through sequences of space. Digital technologies explode the isolation of the edifice, allowing the building itself to be interfaced with its context, its user or its inhabitant. In the last decade, the fields of responsive environments and ubiquitous computing has lead to concepts such as the intelligent house and the smart home where interface technologies are integrated into the fabric of the building allowing for an optimisation of user experience, as light switching, temperature control, ventilation or home security become automated, user triggered and remote controlled. The idea of phoning your house up to switch on the heating or surveille the nanny is no longer fiction. While the embedding of information and communication technologies into the core body of the built environment, posits the idea of architecture as reactive organism, the concept of a behaving architecture challenges the idea of user optimisation. Instead of a benign desire to accommodate the perceived wishes of its occupant, the built edifice becomes a reactive self, a Strange Metabolism, as internal processes activate its permeable membranes. Robotic Membranes speculates on the technological, the computational and the spatial potentials of this idea. Seeking to devise a programmable material that incorporates the potential for movement and actuation as well as for awareness and sensing, Robotic Membranes uses the term textile as both technology and material. Robotic Membranes suggest new ways incorporating controllable state changes into the textiles constructions. The aim is to create a common surface, or membrane, that collapses sensing and actuation. By programming these materials with generative logics that lead to the emergence of behaviour and thereby to the shaping of form, the aim is to create an autonomous material defined through its potential for action as well as for reaction, for adaptation and for learning. Robotic Membranes is realised through a series of design probes. The probes are seen as architectural models. As such, they operate in a representational realm. Architectural practice takes place in the design space of drawing. The medium of drawing is an intellectual space of investigation and invention, while also being a place of notation and communication. Like a written text, the drawing is a medium of inquiry, presenting its own depths and encoded languages by which it is read. The architectural model is similarly a place of investigation, but through its material presence starts a new line of enquiries that probe at the potential realisations of a space. Whereas, the material of the model does not necessarily coincide with the materials of its realisation, it is through its erection, its presence and its scale that the model communicates a new level of information. The models in Robotic Membranes are therefore simultaneously immediate and spatial while also probing at a potential future realisation. Each probe relates its own scaled relationship to the body. Moving from the wallpaper, to the room, to the city, they fundamentally question a shifting relationship to a user. Furthermore, the models are scaled investigations, moving from the actual scale of 1:1 to the representational scale of 1:50.

The models are also places of technological invention. Investigating the imagination of an embodied behaving architecture necessitates a material investigation. Just as in Gordon Pask’s experiments, the model cannot be separated from its material. Robotic Membranes seeks to find a new technological basis for a reactive architecture in the technical textiles and intelligent fabrics research field. The last decade has seen an extreme development of the textiles industry. The invention of new high-technology fibres and yarns as well as new fabrication techniques for weaving, knitting, pleating, welding or laminating materials, is exploding the use of textiles. From the miniature detailing of knitted arteries inserted into the body to the extreme scales of geotextiles, textiles are entering new fields of fabrication hybridising existing technologies and inventing new (McQuaid, 2005). One of the key developments in this technological innovation has been the emergence of smart textiles, or intelligent textiles, that embed digital technology into woven, pleated or knitted surfaces. These materials enable wiring or circuitry to become a direct part of the material. Intelligent clothes, wearables and soft computing are research fields that have been receiving huge amounts of international interest during the last decade. The use of conductive threads and fabrics and the embroidery of standard electronic components as well as stand-alone microprocessors have allowed the development of new hybridised applications. Here, state-changes: the intensifying of colour, the emergence of light or heat and the stirring of movement, allows the material itself to become a reactive surface that engages with its occupant or wearer. These materials have mostly had their application in the development of smart uniforms for the military, but have also lead to more experimental and probing explorations allowing for a new conditioning of technology as something soft, pliable, adaptive and mobile (Berzowska and Coelho, 2005; Parent and Leech, 2005). Robotic Membranes makes use of these technologies. The aim is to use the pliable technologies of textiles to sew a robot.

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First experiment: could wallpaper ripple? Sliver is an autonomous system formed through the interactions of a series of rule-based behaviours. Based on Conway’s (1970) The Game of Life, Sliver is an interactive textile embedded with a cellular automaton logic. As a surface, Sliver is inhabited by a series of iterative logic states that react to itself across time (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Sliver

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Technology As a first probe, Sliver uses a conductive organza as its core material[2]. The organza is a weave of steel and silk. The steel weft thread allows the passing of electricity through along the breadth of the material. In Sliver, the material is embedded with sewn circuitry of LED lights. Each LED is embroidered into the fabric using an insulated copper wire connecting the LEDs to a microcontroller while the organza itself becomes the circuit’s common ground. Concepts In Sliver, the autonous system remains blind to its context. As a textile wallpaper, it probes at the idea of a surface that holds its own potential of self-organisation. The microcontroller is programmed with Conway’s glider and as such it flashes its behaviours across the textile surface which in essence becomes a display. The physical embroidering of the LEDs furthermore necessitates small population sizes and across Sliver’s 56 cells, only a very shallow of level of complexity is allowed. Sliver is therefore not as much as an investigation into computational complexities of a robotic membrane as the first probe into the making of a sewn circuitry. Using the fabric as a common ground allowed the conceptualisation of the fabric as a matrix, a strata that establishes a common site that the cells exist within. Parallel to the checkered tablecloth on which Conways game started (Levy, 1992), the fabric itself holds a presence within the circuitry. Second experiment: breathing room It was this notion of the fabric as a matrix for communication that inspired the making of vivisection, developed in collaboration with Simon Løvind. Here, the fabric is seen as that which communicates the states of the three separate computation entities that steer the installation. The fabric itself becomes the means by which the installation knows about its environment and shares its understanding, or reactive pattern. Vivisection is designed as a distributed computational system of three interacting cells. Learning from other distributed systems such as Frazer’s (1995) Evolutionary Architectures and Henrik Hautop Lund’s ATRON robot cells (Christensen et al., 2004), Vivisection seeks to establish the organism’s behaviour as a result of interaction. But, instead of thinking the distributed systems as discrete building blocks that stack or hinge onto one another, Vivisection points towards the technology of textiles, and its techniques of conjoining fibres, as a means of creating a singular membrane informed by multiple levels of agency. This intelligent tissue, seeks its own reactive behaviours, its own habitual patterning, as it learns to act and react to changes within and without of itself (Figures 2-4). Furthermore, the fabric itself becomes the interface to the containing environment. By connecting an antenna-based sensor chip to the fabric, the material becomes sensitive as it registers changes in the magnetic field around the antennae. As users touch or pass underneath the fabric, they actuate the sensor which in turn informs a small network of microcomputers that finally switch on and off each of the fans. As such, Vivisection becomes the making of a sensitive skin that actively senses its inhabitation and act upon it.

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Figure 2. Vivisection, photography Anders Ingvartsen

Figure 3. Vivisection, photography Anders Ingvartsen

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Figure 4. Vivisection, photography Anders Ingvartsen

Technology Vivisection is constructed from the same organza as Sliver. The installation is inhabited by three lunge chambers, activated by large-scale fans. The lunges are made from the same material as the main construction coated with a thin film of silicone allowing the material to become airtight. The fans inflate the lunges enabling the accumulation of airflow. The material is also used an antennae to the sensor chip. When implementing the programming, it turned out that using the entire surface of the installation created vast amounts of noise within the signal which were impossible to filter out. The installation therefore has a set of sensorial bands, or erogenous zones, through which it can be affected by the passing by of users. The three microcomputers connect and communicate through an embroidered copper thread that like a main nerve path passes signals along the length of the installation. Concept Vivisection is the making of a live section, a sensing skin that acts and reacts on its inhabitation. The project is in many ways defined through its scale. Vivisection is big. As a room installation, it defines an interior and an exterior as well as a volume that escapes inhabitation but through its scale of its cavities relates to the body. Inspired by large-scale textile constructions such as box kites and parachutes, it is constructed from three connected sections creating separate interior chambers. These chambers are inhabited by three lunges that, through their continual in- and exhalations, give the construction an inherent movement and rhythm (Figure 5).

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Figure 5. Vivisection, photography Anders Ingvartsen

The installation is understood as constructed through the collective actions and reactions of three microcomputers, or agents, that together generate a patterning or an emergent behaviour. Each chamber is programmed with a rhythmic respiration pulsing in respect to its size. The chambers are differentiated; the two outer chambers react to changes in their environments through sensor input, whereas the central chamber is isolated listening only to the changing rhythms of the two first ones. As users move around the installation or touch the sensor bands, they affect and hasten the pulsing of the two outer lunges that in turn affects the central lunge. As such, the installation can be seen to hyperventilate as the users stroke its skin. Through this over stimulation, the installation gains its own reactive behaviours shaped by both its own internal constructs of listening and reacting as well as by the interactions of the user. Vivisection explores the idea of textile membrane that has an inherent capacity to sense and react to its surrounding. Collapsing the idea of the controlled and the controlling, Vivisection is the making of a material that has its own, autonomous, relationship to its environment. The organza is treated as a composite material that through its inherent conductivity allows for the passing of computational signals, but also through its structural strength and through its treatment gains new properties such as air tightness. Limitations As a model, Vivisection holds a series of compromises that allow for the imagination of the experiment while also taking into account the material and technological limitations. The making of sensorial bands, separating of the sensitive from the constructive, the sewing of the copper nerve path and the use of the separate technology of fans as actuators allow the installation to take on the ambitions of making an architectural scale installation but segregate to a degree the technology of

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sensing and actuation from the actual construction. Even more fundamentally, it is difficult to assess the emergence of a behavioural state through the small population of three autonomous agents. Vivisection is therefore seen as a first probe, exploring the conceptual framework for Robotic Membranes and creating a knowledge base for working with large-scale interactive textile constructions.

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Third experiment: performing a city Strange Metabolisms changes the scale of this investigation. By imagining a city of emergent behaviours, Strange Metabolisms speculates on the behaviour and form of a city of knitted skins. The project operates is simultaneously a scaled investigation at 1:50 exploring a city space, and a detailed investigation exploring the technologies of knit. The project is ongoing and represents a series of collaborations with knitter Toni Hicks, interactive textiles design Johanna Berzowska and polymer researcher Peter Sommer Larsen[3]. Technology Strange Metabolisms are machine-knitted structures exploring the design and making of complex skins. The project explores the making of composite skins that bring together fibres with different material properties, allowing for varying degrees of structural support and actuation. The models knit together multiple fibre types, embedding armatures and small electronic circuitries allowing light and heat. Using a polyethylene monofilament as a base material, the models mix wool and silk for insulation, copper wire and carbon loaded fibre for conductivity, LEDs for light and resistive threads for heating, the models propose the making of an inhabited skin that folds around the built as a pliable cladding (Figures 6 and 7). Strange Metabolisms explores the technology of knit. In difference to weave structures that are dependent on the continuity of the weft, knitted fabrics can entwine, graft, splice as well as completely replace materials at any given moment. The possibility of adjusting a materials performance allows for the bespoke detailing of the fabric. In Strange Metabolisms, this notion of a complex and composite structure is held together with an early probing at how smart materials such as shape memory alloy and shape memory polymer can be embedded into the material. The aim is to explore how the materials own architecture, its shape, size, weight porosity and

Figure 6. Strange Metabolisms, photography Anders Ingvartsen

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Figure 7. Strange Metabolisms, photography Anders Ingvartsen

structure can exist in a mutual exchange with the smart material’s state shift in turn triggered by changes in their environment (Appendix).

Concept As a utopia, the project imagines the making of a textile architecture, a knitted skin, wrapping, folding, pleating the inner from the outer, the intimate from the public. Imagining a city as the totality of its interactions, Strange Metabolisms explores the thinking of an organism that communicates through its skins. As a design investigation, Strange Metabolisms explores how knit as a principal of construction can lead to new formal languages. In Strange Metabolisms, this notion of a complex and composite structure seamlessly integrating areas at which the fabric folds, stretches or collapses, partly through its inherent material properties and partly through its actuation. Merging pattern with structure, the skins posit shifts between interiors and exteriors through their folds, protrusions, slits and layerings. By embedding different potentials for actuation, the project seeks to question the role of the interface. Developing complex 3D skins imagined at a building scale, Strange Metabolisms is the thinking of how an architecture could come alive through the actuation, the animation, of its edifice. What happens to computation when sensing and actuation collapses? How can we think architecture, and the tradition of detailing, as the mediator of indeterminacy? Rather than embedding a mechanic techtonic actuating the built through an extended armature, can we imagine a skin which through its design

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holds its own possibility of creating loops and feedback, patterns and behaviours, in the way it moves? Conclusions The experiments are first probes into the making of a material presence informed and formed by digital logics. The aim for these experiments is to explore how a material could point toward a formal realm when imbued by a behavioural logic. By investigating the emergent relationships between learning and behaviour, the experiments seek out how morphogenesis and the presence of form can be thought through a durational mirror, where the process of becoming is not halted and gestalted but remains in flux. The experiments above are seen as a lab environment for the exploration of how a Robotic Membranes can be imagined. Through the technological probing of the architectural models, the aim is to investigate an indeterminate architecture of behaviour. As such, Robotic Membranes posits a series of ideas: Firstly, it sites architecture as an autonomous system opened up to its context through the design of apertures, or interfaces, through which it perceives its environment. Thinking architecture as a systemic environment poses the question of its intensions. If architecture departs from the model of user optimisation, it allows for different perception of the actions. In Robotic Membranes, the built has no immediate and preconceived desire to please its inhabitants and as such is free to engage with its own rhythms. Secondly, it presents the design of material as a core architectural practice. Contemporary architectural practice can in its most mundane examples be seen as the constellation of prefabricated elements. When architecture becomes not just responsive or automated but behavioural, the means by which the architecture is built must be part of the design. The weight, flex and strain of the conductive thread, the metal organza and the polyethylene fibre affect and form the making of the Robotic Membranes as much as their digital logics. Escaping the gravityless, frictionless, distanceless realms of the digital, the physical construction of the models allow for the thinking of a digital space outside representation. Here, computation gains an experiential immediacy, coupling real time interaction with physical presence. The making of these hybrid materials that join the actuated with the structural becomes simultaneous, or perhaps synonymous, with the programming of the actuated system. Notes 1. Finding Fluid Form was a cross practice research event inviting practitioners working with live systems merging interface design, intelligent environments, performance and physical output, as well as biologists, artificial life researchers and cognitive scientists. The event combined formal talks with workshop presentations of creative works. Speakers were: Professor Maggie Boden, Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Professor Bill Seaman, Head of Digital Media, Rhode Island School of Design, Professor Neil Theise, School of Medicine, New York University, Professor Peter Cariani, Department of Physiology, Tufts Medical School, Boston, Carol Brown Dances and Escape Design, London, Konic Thtr, Madrid, Paul Sermon and Andrea Zapp, University of Salford, Jon Bird and Andy Webster, University of Sussex. 2. I am very thankful to Johanna Berzowska for introducing me to this material.

3. Each of these collaborations have been fundamental to the thinking of Strange Metabolisms. Toni Hicks is head of Constructed Textiles, University of Brighton. Johanna Berzowska is head and founder of XSoft Lab, Concordia University and Peter Sommer Larsen is senior scientist at Danish Polymer Centre, Risø National Laboratory. References Berzowska, J. (2005), “Memory rich clothing: second skins that communicate physical memory”, Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Creativity & Cognition, ACM Press, New York, NY, pp. 32-40. Berzowska, J. and Coelho, M. (2005), “Kukkia and Vilkas: Kinetic electronic garments”, paper presented at 9th IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC’05). Bird, J., Layzell, P., Webster, A. and Husbands, P. (2003), “Towards epistemically autonomous robots: exploiting the potential of physical systems”, LEONARDO, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 109-14. Cariani, P. (1993), “To evolve an ear: epistemological implications of Gordon Pask’s electrochemical devices”, Systems Research, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 19-33. Christensen, D.J., Østergaard, E.H. and Lund, H.H. (2004), “Metamodule control for the ATRON self-reconfigurable robotic system”, Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS-8), Amsterdam, pp. 685-92. Conway, J.H. (1970), “The game of life”, Scientific American, October, p. 120. Dreyfus, H. (1972), What Computers Still Can’t Do, A Critique of Artificial Reason, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Frazer, J. (1995), An Evolutionary Architecture, Architectural Association Publications, London, Themes VII. Hayles, N.K. (1999), How We became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Kolaveric, B. (2003), Architecture in the Digital Age, Taylor and Francis, New York, NY. Levy, S. (1992), Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation, Penguin Science, London. McQuaid, M. (2005), Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance, Princeton Architectural Press, Princeton, NJ. Maturana, H. (1980), “Man and society”, in Benseler, F. and Hejl, P. (Eds), Autopoiesis, Communication and Society, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt-am-Main. Parent, S. and Leech, A. (2005), “WEAR smart clothes, fashionable technologies”, HorizonZero, Vol. 16.1. Pask, G. (1960), “The natural history of networks”, in Yovits, M.C. and Cameron, S. (Eds), Self-Organzing Systems, Pergamon Press, New York, NY. Winograd, T. and Flores, F. (1986), Understanding Computers and Cognition, Ablex Publishing Co., Norwood, NJ. Zahorik, P. and Jennison, R.L. (1998), “Presence as being-in-the-world”, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 78-89. Further reading Heylighen, F. and Joslyn, C. (2001), “Cybernetics and second order cybernetics”, in Meyers, R.A. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Physical Science & Technology, 3rd ed.,Vol. 4, Academic Press, New York, NY, pp. 155-70.

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Matovani, G. and Riva, G. (1999), “‘Real’ presence: how different ontologies generate different criteria for presence, telepresence, and virtual presence”, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, Vol. 8 No. 5, pp. 540-50.

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Appendix In Strange Metabolisms, the actuation of the skins is explored through four different means allowing for varying degrees of spatial and technical complexity. Stop frame animation As a first investigation, the scaled models were animated through simple stop frame animation much as a puppetry. The animation is seen as speculative space that allows the imagination of design criteria by which actuation can be embedded. Motor In a series of studies, we have explored the embedding of a potential for actuation. One set of experiments used standard servomotors to created dynamic pulley systems that tighten drawstrings collecting and relaxing the skin. By controlling the servos through microcomputers, it becomes possible to programme the animation of the skins. Using conductive threads to knit switches that change the electronic circuit as the skins move, these explorations have lead to a conceptualisation of the skin as holding a potential for self-sensing or state control. When sensor and actuator is collapsed, and the physical electronic circuit is directly changed as the membrane is actuated, iterative loops and reactive patterns can be formed. Shape memory alloy In a second set of experiments undertaken in collaboration with Joanna Berzowska from XS Lab at University of Concordia, we explored the integration of smart memory alloys in knitted structures. Learning from Berzowska’s (2005) prior work with smart memory alloys, we found ways of actuating knitted structures with memory alloys. Again, simple animatronic methods proved the most useful pulling and relaxing structures in response to a programmed sensorial input. Here, smart memory alloys we sewn or stitched directly into the material. Experiments were also undertaken with knitting with smart memory alloys. However, as the memory alloys functions as a resistor it is problematic if the memory alloy touches itself as it then varies the amount of current it needs to activate. Knitted structures are inherently folded in on themselves as fibres create continuous loops. Knitting with memory alloys therefore necessitates a variable power supply. Shape memory polymer These experiments have lead us to explore smart memory polymers in knitted structures. In collaboration with Risø National Laboratory in Denmark, we are casting memory polymers as a thread and then integrating it into the knitted structure. The aim is here, as in the other experiments, to find means of embedding the potential for actuation as an integral part of the structure. Rather than animating, or programming, the material through a separate pulley system and thereby creating a distinction between actuation and the surface of the skin itself, it is here the objective to find ways of create one continuous surface where the different structural, qualitative, decorative and active properties are brought into play.

About the author Mette Ramsgard Thomsen is an architect working with interactive technologies. Her research centres on the design of spaces that are defined by physical as well as digital dimensions. Through a focus on intelligent programming and ideas of emergence she explores how

computational logics can lead to new spatial concepts. Her work is practice lead and through projects such as Robotic Membranes, Lacer, Sea Unsea and The Changing Room she investigates the design and realisation of a behavioural space. She is an Associate Professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, where she heads the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture (CITA). She has researched and taught at the Bartlett School of Architecture, the Department of Computer Science, University College London and at University of Brighton, School of Architecture and Design. She has taught multiple workshops in Calcutta, Ahmedabad, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Seoul, Copenhagen, Aarhus, Bonn and Braunschweig. Mette Ramsgard Thomsen can be contacted at: [email protected]

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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0368-492X.htm

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Second-order cybernetics, architectural drawing and monadic thinking

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Peg Rawes The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, London, UK Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine shared principles of “irreducibility” or “undecidability” in second-order cybernetics, architectural design processes and Leibniz’s geometric philosophy. It argues that each discipline constructs relationships, particularly spatio-temporal relationships, according to these terms. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is organized into two parts and uses architectural criticism and philosophical analysis. The first part examines how second-order cybernetics and post-structuralist architectural design processes share these principles. Drawing from von Foerster’s theory of the “observing observer” it analyses the self-reflexive and self-referential modes of production that construct a collaborative architectural design project. Part two examines the terms in relation to Leibniz’s account of the “Monad”. Briefly, developing the discussion through Kant’s theory of aesthetics, it shows that Leibniz provides a “prototype” of undecidable spatial relations that are also present in architectural design and second-order cybernetics. Findings – The paper demonstrates that second-order cybernetics, architectural design and metaphysical philosophy enable interdisciplinary understandings of “undecidability”. Practical implications – The paper seeks to improve understanding of the geometric processes that construct architectural design. Originality/value – The paper explores interdisciplinary connections between the disciplines, opening up potential routes for further examination. Its analysis of the aesthetic and geometric value of the Monad (rather than its perspectival value) provides a particularly relevant link for discussing the aesthetic production and experience of spatial relations in second-order cybernetics and contemporary architectural design. Keywords Cybernetics, Design, Architecture, Geometry Paper type Conceptual paper

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1486-1496 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827436

This paper examines the relationship among second-order cybernetics, contemporary architectural design and Leibniz’s seventeenth-century philosophy of the “Monad”. It brings these three subjects together in order to examine shared properties among them; in particular, by exploring the value that each places on the relationships, especially spatial relationships, which exist between its respective constituents. In addition, I suggest that second-order cybernetics, architectural drawing and Leibniz’s geometric theory are connected because each recognizes the inherent irreducibility of its methods of representation and, consequently, the spatial relations that are constructed. In cybernetic theory, the distinction between “complete” bodies of knowledge, versus “irreducible” fields of knowledge, describes the difference between first and second-order cybernetics. First-order cybernetics, such as closed algorithmic feedback systems, can be characterized by the adherence to laws that generate symbolic or disembodied “truths” for all respective constituents, including the active human subject. In contrast, second-order cybernetics is underpinned by principles that affirm the

irreducibility and contingency of embodied and qualitative relationships between its constituents, especially the relationship between the human subject and his or her world (Zienke, 2005; Umpleby, 2005). So, first-order cybernetics understands truths as “decidable” forms of knowledge. Second-order cybernetics, however, considers truths to be “undecidable” or irreducible. Heinz von Foerster has explored this shift in the role of the scientific observer; in first-order cybernetics, his/her functions are extrinsic to the underlying laws of organization. In second-order cybernetics, however, the observer is self-aware or “self-reflexive” and is therefore intrinsic to the principles of organization (i.e. s/he is “the observing observer”) (von Foerster, 2001, p. 288-9). Second-order cybernetics is therefore the study of embodied, “self-reflexive”, “self-referential” and irreducible constructions of reality in which the observer is intrinsic. Self-reflexive and self-referential forms of architectural design, history and theory in the UK and USA are also called “post-structuralist” practices. In such practices, architecture is constructed out of the contingent relations between its human agents and their social processes of exchange and interaction, modes of representation, materials, technologies and the built product. Architecture’s self-reflexivity and self-referentiality are therefore generated by the multiple physical, material and psychic modes of interaction that constitute the processes of building and spaces that form the built environment. It is composed of the activities of designers, building professionals and users, as well as the diverse range of socio-political, cultural and environmental factors that comprise its materials, techniques and processes of fabrication and site-specific contexts[1]. In addition, these architectural practices correspond to European and North-American post-structuralist philosophies that consider the existence of multiple subjectivities and contingent relations to be politically necessary for ethical forms of social life[2]. In the first part of this paper, I examine the irreducible design relations that form a project between two architectural designers and an architectural theorist, with reference to von Foerster’s “observing observer”. Architectural design and cybernetics correspondence when architectural design is underpinned by the principle that its processes and constituents for constructing space are distinct, yet connected, self-referential “realities”. I suggest that each considers the following values to be significant: . the act of constructing its respective architectural or cybernetic realities; . the relationships that compose different architectural or cybernetic spaces; and . the necessity (that is, an ethical requirement) that each architectural or cybernetic reality also exists simultaneously in different modes of physical and psychic materialization. Second-order cybernetics and architectural design therefore enable unique forms of spatial representation and modes of interaction to be simultaneously generated, including: spatial designs and ideas, geometric subjects and figures, embodied observers or objects. I then explore a philosophical theory of undecidability in the human subject and his or her modes of perceiving the world in more detail. I briefly refer to Kant’s eighteenth-century theory of aesthetics, in order to highlight the inherent irreducibility of spatial thinking. Developing from this argument I explore Leibniz’s theory of the Monad, proposing that it is a particularly valuable philosophical prototype of

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von Foerster’s observing observer and the reflexive architectural designer. Leibniz’s theory of subjectivity also enables a connection between architectural design and second-order cybernetics to be drawn out because it shows how geometric spatial relations are not derived from deterministic notions of geometry. First, Leibniz provides a historical and philosophical analysis that underscores von Foerster’s interest in undecidability in metaphysics and second-order cybernetics. Second, the Monad reflects the geometric values found in contemporary architectural design that resist being merely disembodied or symbolic mathematical representations of space. Instead, Leibniz’s theory of geometry promotes irreducible and aesthetic forms of spatial representation, thereby enabling the irreducible qualities of the architectural drawing process to be highlighted. In this respect, Leibniz’s metaphysics also represents a prototype of geometric thinking in architectural design. Moreover, Leibniz’s geometric thinking builds not merely scientific, but aesthetic or “living” realities that are central to the aims of self-reflexive architectural design practice. His geometric thinking is therefore connects to principles of irreducibility that are central to second-order cybernetics and post-structuralist architecture. Part I – an architectural collaboration[3] Below, a description of a drawing project by two architectural designers gives an example of the irreducibility that exists in the process of constructing geometric architectural spaces: Recently, I sent a text to two architectural designers to ask if they would like to make some drawings for a book that I was writing on architecture and philosophy. “Great” they replied, “email us the details and we’ll talk next week”. In my email I give them a list of chapter headings and contents which examine a series of “architectural” texts by a contemporary feminist philosopher. The six chapter headings read; multiples and doubles, passages and flows, touching and sensing, diagonals and asymmetry, envelopes and horizons, voices and poetics. The following week we meet to discuss a number of options for the drawings. Laura and Mark have an idea for a new drawing project that explores these geometric ideas within a single site called, “retreating village” which represents a group of buildings that respond to a changing coastal landscape. They propose a series of drawings that will represent the changing spatio-temporal relationships between the built architectural elements and the environment; for example, the buildings’ responses to changes in light, temperature, geology and the sea. They are interested in the proposal because it gives them the opportunity to develop a large project that is viewed in multiple drawings, rather than designing an architectural site that is captured in one single over-arching architectural plan. This suits me, because their drawings will form a visual architecture to my text that examines multiple modes of interpreting architectural spaces in architectural history, theory and design. In addition, the drawings will allow readers to compose a variety of understandings about how buildings are constructed and experienced.

The project highlights a number of different modes of “geometric thinking” that take place in the process of constructing an architectural text and architectural drawings; in particular, it highlights how architectural ideas and designs are developed through the social, physical, material, digital and imaginary relationships that exist between designers and other architectural practitioners. The architectural design process is

shown to be a complex inter-relationship between diverse material processes and technologies, immaterial psychic desires and ideas, and self-aware subjects or agents. In this respect, the collaboration represents a form of second-order cybernetics when we consider how it operates in the context of the self-conscious observer and self-organising realities. von Foerster (2001, p. 289) shows us the value of self-awareness in the act of building any given reality when he writes: It may be argued that over the centuries since Aristotle, physicians and philosophers again and again developed theories of the brain. So what’s new about the efforts of today’s cyberneticians? What is new is the profound insight that it needs a brain to write a theory of the brain. From this follows that a theory of the brain that has any aspirations for completeness, has to account for the writing of this theory. And even more fascinating, the writer of this theory has to account for her- or himself. Translated onto the domain of cybernetics: the cybernetician, by entering his own domain, has to account for his own activity. Cybernetics then becomes cybernetics of cybernetics, or second-order cybernetics. Ladies and gentlemen, this perception represents a fundamental change, not only in the way we conduct science, but also how we perceive of teaching, learning, the therapeutic process, organizational management, and so on and so forth; and I would say, of how we perceive relationships in our daily life. One may see this fundamental epistemological change if one considers oneself first to be an independent observer who watches the world go by; as opposed to a person who considers oneself to be a participant actor in the drama of mutual interaction of the give and take in the circularity of human relations’.

Thus, von Foerster identifies correspondences between second-order cybernetics’ methods and goals, and other social contexts or disciplines that construct worlds and realities (e.g. post-structuralist architecture and philosophy). In addition, he argues that self-awareness is generated in the “mutual interaction” between different kinds of relations. Second-order cybernetics is therefore inherently concerned with the processes of generating dynamic relationships between its constituents. von Foerster’s emphasis on the importance of relationships (or interactions) between the observer or subject, and his or her act of constructing a reality, provides a valuable insight into the spatiality of cybernetics, and through which this example of collaborative architectural activity can be explored. In architecture, this focus on relationships includes the actual physical construction of buildings and spatial forms of representation (e.g. architectural drawings, models and renders), but also refers to the spatial relationships that organise, for example, the materials, processes, human subjects, socio-political processes, techniques and economic factors which inform the design of the built environment. Architectural design is therefore also inherently concerned with the production of dynamic spatial relationships, especially within its initial stages of the design process, such as the processes of drawing and modelling. So the collaboration displays second-order cybernetic features, because it embodies a range of unique physical and psychic realities that construct dynamic architectural relationships between the participants and their respective “designs” or ideas (i.e. their psychological feelings, desires, imaginations and images), including: . three individual’s ideas and their respective spatial practices, techniques, ideas, designs, images or “realities”; . multiple interpretations of the philosopher Luce Irigaray’s ideas of space in relation to architectural design;

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. .

multiple ways of materialising spatial ideas in verbal and visual languages; and different material spatial processes of transmission, including the digital and multi-sensory modes of perception that construct the conversation (i.e. e-mail, voice and hand).

As a result, the project is formed by a range of different material and immaterial spatial processes; ranging from the physical drawings themselves, the telephone text message, to the different images of the geometric spaces that each person mentally creates. In particular, it shows that the human subjects are intrinsic agents for materializing spatial relationships. Acts of spatial construction do not just exist in material techniques and processes, but take place continuously over time in immaterial psychic and mental forms as well; for example, immaterial philosophical geometric ideas about space are transformed into material forms of space, as architectural theory and architectural drawings. Each designer (and theorist) therefore represents a self-organizing and self-reflexive agent that enables new versions of the original ideas to be materialized or re-presented as drawings, designs or text, each of which is part of an iterative design process. Architecture’s self-organising processes of manufacture and identity are therefore expressed in the multiple modes of expression through which the designer (and user) operates; such as, the different verbal, visual and textual modes of communication, together with the use of technologies through which architectural design ideas and theories are transmitted and materialized. Furthermore, each individual’s design processes can be even more finely differentiated from one another, because of the unique development of visual and verbal languages, socio-political, educational and aesthetic contexts that form his or her intellectual, technical and aesthetic abilities. In this respect, second-order cybernetics’ principles of self-reflexivity and self-organization not only provide an explanation of specific representations, such as the production of an architectural drawing of a designed space, but also describe the psychic and material processes that construct architectural spaces. A post-structuralist architectural design project corresponds to second-order cybernetic principles because the relations between the various constituent human, technological and material modes of representation – i.e. the ideas and the context of production including materials and technologies – are necessarily linked together by the self-reflexive and self-referential actions of the individual participants. Geometric architectural space is therefore constructed by an irreducible combination of physical, aesthetic, material, social, political and cybernetic conditions. Architectural drawings If we also focus more closely on the act of drawing, and two examples of the drawings produced in the collaboration, we can see how each drawing embodies the dynamic spatial relationship that is formed out of the material self-reflexive designer and the immaterial architectural idea: Mark and Laura sketch out their ideas in two composite drawings (Figures 1 and 2). Each one combines design ideas that originated separately from the two individual designers. Yet each drawing is also an iteration of the project which they have jointly discussed with each other. Laura’s drawing describes three modes of viewing; an elevation, a section and a plan. In each, the geometries and lines represent at least two different forms of architectural event, material

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Figure 2. Mark Smout, “Aerial perspective of retreating village” 2007

or “performance” at the same time. Each drawing is individual, but its subject is also re-presented from a different point of view within the other drawings. Mark’s drawing shows an aerial perspective of the site in fourteen different frames. Within each of these moments he indicates different architectural responses to the landscape, such as, concealed or revealed spaces, different mechanical relationships that orientate it, or stages of assimilating the architectural boundaries into the landscape, and vice-versa. The project embodies multiple drawings and origins, multiple designs and geometric spaces, materials and environmentally informed relationships.

Each drawing is therefore a physical manifestation of architectural ideas of space. The drawing process generates lines, planes, sections and elevations, etc. which describe the specific spatial relationships that comprise the site. In addition, given that each is an iteration of a currently imaginary building, the drawings represent the, as yet, unmaterialized potential of the spatial relations (i.e. the “life”) of the building for the users.

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This account therefore contrasts with critics of architecture, who argue that the technical measurement and “control” of geometric space in the architectural plan or diagram illustrates the discipline’s reliance upon “decidable” (i.e. pre-determined or symbolic) representations of space. At this stage of the design process, however, it is clear that no such determination exists. Rather, a second-order cybernetic interpretation of these drawings defines these drawings as legitimate representations, within a continuously changing spatial relationship between the building and the landscape. In addition, each drawing represents a discrete self-organising and self-referential reality on a number of different levels. First, each is self-referential because it is the visual materialisation of a specific set of geometric spaces that form the building. Second, each drawing is the product of the psychic and immaterial realities – i.e. the desires and mental processes – of the designers and the writer in the project. Third, each drawing’s material and immaterial realities are multiplied still further because they are parts of an overall larger drawing project, yet each is singular and internally individuated within this process. Finally, each drawing indicates to the contingency involved in the process of drawing architectural space, because at least 18 different geometric architectural interpretations could be drawn out of the initial geometric ideas observed in the philosopher’s texts. So, in architectural design processes, self-organization is generated out of the contingent conditions that include the thinking, self-aware architectural designer, and ideally, user. This self-referentiality takes on many different levels of organization during the design process; for example, it is the drawing or model itself, the development of the building overall, or the relationship between the building, designer and client. Once completed as a built form, self-referentiality then also exists in the way that the inhabitants and users engage with the building (i.e. the ways in which inhabitants make a building their own). Architectural spaces and design processes therefore carry in them the self-referential thinking, sensing and perceiving human subject, in the form of the designer and the users. Moreover, architectural forms of self-organization do not merely refer to the different kinds of identity-subjects (e.g. the designer, theorist, historian, planner and user) that constitute the architectural process. Instead, self-referentiality is also constructed out of the distinct ways in which a designer or active user expresses him or herself; for example, the different ways in which an architect develops a visual language or “style” for describing spatial relationships. Consequently, the collaboration with my colleagues indicates to the inherently irreducible nature of post-structuralist architectural practices, professional architectural relations, and architectural forms of representation. Furthermore, second-order cybernetics helps to reveal the nature of the relationship between the designer and his or her design processes, and shows that each stage of iteration in the process is a legitimate form of self-reflexive and self-referential architectural expression. Part II – self-reflexivity, self-referentiality and aesthetics A second-order cybernetic analysis of the activity of architectural drawings shows how the designer’s self-reflexive and referential powers are embodied in material representations and physical design processes, and in immaterial ideas, and psychic design processes. Below, I show how Leibniz considers self-reflexivity and self-referentiality to be essential for understanding the nature of living, thinking and

sensing subjects (i.e. “subjectivity”) and for understanding our experience of geometric space. This emphasis on the production of spatial realities is also found in Kant’s eighteenth-century philosophy of aesthetics which examined the importance of self-referential, self-reflexive relationships in the formation of the sensing subject and geometric space. For Kant, aesthetics describes how the individual’s experiences of the world are formed by our powers of “sensibility” (i.e. the senses, perception, feelings and the imagination), not through processes of logical, intellectual and conceptual reasoning. He calls aesthetics, “the science of the sensibility” (and, in this respect, it may well represent an early definition of second-order cybernetics) (Kant, 1997, p. 173). In addition, aesthetic modes of experience generate a special kind of knowledge, “aesthetic judgments” which describe the dynamic relationship between the individual, their ideas and desires, and the external world. Accordingly, aesthetic modes of constructing the world, such as architectural drawings, are aesthetic expressions of the self-reflexive and self-referential powers of the individual designer. So, Kant’s theory of the analogue relationship between human forms of spatial expression and the physical world provides a route through which to connect the self-reflexive architectural designer to Leibniz’s earlier eighteenth-century philosophy of self-reflexivity and self-referentiality: in particular, because Leibniz also explores the relationship between the individual and geometric forms of organization. Leibniz produces an aesthetic kind of geometric thinking and geometric relationships that is distinct from mathematical theories of geometry in which the observer or subject is extrinsic to the outcome. Rather, his analysis of the processes of generating geometric and spatial relationships shows that aesthetic judgments, such as geometric figures and the human subject or Monad, are constructed out of the sensibility (i.e. embodied, material feelings, emotions, physical and psychic perceptions). Therefore, Leibniz’s geometric thinking and architectural design share the understanding that geometry is not just a science for building spatial quantities and geometric bodies, but is also an aesthetic mode of constructing space. This, in turn, produces a link between Leibniz’s philosophy of geometry, architectural design and second-order cybernetics because each emphasises the value of the embodied human subject in the process of constructing spatial relationships. von Foerster (2001, p. 291), for example, highlights the correspondence between metaphysical philosophy and second-order cybernetics when he states; “we become a metaphysician any time we decide upon in principle undecidable questions”. Continuing a few pages later, he reiterates this “metaphysical postulate” by arguing that, “Only those questions that are in principle [undecidable], we can decide” (Von Foerster, 2001, p. 293). Here, then, Leibniz’s metaphysical philosophy and self-reflexive architectural design agree on the undecidability of geometric and spatial thinking. In addition, second-order cybernetics and Leibniz’s metaphysics are linked in their challenge to claims made for the adequacy of neutral disembodied observers and scientific methods. Geometric and aesthetic undecidability Leibniz’s theory of the Monad is most clearly outlined in the Monadology (1714). Developing from his earlier post-Cartesian philosophy of infinite substance, he opposes Descartes theory of human subjectivity which divides subjectivity into two distinct

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substances, minds and bodies. In contrast, Leibniz argues that the existence of an idea or a human subject is inherently connected to infinity, because all substance can be divided into infinite parts. As a result, Monads are not defined by their shape or form, but by their self-referential material and immaterial capacities. Monads are composed of immaterial ideas (i.e. the soul, psychic or incorporeal images, memories and desires) and corporeal (i.e. embodied or bodily) subjects. They are therefore, multiple or undecidable beings, because they represent geometric figures composed of immaterial ideas or spaces, and material sensing human beings. For Leibniz, undecidability (i.e. irreducibility or infinity) exists in the multiplicity of geometric figures that are actual and possible. He defines geometry as the operation of division or “limit”; for example, it is the division of a triangle into infinitely smaller triangles. However, because Monads also represent human subjects, these geometric operations are embodied processes, not disembodied intellectual operations. Leibniz emphasizes the power of geometric division for constructing irreducible relationships between entities (e.g. the relationship between the whole and the part). He states, for example, that the Monad’s infinite composition represents a kind of “aggregate” or “composite” rather than a finite whole (Leibniz, 1973, p. 251, §2). Limit is therefore a kind of “approximation” or “accident” rather than an absolute pre-determined “end”. In addition, Leibniz’s earlier mathematical theory of geometric division, Calculus, provides us with evidence of his scientific theory of infinite divisibility. In his Treatise on Calculus (1675-1676), for example, he defines calculus as; “every curvilinear figure is nothing but a polygon with an infinite number of sides, of an infinitely small magnitude” (Arthur, 2001, p. iv). Calculus therefore corresponds with Leibniz’s metaphysical belief in irreducibility or undecidability. In addition, it also corresponds with an aesthetic theory of geometry because each considers geometric relationships to be infinite. The Monad is therefore both a geometric figure and an aesthetic subject. In each case, it is founded on irreducibility or infinity. Geometric principles of change: perception and appetite Leibniz’s aesthetic theory of Monadic geometry is particularly clear in his discussions of perception and appetite (or desire). He calls perception the incorporeal principle of change, which generates the Monad into a continuous unity of parts: it is “the passing condition which involves and represents a multiplicity in the unity” (Leibniz, 1973, p. 253, §14). Perception, then, is analogous to a geometric operation of division because it generates irreducible and infinite changes in state in the Monad, in the form of perceptions or desires. Analogous to the operation of division in Calculus, which produces infinite degrees of calibration of curvature, perception generates infinite degrees of change in the Monad’s engagement with the external world. Moreover, perception represents an infinite process because it generates all perceptions, even those which are unconscious or imaginary. It generates every different level of psychic activity through which we perceive the world; for example, it is the capacity for greater or weaker states of “attention” and registers the harmony or disharmony that exists between the subject and his or her world. In addition, Leibniz describes how perception occurs in a particular form called, “appetition”; the “internal principle” that “brings about the change or the passing from one perception to another” (Leibniz, 1973, p. 253, §15). However, although “desire” (l’appetit) strives to fully materialize perceptions in the

subject, it cannot retain them in the Monad. Desire cannot therefore produce stable or enduring perceptions, although they are legitimate ideas or images. So, perception and desire operate as differentiating forces (i.e. “life-forces”) in the Monad. As such, they are not reducible to symbolic explanations of geometric relationships or spaces; for example, they are not merely “mechanical causes” or “figures and motions” produced by disembodied geometric principles. Using the example of a mill’s mechanical components Leibniz shows that perception and its “products” are not reducible to a mechanical or systematic diagram of parts and wholes. Rather, perception and its changing appetites are internally generated activities in substance itself, and so resist reduction to a mechanical definition of relationships (Leibniz, 1973, §17). The Monad is also “undecidable” because it creates multiple qualitative differences between its perceptions. The Monad’s powers of perception endure continuously as strong and weak states that change from moment to moment, whether the Monad is alert or distracted, active or passive. These are “weak” states of awareness “in which nothing stands out distinctively” such as, unconsciousness, dreams, or the act of “spinning around” (Leibniz, 1973, p. 251, §§21-3). Once again, this aesthetic analysis corresponds with Leibniz’s mathematical theory of geometric division, because perception can be infinitely differentiated into little perceptions or thoughts, discrete changes in magnitudes of awareness. Perception is therefore a process that constructs both immaterial or “virtual” perceptions and materially embodied ideas. In addition, the constant changes in the Monad’s states of awareness mean that any given perception is always a concatenation of its past and future states; “Every present state of a simple substance is a natural consequence of its preceding state, in such a way that its present is big with its future” (Leibniz, 1973, p. 256, §22). At any point in time, a perception is also always part of a previous perception. The Monad’s powers generate its self-reflexivity and self-referentiality (i.e. its subjectivity) in immaterial and intensive forms, and in material and extensive forms, because of the infinite degrees of change in perception. In this respect, therefore, Leibniz’s geometric thinking is not merely restricted to the symbolic production of space but generates dynamic cybernetic and spatial relations between the different physical and psychic states that constitute the thinking and feeling subject. Aesthetic and geometric architecture and cybernetics By drawing together, the architectural project and Leibniz’s theory, we can see that the activity of architectural design represents an example of Monadic thinking because it contains multiple levels of physical and psychic expressions or states that are developed out of geometric and aesthetic modes of production. The self-reflexive architectural designer represents a Monad because of the multiple modes of perception and desire that he or she embodies within the process. In addition, each drawing represents a Monad, because they express the self-referential nature of an iteration of the design, but also because they are aesthetic and geometric materialisations of the perceptions and desires of the designer. Each drawing therefore also embodies mathematical and aesthetic ideas of geometric organisation. In addition, the drawings are analogous to the Monad’s aggregate structure, because each represents an

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irreducible part of the overall project. As a result, each drawing can be considered to be inherently undecidable. Leibniz’s theory of the Monad therefore represents a prototype of the undecidable relations that post-structuralist architectural design and second-order cybernetics display. In each case, multiple forms of spatial relations are generated. Also, these three disciplines also reflect the desire to challenge disembodied and decidable representations of the world. Each places particular emphasis on the multiplicity of material and immaterial (i.e. physical or psychic) realities that exist for the self-reflexive subject or observing observer. Moreover, each is inherently concerned with undecidability. Notes 1. See, for example, the designs and writing by architectural designers and historians such as, Stan Allen, Beatrice Colomina, Stephen Gage, Catharine Ingraham, Ben Nicholson, Jane Rendell, Cedric Price, Neil Spiller and Mark Wigley. 2. See, for example, the French post-structuralist thinking of Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida or Luce Irigaray whose work is explored below. 3. Thanks to Laura Allen and Mark Smout. References Arthur, R. (Ed.) (2001), The Labyrinth of the Continuum: Writings on the Continuum Problem, 1672-1686, G W Leibniz, The Yale Leibniz Series, Yale University Press, London. Kant, I. (1997), The Critique of Pure Reason, edited and translated by P. Guyer and A. Wood, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Leibniz, G. (1973), Discourse on Metaphysics, Correspondence with Arnauld, Monadology, translated by G.R. Montgomery, Open Court Publishing Company, La Salle, IL. Umpleby, S. (2005), “What I learned from Heinz von Foerster about the construction of science”, Kybernetes, Vol. 34 Nos 1/2, pp. 278-94, Special Issue. von Foerster, H. (2001), Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition, Springer-Verlag, New York, NY. Zienke, T. (2005), “Cybernetics and embodied cognition: on the construction of realities in organisms and robots”, Kybernetes, Vol. 34 Nos 1/2, pp. 118-28, Special Issue. About the author Peg Rawes is Co-ordinator of Diploma History and Theory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Her teaching and research on architecture, art and philosophy explores themes of embodiment, aesthetics and spatio-temporality. Publications include: “Reflective subjects in Kant and architectural design education” Journal of Aesthetic Education, 41(1), Spring 2007; “Plenums: rethinking matter, geometry and subjectivity,” Katie Lloyd-Thomas (ed.), Material Matters (Routledge, 2007), Irigaray for Architects (Routledge, 2007); Aesthetics: Space, Geometry and Through Kant and Towards Deleuze (forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Peg Rawes can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Cybernetic principles for learning design

Cybernetic principles for learning design

Bernard Scott, Simon Shurville, Piers Maclean and Chunyu Cong Defence Academy, Cranfield University, Shrivenham, UK

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Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to present an approach from first principles to the design of learning experiences in interactive learning environments, that is “learning designs” in the broadest sense. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is based on conversation theory (CT), a theory of learning and teaching with principled foundations in cybernetics. The approach to learning design that is proposed is not dissimilar from other approaches such as that proposed by Rowntree. However, its basis in CT provides a coherent theoretical underpinning. Findings – Currently, in the world of e-learning, the terms “instructional design” and “learning design” are used to refer to the application of theories of learning and instruction to the creation of e-learning material and online learning experiences. The paper examines the roots of the two terms and discusses similarities and differences in usage. It then discusses how the processes of learning design fit into the larger processes of course, design, development and delivery. It goes on to examine the concept of a “learning design pattern”. Originality/value – The paper contends that, whilst learning design patterns are useful as starting-points for individual learning designs, learning designers should adopt the cybernetic principles of reflective practice – as expressed in CT – to create learning designs where received wisdom is enriched by contextual feedback from colleagues and learners. Keywords Cybernetics, Learning, Design Paper type Conceptual paper

1. Introduction In this paper, we explore the relationship between the disciplines of cybernetics and design with specific and practical application to the interdisciplinary praxis of learning design for technology enhanced learning (TEL), which encompasses a range of topics from other disciplines including learning theory to software engineering (Koper and Olivier, 2004; Koper and Tattersall, 2005; MacLean and Scott, 2006). By learning design for TEL, we refer to the application of theories of learning and instruction to the creation of material resources and online learning experiences for training and education that will be mediated by information and communications technologies (this is explored in detail below). We focus on conversation theory (CT) (Pask and Scott, 1972). We describe how the cybernetic approach of CT provides both a principled foundation and a structured methodology for the discipline of learning design for TEL. Given our specific concerns with learning design, we do not address at length the relationship between cybernetics and design in general. For such a discussion, we refer the reader to Glanville in this special issue. We do, however, briefly discuss how CT, as a second order reflexive theory, can be used to characterise designers in any domain of practice as reflective participant observers. We do this by making explicit the parallels between second-order cybernetics (von Foerster, 1984) and second-generation design methods (Cross, 1984). CT be seen as a second-generation design method, which

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provides principled guidelines to help socially situated and reflective designers to tame problems in multi-disciplinary and ethically challenging domains. The paper is structured as follows. First, we trace the evolution of learning design from its origins in the instructional design programme of the Second World War to the internet era. Second, we explore cybernetic principles for learning design by explaining the purpose and practice of CT. Third, we demonstrate how CT can be applied in the practical context of course, design, development and delivery. We then discuss learning design patterns, which are an emerging specialised application of design theory with substantial influences from the cybernetic tradition (Alexander, 1972, 1978; Alexander et al., 1978). We contend that, whilst learning design patterns are useful as starting points for individual learning designs, learning designers should adopt the cybernetic principles of reflective practice – as expressed in CT as a second order reflexive theory – to create learning designs where received wisdom is enriched by contextual feedback from colleagues and learners. 2. Instructional design, learning design and conversation theory Currently, in the domain of TEL, the terms instructional design and learning design are used relatively interchangeably to refer to the application of theories of learning and instruction to the creation of material resources and online learning experiences. This section examines the roots of the two terms and discusses similarities and differences in usage. We conclude that learning design is the more generic term and that it encompasses both first and second order theories of human learning and first and second-generation design methods. We advocate the use of the term in TEL and beyond to encompass all aspects of the design of learning experiences. 2.1 Origins of instructional design The origins of the term instructional design can be traced back to the USA during the Second World War. In order to achieve swift military success, the USA required a rapid and effective means of preparing its armed forces personnel for their combat roles. Among the people recruited by the US Department of Defence to assist in the task were well established research psychologists with an interest in learning theory. Building on the work of early twentieth century, educational thinkers such as John Dewey and Robert Thorndike (Reigeluth, 1983, p. 27) the psychologists investigated how systems engineering principles could be combined with learning theory to develop effective training and instruction on a large-scale. Their research resulted in a systems approach (Dijkstra et al., 1997) to the design of instructional materials which focussed on defining the training requirement at an early stage of a development lifecycle borrowed from the systems engineering model of analyse, document, design, and develop. Intended learning goals, expressed in terms of expected performance of a specified task, were analysed and broken down into component tasks. These tasks became learning goals for which learning experiences were designed and developed. Delivery methods were decided upon during the development cycle and media and communications technologies were frequently selected to deliver the results of these design processes. This approach equates to a procedural first-generation design method, as discussed above. However, training military personnel for combat is clearly a wicked problem as it contains moral, political and professional dimensions

(the relationship between cognitive psychology and morality in this context is discussed in depth by DeLanda (1992)). Owing to its success in wartime training, the instructional systems approach was widely adopted in North America and Europe during the 1950s and 1960s. It is interesting to note the investment in applied cybernetics and design theory during the same period and their influence upon and influence by the new sciences of information technology (Heims, 1991; Edwards, 1996). Information technology took on a new importance in education in this period and much emphasis was placed on the potential use of teaching machines in the classroom. Programmed learning, a highly structured and sequenced teaching method based on behaviourist theory, was introduced into schools. It was largely due to the work of the psychologists B. F. Skinner, Jerome Bruner, and David Ausubel, that programmed learning and the systems approach evolved into the discipline of instructional design (Reigeluth, 1983). At first, the new discipline continued to be oriented towards the behaviourist theories of Thorndike (1911) and, later, Skinner (1954). However, research into how humans learn continued and inspired the development of new theories. The most significant of these for instructional design were the cognitive theories of Ausubel, Bruner and others which led to a steady drift away from behaviourism. Among those drawn to a cognitivist orientation were many individuals who had played leading roles in the development of instructional design theory including Robert Gagne´ Robert Glaser and Gordon Pask (Dijkstra et al., 1997). We suggest that this movement was heading towards a second-order and second-generation approach[1]. 2.2 Origins of learning design Learning design’s origins as a term associated with TEL are obscure and its use is somewhat confusing. It first appears in the literature of psychology and education in North America during the 1960s and 1970s (Moment and Zaleznik, 1963; Schmuck and Schmuck, 1974) where, learning design is occasionally used as a singular noun to describe a method of instruction for a particular learning session. Later, it is expressed as “a format that structures the process of learning by providing a framework of orderly steps for acquiring knowledge, attitudes, or skills” (Mouton and Blake, 1984) and it is in the context of designing conventional learning that it continued to be used until the late 1990s. Again, this approach carries some hallmarks of procedural first-generation design method, as discussed above. In the mid-1990s, learning design started to become associated with the design of learning that would harness the promise of the internet and “the several attributes of the Superhighway and PCs that can be utilised to facilitate learning” (Riding and Rayner, 1995). The internet offered a relatively low cost and democratic medium that enabled some of the more constructivist minded researchers, typified by Duffy and Jonassen (1992) to join the mainstream of TEL. Only after Jay Cross coined the expression e-learning in 1998 does learning design appear to be closely associated with the creation of online learning resources, online learning experiences and now TEL. From this time, it starts to be used, often interchangeably, with instructional design in commercial and educational contexts relating to e-learning and loses its association with traditional pedagogy. Britain (2004, p. 2) redresses the imbalance to point out that “designing for learning” is not a new concept and learning design is, in fact, part of everyday teaching practice.

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A major driver for the increased use of the term learning design in a TEL context was the development of the Instructional Management System Learning Design (IMS LD) specification released in 2003. IMS LD aims to expand upon and remedy perceived shortfalls in earlier e-learning specifications, such as ADL SCORM[2] with its roots in instructional design practice[3]. The IMS LD specification sets out to represent the “learning design” of traditional teaching sessions – “units of learning” – “in a semantic, formal and machine interpretable way” (Koper and Olivier, 2004). Koper (2006, p. 13) unambiguously states that the key principle in learning design is “that it represents the learning activities and the support activities that are performed by different persons (learners, teachers) in the context of a unit of learning”. This concept effectively extends the scope of the teacher – the designer of learning – to take advantage of technology-based environments as another area where learning can occur. Instructional design is a clearly defined and established discipline aimed at “aiding the process of learning rather than the process of teaching” and the creation of “intentional learning” rather than “incidental” learning (Gagne´ et al., 2005, p. 2). Instructional design theory is design oriented and is a theory that “offers explicit guidance in how to help people learn and develop” (Reigeluth, 1999, p. 5), which is, as we have suggested above, very close to first-order cybernetics and first-generation design. This explicit guidance has been successfully applied in many situations as evidenced in Reigeluth (1983, 1999) but has mainly been concerned with designing training materials for individual learners. How usable is it in scenarios such as academic learning? Laurillard (2002) identifies several inadequacies in the model originally published by Gagne´ in 1965. She argues that it has probably been well received because of its logical structure but is flawed because it lacks an empirically grounded theory and, while it might be explicit in how to design learning, Laurillard suggests that it builds on supposition. The implications here are that Gagne´’s and other instructional design models are suitable for straightforward and limited learning scenarios and that while they might answer questions about how to learn they fail to look deeper. The fifth edition (2005, p. 20) of Gagne´’s work appears to refute this view and suggests that instructional systems design is sufficiently capable of being used to create very advanced learning environments. To us, this type of controversy indicates that both sides either explicitly or tacitly appreciate the need for second-order cybernetics and second-generation design methods in the domain. Such advocates of constructivist approaches to TEL already existed on both sides of the Atlantic (Pask and Scott, 1973; Duffy and Jonassen, 1992) but, it could be argued, prevailing belief systems, particularly in the USA, had rather marginalised them in a similar way that, for example, neural networks and associated philosophies (McCulloch, 1988) had been eclipsed by expert systems and associated philosophies (Simon, 1969; Edwards, 1996). Just as there was a renaissance in neural networks (Rumelhart and McClelland, 1993) and systems thinking (Kauffman, 1993) in the 1990s, a balance started to be restored in TEL when Laurillard (1993, 2002) brought light to a considerably different approach to learning design in its broader sense that also encompasses the use of technology. The approach was aimed at higher education students and sought to understand the ways in which students experience learning. In contrast to the “transmission of knowledge” model found in much instructional design, she uses a theory of “conversational frameworks” to give an account of how active interaction between teacher and student in the form of dialogue about tasks set can lead to

effective learning. This approach is based directly on Pask’s CT (Pask and Scott, 1972). We will explore CT and its applications in the next sections. 2.3 Learning design as the superset of instructional design? When viewed from the above perspective, it can be clearly seen that instructional design can be a highly didactic and prescriptive subset of the potential domain of learning design. For these reasons, we propose the use of learning design as the more generic term and that, in the diverse world of TEL, instructional designers should more aptly refer to themselves as learning designers. At risk of over simplification, we feel that instructional design equates closely with first-order cybernetics and first-generation design methods, while learning design also encompasses the more metaphysical second-order cybernetic approach and second-generation design methods. We propose that learning design should be adopted as the preferred generic term. Such adoption extends its current standard usage (Koper and Tattersall, 2005) and also indicates the level of situated skill which we believe is a pre-requisite for professional learning design. We therefore advocate that professional learning designers adopt the kind of second-order cybernetic approaches and second-generation design methods exemplified by CT. 3. Cybernetic principles for learning design CT, as developed by Pask and Scott (1973), originated from a cybernetics framework and attempts to explain learning in living organisms, organisations and machines. The power of CT is that it encompasses and unifies many different theories of learning and teaching[4]. It can be applied in any education or training context for the design of both individual and group learning scenarios. CT takes as its starting point the concept of a self-organising system (SOS) (Ashby, 1947; von Foerster, 1960) that adapts, habituates and learns[5]. It goes on to describe human-machine and human-human interactive as the synergistic composition of SOSs into a larger whole (Pask, 1996). Underlying assumptions of CT include the following. The brain/body system is a dynamic self-organising, “variety eating” adaptive and habituating system, subject to boredom and fatigue. As Pask (1968, p. 137) puts it, “Man is a system that needs to learn” thus the problem of motivation is not “that we learn” it is rather what is learned and why. The basic mechanisms that support learning and adaptation are the various forms of conditioning that take place in associative networks (parallel distributed systems), with attentional systems subject to sensory-motor feedback (including proprioception and kinaesthesia) and algedonic (pain, pleasure) feedback. Thus, cognition is inseparable from affect: to think is to feel[6]. For humans, learning is also about the construction of symbolic representations, subject to constraints of logical coherence, acquired through the medium of dialogic, conversational interaction and the inner dialogic processes of strategic and tactical attention directing. In conversation, narrative forms are constructed and exchanged. What is memorable is that which can be “taught back” (Pask and Scott, 1972). Remembering is understood as a dynamic process of reconstruction that is always contextualised and social. CT has become fairly widely known in the UK through the writings of Laurillard (1993, 2002) and Harri-Augstein and Thomas (1991). However, their accounts are fairly superficial, failing to capture the full depth and richness of CT and its applications

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(see Burt, 2004, for a critique along these lines; see Scott, 1993, 2001, for accessible overviews of CT). It is useful to introduce CT by considering the interaction between a teacher and a learner where a specific subject domain is being addressed. The theory can be generalised to adumbrate more general, many person interactions and conversations where the topic addressed may be many levelled and may evolve in open-ended ways. Indeed, in CT, the conversation itself may be a topic of conversation. Some key ideas from CT are shown in Figure 1, the “skeleton of a conversation”. Notice the distinction between verbal, “provocative” interaction (questions and answers) from behavioural interaction via a shared modelling facility or “micro-world”. The horizontal connections represent the verbal exchanges. Pask argues that all such exchanges have, as a minimum, two logical levels. In the figure, these are shown as the two levels: “how” and “why”. The “how” level is concerned with how to “do” a topic: how to recognise it, construct it, maintain it and so on; the “why” level is concerned with explaining or justifying what a topic means in terms of other topics. The vertical connections represent causal connections with feedback, an hierarchy of processes that control or produce other processes. At the lowest level, in the control hierarchy, there is a canonical world, a “universe of discourse” or “modelling facility” where the teacher may instantiate or exemplify the topic by giving non-verbal demonstrations. Typically, such demonstrations are accompanied by verbal commentary about “how” and “why”. In turn, the learner may use the modelling facility to solve problems and carry out tasks set. He or she may also provide verbal commentary about “how” and “why”. Note that the form of what constitutes a canonical “world” for construction and demonstration is itself subject to negotiation and agreement. Here, a brief example will have to suffice. Teacher

Learner

Receives of offers explanation in terms of relations between topics

Why questions and responses

Receives of offers explanation in terms of relations between topics

Why?

Offers demonstrations or elicits models and problem solutions

How questions and responses

Receives demonstrations, builds models or solves problems

How?

Modelling facility for performance of tasks such as model building and problem solving

Figure 1. The “skeleton of a conversation” Source: Scott (2001)

Consider topics in chemistry. A teacher may: . model or demonstrate certain processes or events; . offer explanations of why certain processes take place; . request that a learner teaches back his or her conceptions of why certain things happen; . offer verbal accounts of how to bring about certain events; . ask a learner to provide such an account; and . ask a learner to carry out experiments or other practical procedures pertaining to particular events or processes. A learner may: . request explanations of why; . request accounts of how; . request demonstrations; . offer explanations of why for commentary; . offer explanations of how for commentary; and . carry out experiments and practical activities. Pask refers to learning about “why” as comprehension learning and learning about “how” as operation learning. and conceives them both as being complementary aspects of effective learning. These distinctions allow Pask to give a formal definition of what it means to understand a topic. Understanding a topic means that the learner can “teachback” the topic by providing both non-verbal demonstrations and verbal explanations of “how” and “why”. Pask notes that conversations may have many levels coordination above the why level: levels at which conceptual justifications are themselves justified and where there is “commentary about commentary”. Harri-Augstein and Thomas make this notion central in their work on self-organised learning, where the emphasis is on helping students “learn to learn”. In brief, they propose that a full “learning conversation” has three main components: (1) conversation about the how and why of a topic, as in the basic Pask model; (2) conversation about the how of learning (for example, discussing study skills and reflecting on experiences as a learner); and (3) conversation about purposes, the why of learning, where the emphasis is on encouraging personal autonomy and accepting responsibility for one’s own learning. 3.1 A framework for course design The framework for course design that we propose is not dissimilar to other approaches such as that proposed by Rowntree (1990). However, its basis in CT provides a coherent theoretical underpinning, three central features of which are:

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(1) the assessment of understanding based on “teachback” procedures (first expounded in Pask and Scott, 1972), both for formative and summative assessment purposes; (2) the use of a sophisticated knowledge and task structure elicitation and representation methodology (Pask et al., 1975; Scott, 1999); and (3) a well articulated theory of scaffolding and adaptive teaching (Lewis and Pask, 1965; Patel et al., 2001.) The framework has four major components: (1) a description of course aims and desired learning outcomes; (2) a specification of course content, describing knowledge and skills and desired learning experiences; (3) specification of the learning designs and tutorial strategies to be employed, including sequencing of learning experiences, choice of media and the role of dialogic interactive activities designed to encourage and reinforce effective learning; and (4) the assessment strategy to be used (for both formative and summative assessment). The essential principles of good quality course design can be summarized as follows: . There should be a clear mapping between the statements of learning outcomes and the specification of course content. . An analysis of course content should be carried out in order to specify appropriate learning designs and tutorial strategies. . There should be a clear mapping between course content and assessment activities which preserves the mapping between learning outcomes and course content. These ideas are shown in Figure 2[7]. 4. Course design, development and delivery Our account of the practice of learning design would not be complete without our positioning it within the larger context of the business processes that constitute course design, development and delivery. These processes are shown in Figure 3. In contrast to some other design domains, the aesthetic quality, beauty or elegance of a learning design is predominantly an aspect of its form as a pedagogically effective support for learning. Other qualities, such as representational attractiveness are secondary. If the principles of good course design are not adhered to, a particular learning design, presented as a pleasing to look at and entertaining to interact with piece of multimedia, may be pedagogically inferior compared to a learning designs presented as text and simple graphics. 5. Second-order cybernetics and second-generation design methods Within the discourse of second-order cybernetics[8], von Foerster (1991) coined the term “metaphysical” to describe domains whose navigation requires participant observers to perform value judgements in selecting a problem-setting framework

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learning outcomes

course content

assessment procedures

tutorial strategies

Note: All items of any of the four components should map on to corresponding items of other components

Figure 2. A framework for course design

Perceived need for a new or revised course 1. Needs Analysis Population, Context, Business Case

10. Evaluation

2. Specify Aims and Learning Outcomes

Summative Assessments, Student Feedback, Staff Feedback, Reporting and Dissemination

Performance, Cognitive, Attitudinal

9. Implementation

3. Specify Course Structure

Start-up Support, Course Management, Maintenance

Sequencing, Signposting

8. Development

4. Specify Content

Support Systems, Implementation Plan, Learning Resouroes

Knowledge and Task Analysis

7. Specify Assessment Procedures

5. Specify Learning Designs

Tasks, Delivery, Analysis, Feedback

Activities, Formative Assessment, Use of Media

6. Specify Student and Tutor Support Systems Induction, Study Guide, Tutor Guide, Student/Tutor Communication, Course Team Communication, Tutor Mentoring and Monitoring

C o urse D e si g n

Any of the above activities may take place in parallel. At any stage of the design process, the outcome may be revised in the light of experience as indicated by the anti-clockwise arrows.

Figure 3. Course design, development and delivery

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and a set of guiding principles. Such metaphysical domains are contrasted with more trivial domains where apparently objective agents can navigate via deterministic problem-solving methodologies (von Foerster, 1991). This distinction has a parallel in design research, where Rittel and Webber (1973) drew a distinction between “tame” and “wicked” domains. In tame domains, problems come pre-framed such that an apparently objective agent can apply deterministic procedures to solve them. In wicked domains, the framing of a problem by participant observers is a fundamental part of addressing it. Further, a genuinely wicked problem contains irreducible moral, political and professional dimensions which participant observers must take into account (see Cooley, 1980, for an account of such professional issues in the context of design). This distinction between tame and wicked problems was re-invented by others working in adjacent domains, such as the systems thinkers Ackoff (1974) and Checkland (1981). Design researchers such as Archer (1979), Broadbent and Ward (1969) and Jones (1977) appreciated the distinction between tame and wicked problems. They also recognized that the majority of design methods that had been developed during a well funded period of research following the Second World War were aimed at tame domains (Cross, 1984). These researchers rose above these highly procedural first-generation design methods and began to develop second-generation design methods, which were structured yet acknowledged the personal values and histories of socially situated designers (for further history, see Cross, 1984). Hence, we suggest that there are many design-domains, which can, depending on the observer’s context, equally well be described as metaphysical or wicked (see also Papanek, 1984; Grudin, 1990, for parallel discussion of design and ethics). This is useful, because it provides a cross-disciplinary bridge and enables research and praxis to be ported to and fro between cybernetics and design. We argue that learning design for TEL constitutes a metaphysical domain which yields wicked problems that require second-order sensibilities and second-generation design methods. We have two reasons to make this claim. First, learning design for TEL is extremely complicated. It requires “interdisciplinary collaboration across the disciplines of learning, cognition, information and communication technologies (ICT) and education, and the broader social sciences” (Teaching and Learning Research Programme, 2006) and hence requires diligent professionalism (MacLean and Scott, 2006). Second, since learning design ultimately involves the education of real people, its moral, political and professional dimensions cannot be ignored. So addressing problems in learning design for TEL in an ethical fashion (von Foerster, 1991) requires learning designers to recognise that they are socially situated, participant observers who need to tame problems with well founded and appropriately structured methodologies. 6. Learning design patterns To bring the discussion of cybernetics, design and learning design up to date we would like to discuss how the tenets of second order cybernetics and second-generation design methods can enhance the application of learning design patterns, which are an increasingly popular innovation in the praxis of learning design for TEL (Mor and Winters, 2007). The concept of a “design pattern” originated as a second-generation design method in the domain of architecture. The architect and design theorist, Christopher Alexander

observed that “timeless” structures tend to contain recurrent patterns of features that can be thought of as recurring solution to common problem in a particular contexts. A design pattern: . . . describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice (Alexander et al., 1977, p. x).

Alexander and his colleagues published a guide to 253 patterns, in each case illustrating contexts for use and recommending partner patterns. For example, Alexander defined the pattern “arcade” as pattern number 119. An arcade is a covered walkway at the edge of one or more buildings, which is partly within and partly without and which plays a defining role in how people will interact with some building(s). Alexander offers the advice that arcades should be used, at the very least, to provide covered paths between buildings. Importantly, Alexander also suggests that designers consider the arcade pattern in the context of three other patterns, viz. “cascade of roofs” “circulation realms” and “pedestrian street”. These patterns, in turn, suggest other useful patterns for use in context. The task of selecting and adapting an appropriate bricolage of patterns for a particular context remained a meaningful and interpretive assignment that depended upon the values and experience of the designer. Applying design patterns should be an example of what Jones termed “designing designing” (Jones, 1991), i.e. a reflexive and reflective praxis. Thus, in the context of the current narrative, the process of applying design patterns is suited to navigating metaphysical domains and also qualifies as a second-generation design method. There is also an aesthetic dimension to design patterns as successful patterns tend to capture and engender aesthetic pleasure on the parts of the designer and the end-users (Jordon, 2000). Particular aesthetics might be visible within the finished artefact or they could be found in the process of design itself or within a particular production process or, as noted and emphasised above, in the perceived pedagogical effectiveness of the design. Alexander was mindful of cybernetic principles and thus embedded design patterns in a reflective and participative tradition with Taoist influences (Alexander et al., 1977; Alexander, 1979). So, it is important to grasp that Alexander’s patterns are not designed as recipes. As Alexander (1979, p. 19) notes: . . . there is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named. The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person’s story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive.

So Alexander’s patterns capture wisdom as a spur for contemplation and inspiration in a way that is reminiscent of texts such as the I-Ching (Wilhelm and Baynes, 1989) whose application requires a reflective participant observer. Comparable experiences are recounted by Pye (1978) in his exegesis of how designers approach their work. Reflective practice has been discussed in detail by Scho¨n (1983). Scho¨n (1987) explores the relationship between reflective practice, design and education. Since, the 1990s design patterns have been extremely influential in software engineering (Gamma et al., 1995), project management (Brown et al., 2000) and knowledge management (Huges, 2006). We observe that as design patterns have passed through the software engineering mindset, logical positivism has influenced practice such that

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some treat them as recipes or even a mere “generative grammar”. For example, Hughes (2006) takes a knowledge management approach to design patterns and regards them as “knowledge assets” that can be entered, stored and retrieved via a knowledge-based system. We consider this approach naı¨ve because, for example, Hughes (2006, p. 14) recommends that “whoever manages or administers usability testing within an enterprise . . . prepares for design sessions by searching the KMS for relevant patterns and presenting those patterns during the design sessions” and “enters new patterns into the KMS after every usability test and to cross-reference existing patterns if appropriate with the newly acquired data”. Searching a knowledge base is, in principle, comparable to search a book. However, we suggest that Hughes and others who take a knowledge management approach to design patterns accredit an implicit authority in the knowledge-base and in the pattern matching abilities of knowledge-based systems. Moreover, deriving new patterns from isolated experiences is contrary to an approach that distilled knowledge from “timeless structures”. This is not to discredit Hughes’ approach. Rather, the contents of the knowledge base are probably better regarded as use cases, i.e. descriptions of how a user might approach a particular function performed by a software system (Bittner and Spence, 2002), instead of design patterns. However, the example does demonstrate that design knowledge is sometimes reified into design patterns which are also erroneously used in a first order, first generation mode where they are perceived as prefabricated methods rather than as inspirations to individual reflective design. Design patterns have also migrated from software engineering to learning design for TEL (Anthony, 1996; Eckstein et al., 2002; Garzotto et al., 2004; Goodyear, 2004; Koper and Tattersall, 2005; Bailey et al., 2006; Mor and Winters, 2007). The literature reviews associated with this migration tend to mention the origin of design patterns in design research as well as their success in software engineering, project management and knowledge management. However, the move towards logical positivism, reified knowledge and a first-order, first-generation approach to design processes and the role of the designer as a reflective participant observer goes unmentioned. Projects such as E-LEN, have produced online repositories of learning design patterns (E-LEN, 2005). However, although the home page of the E-learning Design Patterns Repository places learning design patterns in the context of the quote by Alexander which we cited in the beginning of this section, we are concerned that learning designers will regard such putative learning design patterns as authoritative and complete rather than as spurs to action for reflective participant observers. Moreover, in many cases the individual learning design patterns are based on isolated experiences (pace Hughes, 2006). We contend that such learning design patterns are closer to use cases and are thus useful starting points for individual learning designs. CT, as evidenced by the forms of learner – teacher interaction imminent in Figure 1, is a rich source of learning design patterns and can also be used retrospectively to bring order to a wide variety of individual use cases (Pask, 1975, 1976). The authors of this paper are working to apply CT to the current world of learning design for TEL, including the development of a conceptually coherent taxonomy of learning designs (Maclean, 2007). Beyond those applications of CT, we recommend that learning designers adopt the cybernetic principles embedded in reflective practice, as exemplified by CT, to create learning designs where received wisdom is enriched by contextual feedback from colleagues, mentors and learners. Indeed, we have found within our own practice that

CT can be used to structure such conversations and reflective processes. At the lower levels of CT, participants can discuss the opportunities and outcomes of selecting and applying learning particular design patterns in concrete contexts. As participants climb the hierarchy of CT, the process can become more reflective such that abstractions and helpful generalizations emerge. In summary, we believe that when learning designers create new learning design patterns, the outcomes of “the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person’s story” (Alexander, 1979, p. 19) must remain irreducible elements of a living tradition. Similarly, learning designers need to perceive themselves as participant observers operating ethically in a metaphysical domain throughout the praxis of applying existing patterns. 7. Some concluding comments In this paper, we have used a cybernetically formulated theory of learning and teaching (CT) as a basis for a discussion of what is learning design and what is learning design practice. In particular, we have compared second-order cybernetics and second-generation design methods to demonstrate a theoretical and practical mutualism between these disciplines. We have noted how the concept of a design pattern has migrated into the world of learning designs and indicated how CT can bring order to the business of creating and classifying learning designs. Finally, we have suggested that learning designers (indeed, designers of any kind) can usefully apply CT to their own practice as reflective, participant observers. Notes 1. Pask (1972) provides an early, spirited attack on the limitations of instructional design as then practiced. 2. Advanced Distributed Learning Systems’ Shareable Content Object Reference Model. “SCORM is a collection of standards and specifications adapted from multiple sources to provide a comprehensive suite of e-learning capabilities that enable interoperability, accessibility and reusability of Web-based learning content” available at: www.adlnet.gov/ scorm/index.cfm (accessed 28 January 2007.) 3. For more information about specifications and standards for TEL see the website of the UK’s Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards (CETIS). www.cetis.ac. uk (accessed April 2007.) 4. Pask (1968) defines teaching in cybernetic terms as “the control of learning”. 5. Cybernetics deals with control and communication in complex systems that adapt, evolve and learn. For summaries of the principles underlying cybernetics, see Ashby (1956) and the websites www.cybsoc.org/ and http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ (both accessed April 2007.) 6. See also D’Amasio (1999) on this topic. 7. Biggs (1999), in a separate development, makes similar proposals with respect to the need for course components to be “constructively aligned”. 8. Von Foerster (Von Foerster et al., 1974) distinguishes between first order cybernetics (the study of observed systems) and second order cybernetics (the study of observing systems). References Ackoff, R. (1974), Re-defining the Future, Wiley, London. Alexander, C. (1979), The Timeless Way of Building, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

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Alexander, C., Silverstein, M. and Ishikawa, S. (1977), A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, Center for Environmental Structure Series, Oxford University Press, New York, NY. Anthony, D.L. (1996), “Patterns for classroom education”, available at: http://ianchaiwriting. 50megs.com/classroom-ed.html (accessed 20 January 2007). Archer, B. (1979), “Whatever became of design methodology”, Design Studies, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 17-18. Ashby, W.R. (1947), “Principles of the self-organizing dynamic system”, Journal of General Psychology, Vol. 37, pp. 125-8. Ashby, W.R. (1956), An Introduction to Cybernetics, Wiley, New York, NY. Bailey, C., Conole, G.i., Davis, H.C., Fill, K. and Zalfan, M.T. (2006), “Panning for gold: designing pedagogically-inspired learning nuggets”, Educational Technology and Society, Vol. 9, pp. 113-22. Biggs, J. (1999), Teaching for Quality Learning Buckingham, Society for Research in Higher Education/Open University Press, Buckingham. Bittner, K. and Spence, I. (2002), Use Case Modeling, Addison-Wesley Professional, Boston, MA. Britain, S. (2004), “A review of learning design: concept, specifications and tools”, A Report for the JISC e-Learning Pedagogy Programme, available at: www.jisc.ac.uk (accessed 18 February 2006). Broadbent, G. and Ward, A. (1969), Design Methods in Architecture, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London. Brown, W.J., McCormick, H.W. III and Thomas, S.W. (2000), Anti Patterns in Project Management, Wiley, New York, NY. Burt, G. (2004), “The conceptual degeneration of sophisticated knowledge: how others have used Gordon Pask’s work”, Principled Discourse, Note 13, available at: http://iet.open.ac.uk/pp/g. j.burt/main.htm (accessed March 2006). Checkland, P. (1981), Systems Thinking, Systems Practice, Wiley, Chichester. Cooley, M. (1980), Architectt or Bee? The Human/Technology Relationship, South End Press, Boston, MA. Cross, N. (1984), Developments in Design Methodology, Wiley, New York, NY. D’Amasio, A. (1999), The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, Harcourt Brace, New York, NY. DeLanda, M. (1992), War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Dijkstra, S., Schott, F., Seel, M. and Tennyson, R.D. (1997), Instructional Design: International Perspectives,Vol. 1, Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. Duffy, T.M. and Jonassen, D.H. (1992), Constructivism and the Technology of Instruction: A Conversation, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ. Eckstein, J., Bergin, J. and Sharp, H. (2002), “Patterns for active learning”, available at: http://csis. pace.edu/ , bergin/patterns/ActiveLearningV24.html (accessed 20 January 2007). Edwards, P.N. (1996), The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. E-LEN (2005), “E-LEN: a network of e-Learning centres”, available at: www2.tisip.no/E-LEN/ (accessed 20 January 2007). Gagne´, R.M., Wager, W.W., Golas, K.C. and Keller, J.M. (2005), Principles of Instructional Design, 5th ed., Wadsworth/Thomson, Belmont, CA.

Gamma, E., Helm, R., Johnson, R. and Vlissides, J. (1995), Design Patterns, Addison-Wesley, New York, NY. Garzotto, F., Retalis, S., Papasalouros, A. and Siassiakos, K. (2004), “Patterns for designing adaptive/adaptable educational hypermedia”, Advanced Technology for Learning, Vol. 1. Goodyear, P. (2004), “Patterns, pattern languages and educational design”, paper presented at ASCILITE Conference Perth, http://ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/procs/pdf/ goodyear.pdf (accessed 20 January 2007). Grudin, R. (1990), The Grace of Great Things: Creativity and Innovation, Ticknor and Fields, New York, NY. Harri-Augstein, S. and Thomas, L.F. (1991), Learning Conversations, Routledge, London. Heims, S.J. (1991), Constructing a Social Science for Postwar America: Cybernetics Group, 1946-53, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Hughes, M. (2006), “A pattern language approach to usability knowledge management”, Journal of Usability Studies., No. 2, pp. 76-90. Jones, J.C. (1977), “How my thoughts about design methods have changed during the years”, Design Methods and Theories, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 50-62. Jones, J.C. (1991), Designing Designing, Phaidon Press Ltd, London. Jordon, P. (2000), Designing Pleasureable Products: An Introduction to New Human Factors, Taylor and Francis, London. Kauffman, S.A. (1993), The Origins of Order: Self Organization and Selection in Evolution, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Koper, R. (2006), “Current research in learning design”, Educational Technology and Society, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 13-22. Koper, R. and Olivier, B. (2004), “Representing the learning design of units of learning”, Educational Technology & Society, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 97-111. Koper, R. and Tattersall, C. (2005), Learning Design: A Handbook on Modelling and Delivering Networked Education & Training, Springer-Verlag, Berlin. Laurillard, D. (1993), Rethinking University Teaching, Routledge, London. Laurillard, D. (2002), Rethinking University Teaching, 2nd ed., Routledge Falmer, London. Lewis, B.N. and Pask, G. (1965), “The theory and practice of adaptive teaching systems”, in Glaser, R. (Ed.), Teaching Machines and Programmed Learning,Vol. II, Nat. Educ. Assoc., Washington, DC, Data and Directions, pp. 213-66. McCulloch, W.S. (1988), Embodiments of Mind, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Maclean, P.J. (2007), A Conceptually and Methodologically Well-Grounded Taxonomy of Learning Designs, unpublished research proposal, Centre for the Support of Flexible Learning, Cranfield University, UK Defence Academy, Cranfield. MacLean, P.J. and Scott, B.C.E. (2006), “Learning design: requirements, practice and prospects”, in Fernstrom, K. and Tsolakidis, K. (Eds), Readings in Technology in Education: Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Communications Technologies in Education, UCFV Press, Abbotsford, BC, 6-8 July, Rhodes, pp. 152-6. Moment, D. and Zaleznik, A. (1963), Role Development and Interpersonal Competence: An Experimental Study of Role Performances in Problem-Solving Groups, Harvard University Press, Harvard, MA. Mor, Y. and Winters, N. (2007), “Design approaches in technology enhanced learning”, Interactive Learning Environments., Vol. 15 No. 1.

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Scott, B. (2001), “Conversation theory: a constructivist, dialogical approach to educational technology”, Cybernetics & Human Knowing, Vol. 8 No. 4. Simon, H.A. (1969), The Science of the Artificial, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Skinner, B.F. (1954), “The science of learning and the art of teaching”, Current Trends in Psychology and the Behavioral Sciences, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA. Teaching and Learning Research Programme (2006) Announcment of Forthcoming ESRC/EPSRC Call for Research on Technology Enhanced Learning: Understanding, creating, and exploiting digital technologies for learning, available at: www.tlrp.org/tel/ (accessed 19 January 2007). Thorndike, E.L. (1911), Animal Intelligence, York University, Toronto, available at: http:// psychclassics.yorku.ca (accessed 19 February 2006). von Foerster, H. (1960), “On self-organising systems and their environments”, in Yovits, M. and Cameron, S. (Eds), Self-Organising Systems, Pergamon Press, London, pp. 31-50. von Foerster, H. (1984), “On constructing a reality”, in Watzlawick, P. (Ed.), The Invented Reality: How Do We Know What We Believe We Know?, W.W. Norton, New York, NY. von Foerster, H. (1991), “Through the eyes of the other”, in Steier, F. (Ed.), Research and Reflexivity, Sage, London, pp. 63-75. von Foerster, H., et al. (Eds) (1974), Cybernetics of Cybernetics, BCL Report 73.38, Biological Computer Laboratory, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL. Wilhelm, R. and Baynes, C.F. (1989), I Ching or Book of Changes, Arkana, Paris, (translator). Further reading Avgeriou, P., Papasalouros, A., Retalis, S. and Skordalakis, M. (2003), “Towards a pattern language for learning management systems”, Educational Technology and Society, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 11-24. Chen, D. (2003), “Uncovering the provisos behind flexible learning”, Educational Technology and Society, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 25-30. Dijkstra, S. and Seel, N.M. (Eds) (2004), Curriculum, Plans and Processes in Instructional Design: International Perspectives, Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. Mackain-Bremner, M. and Scott, B. (2006), “E-learning projects at the Defence Academy, Shrivenham”, Military Simulation and Training, No. 1, pp. 243-62. von Foerster, H. (1993), “Ethics and second-order cybernetics”, Psychiatria Danubia, Vol. 5 Nos 1/2, pp. 40-6. About the authors Bernard Scott is Head of the Flexible Learning Support Centre, Cranfield University, Defence College of Management and Technology, Shrivenham. Previous appointments have been with: the University of the Highlands and Islands Millennium Institute, De Montfort University, the Open University and Liverpool John Moores University. His research interests include: theories of learning and teaching, course design and organisational change and foundational issues in systems theory and cybernetics. He has published extensively on these topics. He is a Fellow of the Cybernetics Society and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. Bernard Scott is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected] Simon Shurville holds a BA and a PhD in artificial intelligence and an MA in change management. His PhD integrated artificial intelligence with design-theory, including participative design and socio-technical theory. His post-doctoral research focused on artificial intelligence, conversation theory and flexible learning. He returned to industry to architect an

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intelligent learning environment for postgraduates. He also started a consultancy, from which he has co-directed blended courses for City University and the University of Essex. In 2002, became a Project Director at the University of Sussex, where he introduced managed and virtual learning environments via participative design. He later moved to Cranfield University, Defence College of Management and Technology, Shrivenham, to lecture in Knowledge Management. He was promoted to a new post to support flexible learning within the university’s Flexible Learning Support Centre. He is currently interested in applying cybernetics to change management and developing personalized learning environments. Piers Maclean is a Lecturer in the Flexible Learning Support Centre, Cranfield University (CU), Defence College of Management and Technology, Shrivenham. He started his teaching career as a Burnham lecturer providing Arabic language tuition to Armed Forces personnel. After some years as a senior Lecturer, he decided to embark upon a career in IT which saw him working as an IT manager at the Air Warfare Centre, RAF Cranwell. This combination of teaching and technical experience was to lead him to take up a position as the E-Learning Development Manager on the RAF’s Air Warfare Training Management Team. His interest in the design and provision of online learning experiences continued to develop to the extent that he decided to undertake a MSc by Research with CU to investigate learning design within the UK. Towards the end of his studies, he was recruited into his current post. Chunyu Cong is a research student with Cranfield University at the Defence College of Management and Technology, Shrivenham. She holds a BSc in Computer Science and a MSc in Educational Technology. Her research is concerned with the design and evaluation of interactive learning environments.

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Conversations with the self-knowledge creation for designing Kaye Shumack

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School of Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to draw links between the circularity of second-order cybernetics, and constructive, reflective conversations with oneself in design practice. The paper argues that a structured use of internal conversational dialogues with oneself can assist the design process, enhancing creativity and transformative approaches to design projects. Design/methodology/approach – Theories about the emergence of new knowledge, and the causal nature of internal conversations, are used to present a case for the value of a structured self-reflective conversational process in designing. Emergent knowledge is described in terms of flows across domains of public and personal knowledge, through dynamic processes of semantic absorption, codification and diffusion. The structure and agency of the internal conversation are discussed as a practical way to interpret and locate the emergence of project directions, as a kind of meta-language for design production. This is demonstrated through an action research case study, where an internal dialogue about teaching visual communication design is described. Findings – On the basis of the action research described, the use of a structured internal dialogue can be of benefit to designing, as it provides a mechanism for locating and mapping the flows and developments of emergent semantic concepts and design project directions. Practical implications – The model for internal conversations is a way for designers to acknowledge their dual role as both participant (“subject” self) and observer (“object” self). The paper argues that this can help in locating oneself within a design process. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the debate about knowledge of design and for design. A constructive conversational model is presented, which acknowledges the significant role of experiential, cultural and semantic contexts in framing emerging knowledge for designing. Keywords Design process, Knowledge management, Learning, Knowledge creation, Narratives Paper type Research paper

Introduction – conversation as circular communication and knowledge creation The role of the observer in so-called “second-order cybernetics” is described as being both part of the systems being observed, and at the same time, as being a participant in those systems and structures (Glanville, 2004). This description might also be applied to design practitioners engaging in design processes, where, as individuals, they bring their personal expertise and experience into play with a range of other influences and collaborative frameworks: What happens in second-order cybernetics? The distinction between the first-and second-order cybernetics depends, as has already been developed, on a change in attitude to the observer who, in second-order cybernetics, is understood to be both within the system being described and affected by it. That is to say, the boundary of what is being observed is no longer the same. Where there was, in the case of first order cybernetics, a crucial boundary

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between the observer and the system-and-goal (in the terminology used here), in the case of second-order cybernetics there is no such boundary (Glanville, 2004, p. 6).

For design theory and research, the debates about knowledge of design, and knowledge for design, engage with the difficulties of addressing complexity and constant change, in the configuration of knowledge and knowing (or not) in real-world contexts and situations. As described by Glanville above, in second-order cybernetics, there is seen to be no boundaries between the observer and the observed. Similarly, the designer is at once both observer of the process, and at the same time, a participant in the development of that process, in the context of the world and the communication taking place. A good way for creative practitioners and designers to better manage their dual roles as being both, and at the same time, participant and observer, is to look closely at this process of conversation itself, as an open-ended, yet dynamic interplay which inevitably produces a new thing through the interaction of the conversationalists at the time, similar to the circularity of conversations that take place in everyday life. Glanville characterises a cybernetic praxis around conversation as communication, with reference to Gordon Pask: However, there is at least one account of communication that transcends coding. This is the conversational (dialogical) model developed primarily by Gordon Pask. In Pask’s version, understandings are not transmitted. Communication takes place between entities that build understandings (meanings) out of their interpretations of what they sense their conversational partner (or partners) offer them. This understanding is fed back to their partner(s) in new offerings that the partner(s) in turn interpret and compare to their original intention (Glanville, 2004, p. 4).

Glanville’s description of this communication between participants is a good description of what actually takes place in teaching design practice. Following the initial briefing as a formulation of the situation at hand, the learning as discussion opens up to possibilities and opportunities, often drawing on knowledge from other fields and disciplines. The project leader’s role is to guide such developments as an observer, and, at the same, individually (and personally) respond to the configurations being produced by the student. What takes place is a structured conversation, a communication scenario, where commonalities and links across knowledge is identified and placed within the shifting framework of the emerging project for each individual student, and the teacher. In teaching and learning designing, the designers as both participants and observers (teacher and students) bring their own personal experience and knowledge to the table, yet the ways in which this occurs is largely embedded within the process, and is often not entirely evident as a structured process. Scho¨n and Wiggins (1992, p. 155) comment on the value of making the mechanics of this process of discovery and social transformation more explicit for design education: Not only is designing conducive to discoveries that prepare the student for further designing, but designing may be undertaken in order to build improved understandings of systems and structures. It suggests, moreover, that because designing can help to build knowledge of design domains, create new understandings of design problems, and foster the development of appreciative systems, it may be important to elicit conscious reflection on these things. The hard work of making explicit the discoveries gained through designing may help to make them more readily accessible and more subject to conscious control and choice.

In seeking to describe these meta-language underpinnings of design production (including design education), I identify second-order cybernetics, as a model for understanding the virtual nature of design as a heuristic and complex communications practice. I am interested in describing the internal conversation about project work as a reflective narrative, a style of personal writing and reflection, which, I suggest, when structured as part of designing, can provide a means to locate and better manage the communications practice of designing. I describe these internal conversations as dialogues and interactions between the self-as-observer and self-as-participant (Archer, 2003). In this scenario, an internal conversation ebbs and flows across the developing stages of the project, engaging with both personal and public spheres of knowing/knowledge. What results is a kind of dialogic narrative, which enacts the conversational flows, as implicit (coded) and explicit (abstract) knowledge comes together. This reflects Scho¨n’s (1995) description of designing as a “conversation with the materials of the situation”. These situational materials can be broadly framed as media forms and genres, communication context constraints, intended audiences and their histories, and other random influences, as each project manifests unique combinations and configurations of materials. Dearden (2006) describes the dynamics of the conversation with (digital) materials, around an argument for designing as Bahktin’s “utterance”. As a conversation amongst participants as networks of actors, Dearden (2006) suggests a working definition of designing activity as being a “material utterance”. He draws on Bahktin’s (1994) theory of the “utterance” and the notion of “speech genres” where contextual factors, including genre, speaker and audience work in tandem. On this basis, Deardon (2006, p. 204) encapsulates the utterance as the enactment of designing activity: The making of utterances (material or otherwise) that is oriented towards the form of future utterances to involve a different audience.

I propose that the internal conversation provides a subjective space where one can negotiate, conjecture and frame the potential impacts of one’s “utterances” in engaging with materials of a situation. This internal dialogue can reveal local and contextual knowledge for particular contexts, which may be valuable in the framing and understanding of design situations. In Figure 1, Boisot (1995) shows a model for how four quadrants of contextual (cultural) knowledge can be viewed, moving from the concrete and undiffused (local), through to abstract specialization of scientific and topical knowledge. The design process – a loosely structured cycle which involves both personal and public knowledge domains Lawson (2006) refers to Scho¨n’s conversation with materials to propose a model of designing in terms of groups of activities. He describes a structure for the process of design project development as a series of activities of thought-action; these are often fluid and shifting states of possibility, which weave around and across each other during the life cycle of the project: Our model of designing is beginning to appear then. We have groups of activities and skills that are all needed and are commonly found in successful design. They are “formulating” “moving” “representing” “evaluating” and “reflecting” (Lawson, 2006, p. 291).

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Local knowledge

Figure 1. Boisot’s typology of knowledge (1)

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Topical knowledge

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Source: Boisot (1994, p. 122)

In this messy, and expressive structure, the project shape emerges at the heart of the matter, accompanied by all manner of knowledge inputs and influences, which are shaped, by the participants and external factors, including personal and public elements. In this way, the design process cycle can be seen as a knowledge-building cyclic structure. After providing a rationale for movement of knowledge across personal and public domains, Boisot shows this movement as a trajectory, from uncodified and undiffused, to codified and diffused knowledge. At the some point on this trajectory, where the intersections between personal and public domains occur, in what Boisot terms diffusion, something “new” is created from the interactive parts of personal and public knowledge coming together, as an interpretative cultural exchange takes place, and meaning is framed as an exchange across domains of personal and public knowledge (Figure 2). This engagement of dialogue across knowledge types is similar to what occurs in the conversational process per se, as new meanings emerge from the interactions of coded and uncoded, personal, and public knowledge – the emergence of the new-something of the conversational process. Grounded in ethnography and management theory, Boisot proposes a knowledge building structure where culture, as flow, is the driving force of knowledge creation. He names this a culture space (C-Space), foregrounding the cultural aspects of knowledge creation, and highlights this in his theorizing of management for organizations and institutions (Figure 3). I propose that Boisot’s knowledge management model has particular resonance for design, as it too, is engaged in social and cultural processes of managing and transforming knowledge in the world we inhabit. Boisot (1995, p. 93) comments on the importance of understanding organizations and institutions in terms of cultural knowledge flows: . . . organizations and institutions are social attempts to manage information flows and that understanding of knowledge cycles and how they work can only improve their performance. By placing the cycles in a C-Space, we affirm the cultural dimension of knowledge creation;

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Figure 2. Boisot’s codification and diffusion of knowledge

Source: Boisot (1994, p. 144) CODIFIED

Proprietary knowledge

Public knowledge

Personal knowledge

Common-sense knowledge

UNCODIFIED UNDIFFUSED

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Source: Boisot (1994, p. 146)

we also establish a link between the cultural strategies through which knowledge is structured and shared, and the effectiveness with which institutions and organizations are managed.

Viewing the design process as a cyclic, open-ended knowledge-building and management structure is valuable for understanding design thinking, as it provides a grounded rationale for linking the personal and public knowledge domains, as causal and active parts of a heuristic communications cycle, which must accommodate all kinds of external constraints and enablings. In order to gain a perspective on personal knowledge as learning through experience, I describe five dialectical conversational styles from Baker et al. (2002). These are constructive methods for having productive internal dialogues, about personal perspectives and experiences.

Figure 3. Boisot’s knowledge typology (2)

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Experiential learning – five stages of dialectical conversation Baker et al.’s (2002) outline five dialectical frames for dialogic conversational learning exchanges between participants. These are proposed on the basis of extensive data analysis within teaching and learning contexts, evaluating conversations and stages of development around theories of experiential learning. These dialectical processes are based on acceptance of differences, contradictions and tensions within a topic of discussion; acknowledging that there is a multiplicity of views about a topic of conversation. They describe the five linked steps as follows: . . . the dialectic of the knowing dimensions of experiential learning theory; apprehension and comprehension. Next, the dialectic of praxis that incorporates the integration of intention-reflection and of extension-action. This is followed by examination of the dialectical tension between the epistemological, discursive process and the ontological, recursive process. The fourth is the dialectic of individuality and relationality that contrasts conversation as inside-out and outside-in experiences. Finally, the dialectic of status and solidarity describes the ranking and linking dynamics that shape the social realm of conversation (Baker et al., 2002, p. 52).

In dealing with human experiences, these five dialectical frames describe what is essentially, common sense, and everyday. This is shown in the simple and practical examples they provide as case studies. They describe how, through the process, these five modes work together and holistically to provide a conversational space, which is both open-ended, and bounded by what they term “norms”. These are patterns, which emerge in a group dynamic, as a result of iteration and personal dynamics. These norms represent the structure and identity of the group, and the individuals, as well understandings about positioning within the team. On an individual level, norms are the personal behaviour patterns of individuals, a new space of communication, which emerges out of these experiential dialogues: In conversation, the autopoetic process can be seen in the development of norms. As conversations progress, a normative value core that structures the conversation develops and at the same time creates boundaries that define the conversational learning space. . . . There is a paradoxical quality to conversational boundaries. Initially, it seems that boundaries inhibit or block conversation, and indeed conversation across boundaries is often difficult. However, the space created by the boundaries can create a space that is safe and open enough for the conversational exploration of differences across various dialectical continua” (Baker et al., 2002, p. 52).

I suggest that this bounded space to which they refer is the space where Boisot’s diffusion/codification occurs, and where the new-something can be located as an outcome of the conversational process between the participants, and individuals. As a participant (and also as observer), the designer is usually engaged in this same dialogic process, where these “norms” can be seen as in effect, the framework for consensus in the emerging design project, (the emergent new-something). Developing this has involved both their individual experiential input to the conversation, as well as collaborative conversations in a design team. In attempting to reveal the ways in which such internal boundaries and values can be made explicit, I argue that the designer would benefit from using the constructs of experiential learning to tease out a better grasp on locating and managing a design communication practice.

The internal conversation and the causal nature of self-reflexivity Archer’s (2003) work on structure, agency and the internal conversation is predicated upon understanding the constructed self as observer and participant, subject and object, who makes things happen, as well as someone to whom things happen. In her book, Archer makes a convincing argument for the causal powers of self reflexivity, which she proposes as the “missing link” in understandings of mediation, a position which she argues with reference to social theory. Archer proposes the replacement of a concept of introspection (perceptual observation), with the “inner conversation”. This reframing of the causal nature of self-reflexivity is a keystone of her position: The account of how structures influence agents, which will be developed throughout this book, is entirely dependent upon the proposition that our human powers of reflexivity have causal efficacy – towards ourselves, our society and relations between them. However, reflexivity, which is held to be one of the most important of personal emergent properties, is often denied to exert causal powers – in which case it becomes less interesting or of no importance at all in accounting for any outcome. To revindicate the influential nature of reflexivity is thus essential to the present enterprise (Archer, 2003, p. 9).

Archer goes on to discuss the significance of the internal conversation as a significant causal factor in human actions, as “actors” are confronted with constraints and opportunities, and need to respond to these, in a kind of constant review of the situation which leads to their decision making, adopting subsequent courses of action which they deem appropriate. As well as having relevance to intrinsic powers of personal self-transformation, Archer argues that the dynamics of the internal conversation also has relevance for engagement in social transformations. She refers to Peirce (1933) in justifying her position, citing one of his examples, of a man who re-decorates his house, and in so doing, brings his inner world into play with external constraints of his budget: Yet, it is only necessary to presume that he must work within his budget in order to raise some of the most crucial questions about structure and agency, and then about how these are handled within the inner conversation. In short, what does go on conversationally, as we seek to “realise our designs” whilst “living within our means”? Answering this question would involve laying bare those internal deliberations, by virtue of which we mediate social constraints. This entails thinking about our priorities, and deliberating how we weigh costs and benefits and in what currency; and it involves considerations about trade-offs, compromises and concessions in relation to our ultimate concerns (Archer, 2003, p. 78).

As it is not possible to fully outline the complexities of Archer’s argument in this paper, I propose to accept her position at this point, as one which convincingly demonstrates a dynamic relationship of potential influence and affect, between self-reflexivity and potential social transformations and reproductions. This relationship is important for design research, as it implicates the inner conversation (of the designer as actor) as an active player in the construction of the designing process, mediating and negotiating towards courses of action, which are constantly under review, and subject to all manner of external factors, as Goldschmidt’s “team of one” (Goldschmidt, 1995). Archer (2003, p. 98) proposes a model for the workings of the internal conversation, as one where in talking to oneself, we alternate between subject and object in a turn-taking manner. This occurs as a sequence of revision around the initial thought, a series of reflections which refine and revise the situation until a kind of agreement between subject and object voices is found. Archer (2003, p. 100) also refers to Peirce’s

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“musement” as daydreaming or fantasy, which can also be the subject of a dialogue between the subject and object voices, making comment on the topic at hand, a kind of internal bantering and niggling about the topic. As well as operating at a pragmatic and heuristic everyday level, Archer (2000, pp. 230-41) describes the internal conversational process as one which is also engaged with the wider self-values and priorities, in what she terms a dialogical scheme of “discernement, deliberation, and dedication”. In this schema, she claims that humans aim to prioritise their “ultimate concerns” around core values and emotions, as a sifting process of exchanged dialogues between the subject self and object self. Throughout this process, Archer claims, we come to self-knowledge, which is interior, and subjective, and which then have the potential to causally effect social transformations and actions, which are grounded in this self-knowledge. That is, we constantly modify ourselves, and have the potential then to modify the world around us as an extension of this activity, as the two activities are integrally entwined. Archer’s dialogical schema of subject-and-object narrative flow resonates with Boisot’s C-Space knowledge management flows, and Baker et al.’s dialogic experiential learnings. As cyclical and open-ended models of communication, these systems cohere around dynamic linkages between personal and public experiential and cultural domains. Configuring Archer’s constructive internal dialogues, using the five frames of experiential learning, can, I suggest identify sound and useful ways of expressing and enacting design autopoesis, blending and weaving self-knowledge into knowledge configurations. Having an internal conversation about teaching designing Using Archer’s dialogic “subject-self” voice, (S) and “object-self” voice, (O), I will now describe an internal conversation about the delivery of graphic design research curriculum with two different groups of students, which took place over a sustained period of time. This conversation is mainly about the design of a semantic and constructive approach to the teaching of visual design undergraduate curriculum, which is usually project-based. This conversation starts off with my attempts to find better ways to encourage and develop critical visual thinking, and interpretative styles and genres for visual reflecting. It is written here retrospectively, loosely following the flow of Baker et al.’s (2002) five experiential learning frames. The process of self-editing from personal notes is a reflection on the teaching and learning which took place as part of my own, and the students, experiences in the doing of the project. S I want to run the project to help find better ways to critique and discuss graphic designing, to find a kind of language to work with students and build critiques. Teaching graphics can be so frustrating – a lot of students find it really hard to say why they have designed something in a particular way, and how to get to a level of complexity in discussing visual design. This is also an issue for assessing their work, and being able to explain it. We are talking at each other a lot of the time. The verbal language we currently have just is not enough. O Ok fine. You are looking for a better language, a way to discuss visual design. Talking about visual language in a verbal way. This is hard, as visual semantic structures are fluid and virtual – nothing is fixed, it is so fluid and shifting. It is a virtual communication space, things change and reform constantly.

S If I run a project specifically about this, something will come out of it. The main thing to get started is to have an intention, for the students and me. What do we want to achieve? O Exploring ways of describing visual communication styles and grammars is good. You should find a way to start – Kelly’s (1991) personal construct model could be adapted for this. It is a constructive way to gain focus into a topic. It is a practical method, which could be good to try. Here is a diagram of how it could be used (Figure 4). S Ok I just want a starting point, there are over sixty students, so I need some structured exercises, which help me get to the learning objectives. O Using this method could lead you and the students into conversational spaces. Use three visual items, and then these become two/one, as concepts emerge through decision-making. The decisions made then become subject, and can be a way to build critical frames for reflections. S I need to have some meaning frames or filters to use this structure – I need to make a series of exercises which work together. I have to design a process, linking the activities, so one thing leads to another, and there are spaces for discussion. O Ok, so look at what kind of filters you could use to get students looking through, to start working with the construct method. These should be bridges for diving off, not high-walled boundaries. What are you thinking about the situation? Haven’t you been looking at visual grammar and semantic influences as drivers for meaning making? S Yes, but I am also realising the limitations of grammatical approaches, as everything is so fluid and changeable with visual communication. There are three filters I think about visual design, which I think I could use here. These are semantics – visual grammar, contextual – cultural and social situations, and emotion/experience – the affective and non-verbal element. These can and do all work together, as kind of blended and intertwined set of influences in sign assembling. They are fluid across each other as filters, which make meaning visually. This is an abstraction, but I can see 1

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Source: Developed with reference to discussion of George Kelly's personal construct theory, in Harri-Augstein and Thomas, 1991

Figure 4. Using three selected elements, to start a constructive conversation

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how this kind of framing could work, as a way to explicitly discuss visual language, in an unstable visual virtual environment. O That is good to start. They can form the basis for the exercises. Explain them, and then build them into the exercises, using the construct method. See what happens. Make sure the students know it is an open-ended process. Keep them on track – it’s about learning a way to evaluate and critique visual language, not a definitive structure. You should be also a learner in this process. S Ok I have designed a series of exercises, which involve the students critiquing their own found images and graphics, as well as photographs, which I give them to discuss. I am really not sure where this is going. O So, describes briefly the exercises, and how they work together. S Firstly, they each take their individual images, and apply the construct method using the three filters (semantic, contextual, emotion/experience). See where it leads them, and what comes out. I hope this makes them confident with the three filters, and how they are interchangeable as flows of linked sign chains. Second, to take my image sets, and play with these, placing them in construct formations, extending relationships and meanings from different combinations and using the three filters. It is a kind of visual language play. O Exactly, there is no right or wrong answers – everything is mutable and fluid. S The students are making constructs which blend the three filters together. These combine emotion/experience/context, semantics/emotion/experience, semantics/context. In this way, they can critique a specific combination of visuals. Each reading is unique, and there is more than one possible reading for every sign combination. O So, how are the students responding? What are they learning? How are they going? S It is a mixed bag – some are not sure at all, and want more concrete assurances. Some get it, and are combining away, having fun. Some just are not interested at all, they worry me. I can see from their body language that they are a bit uncomfortable, and they think they want more “structure”. I am trying to teach them to be individual thinkers, to link thinking and making, not teaching them a formula. I keep saying this to them. Maybe some do not want this. O Ok do not worry, that is always the way, you have to just keep a solid foundation around your objectives, and lead them through it. Maybe, you need to build in some other things to the final exercise, and try to get them all going. What is emerging as common themes, or trends in this kind of chain-building assembling? S The key thing that is happening is that everyone is making it up, both individually, and in groups. Some are better than others at it. Its about story-telling and narrative-making. Building sense out of signifiers, around the filters of context, emotion/experience and semantics. We discuss this, how a sign can mean different things in different contexts, the importance of context in adding social and cultural details, and in providing a framework for making meaning and understanding, the role of emotion, and individual responses to visual materials. The main thing is that everyone is now getting more confident in speaking about his or her interpretations. Even if they are not confident, they are all involved in the story-telling play. I think even the strugglers have given over to it now.

O That is what you had planned with this last exercise, so it is a good result. So what happened in the final exercise? S I asked each group of 5-6 students to critique an image set from my collections. These are sets of photographs about doing everyday things, shot in different cultural settings – such as a market in Koln, Germany, and a rural village outside of Shanghai, China. I asked small groups of the students to construct a narrative from my photographs, using the language of critique we had developed. The stories they came up with were really interesting. There were some similar themes, but a lot of variations on these themes. The main thing was that we had narratives with beginnings, middles and ends. There was drama, and tension around characters and what was being described for them. Maybe, this says something about the ways in which narrative works as a linking of signs through interpretation. We understand the world through our narratives. O So, you could conclude something about the role of narrative in meaning-making? S I think the results show that, through conversations around the set of images, a visual narrative emerges as meanings are positioned in unique configurations as related signs. This is really interesting to me – this approach has helped build the student skills in critiquing and understanding visual language, but it is a very individual thing, not as if you can just present a method and say ok this is how you do it. It is so much about the conversation, and working through possible relationships between visual signs as a fluid field of intersecting parts. I think this is really interesting. It gets back to the idea of the “materials of the situation” where the visual signs, as a field of potentially intersecting parts, make up the materials of the situation. O A lot of students commented in their final evaluation that they were surprised at the range of constructs and the variety overall. They commented that they realised, as a result of doing these exercises, that they had a bias towards particular blended genres of interpretation, which they had not been previously aware of, and that they had found new skills for critiquing their own approach to visual design, as a process of selection, structure and naming. This is interesting, as it shows there may be more to gain from using the three filters and developing examples of combinatory interpretations – a kind of semantic, emotion, and context filter play. O So, what kind of student feedback have you got? Does this support any of your own findings and thinking about the process? S Overall, the student written responses show that they also got this from it. Here, are two examples of student responses – there are many others more or less like this: In participating in these exercises, I learnt more about myself and why I do what I design. It became clear how and why I create what I create. It’s all related to who, what and where I am as an individual. The results of my designs reflect so much to my history and how I grew up as a designer in this world. For example, I noticed and understand more why I like to design things in proportion and geometrical; this is due to my history of love for architecture. Another thing is that I like to try out new ways of design, and challenge myself. The greatest thing I gained was through the group exercises was the realisation that you need to be able to empathise with another person in order to understand their constructs. This doesn’t have to change how you see things; rather, it can broaden the way in which you see it.

O

Ok so looking back, what have you learnt as a result of the project?

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S I did this project over two years ago. I have thought a lot about it since then, and what we all learnt. I have used these exercises again since then, and had similar results with different students. I see now that using these three frames or filters to explain and reflect on visual language is a good way to reflect and critique visual language. It is open-ended, and not prescriptive, but it does give a structure for discussion about meaning-making and visual communications. What is really interesting is the importance that came out about narration and story telling, as discussions about combinations of visual signs. I now think it would be good to go into deeper waters beyond these three frames, to talk about visual form in terms of code reflection, and intentional re-coding, using Boisot’s knowledge codification and diffusion model. This would be more about specific projects, where a situation and content had already been identified, with an intention to design an intervention as communication into a specific context. Then we could look at constraints and influences, and frame the project intentions around coding and “re-coding” knowledge as it moves through the stages of formation as flow. O Ok so now you could run another project, where students run their project proposals through a knowledge typology around coding and diffusing knowledge from their project proposals. You will need to explain Boisot’s model to them. You could do this as part of project development and setting up research directions as specific linking of the knowledge domains. You should explain to them it is a bit of an experiment in establishing their design researching strategies, and communication perspectives. S Ok I have a group of final year students in the research phase of developing a major project. These are visual design students, as well as journalism and advertising communications, so we are continually framing communication with audiences as the focus. We are working through a series of exercises which link the formulation of the situation with creativity, context, process, and precedent genres and forms. We just did mood board work, and they all have a series of key words and phrases. Yesterday, I gave a lecture about the typology model, and in the seminar, asked them to place their keywords, from the mood board work from the previous week, into the four domains of the typology. I have also explained this is a bit of an experiment, and the reason to try it is to help identify specific relationships in context formations, with an understanding of personal, proprietary, public and common sense domains. They know I am also a learner in the situation. O How did it go? What happened? S I was so intrigued with what happened – they all totally got the coding and re-coding intention, shifting knowledge flows across the spaces of their project using the keywords. We were able to see how each project, when viewed in this way, sat in a particular space on the typology. Some were all about “personal” – “public” some about “proprietary” – “public” “personal” – “proprietary”. They all had “common sense” elements. “Proprietary” became a big area – including softwares, IP, game IP, media genres and content formats. “Personal” was really important – both as their individual motivation and values, and identifying personal needs and attributes of the target audiences. “Common sense” was framed as issues such as readability, access, cost, and practical things, gossip and stuff from the media about local people, politics and social “myths”. “Public” was enormous as a container for metaphors of coded language and activities, cultural, social, idiosyncratic, and audience-based. We were

able to write up at least two detailed research tasks for each project. It really was a good exercise in moving the projects from a general intention to being more specific. The thing that surprised me most was that most of the group just slipped into the model so easily, when it is something, which I had thought, would be possibly too abstract, and I was not sure how practically it could be applied or understood. I am interested in how appropriate it was to do this exercise, and how the idea of “re-coding” and “diffusing” hybrid and alternative visual representations across knowledge domains, through thinking about designing, is really relevant to visual communication, much more than I had thought. This opens up new spaces for us to discuss knowledge coding and diffusion, getting a much more detailed picture of how the projects are progressing. I am now thinking about next week’s exercises and we can have more in-depth discussions about semantic coding and mapping for each of their projects. Conclusion I now return to the subject of this paper. I have attempted to outline the ways in which an internal conversation can help frame designing, as an activity where one is both participant and observer, and subject and object. The resulting dialogue between “subject” and “object” voices, whilst introspective, can also be developed and engaged with as a relevant and informative communications practice, engaging with the world-at-large. By engaging with the causal nature of self-reflexivity as I have described above, I believe that designers, and design educators, can exercise more effective management, understanding and control of, their own designing as an open-ended second-order cybernetic communications practice. References Archer, M.S. (2000), Being Human: the Problem of Agency, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Archer, M.S. (2003), Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Baker, A., Jensen, P. and Kolb, D. (2002), Conversational Learning: An Experiential Approach to Knowledge Creation, Quorum Books, London. Bakhtin, M. (1994) in Emerson, C. and Holquist, M. (Eds), Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, Translated by V W McGee, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX. Boisot, M. (1994), Information and Organizations. The Manager as Anthropologist, Harper Collins, London. Boisot, M. (1995), Information Space: A Framework for Learning in Organizations, Institutions, and Culture, Routledge, London. Dearden, A. (2006), “Designing as a conversation with digital materials”, Design Studies, Vol. 27 No. 3, pp. 399-421. Glanville, R. (2004), “The purpose of second-order cybernetics”, Kybernetes, Vol. 33 Nos 9/10, pp. 1379-86. Goldschmidt, G. (1995), “The designer as a team of one”, Design Studies, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 189-209. Harri-Augstein, S. and Thomas, L. (1991), Learning Conversations, Routledge, London. Kelly, G.A. (1991), The Psychology of Personal Constructs, Routledge, London. Lawson, B. (2006), How Designers Think: The Design Process Demystified, Elsevier, Oxford.

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Peirce, C.S. (1933) in Hartshorne, C. and Weiss, P. (Eds), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce,Vol. 4, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. ¨ Schon, D. and Wiggins, G. (1992), “Kinds of seeing and their functions in designing”, Design Studies, Vol. 13 No. 2, pp. 135-56. Scho¨n, D. (1995), The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, Arena, Alershot. Further reading Cross, N. (1982), “Designerly ways of knowing”, Design Issues, Vol. 3 No. 4, pp. 221-6. Dong, A. (2005), “The latent semantic approach to studying design team communication”, Design Studies, Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 445-61. Downton, P. (2003), Design Research, RMIT Press, Melbourne. Forester, J. (1985), “Designing: making sense together in practical conversations”, Journal of Architectural Education, Vol. 38 No. 33, pp. 14-20. Glanville, R. (1999), “Researching design and designing research”, Design Issues, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 80-91. Goldschmidt, G. and Weil, M. (1998), “Contents and structure in design reasoning”, Design Issues, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 85-100. Jonas, W. (2006), “Research through DESIGN through research – a problem statement and a conceptual sketch”, paper presented at Working Paper for DRS “Wonderground” Conference, Lisbon, November. Krippendorf, K. (2006), The Semantic Turn A New Foundation for Design, Taylor &Francis Group, Boca Raton, FL. Latour, B. (1986), “The powers of association”, in Law, J. (Ed.), Power, Action and Belief. A New Sociology of Knowledge?, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. Law, J. (1992), “Notes on the theory of the actor-network: ordering, strategy, and heterogeneity”, Systems Practice, Vol. 5 No. 4, pp. 3379-93. Russel, T. (2005), “Can reflective practice be taught?”, Reflective Practice, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 199-204. Scho¨n, D. (1988), “Designing: rules, types and worlds”, Design Studies, Vol. 9 No. 3, pp. 181-90. Stumpf, S. and McDonnell, J. (2002), “Talking about team framing: using argumentation to analyse and support experiential learning in early design episodes”, Design Studies, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 5-23. About the author Kaye Shumack is an Associate Professor in Design at the School of Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney, Australia, where she teaches design research and practice across a range of creative media and visual communications contexts. She has recently been involved in the establishment of Sydney’s free-to-air community television channel, TVS. With a background in photography and cross-cultural visual communications, she has been executive producer for a range of television media and design projects. She is currently completing PhD studies at School of Design and Architecture, University of Canberra, Australia. Kaye Shumack can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Design of the netgeneration

Streaming the flow of design and science in the educational practice of the creative industry Aukje Thomassen

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Faculty of Art, Media & Technology, Utrecht School of the Arts, Utrecht Research Institute for Digital Cultures, Hilversum, The Netherlands Abstract Purpose – This paper sets out to provide insight into the current debate on art, science and the new net generation of young professionals with the usage of the conceptual framework of cybernetics that will look into the dynamics of this netgeneration. Design/methodology/approach – Literature review will set the stage of the current debate on design education in the creative industries, which aims to provide a reflection. The theory and approaches are then applied to a case study in which the conceptual framework of cybernetics will be unfolded. These concepts are then evaluated in order to provide a proposal for continuing research. Findings – The paper provides insight into the mechanisms of knowledge management systems in particular for the context of design-making processes by the netgeneration. The findings are reviewed and concluded by proposing a method for continuation of research. The case study will benefit from the findings and as such design education itself. Research limitations/implications – It is not an exhaustive scope of literature review as the literature chosen is in particular very applicable to the case study in this paper. However, the point of departure is the current debate within the creative industries on design education and the netgeneration. Originality/value – This paper interconnects different elements which are the subject within different venues such as within design, science, pedagogy, and knowledge management. Therefore this paper might be applicable within these different articulated venues. Keywords Cybernetics, Design, Education, Creative thinking, Young adults Paper type Case study

1. Setting the stage of the creative industries Since, the early 1980s, knowledge management has become a hot issue. Business researchers, consultants and media pundits from all over the world have exhorted today’s companies to consider knowledge as an important aspect of production and a source of competitive advantage. Toffler (1981) and Drucker (1993) have described the transformation of Western society from post-industrial production (labor, capital and raw materials) to a society where knowledge is the predominant aspect of production and economic growth. Trends in economic globalization have led to ever increasing competition and shortening of life cycles of products and services. According to Porter and others, only organizations which are focused on ever increasing added value will survive competition. According to Reich (1989), the recipe for survival in the post-industrial information society is the creation of organizations which value learning, creativity and the ability to innovate. Pine and Gilmore (1999) pointed out that the current Experience Economy is an advanced service economy which has begun to sell “mass customization” services that are similar to theatre, using underlying goods and

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services as props. Their research points out the need for focus and prioritizing the creative industry. The creative industry is widely being defined as, “Those activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill, talent and which have their potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property” (British Department of Media, Culture and Sports). One of the recent publication by the Dutch Innovation Platform (2005) stresses this also, but moreover they see design research as one of the key aspects of future innovations in the creative industry. If so let us focus first on design education. The educational institute’s main target is to “prepare” their students for the professional practice. Especially, the expertise field of the creative industry in which the development of competences is “life-essential” for substantial development and growth of knowledge. In which a competence is perceived as the ability to achieve and develop certain capabilities which are articulated within and attached to a specific set of tasks. Therefore, the approach of knowledge management follows the routing of cybernetics as it looks at it from the perspective of the concept of the learning organization. In which the concept of a learning organization underpins the philosophy of learning by different individuals as part of their work process. The cyclic approach of cybernetics (Wiener, 1948) enables the individuals to learn and grow through learning and as such gain competence to fulfill the mission of learning. And according to Geyer (1994), it concentrates on: . . . the results of input-output transformation processes that may be explained by the structure of the system, while that structure can in turn be conceived as the resultant of previous processes.

Geyer shows that the art of cybernetics is the art of steering; the art of processes that flow within an input-processing-output model as education is perceived from in this argument. Central to this philosophy is the relation with the creative industry: students graduating will be employed by this creative industry. As such the competences set for this students must be a result of mutual and close interaction of education and industry. As a result within this perspective knowledge can be created, exchanged and shared. Preceding the competences for education and industry will disrupt the knowledge and hence – the growth and innovation so necessary and characteristic for the expertise field of creative industry. The up-and-coming creative class is shaped by its people, the creative class who give shape to their ideas on the basis of a wide range of disciplines in various networks. These skills are nourished within academia and professional settings. Especially, within the highly innovative field of art and science the demands are not only set by the institute but also by the professional practice as well. This demand brings forth the need for highly educated professionals in the area of overlap between the arts and science. Professionals who work together, with and for the creative industry. This ranges from dramaturgists, concept developers, technically skilled designers, artistic policy developers and managers with creativity and trained intuition. 2. From design to science to education In the past, design was rooted and as such designated to craft-education. The challenge it faces today is the shift from practice-based towards understanding (Friedman, 1997) design as a science. This new approach requires a vision on knowledge and experience.

As design used to be perceived as an experience, this new shift requires a paradigm shift of design as a reflective practice in which knowledge plays a profound role. According to Boorstin (1985), “The new currency of knowledge was the product of a special form of experience, to be known as experiment” and Friedman (1997), “To reach from knowing to doing requires practice. To reach from doing to knowing, one requires the articulation and critical inquiry that allows a practitioner to gain reflective insight.” The research will therefore acknowledge the dynamic features of design knowledge: combining theory and practice. The process of developing and shaping a science of design does not easily emerge from this articulated point of departure. For the proper deployment of knowledge for science this research proposes critical inquiry for analysis and synthesis of both practices (science and design). It perceives knowledge as a whole constructed on the distinction of tacit and explicit knowledge. Tacit refers to the personal design experience and explicit to the more formal articulated (or codified) knowledge. The knowledge creation then proceeds by the circular (spiral) process of interactions between explicit and tacit knowledge (Nonaka and Konno, 1998). The need for critical inquiry within this domain is also shared by the research of Glanville (1999), De Zeeuw (1997) and others. And as a consequence it can be stated that experience alone does not increase and improve the quality of design. In design education, learning is considered from a constructivist point of view: “Learning is a process of creating knowledge” (Weick, 1991). This definition of learning implies that knowledge is both the input of a learning process as well as the output of a learning process. When the learning process is observed from this angle, and it is part of the culture of the institution to value the learning process of the student as an important aspect to monitor (instead of focusing on output alone), this poses new challenges. On top of that, Scho¨n’s concept on learning is very applicable as it contemplates the role of designer from the practitioner’s angle. It helps us to understand the ambiguity of design and of the designer: The practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour. He carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation (Scho¨n, 1983).

Therefore, this paper takes on the concept and perspective on design education from a knowledge management angle. Not only articulated within the area of educational theories. Also the publications by UNICE (2000) and the works of Drucker (1993) corroborate the concept of the knowledge economy by introducing the creative industry as an important enabler for knowledge creation, as it main products are the transfer of experiences, ideas, skills and attitudes. Or to put it in other words the creative industry will engender the knowledge creation cycle. 3. Case: design education within science and arts To adequately meet these needs the University of Utrecht and the Utrecht School of the Arts put their thoughts and strengths together. On January 2004 the European Media Master of Arts (EMMA) program began an exciting new partnership with the University of Utrecht. The framework of the partnership is The Professional School of the Arts Utrecht (PSAU). The goal of this partnership is to combine EMMA’s

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established “hands on” technical and artistic expertise with the University of Utrecht’s reputation for the quality of its more formal scientific research methodologies. For students the value of the partnership will be to enhance the opportunities to operate effectively at the interface between art, science and the professional practice. In the PSAU Masters program, students develop and enrich themselves as professionals within the creative industry; creation and conception of value assets such as skills, attitudes and approaches reflecting their creative practices. Dynamics of all involved parties, the creative industries, educational institutes and the young professionals, in particular the non-linearity of the human actions in a system that predominantly is built in a non-linear way, are difficult to oversee let alone to react and pre-act on it. Or as the Darkness principle states: Even though a system is never completely known, it can be managed effectively [black box theory].

That’s why the program must enable students to work, research, design, and develop artefacts within projects that fully reflect the professional practice. They learn how to apply project management skills, develop design skills and theoretical knowledge into a coherent state of the art design, meeting the client requirements. The PSAU education strives for adequately reflecting professional practice and as such must be open and flexible for the changing dimension of the new generation of young professionals: This is the first generation born with a mouse in their hands and a computer screen as their window on the world. Tweens understood icons before they could read. They now surf the Net with an ease and speed that belongs only to those who are at home in cyberspace (Lindstro¨m and Seybold, 2003, p. 3).

This net generation puts forward new approaches towards learning (Veen and Jacobs, 2005); his research points out, that interaction is elementary for learning. No longer is the classical image of students as “receivers” valid, they now participate, contribute and independently send knowledge and information. The net generation makes heavily use of new media tools (such as chat, wiki), processes content in a non-linear manner, is capable of handling and understanding more than four information streams at the same time. The main aim of the PSAU program is to create a common ground for the netgeneration that reflects the professional practice of the creative industry within the domain of design and science. The Darkness principle therefore supports the educational rationale; the common ground as a serious game in which the different actors (teachers, students, artefacts, industry and institutes) all play their role. The gameplay manages all the involved processes in which the interaction is crucial. If we deconstruct the academic program the game play and the self regulating processes will be unfolded. The Group Project Work is a two semester course module in which the development of (multi)media- and music-productions is the key strategy for acquiring professional skills and attitudes. The end-product of the module should be a client approved state-of-the-art application or creative artefact or project portfolio. These end-products have to be made either as a team effort, with different members of the group taking different roles and responsibilities, in a manner which reflects current industrial practice. The team consists out of design, computer engineering, and science students. The goal of the project is for students to enrich their professional practice with formal

and informal knowledge as in being part of a multidisciplinary team and as in applying project management skills, design skills, and theoretical knowledge into a coherent state of the art design meeting the client requirements. In the end, the required learning outcomes for the students are both from a formal and informal order: they will be competent to professionally deliver a client approved and state-of-the-art end-product. This end-product is the result of multidisciplinary team effort and responsibilities which reflects current industrial practice. Each team member is in charge of its own crafts and skills. The didactic model strives to reflect professional practice and as a consequence the student work in self-directed teams. In this model, we refer to supervision as supervision circle: . first and second supervision (lecturers/researchers) of the student involves guidance, support and conversation; . day-to-day support on group dynamics by tutor; . constant measurement and benchmarking of the academic level; . outside pressure of the professional practice (client) but most of all; . the self-regulatory aspects of all the team members in the group (the students themselves); and . the competition of all the groups (Figure 1).

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This diagram[1] provides an overview of all the involved actors and their manner of feedback. The crux of the success of this didactic model is its self-regulating character. According to Stewart, this model takes on a behaviorist approach, in which any object

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examines its output and the relation of this output to the input. As such it can be perceived that the actor will always examine the output received in order to react upon it and start the input. This concept of circular causality that each actor does respond on the previous input provides the model with an internal flow. Maturana (1997) stresses the fact that living systems are open to flow of matter and energy. This consistency within the system is the point of departure for assessing both students and the academic level. If we deconstruct the model, we can distinguish different modes of assessment: (1) Internally the students are assessed in different modes: . Examination and forms. The students are supervised on a nearly weekly basis by two experts out of the field. The supervision promotes critical thinking and (self-)reflection of the students individually and by group level. The students respond very well to this approach as it reflect and triggers their demand-driven approach. They are solution driven, in need for openings and answers. This feed forward supervision is completed by two formative and official assessments. Both group and supervisors are “forced” to evaluate and assess the work (in progress and the end product) in a formal and more restricted manner. The assessment is accompanied by examination regulations and forms. This negative feedback mechanism as such enables supervisors and students to respond and proceed. . Peer pressure. Within the group the students are required to perform in such an educational context that really reflects the professional practice. This brings along peer-pressure; they need to support, trust and communicate their skills, attitudes and knowledge amongst each other. Plans and task divisions are outlined on these aspects and that makes the student both an observer and active actor in the group. Their understanding and building of mutual frame of reference is created within conversation. They learn through the interactions constructed in this model. The group conversations are really the basis of all that is known. This looping-around across perspectives enables them to construct a common ground. They take position shape their design identity, articulate opinions and feelings. In sum, it creates a lot of formal and informal knowledge. (2) Professional practice. Owing to the continuing dialogue with the creative industries the institute manages to stay on top of the innovations and developments. Part of this dialogue is involving the client as one of the assessors of the state-of-the-art end product. They students present their work in progress during the whole period a few times, the client provides negative feedback. The response is the input caused by a previous output. This assessment is partially indicative for the quality of the students work. The other part of benchmarking with the creative industry are key moments in which the end products are shown to the outside world and as such being evaluated by the market and potential employers and fellows. This form of assessment is less formative and navigates more along the line of feed forward mechanism. The impulses given makes the actor respond again.

These forms of assessment are carefully mapped onto the concept of circular causality feedback loops occur whenever part of an output of some system is connected back into one of its inputs. The didactic model is a complex and fragile system as it is built on people who are observed and observing. Understanding the dynamics and mapping constant assessments makes it adaptive and rich. Consistent throughout each interaction, assessment or conversation is the exchange and creation of knowledge. In other words, “there is a reality independent of the observer” of the didactic model where we strive “to construct a consensual domain whose structure and behaviour is deemed to be independent” (von Foerster, 1982). In sum, the outcomes of the both MA programs are as to what the students formally learn: . to be prepared for the complexities of multidisciplinary projects and the necessary management skills to successfully complete a project of that kind; . design and development skills such as usage of software; . to develop an understanding of management procedures to complete all phases of project management form original concept development through to delivery and de-briefing; . to conduct self directed research, both applied and theoretical, at M-level; . to explore a full range of research methods and technological applications with relevant case studies comparing and evaluating their application in the field of Multi-media; . to reflect on the relevance and applicability of theoretical and models and insights in their creative practice and to bring theory and practice into meaningful resolution; . to structure and sustain a coherent self-directed contribution to complex externally assigned project(s) over an extended period of time; and . to manage and co-ordinate their own skills and those of others in a manner which delivers results which are both innovative and practical. Informally learn: . to work in multidisciplinary teams and deal with their group dynamics; . to balance their personal desires in their designs vs the wishes and requirements set by the client and the context; . to develop the critical self-reflection needed to continuously question underlying assumptions of any proposition or assignment set by the context or the client; . to take an informed position on the meaning and status of research in the context of Multi-media; . to be able to discuss and present research concerns and interests employing an appropriate level of knowledge and references; . to develop the skills of sharing critical dialogues and conducting debate around a variety of specialisms; and . to develop and reflect upon their personal professional practice by their dialogue with the industry.

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And as an institute we strive for: . providing the students with the skills and resources needed to successfully resolve a complex externally sourced assignment(s) which closely mimics future complex work situations in a safe but rigorous learning environment; . developing the skills needed interrogate assumptions underlying a given assignment with an intensity sufficient to lead to innovative outcomes and a more developed subject area discourse; . understanding a variety of the project models and methodologies including tasks, roles and responsibilities required to successfully resolve projects of this complexity; and . providing for a multidisciplinary environment in which successful cooperation with people from other disciplines and backgrounds is vital for successful completion of the projects. This compiled list refers to set of competences that both the student will acquire and the institute will foster. The supervision circle and this list again are exemplary elements for a cybernetic approach on design education: We have to take certain things as read. We have to fall back on routines in which previous thought and sentiment has been sedimented. It is here that the full importance of reflection-on-action becomes revealed. As we think and act, questions arise that cannot be answered in the present. The space afforded by recording, supervision and conversation with our peers allows us to approach these. Reflection requires space in the present and the promise of space in the future (Smith, 1994).

4. Knowledge management in design education Within the setting of group project work formal and informal knowledge is being created and shared. First of all more specification is required in order to identify the meaning and effect of formal and informal knowledge. On the pedagogical level the group project can be classified as experiential learning in which problem solving plays a central role. The knowledge created occurs outside the traditional setting of classroom-based education. Students practice their profession within a real context such as experiencing professional practice, building up an understanding and reflection of social practices and group dynamics and finally develop their design skills. Hence, the didactic model concentrates on: . . . the results of input-output transformation processes that may be explained by the structure of the system, while that structure can in turn be conceived as the resultant of previous processes (Geyer, 1994).

Investigating the concept of knowledge according to the conversation theory (CT) of Pask implies a knowledge understanding from the perspective of effective communication. As outlined, design education within the creative industries is constructed on mutual understanding and close interaction with industry and education. In comparison with other models, the CT model brings science into “action” (Scott, 2001), this understanding evidently can be applied onto design as well. The model of CT looks at knowledge as coming to know in terms of “knowing why” and “knowing how”. This approach mirrors the didactic model; they learn by being

ambitious to know how and why in their problem-solving manner. The CT model takes all the different actors within the full conversation into account (student, institute and expertise field as well) where the overall aspect of learning is crucial; it is a process of adaptation and necessity. “One cannot not learn” (Scott, 2001). Learning is acquiring knowledge: why and how to. Knowing why involves the cognitive and conceptual knowledge and is critical to the system, whereas knowing how involves procedural and performance knowledge and is aimed at effective pragmatism. Both elements are founding fathers of design; the ability to critique and develop and crafts and skills to accomplish it all. Though the design profession is in particular an area in which it is difficult, or not even possible, to formalize the knowledge created: The design profession is a contemporary field growing within the university. Having few historical roots in the philosophical tradition deeper than the last few decades, we have yet to shape a clear understanding of the nature of design. We do not agree, therefore, on whether design knowledge constitutes a discipline, a field, or a science, one of these, two or even all three,

As Friedman (2000) so adequately noted. design research has its foundations within a variety of disciplines, such as art, philosophy and humanities, engineering, and IT. Much research has been spent on the taxonomy of design and its implications for design research. The value of design research is also present within the debates and arguments set already in the research by Frayling (1993) in which he defines three key modes of design research; research into design, research through design and research for design. Understanding of design has been researched thoroughly and, is still a continuing process as new fields emerge within this domain. Central to design is that it is a process. The rooting of design is situated within both theoretical and practical domains. The challenge of this new emerging field is to articulate formal and informal knowledge retrieved through formal and informal practices. The role of knowledge is of particular interest and importance as the field is still to be articulated in its taxonomy and ontology (Friedman). Knowledge can help, support, provide exchange and as such increase knowledge of, knowledge for and knowledge through design research. Knowledge enhances inter-disciplinary dialogue, mutual learning, facilitates research education, and promotes innovations in different fields.

5. Promotion of knowledge creation Knowing is the essence and duality of design research but how do we promote it? Mapping the current situation along the research of Krogh et al. (2000) on “enabling knowledge creation,” they have defined key enablers which promote the knowledge creation process: . creating the right context; . managing conversations; and . globalizing local knowledge. These concepts, although from the knowledge management discourse, are highly applicable in the above articulated model of the group project work approach towards learning and the role of the artefact.

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5.1 Creating the right context Effective learning depends on an enabling context, which can foster ideas and facilitate the articulation, creation and evaluation of learning experiences. As such the whole process of knowledge creation requires the necessary context or “knowledge space.” Creating a “right context” is crucial to student-centered learning and typically requires the institute to initiate a learning process by stating a problem or assignment. By offering the students a formal assignment from the industry a context is created and the student will be enabled in its knowledge creation. 5.2 Managing conversations Educational facilitators in student centered education often apply the beneficial effects of conversation on individual learning processes. In coaching student groups educational facilitators often rely on conversations for the purpose of stimulating intellectual effort, promoting the articulating of progress and structuring the workflow. These Socratic dialogues stimulate students to articulate the knowledge and learning experiences acquired and promote critical reflection. The students must be supported by their domain related supervision involving both a creation and process. It is within this manner design work can fully flourish as supervisors keep a close watch on relevance and connection to the assignment, the quality and creative innovation of the end-product. 5.3 Globalising local knowledge Critical to the quality of learning processes is the flow of information between students, educators and the institute. Supervisors require access to articulated learning experiences to enable coaching or evaluation of student-users. Peer learning can be promoted by enabling the exchange of learning experiences within and between student groups. Furthermore, the institute may require the collection of research papers, concepts, project plans and the final end-product. As a consequence the institute requires the students to upload and share the articulated experiences formal and informal: as in uploading formal deliverables but also informal logs elaborating on their (personal) experiences. So both articulation and reflection on local knowledge will be globalised with the usage of an e-learning environment. And can therefore be shared, created and exchanged. 6. Challenges All this insight and mapping still leaves us standing at the doorstep of a potentially fruitful and rich understanding. We know how to and why we need to promote a knowledge driven environment. This brings us to the essential challenge of how to enable knowledge creation and exchange of both formal and informal knowledge. In his work Pask refers to p- and m-individuals as elements for circular learning. Though we need to establish tools and methodologies on how to sustain informal knowledge: Without a mathemetical or logical apparatus there is no direct reading of facts, because this apparatus is prerequisite. Such an apparatus is derived from experience, the abstraction being taken from the action performed upon the object and not from the object itself (Piaget, 1956).

Pask stresses the coherent relation of p- and m-individuals; m-individual represents the self-productive network that supports p-individuation, through conversations

(Scott, 2001). Therefore, I propose participatory research as a vehicle for thoroughly investigating each other knowing why and how to. By the creation of a community of practice (from hereon referred to as CoP) the construct of m and p is assured. A CoP brings together different actors (p-individuals) in the didactic model and with the usage of a set of procedures creates a network (m-individual). The concept of CoP communicates the process of learning when bringing actors together who share a commonground (problems). The CoP continues over a certain period of time in order to share ideas, find solutions, and build innovations. It helps to support social capital, nurturing new knowledge, stimulating innovation, or sharing existing tacit knowledge within an organization (Wenger, 1998). And therefore supports the idea of organizational learning as proposed in the beginning of this paper: For organizations, . . . learning is an issue of sustaining the interconnected communities of practice through which an organization knows what it knows and thus becomes effective and valuable as an organisation (Wenger, 1998).

The CoP will raise topics in the discussions that need to be addressed to on a how-to and why level from the perspective of knowledge. The responses on these topics are then reflected upon, organized and developed into articulated end-results that can find their way into the system as an input for teach back-aspects. And as a result can analyze and organize them in terms of hierarchical or heterarchical knowledge that provides us again insight on how-to and why issues. Considering the dilemma’s set out in the previous paragraphs this research tries to aim for exploring this new territory in which the focus in the CoP will be on: (1) How can we separate design knowledge from design experience, in other words to go beyond the product? (2) If so what kind of products of design research do we have? (3) Do these products require a new system of exchange and reference in comparison to the overall academic referencing system? Constructing design as a science sustaining deployment and growth. (4) How as a design research community can we capitalize on these results in terms of: . developing of research methodology specifically designed for the reflective practice of design research; and . development and deployment of didactic models for design learning within the new paradigm of design science Overall the research tries to enhance a mutual frame of understanding and cooperation in which we develop a scholarship and knowledge in design by sharing knowledge across the boundaries of design disciplines. Offering open access to knowledge assets (products from learning – formal and informal), in which we strive for an international effort to make knowledge and information throughout both academia and creative industries freely available. 7. Concluding Friedman puts it so grandly and profoundly forward why design should be making the shift towards research and science. The more comprehensively designers

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understand fundamental principles, the more effectively they will further the competitive goals for which they are responsible. A scientific approach to design is more likely to be successful than any other approach. The more comprehensive and richly complex the approach, the more scientific. This requires an understanding by the designers of theory, complexity and problem solving. Education will enhance and enrich the designers perspectives and practices which in their turn will meet the demands set by the expertise field of design research. This iterative behavior characterizes the flow of knowledge and information through academia and the creative industries. The research is originated as a response to traditional approaches of design as a practice (craft). An important focus of the approach is the ability to enable knowledge creation and exchange. This is where concepts and ideas from the field of knowledge management appear to be highly applicable to an educational setting. In which the philosophical understanding of the role of the artefact is of high value for knowledge creation and exchange within such a dynamic and innovative field. Consolidating it as an interdependent research area will promote the emancipation of design research. This paper has presented different interlocking domains though further research and investigation of the work of Pask is strongly advised in order to progress. Note 1. This diagram comes out of EMMA course handbook and is developed and articulated by the Graduate School of Art, Media, Music and Technology at the Utrecht School of the Arts in The Netherlands. References Boorstin, D.J. (1985), The Discoverers, Random House, New York, NY. De Zeeuw, G. (1997), “Second order organizational research”, in Achterbergh, J., Espejo, R., Regering, H. and Schwaninger, M. (Eds), Organizational Cybernetics, Nijmegen Business School, Nijmegen. Drucker, P. (1993), Post Capitalist Society, Butterworth & Heinemann, Oxford. Frayling, C. (1993), “Research in art and design”, Royal College of Art Research Papers, Vol. 1 No. 1. Friedman, K. (1997), in McGrory, P. (Ed.), Design Science and Design Education, The Challenge of Complexity, University of Art and Design, UIAH, Helsinki, pp. 54-72. Friedman, K. (2000), Creating Design Knowledge: From Research into Practice, Department of Knowledge Management, Norwegian School of Management, Oslo. Geyer, F. (1994), “The challenge of sociocybernetics”, Kybernetes, Vol. 24 No. 4, pp. 6-32. Glanville, R. (1999), “Re-searching design and designing research”, Design Issues, Vol. 13 No. 2. Innovatieplatform (2005), Creativiteit: de gewichtloze brandstof van de economie, Innovatieplatform, Den Haag. Krogh, G., Icchinjo, K. and Nonaka, I. (2000), Enabling Knowledge Creation, University Press, Oxford. Lindstro¨m, M. and Seybold, P. (2003), BRANDchild: Remarkable Insights into the Minds of Todays Global Kids and their Relationships with Brands, Kogan Page, London.

Maturana, H. (1997), Metadesign, Instituto de Terapia Cognitiva (INTECO), Santiago de Chile, available at: www.inteco.cl Nonaka, I. and Konno, N. (1998), “The concept of ‘Ba’: building foundation for knowledge creation”, California Management Review, Vol. 40 No. 3. Piaget, J. (1956) in Tanner, J.W. and Inhelder, B. (Eds), Comments in Discussions on Child Development,Vol. 2, Tavistock, London. Pine, B.J. and Gilmore, J.H. (1999), The Experience Economy, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA. Reich, R. (1989), The Company of the Future, Free Press, New York, NY. Scho¨n, D. (1983), The Reflective Practitioner. How Professionals Think in Action, Temple Smith, London. Scott, B. (2001), “Gordon Pask’s conversation theory: a domain independent constructivist model of human knowing”, Foundations of Science, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 343-60, special issue on The Impact of Radical Constructivism on Science, (ed.) by A. Riegler. Smith, M.K. (1994), Local Education, Open University Press, Buckingham. Toffler, A. (1981), De Derde Golf, Uitgeverij Veen, Utrecht/Antwerpen. UNICE (2000), Stimulating Creativity and Innovation in Europe, Union of Industrial and Employers’ Confederations of Europe, Brussel. Veen, W. and Jacobs, F. (2005), “Leren van jongeren, Een literatuuronderzoek naar nieuwe geletterdheid”, Surf Onderwijsreeks. von Foerster, H. (1982), Observing Systems, Intersystems Publications, Seaside, CA. Weick, K. (1991), “The non traditional quality of organizational learning”, Organization Science, Vol. 2 No. 1. Wenger, E. (1998), Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Wiener, N. (1948), Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Hermann et Cie/MIT Press, Paris/Cambridge, MA.

Further reading Bijk, E. and Thomassen, A. (2002), “Knowledge management in design education”, Global issues of Open and Distance Learning, EDEN Society, Granada. Bijk, E., Thomassen, A. and Renger, W. (2002), “E-Learning and arts pedagogy”, Proceedings of “e-Learning and Distance Learning in Arts Pedagogy” 7th ELIA Conference, “Comhar” Dublin, Ireland. Brummelhuis, T.A.C.A. (2000), ICT-monitor 1998-1999, University of Twente, Enschede. Bunge, M. (1982), “Demarcating science from pseudoscience”, Fundamenta Scientiae, Vol. 3, pp. 369-88. Collier, J. Jr and Collier, M. (1986), Visual Anthropology. Photography as a Research Method, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Drucker, P.F. (1999), Management Challenges for the 21st Century, Harper, New York, NY. European Commission (2005), Future of Creative Industries. Implications for Research Policy, European Commission, London. Hofman, H. (2003), Kennis en competentie: Competenties in onderwijs- en bedrijfscontext, Fontys Interactive, Eindhoven.

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Holmes, B. (Ed.) (2000), Future Research Issues in Advanced Learning Environments: Next Steps in Learning Futures, IST evaluation report, Luxembourg. Laurel, B. (2003), Design Research, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Member Networks (2004), “Distance learning and eLearning in European policy and practice: the vision and the reality”, Policy Paper of the European ODL Liaison Committee approved by the Member Networks. Postman, N. (1992), Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Vintage, New York, NY. Richardson, S. and Courtney, J. (2004), “A churchmanian theory of knowledge management system design”, Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Hawaii, HI. Tapscott, D. (1998), Growing up Digital – the Rise of the Net Generation, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Thomassen, A. (2003), “In control: engendering a continuum of flow of a cyclic process within the context of potentially disruptive GUI interactions for web-based applications”, PhD thesis, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth. Thomassen, A. (2005), “Group project work: professional practice of formal and informal knowledge creation and exchange”, Proceedings: Joining Forces, UIAH, Helsinki. Thomassen, A. and van Oudheusden, M. (2004), “Knowledge creation and exchange within research: the exegesis approach”, working papers of Art and Design, United Kingdom. Thomassen, A. and van Oudheusden, M. (2005), “Practice based research: theory and practice within the exegesis approach”, Cumulus working papers, 2005, University of Art and Design, Helsinki. Vermunt, J. (1992), Leerstijlen en Sturen van Leerprocessen in het Hogeronderwijs, Naar Proces Gerichte Instructie in Zelfstandig Denken, Swets & Zeitlinger, Amsterdam. Weggeman, M. (1997), Kennismanagement, inrichting en besturing van kennisintensieve organisaties, Scriptum, Schiedam. About the author Aukje Thomassen is a Post Doctorate Researcher on design research for the creative industry. The research focuses on knowledge management to meet the competences set by the industry using the conceptual frame work of cybernetics. She has been involved in the (inter)national debate on the creative industry as a policy advisor and researcher such as for the Dutch Innovation Platform. Next to this she is a Managing Director of the Professional School of the Arts Utrecht, a collaborative MA and PhD program with the University of Utrecht. She also supervises (MA and PhD) students within the Postgraduate School of Art, Media and Technology at the Utrecht School of the Arts. Aukje Thomassen can be contacted at: aukje@ dorstighart.nl

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A framework for designing sustainable urban communities

A framework for designing

Shann Turnbull International Institute for Self-Governance, Sydney, Australia

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Abstract Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to show how the sustainability of urban settlements can be improved by treating as a variable the design of property rights: to realty, corporations, and currencies, and the communication and control architecture of communities. Design/methodology/approach – System science shows how the resulting increases in the richness and variety of communication and control channels improve the governance of urban precincts. The new variables also provide a way to integrate the design of the built environment into the design of its governance architecture. The scope of orthodox economic analysis is extended to include the value of assets and liabilities to provide additional feedback signals. This more holistic economic framework increases the richness of the “semiotic” channel of social communication and control that complements those based on senses, words and prices. Findings – The analysis reveals self-reinforcing feed-forward and feedback channels between the use and maintenance of the built environment and its governance architecture not available in less holistic design frameworks. Practical implications – The paper identifies the need for urban planners to extend their discipline to become governance architects and how the knowledge of system scientists can be applied to improve the design of capitalism. Originality/value – A new design paradigm is identified that allows improvements to be introduced in the ability of towns or suburbs, to become self-financing, self-governing political units. The paradigm identifies how capitalism can be designed to become more efficient, equitable, responsive, and democratic. Keywords Cybernetics, Economics, Governance, Property rights, Urban areas, Communities Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction This paper shows how the ability of an urban community to be sustainable is facilitated by a design framework that introduces time limits, as found in all living things, for property rights to realty, corporations and money. Ownership and control rights that terminate over time or “die,” as exist for all intellectual property are described as “ecological.” The framework also introduces as a variable the design of the communication, control and decision making architecture of communities – referred to as its cybernetic or governance architecture. Social analysis is traditionally undertaken on the assumption that the nature of property rights is fixed, rather than being a variable subject to design. By making property rights and the cybernetic architecture of communities a design variable, a different framework or paradigm is introduced to extend the study of economics, urban design and other disciplines that implicitly assume that the existing designs represents the “natural order of things.” Instead of implicitly assuming that property rights are static, exclusive and perpetual the innovation of this paper is that they can be designed to become dynamic, inclusive and time limited. Dynamic rights increase the variety of feedback and feed

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forward channels to increase the importance of the science of communication and control in the design of sustainable urban communities. This makes it important to also design their governance architecture. The process of design is defined by Ashby (1968, p. 252) as “what determines the final model, of how it comes to be selected” (emphasis in the original). The act of designing means that maker of a machine or the architect of a social organization is involved in selecting from all possible varieties. Ashby describes the design process as selecting in stages and this contribution follows this approach by first selecting a framework that determines how the more traditional details of design are executed. The criteria for the economy of an urban precinct to become self-financing also provide design criteria for the built environment. The interdependency of the visible and invisible structures of society requires that town planners acquire the knowledge of system scientists. System scientists in turn need to acquire knowledge of the: . operating characteristics of the four cybernetic channels (senses, semiotics, words and prices) that modern societies use to co-ordinate and govern their activities; and . limitations of humans to reliably receive, store, process and transmit signals. With this knowledge they can apply the laws of requisite variety of communication channels, decision making and control to design organizations that can mitigate the unreliability and inconsistency in human communications, control and decision making. To increase the richness and variety of social cybernetic channels, property rights to realty, corporations and money are considered a design variable. To take into account changing economic values introduced by dynamic property rights when transactions do not occur to generate a price signal, the scope of orthodox economic analysis is extended to include the value of assets and liabilities. The traditional remit of economics has been limited to the production and exchange of goods and services that ignore the windfall gains that accrue in property and how investors can get overpaid (Turnbull, 2006, p. 451). The holistic approach to both economics and property rights creates a design framework for improving the economic efficiency and equity in sustaining urban communities. The framework also provides a way of improving the responsiveness and participation of citizens in governing themselves in using, managing, maintaining, and developing the built environment. For a town or suburb to manage its affairs on a sustainable basis it needs a degree of political independence to take into account feedback information from its host environment, its citizens and trading partners. Political independence of an urban community is dependent upon resident ownership and control of its land, sites, services and productive processes. It also depends on the ability of its residents and their local government to operate on a self-financing basis to make them independent of, or being excessively controlled by, higher orders of government or private sector agents. Self-financing urban communities can be viewed like a micro economy and/or a “holon” (Koestler, 1967). Politically they could represent a local government body, suburb or a component of one. To further their financial and so political independence communities needs to eliminate or minimize the loss of economic value from:

. . . . .

imports exceeding exports; migration of its citizens; wages, salaries, and fees paid to guest workers; rents, profits, dividends, royalties, and fees paid to external property owners; and interest payments to external lenders.

These considerations provide criteria for designing the built environment, its governance architecture and its economic institutions, each of which provides feed forward and feedback information to each other as recognized by Howard (1946) in designing both the visible and invisible structures of Letchworth. The design of the invisible communication and control architecture of urban communities needs to take into consideration the limited ability of humans to receive, store, process and transmit data, and its higher derivatives of information, knowledge and wisdom. Humans have five senses of taste, touch, smell, sound and sight for detecting signals from others and their environment. The amount of data that can be communicated in bytes/second by each of these five senses has been measured by the Research Laboratories of British Telecom (Cochrane, 2000). No matter what technology is used to communicate between humans their ability to receive and transmit data and so information, knowledge and wisdom is limited by the physiology of their input and output channels. The export of data from humans is in practice limited to body movements and sounds because it is difficult to vary ones taste and smell and like touch requires intimacy. Communication through movement creates signs and symbols described as “semiotics.” A highly specialized form for semiotics developed by humans is writing/typing and an even more specialized communication channel is through the use of prices. The data intensity or “band width” of each channel decreases as its specialization increases. The richest input channels are the sense of sight and sound, then semiotics, words and price. The band widths, operating characteristics, limits and benefits of each of the four channels provide criteria for designing the invisible cybernetic architecture of urban communities as identified by Turnbull (2000b, p. 96). Different combinations of the four channels create different social outcomes that are characteristic of different political systems (Turnbull 2000b, p. 277). Humans also have limited ability to store or process bytes (Kurzweil, 1999). The design of human social organizations must therefore accommodate their limited neural ability to store and process bytes in this context[1] (Turnbull 2000b, p. 111). Not only do humans have physiological and neural limits in transacting bytes but also they can be inconsistent in how they interpret, process or use the data and/or create omissions, biases and errors in their communications with others. However, the cybernetic laws of requisite variety in communications, decision making and control provide the organizational architect with design strategies to mitigate these problems. The manner in which humans convert bytes into data, information, knowledge and wisdom is determined by nature and nurture with nurture being subjected to cultural conditioning. For example, the meaning of ownership is culturally determined. Traditionally nomadic Australian Aboriginals did not even have a word for ownership (Turnbull, 1986). The concept of ownership has evolved over time from the use and/or

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control of land. In squatter settlements the rule is “if you do not use it you loose it.” This rule introduces a dynamic dimension to the concept of ownership that is consistent with the efficient and equitable use of land or any other resource. An option not considered by George (1912) who sought the same objective but assumed that the rules of ownership were fixed rather than variable. As a result his solution of taxing the underutilized value of land introduced the dead weight cost of valuing each individual land title and administrating a tax system. Time limits promote efficiency because they can avoid a resource not being used. Time limits promote equity as it avoids a non-user-owner being over-paid by receiving rents in perpetuity or from non-owner-users being excessively exploited. Property rights without time limits only exist in regards to realty and corporate shares. All productive assets wear out, all intellectual property has time limits, and ownership of art and other collectable is limited to the span of human life. The introduction of time limited ownership of realty and corporations minimizes the loss of value from communities to external owners and so furthers their ability to become self-financing. It also increases the efficiency and equity of allocating resources within the community to support the hypothesis of this paper that ecological ownership facilitates the sustainability of urban communities. Another way value can drain out of communities is through interest payments. Households may spend up to a third of their income in paying mortgage costs or rent. Over half of household income can be spent on other goods and services. A community currency provides a way of identifying these costs and/or reducing payments outside the community. During the Great Depression (1929-1939), when the US banking system did not provide sufficient credit, thousands of communities created their own currencies described as “Stamped Script” (Fisher, 1934) that had ecological property rights. Stamp scrip was not created by banks but by local government authorities or chambers of commerce in the form of a voucher that lost all its value unless a stamp was fixed to it at a specified interval. Various rules were designed in different communities but typically a voucher or script valued at one dollar would loose all its value every Wednesday midnight unless a one cent stamp was attached each week. Stamp scrip was given away to citizens who could redeem them for their face value of one dollar after two years. However, during this time the issuer of the scrip would collect income from selling stamps for 104 weeks that would amount to $1.04. So a 4 percent gross profit was made on redeeming the scrip that was given away! Merchants accepted the 1 percent cost of the stamp per week as it represented only a fraction of the charge from a modern credit card that cost around 3 percent per transaction. Citizens accepted scrip and its 1 percent “demurrage” charge per week because it cost them nothing to acquire the scrip. The cost of the demurrage charge per transaction decreased with use of the scrip to make it more attractive than official money – even when it was available. If stamped scrip was used 20 times in a week its 1 percent cost reduced to 1/20th or 0.05 percent per transaction. The adoption of stamped script spread rapidly because it created credit without an interest charge. For this reason, it posed a serious threat to the banks licensed by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 who created credits that generated profits from earning an interest rate in perpetuity rather than fees for a limited time. As a result, local

currencies were squeezed out by “The New Deal” legislation introduced in 1933. However, local currencies are now appearing again around the world (CC, 2007). A currency with a demurrage charge provides an incentive to convert money into tangible assets that increase in value over time like trees, breeding cattle and man made productive assets. Demurrage money inhibits monetary speculation and eliminates discounting the future. This provides additional support to the hypothesis that ecological property rights facilitate sustainable communities. The ability of money to earn interest undermines sustainability because future values are discounted from the ability to earn interest today. As recognized by Islamic banking, the ability of money to increase in value from interest independently of any increases in real assets is inconsistent with the laws of nature. It would be difficult to explain to a visitor from another planet why an artificial token should be designed in such a way. Especially, when it is the cost of money that disadvantages investment in sustainable energy sources as discussed in Section 3. As a result the design of the current monetary systems is creating market forces to exacerbate climate change. Another design problem in the current monetary system is that it is based on central banking that represents a specialized form of central planning. As described by Jacobs (1985, pp. 156-81) a centralized monetary system in a diversified economy can misallocate resources in different regions from the feedback signals that it creates which must be based on the aggregate of all regions. This problem would be overcome with competing regional currencies as described Hayek (1976a, b). The following Section 2 considers a framework for designing self-financing self-governing urban precincts. The attraction for introducing a local currency defined in terms of sustainable energy is considered in Section 3. Section 4 illustrates how urban design framework creates the need for urban planners to become system scientists and how cybernetics provides criteria for designing self-governing sustainable urban communities. Concluding remarks on the interdependency of “cybernetics and design” is presented in Section 5. 2. Design framework of property rights to urban spaces This section considers the how the design of property rights to: community sites, services, dwellings, public areas, and commercial developments can further the ability of an urban precinct to become self-financing. The design of the current land tenure system creates private profits from public money invested in infrastructure to introduce gross economic inefficiency and gross inequity. This is illustrated by the building in 1999 of the Jubilee underground train line in London. About 11 new stations were built at a cost of £3.5 billion sterling. Riley (2002) reports that the aggregate uplift in the value of land within 1,000 yards of the new stations was £13 billion, £9.5 billion in excess of the cost of the whole project. If the land was held by community owned corporations, as described below: . all residents instead of a few land lords would have captured the windfall profits; and . the £13 billion in windfall profits could have been used as collateral for the community owned corporation to borrow the project cost of 3.5 billion to make the project self-financing.

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The value of urban land is created by how well it is serviced with: water, sewerage, power, roads, transport, communication, hospitals, schools, places of employment, entertainment, and recreation. The value is not in the land but how well the site is serviced by external public and private investment. The site also obtains value from the improvements on it which may be a dwelling, home unit, shop, office, factory or entertainment facility. To establish equity and efficiency property rights need to be designed to separate the externally created values in a site from those created by improvements on the site. The separation of private and community property rights is a common feature of condominium, company or “strata title” systems and in Community Land Trusts (CLTs). However, these “duplex” ownership systems do not provide separate publicly negotiable title deeds to each type of property right. Nor do they operate over an area sufficiently large to capture most of the values generated externally to any single site. What are required are two separate title deeds with one deed being represented by a share in a corporation that owns all the sites in a contiguous viable precinct. The other title deed would provide negotiable rights to a specific volume in space like an Australian “strata title”. One share in the land owning corporation could be issued for every square meter occupied by each residential strata title. In this way residents would own all the land occupied by non residents, trusts, partnerships, corporations and higher levels of government. Another way of thinking about the arrangement is that, it represents an incorporated unit of urban government that issues voting shares only to its residents be they home owners or tenants. Unlike a CLT and other forms of duplex tenure, its scale is sufficient to establish a public market for both private and community spaces to provide collateral for conventional lenders. There is no necessity to introduce any new law to create the duplex system of property rights described above that creates a Co-operative or Community Land Bank (CLB). Corporate constitutions possess replaceable rules and the rules can be designed to provide the most desirable property rights for the particular built structures in each precinct. Competition for investment between precincts would provide a way of determining the most efficacious designs. A CLB represents a design framework in which detailed rules can be designed. The “use it or loose it” approach could be applied to the property rights to strata titles and the CLB shares. Surprisingly, such dynamic ecological property rights could be used to attract investment in apartment buildings or in commercial improvements. The attraction for investors is that they would not need to purchase the site they occupied. The cost of a site in advanced economies is typically half the cost of a dwelling as reported in the USA by Davis and Palumbo (2006). For pioneer home owners in a CLB this creates half price housing as sites become self-financing and only the cost of the dwelling needs to be financed by its owner (Tunbull 1976, 1983). Commercial investors in a CLB can significantly reduce the size of their investment in return for relinquishing their ownership rights at the same rate that they write off their investment for tax purposes. Their rate of profit is not reduced for their investment in shopping centers, office blocks, recreational facilities or factories because they are not incurring any additional cost. However, their rate of return could increase as they are reducing the size of their investment. On the other hand, any windfall gains or “surplus profits” that arise from their investment operating for a

longer time than the tax write-off period, transfers to the CLB – and so to all its shareholders. Mass asset transfers can be achieved in this way not identified or explained by orthodox economic analysis to democratize the wealth of nations (Turnbull, 1975, 2006). “Surplus profits” is a concept not recognized by economists because it is different from the various ways the concept of “economic rent” is defined. Economic rent is typically described as the revenues required to maintain or produce production. Surplus profit is a complementary concept because it is the revenues not required for an investment in either productive or non-productive assets. Surplus profits are those in excess of the incentive required to attract investment in production, or other assets, that provide windfall gains (Turnbull, 2006, p. 455). Only residents in the precinct can own and so vote CLB shares to control their precinct. In this way external ownership and control can be almost eliminated. The ownership of the strata titles in investment dwellings transfers, as they are written off for tax purposes, to the tenants rather than the CLB. The CLB transfers ownership of the shares “stapled” to the strata title to tenants at the same rate. If investors wrote off the cost of their investment over 25 years, their tenants would obtain 100 percent ownership of both their dwelling and the CLB shares without paying any more than a normal competitive rent. This creates an incentive for the tenants to take over the maintenance cost of their dwellings to increase the return to investors. The incentive for buying a home rather than renting for pioneer residents in a CLB arise from obtaining half cost housing. If they leave their home and rent it out then they would loose ownership rights in both their strata title and the associated CLB shares at 4 percent per year to become co-owners with their tenants. This creates an incentive for non-user home-owners to sell their property rights. The price paid for the strata title on the open market would take into account the cost of buying the associated shares from the CLB who would price them in the same manner as a real-estate investment trust. The CLB would purchase its shares back from the seller at a discounted price to capture back some of the windfall gains created in the community by either public or private investment and/or by improvements in the quality of life created by how the CLB is governed. The values captured back from trading in its shares assist in making the CLB self-financing in a way not available to CLTs. CLTs also do not borrow money secured by the equity created from uplift in its land value like a CLB. Ideally, the CLB precinct will include a rich mix of commercial activities to provide rent/rates to service any borrowings to finance its infrastructure and/or cross subsidize residents and/or pay them a dividend. Ideally also, the number of dwelling in the precinct would be sufficient to support educational facilities up to a basic tertiary level with supporting health care services to sustain its mix of residents over generational changes. This would typically mean a population of from say from 50,000 to 100,000 residents. The above considerations indicate how the design of the visible structures in a community that seeks to be sustainable over generations needs to keep an appropriate demographic balance to maintain efficient use of its assets. This also implies an appropriate balance of dwellings for single people, families and retirees with a demographic equilibrium of migration in and out of the precinct. The challenge for system scientists/town planners is to design the architecture of the property rights and

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the architecture of community governance to automatically create self-correcting feedback signals and incentives to maintain the community on a sustainable basis. The failure of urban communities to achieve this over the last two millenniums has been documented by Jacobs (1985). Some of the variables which community planners could include in their design framework are the design of property rights of firms and currencies as is next considered. 3. Design framework for firms and currencies The previous section considered how to design property rights to eliminate external ownership and control of land to further the self-governance and self-financing of urban communities. This was achieved by only residents obtaining voting rights in a CLB. The use of ecological property rights provided a way to minimize the export of windfall and other surplus profits from external ownership of the built environment. This section considers how ecological property rights can be introduced to firms and money to likewise increase local ownership and control to minimize the export of surplus profits, interest payments and the import of goods and services. The problem of “foreign” ownership of firms was identified by Penrose (1956), who pointed out that they introduced “unlimited, unknown and uncontrollable foreign liabilities.” To minimize this problem and the unnecessary export of value, incentives need to be designed for shareholders to vote to change their corporate charters to relinquish their property rights to introduce an ecological form or ownership and control. The incentive required to make it attractive for shareholders to adopt ecological ownership is not excessive as shown by Turnbull (2000a, p. 409) because investors discount future cash at equity discount rates and then discount the future again for uncertainty. A bigger, quicker less risky profit in a limited time is more attractive than a slow, smaller and more uncertain profit over the indefinite future. The attraction for investors to accept limited life property rights is illustrated by investments in: a bet, theatre productions, films, research and development syndicates, patents, mining leases and mines, leasehold improvements and build own operate and transfer (BOOT) infrastructure projects. CLBs can provide incentives for firms to adopt ecological ownership from the terms on which they provide access to its sites and services and the rent/rates payable. Arrangements could be provided to shareholders similar to those outlined above for commercial property investors to make it attractive for them to transfer ownership to the CLB and/or its residents. In addition, corporations could issue shares to the CLB and/or its residents as part payment for the use of CLB sites and services. In the case of firms, there are operational advantages in designing the transfer of ownership to individuals involved with the firm such as employees, suppliers and customers (Turnbull, 1997, 2000a). No operating business can exist without such individuals who by definition become strategic stakeholders. The inclusion of strategic stakeholders in the governance architecture of US firms was recommended by Porter (1992). Ownership of firms by strategic stakeholders provides competitive advantages not available to investor owned firms (Turnbull 2000b, pp. 228-34, 2001). Besides, exporting value through their profits, dividends and windfall gains, firms can drain economic value out of their host community through interest payments. This drain is magnified by externally financed home loans and borrowings by the CLB.

The export of value from the community through interest payments can be minimized by the establishment of an ecological community currency and the CLB becoming a provider of mortgage finance. A review of the various community currencies listed by the complementary currencies data base (CC, 2007) reveals that they are designed in various ways that result in different operating characteristics, benefits and disadvantages. Most forms of local currencies represent a “shadow” complementary exchange system that operates in parallel with the official legal tender system to define its unit of value – as was done with Stamped Scrip. Ideally, a local currency should be designed to provide an independent unit of value to control inflation as described by Hayek (1976a). However, Hayek (1976a, b) did not consider how a national currency can misallocate the value resources of different regions and cities. This was pointed out by Jacobs (1985, p. 161) who stated that: Because currency feedback information is so potent, and because so often the information is not what governments want to hear, nations go to extravagant lengths to try and block off or resist the information.

Jacobs (1985, p. 163) explained: Individual city currencies indeed serve as an elegant feedback controls because they trigger specifically appropriate corrections to specific responding mechanisms. This is a built-in design advantage that many cities of the past had but which almost none have now. Singapore and Hong Kong, which are oddities today, have their own currencies and so they possess this built-in advantage (Emphasis added).

On way to design a currency signaling system is to define its unit of value in terms of a sustainable resource like the Kilowatt hours generated by energy obtained from the sun, wind, water, waves, geothermal, hydrogenases and/or fusion sources. As every community in the world has access to some source of sustainable energy it provides a global unit of value but one that can have a different value in each community (Morehouse, 1997, pp. 167-77). While providing a unit of value best suited for each location it need not necessarily carry out the other functions of money such as being a medium of exchange or a store of value. The reason why renewable energy sources have difficulty in competing with non-renewable sources is because they require over twice the amount of money invested for the same output. This makes the financial cost of renewable energy higher than the financial cost of non-renewable energy per unit of output. If the cost of money was eliminated with neutral or negative cost money then renewable energy generation obtain a greater economic advantage (Turnbull, 2007). The cost of writing off the value of the generators over their operating life can be similar from either source. A currency without an interest cost makes sustainable energy sources more economic. This creates a virtuous self-reinforcing mechanism to support a currency defined in sustainable energy dollars. There are many factors to consider in selecting a local currency. These and the design criteria for building a local banking system are considered by (Morehouse, 1997, p. 149-83). The governance of the local financial system in turn needs to be integrated into the governance of the local economy. A CLB provides a framework for the governance of a local monetary system to be integrated into the design of the cybernetic architecture of an urban precinct and its

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built environment (Turnbull, 2007). The governance architecture of CLB is next considered. 4. Designing the governance of local urban precincts This section considers criteria for designing the decision making centers and the communication, and control channels in a CLB to facilitate its self-governance. The design features would be written into the legal constitution of the CLB corporate entity. As such they could be changed by the members of the CLB. This means that the rules for making changes in its constitution need also to be appropriately designed. Some rules could be subject to by-laws that could be more easily changed than changing the constitution. Other rules could be subject to various decision making bodies that may be designed into the governance architecture of the CLB. The need for multiple decision making bodies also arises from the need to provide a division of power, checks and balances with distributed intelligence. Different types of decisions need to be handled by different people at different times in different ways as described by Gibson (1998) and other publications of the Neighbourhood Initiatives Foundation. This approach needs to be designed into the legal architecture of a CLB. The dominant cybernetic architecture of local government and corporations in general is a command and control hierarchy. As noted by Hock (1994): Industrial Age, hierarchical command and control pyramids of power, whether political, social, educational or commercial, were aberrations of the Industrial Age, antithetical to the human spirit, destructive of the biosphere and structurally contrary to the whole history and methods of physical and biological evolution. They were not only archaic and increasingly irrelevant, they were a public menace.

The assertion by Hock is supported by an analysis of the ability of centrally controlled hierarchies to have requisite variety of decision making, communications and control to govern the complexity of urban settlements. That is, hierarchies are “structurally contrary” to the cybernetics architecture of living things and so of cybernetic laws. Centrally controlled hierarchies also do not possess a division of power to provide checks and balances to meet the conditions for self-governance (Turnbull 2000b, pp. 113-26, 2002). The need to design a division of decision making power is also dictated by the limited physiological and neural ability of humans to transact bytes discussed in Section 1. This problem and the lack of variety of communication and control channels can be overcome by the decomposition of decision making labor into a number of decision making centers. This facilitates the allocation of decision rights as suggested by Gibson (1998). An approach that also creates a division of power required for self-governance as organizations with centralized control possess absolute power to manage their own conflicts of interest to allow absolute corruption. The resulting cybernetic architecture is described as “network” governance. All non-trivial employee controlled firms that have sustained their existence over generations possess network governance (Turnbull 2000a, pp. 177-98). This provides evidence that employee owned firms with a traditional command and control architecture cannot be sustained over generations and/or cannot be competitive. The theory and practice of network governance is not taught at schools of management as management implies a command and control structure. There is also a practical reason

for this educational gap as there is an insufficient market to attract either graduates or educational institutions. However, the emergence of network governance arises organically from operational and competitive forces among many small firms with command and control architectures in industries subject to rapid changes and intense competition as found in entertainment, construction, electronics and biotechnology (Jones et al., 1997). A striking feature of network governance is that its application within a firm seems to be limited to those controlled by its stakeholders as would be appropriate for a CLB. Another feature is that the existence of network architecture within a firm would seem to be more important in sustaining it than the details of its design as documented in case studies (Turnbull 2000b, pp. 177-98). However, one group of firms has grown by adopting a common design template that allows design variations to take into account differences in their stakeholder constituencies created by differences in their activities. The first stakeholder controlled firm in this Spanish group was established in 1956 and now there are over 200 described collectively as the Mondrago´n Corporacio´n Cooperativa (MCC). Likewise, only some general principles can be provided in developing a design template for a CLB. Design details would depend upon the characteristics of the built environment, its economic base, the nature of its trading partners, political context and demographics of its residents. However, one over arching general principle is the need to focus the self-interest of various constituencies that have conflicts with each other to force them to compromise their interests to make cooperative alliances for furthering long-term sustainability of the CLB. In this way, competition for control over various interests can be used to negotiate long-term efficiencies without the need for market competition for goods, services or corporate control to achieve this end. This outcome is made possible by network governance being able to introduce a number of control centers/boards/councils and other forums with different constituencies. For example, tenants have an interest in promoting incentives to maintain an adequate stock of rental properties and/or easy terms for buying a home. On the other hand, home owners do not want the value of their home reduced by making it too easy for people to purchase a home. As both home owners and tenants obtain equity interests in all the sites of the CLB they both have an interest in providing incentives to attract commercial activities to increase the cross subsidy of the rates, share in the uplift in value of the sites, capture surplus profits and perhaps even earn a dividend on their CLB shares. However, if the share value increases too much it could decrease the sale value of dwellings as buyers must also buy the CLB shares stapled to the dwelling. In this way the design of property rights in a CLB can introduce self-correcting forces to maintain an equilibrium position. The opposing interests of various constituencies provide a basis for competition for control of its governing organs to promote economy, efficiency and effectiveness with responsiveness and accountability to sustain self-governance. The challenge is to design cybernetics networks to facilitate contestability and sustainable equilibrium between the various opposing interests in the CLB as well as between CLBs and other urban precincts. Equilibrium between opposing interest within the CLB is facilitated and promoted by the dynamic nature of the property rights described above to force changing alliances of its residents and corporate stakeholders.

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5. Concluding remarks Because the CLB provides a framework for furthering the self-governance of urban citizens it also allows them to be responsive to the needs of their host bio-region. In this way, signals from the natural environment can provide feed forward and feedback information to allow contributions from nature to govern society to introduce elements of “Environmental Republicism.” If urban communities are to maintain themselves over generations on a sustainable basis they need to receive not only feed forward and feedback information from nature but also from all stakeholders on whom they depend for their existence. Residents are the primary stakeholders but external investors, and stakeholders in resident firms and trading partners represent secondary stakeholders on who the community depends for its existence. Beside these “lateral” stakeholders there are also “vertical” stakeholders such as higher levels of government. In this way urban communities designed as a CLB can become a “holon” in a “holarchy” (Koestler, 1967) to mimic the architecture of nature as illustrated by examples in Turnbull (2000b, pp. 130, 221). The CLB can itself be composed of almost self-governing holons that could be represented by apartment complexes, shopping centers, firms, schools, hospitals and community centers. A rich diversity of activities assists in making a CLB self-financing as discussed earlier. This introduces complexity. Nature governs complexity by adopting holonic architecture because “The reduction in data transmission, and in data complexity, achieved by the holonic architecture, is prodigious” (Mathews, 1996, p. 30). This observation provides an answer to the first question posed by the guest editor for the current issue of this journal who asked: “How does cybernetics throw light on design, and leads to developments and improvements in our understanding of an ability to act in design.” The observation by Mathews means that holonic architecture needs to be designed into the governance systems of complex activities found in a CLB. Holonic architecture also provides a framework for designing requisite variety in communications, control and decision making to govern complexity as reliably as required. A corollary is that centrally organized command and control systems cannot deliver requisite variety to govern complexity. The second question raised by the guest editor was, “How does design inform us in our understanding of cybernetics and its potential to parallel and throw light on design?” The answer to the question is provided by the architecture of the MCC which provides an outstanding example of a governance architecture that mimics nature with nested holonic networks supported by lateral holonic networks as found in living things (Turnbull 2000b, p. 221). In this way the MCC informs us of the efficiency and effectiveness of following the architecture of nature as the MCC has proven to be more efficient, competitive and sustainable than hierarchical controlled firms. Cybernetics in turn explains why the architecture of the MCC is successful for the reasons noted by Mathews and because its networks provide a way to decompose decision making labor to a level sufficiently simple to allow humans to govern complexity on a sustainable basis. The third question raised by the guest editor was: “What is the mutualism that may hold between them when questions (1) and (2) are seen as part of the same whole?” As pointed out above, the CLB creates a design framework for designing both the visible and invisible structures of society to create a virtuous self-reinforcing process to sustain each other. It does this in way to enrich the participation of citizens in the

decision making processes of their community to create a more efficient, equitable and democratic form of capitalism as indicated in Turnbull (1976). Another element of mutualism arises from designing dynamic property rights to realty, firms and money so that they take on ecological characteristics. As indicated in the last section, dynamic tenure can fundamentally change decision making in the use and control of realty, firms and money. It introduces continuous change but at the same time introduce incentives to maintain sustainable equilibrium between opposing interests. Mutuality arises as this can only be achieved by designing a governance architecture that can use and act on the emergent behavior that dynamic tenure introduces. However, the most compelling reason for introducing dynamic ecological property rights is to stop economic value being drained out of communities. Mutuality is inherent in the design of property rights, the nature of the built environment and its governance architecture for creating self-governing sustainable communities. This provides a compelling reason for town planners to become system scientists and governance architects. Note 1. Excludes the transaction of bytes through reproductive processes or therapeutic therapies using DNA. References Ashby, W.R. (1968), An Introduction to Cybernetics, University Paperback, London. CC (2007), “Complementary currency data base”, available at: www.complementarycurrency.org/ ccDatabase/les_public.html Cochrane, P. (2000), “Hard Drive: Bandwidth and brandwidth”, Telegraph, April 6. Davis, A.M. and Palumbo, M.G. (2006), “The price of residential land in large US cities”, Finance and Economics Discussion Series, Divisions of Research & Statistics and Monetary Affairs, Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC, available at: www.federalreserve.gov/ Pubs/feds/2006/200625/200625pap.pdf Fisher, I. (1934), Stamped Script, Adelphi Press, New York, NY. George, H. (1912), Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy, Doubleday, (First published 1879), Garden City, NY, available at: www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/George/grgPP.html Gibson, A. (1998), The Do-ers Guide to Planning for Real Exercises, Neighbourhood Initiatives Foundation, Telford. Hock, D.W. (1994), “Institutions in the age of mindcrafting”, paper presented at Bionomics Annual Conference, October 22, San Francisco, CA, p. 5, available at: www.cascadepolicy. org/dee_hock.htm Howard, E. (1946), Garden Cities of To-Morrow, Faber and Faber, London. Jacobs, J. (1985), Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life, Vintage Books, New York, NY. Jones, C., Hesterly, W.S. and Borgatti, S.T. (1997), “A general theory of network governance: exchange conditions and social mechanisms”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 911-45, available at: www.analytictech.com/borgatti/oppamr6z.htm Koestler, A. (1967), The Ghost in the Machine, Hutchinson, London.

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Kurzweil, R. (1999), The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, Viking, New York, NY.

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Morehouse, W. (Ed.) (1997), Building Sustainable Communities: Tools and Concepts for Self-Reliant Economic Change, Revised 2nd ed., Intermediate Technology Development Group of North America Inc., New York, NY. Penrose, E. (1956), “Foreign investment and the growth of the firm”, Economic Journal, Vol. LXVI, p. 220.

Mathews, J. (1996), “Holonic organisational architectures”, Human Systems Management, Vol. 15, pp. 27-54.

Porter, M.E. (1992), “Capital choices: changing the way America invests in industry”, a research report presented to the Council on Competitiveness and co-sponsored, The Harvard Business School, Boston, MA. Riley, D. (2002), Taken for a Ride, Centre for Land Policy Studies, London. Turnbull, S. (1975), Democratising the Wealth of NATIONS, Company Directors’ Association of Australia, Sydney, available at: http://cog.kent.edu/lib/TurnbullBook/TurnbullBook.htm Turnbull, S. (1976), “Land leases without landlords”, United Nations Habitat Forum, Vancouver, June 8, available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract ¼ 630861 Turnbull, S. (1983), “Cooperative land banks for low income housing”, in Angel, S., Archer, R.W., Tanphiphat, S. and Wegelin, E.A. (Eds), Land for Housing the Poor, Select Books, Singapore, pp. 511-26, Section IX, available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract ¼ 649642 Turnbull, S. (1986), “When land owns people”, Et cetera: A Review of General Semantics, International Society for General Semantics, Vol. 43 No. 4, pp. 389-92. Turnbull, S. (1997), “Stakeholder co-operation”, Journal of Co-operative Studies, Society for Co-operative Studies, Vol. 29 No. 3, pp. 18-52, available at: http://ssrn.com/ abstract ¼ 26238 Turnbull, S. (2000a), “Stakeholder governance: a cybernetic and property rights analysis”, in Tricker, R.I. (Ed.), Corporate Governance: The History of Management Thought, Ashgate Publishing, London, pp. 401-13, available at: http://cog.kent.edu/lib/turnbull6/turnbull6.html Turnbull, S. (2000b), “The governance of firms controlled by more than one board: theory development and examples”, PhD thesis, Macquarie University, Sydney, available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract ¼ 858244 Turnbull, S. (2001), “The competitive advantage of stakeholder mutuals”, in Birchall, J. (Ed.), The New Mutualism in Public Policy, Chapter 9, Routledge, London, pp. 171-201, available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract ¼ 242779 Turnbull, S. (2002), “The science of corporate governance”, Corporate Governance: An International Review, Vol. 4, pp. 256-72, available at: http://ssrn.com/ abstract_id ¼ 316939 Turnbull, S. (2006), “Grounding economics in commercial reality: a cash-flow paradigm”, in Kreisler, P., Johnson, M. and Lodewijks, J. (Eds), Essays in Heterodox Economics: Proceedings, Refereed Papers, Fifth Conference of Heterodox Economics, University of New South Wales, Australia, pp. 438-61, available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract ¼ 946033 Turnbull, S. (2007), “Forthcoming, financing urban communities with sustainable energy dollars”, in Droege, P. (Ed.), Urban Energy Transition, Elsevier Science Publishers, Oxford. von Hayek, F.A. (1976a), Choice in Currency: A Way to Stop Inflation, Occasional Paper 48, The Institute of Economic Affairs, London.

von Hayek, F.A. (1976b), Denationalization of Money: An Analysis of the Theory and Practice of Concurrent Currencies, Hobart Paper Special 70, The Institute of Economic Affairs, London. About the author Shann Turnbull has been Chairman and/or CEO of listed companies and has founded a number of businesses, with three becoming listed, refer to www.linkedin.com/pub/0/aa4/470. In 1975, he co-founded the first educational qualification in the world for company directors. He used his PhD thesis at http://ssrn.com/author ¼ 26239 to create a MBA course for designing and evaluating the governance architecture of private or government organizations. Author of hundreds of articles on reforming the theory and practice of capitalism including books: Democratising the Wealth of Nations and A New Way to Govern: Organisations and Society after Enron. Professional affiliations are listed at www.aprim.net/associates/turnbull.htm. Shann Turnbull can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Informing design praxis via 2nd-order cybernetics

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enolagaia.com, Bellbrook, Ohio, USA and American Society for Cybernetics, Washington, DC, USA

Randall Whitaker

Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to present lessons learned in applying 2nd-order cybernetics – specifically Maturana and Varela’s “biology of cognition” – to the actual design of interactive decision support systems. Design/methodology/approach – This consists of a review of the rationale and bases for applying 2nd-order cybernetics in interactive IT design, the challenges in moving from theory to praxis, illustrative examples of tactics employed, and a summary of the successful outcomes achieved. Findings – The paper offers conclusions about the general applicability of such theories, two sample applications devised for actual projects, and discussion of these applications’ perceived value. Research limitations/implications – The applications described are not claimed to represent a complete toolkit, and they may not readily generalize beyond the scope of interactive information systems design. On the other hand, the examples offered demonstrate that 2nd-order cybernetics can constructively inform such designs – advancing the focus of discussion from theory-based advocacy to praxis-based recommendations. Practical implications – The paper presents illustrative examples of the exigencies entailed in moving 2nd-order cybernetics ideas forward from theory to praxis and specific tactics for doing so. Originality/value – This paper addresses the persistent deficiencies in both concrete examples and guidance for practical applications of 2nd-order cybernetics theories. It will hopefully stimulate similar attempts to demonstrate such theories’ practical benefits. Keywords 2nd order cybernetics, Biology of cognition, Design, Maturana, Varela Paper type Case study

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1558-1569 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827599

One focus of this special issue is the question, “How does cybernetics throw light on design, and lead to developments and improvements in our understanding of and ability to act in design?” This paper addresses that question by reporting on efforts to inform design praxis with ideas from 2nd-order cybernetics. Specifically, this discussion will proceed with respect to one stream of work associated with 2nd-order cybernetics. This is the biology of cognition – the theoretical corpus produced individually and jointly by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. These authors defined living systems in terms of autopoiesis – a state of affairs where a system’s (machine’s) constitutive components: . through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and . constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network (Varela, 1979, p. 13). Based upon this uniquely systemic definition for living systems, Maturana and Varela analyzed diverse aspects of the “phenomenology of the living.” For more details on

these theories, the reader is referred to Maturana and Varela (1980, p. 1987) and Varela (1979). I have spent almost 20 years attempting to establish constructive connections between the biology of cognition and my professional work in knowledge acquisition (KA), cognitive task analysis, and advanced interface design. This paper summarizes some lessons learned, so as to demonstrate: . 2nd-order cybernetics can usefully inform design praxis; and hence . discussions of 2nd order cybernetics and design need not remain limited to philosophical speculation or allusive advocacy. Overview: cybernetics, design, and the biology of cognition This first major section will establish some context with respect to both cybernetics and design and then discuss how ideas from the biology of cognition can inform design. The subsequent major section will present capsule summaries of two cases illustrating applications of these ideas in actual design practice. Regarding cybernetics In North America circles, “cybernetics” is treated as an anachronism – a field that has produced nothing new in decades, has dissipated, or is properly subsumed under later disciplinary labels (e.g. “complexity science”). This is an unreasonable interpretation, but there are specifiable reasons explaining why it arose. “Second wave” (e.g. 1960s – 1970s) thinkers associated with cybernetics (e.g. von Foerster, von Glasersfeld, Pask, Maturana, and Varela) achieved neither the fame nor the impact of earlier thinkers like Wiener and Ashby. Their work – often characterized as falling under the rubric “2nd order cybernetics” – did not obviously recommend itself as practically applicable to the technical and engineering audience the field had attracted since the Macy conferences. Additionally, the seminal efforts now attributed to 2nd-order cybernetics were often portrayed as contributions to fields other than cybernetics per se (e.g. education, biology, and even philosophy). In other words, 2nd-order cybernetics was not well-known, appreciated, or even widely recognized as “cybernetics.” One common feature of 2nd-order cybernetics theories is a focus on an observer and her unavoidable role(s) in recognizing, understanding, and engaging a system of interest. This orientation highlights epistemological and cognitive aspects of human-system interactions – aspects that would not demand widespread attention until the proliferation of computer and network technologies in the 1980s. By the time this demand emerged, mainstream approaches to epistemology and cognition had become dominated by the rationalistic/symbol-centered “cognitivism” of Alan Newell and Herbert Simon. Also by this time the primary institutional venue for 2nd-order cybernetics research (von Foerster’s Biological Computation Lab at the University of Illinois) had shut down, allowing its already little-known contributions to slide even further into obscurity. Save for isolated 2nd-order cybernetics references in critiques of AI and cognitivism (e.g. Winograd and Flores, 1986), no constructive mainstream connection between 2nd-order cybernetics and human-computer interaction (HCI) issues had been established as of the point the Internet and the Web made computing ubiquitous in the 1990s. In commiserating over cybernetics’ ascribed irrelevance or extinction, adherents often pose two key questions:

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(1) Why is not there more respect for the knowledge embedded in cybernetics? (2) Why cannot we seem to inform other communities about cybernetics’ value? There are many challenges in trying to answer these questions. The most troublesome of these challenges may well be two framed with regard to themes from cybernetics itself: (1) If one accepts Maturana’s maxim that “all doing is knowing and all knowing is doing” (Maturana and Varela, 1987, p. 27), is not the extent of “knowledge” attributable to you therefore proportional to what you can demonstrably “do”? (2) If one aspires to “inform” other fields about cybernetics’ value, is not one obligated (via a play on Bateson) to specify how such ideas “make a difference” as well as how that difference thus made “makes a difference” in some concrete situation or to a specific audience? In other words, the key questions are moot unless one addresses how – and how well – cybernetics concepts can be usefully employed in practice. Regarding design I have “designed” for over a third of a century. I have designed “personally” – i.e. my own contributions have substantially or wholly circumscribed the innovation(s) generated. I have designed “professionally” – i.e. in the context of paid employment and results subject to third party judgment. Finally, I have designed “practically” – i.e. the innovations I have created have transitioned to actual implementation and deployment. Along the way, I have designed a wide range of distinct artifacts including: . Physical artifacts such as steel piping systems, pressure vessels, and individual and group computer-supported workspaces. . Aesthetic artifacts such as graphics, music, films, websites, and performances. . Logical artifacts such as algorithms, inference engines, knowledge bases, and ontologies. . Social artifacts such as organizational units, workflow infrastructures, procedures, and protocols. The more I participate in design, and the more types of artifacts I design, the less I believe in the notion of “Design” (capitalized; denoting a universal or all-embracing concept). The procedures and protocols I have found effective have not been consistent across the diverse artifact categories addressed or even across specific situations engaged within any given category. As a result, it is my opinion that discussions of design must be anchored with respect to the situational context in which innovation is undertaken. In summary, I see 2nd-order cybernetics as a broad topic for which specific practical utility has yet to be demonstrated and design as a situation-specific activity for which universal principles become increasingly elusive with experience. The remainder of this paper will illustrate the problems and payoffs encountered when applying 2nd-order cybernetics ideas – specifically, ideas from the biology of cognition – to design praxis in information technology (IT) projects. However, I make no claim that

the design tactics described herein necessarily generalize beyond these and closely similar intervention contexts. The biology of cognition as a basis for IT innovation The literature on the biology of cognition offers many novel constructs, but no guidance for how one may employ them to practical ends. Scholars and researchers must themselves identify ways in which the biology of cognition may constructively inform their specialties and practices. Given IT researchers’ a priori focus on artifacts (hardware, software, data structures, etc.), they have consistently pursued the notion of configuring an artifact (or model of an artifact) in terms of only one concept drawn from the biology of cognition – autopoiesis. Some such efforts have done more to demonstrate researchers’ misunderstandings than the concept’s utility. Examples over the last 20 years include, e.g. misattributions of autopoiesis to knowledge base meta-representations (Nissan, 1987) and self-maintaining software (Gabriel and Goldman, 2006) – artifacts whose allonomy (externally controllability) excludes their being autonomous, much less autopoietic (Varela, 1979). Maturana and Varela’s work addressed two major themes: (1) living systems’ definition and requisite constitution; and (2) operations and phenomenology of the systems thus constituted. IT researchers have seized on the first theme, attempting to characterize IT artifacts with respect to autopoiesis. However, it is the second theme from which the biology of cognition offers richer and more potentially useful guidance on IT issues. This has gone unrecognized owing to the popular misconception that all one needs to know from the biology of cognition is “autopoiesis” – the one construct most closely and uniquely tied to issues of system constitution rather than systemic phenomenology. Autopoiesis is almost entirely dispensable (except as a background allusion) when addressing system phenomenology, for which the analogous central construct is poieseity – an autonomous system’s mode of “being peculiarly oneself/itself” (seity) as contextualized by the dynamics and contingencies via which it is initially created and continuously re-created ( poiesis). The biology of cognition as a basis for design praxis Like the IT researcher, the design practitioner must devise her own tactics for framing and conducting design praxis in accordance with the biology of cognition. As Maturana has clearly and consistently stated, the biology of cognition constitutes a “scientific explanation” descriptive of living systems – an explanation which any other observer is free to accept or not. The fact that this approach circumvents any recourse to “proof” may not be problematical within the realm of theoretical discourse. However, this approach leaves aspiring practitioners unsupported in the sense that the grounds and criteria for applying biology of cognition to praxis would derive from (or at least be recommended by) the grounds and criteria any “proof” would necessarily entail. Maturana and Varela’s writings rarely allude to particular types of artifacts with which observers may interact, much less references to the manner in which they are – or should be – designed. For example, Maturana’s (1997) “Metadesign” essay is most reasonably characterized as a sociological commentary on technology and associated empowerment issues, offering more specific allusions to “art” than to “design.” To be

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fair, this situation is largely explained by rigor, not negligence, in Maturana and Varela’s writings. Their stated explanatory foci were living systems’ definitive constitution and phenomenology. Peripheral or corollary objects of reference – once distinguished as other than living – did not demand explanation be extended across the distinctions to illuminate them as well. Expositions of concepts suggestively relevant to technical or design applications were almost never expanded or developed with clear regard to: . either such “other” entities with which autonomous/autopoietic systems may interact; or . the interactions themselves. For example, Varela’s (1979) theoretical construct admissible symbolic descriptions would be of great potential relevance for visualization design. However, his discussion of the concept concerned descriptions of autonomous systems exclusively. Still, some basic points about artifacts and their design are discernible in the primary literature. IT artifacts are allopoietic because they “. . . have as the product of their functioning something different from themselves” (Maturana and Varela, 1980, p. 135). Such “other-production” (allopoiesis; heteropoiesis) is characterized as the “space of human design” (Maturana and Varela, 1980, p. 136), insofar as the artifact’s “. . . boundaries are specified by an observer, who by specifying its input and output surfaces, specifies what pertains to it in its operations” (Maturana and Varela, 1980, p. 81). Although, an input/output characterization is unacceptable for describing an autonomous/autopoietic machine, it “. . . is entirely reasonable when one has designed a machine whose central feature is the manner in which we interact with it” (Maturana and Varela, 1987, p. 169). In describing and specifying operations, “. . . the implications in terms of design alluded to by the notion of function are established by the observer and belong exclusively to his domain of description” (Varela, 1979, p. 65). Such a designer-observer’s domain of description must be framed with regard to more than the artifact-system in isolation, because the requisite “. . . functional description necessarily includes a larger context to which [a function] makes reference” (Varela, 1979). The literature yields more substantial insights once attention turns to the topics most important to designing interactive IT artifacts – user/artifact engagement in general as well as those aspects of such engagement that relate to cognition and hence cognitively intensive activities (e.g. decision making). HCI is a structural coupling between two structurally determined systems – “. . . a process of reciprocal selection of congruent paths of structural changes in the interacting systems which result in the continuous selection in them of congruent dynamics of state” (Maturana and Guiloff, 1980, p. 139). The IT artifact serves as a source of perturbations to the user-observer, whose compensatory responses during this coupling can be distinguished by an observer observing the interactions from a third-person perspective (3PP) as a trajectory of actions constituting or instantiating, e.g. a “procedure.” To the extent the user-observer’s trajectory of behaviors are distinguished (from a 3PP) as “effective” relative to some ascribed criteria or purpose, a third-party observer may attribute “knowledge” to the user-observer. Because “[to] know is to be able to operate adequately in an individual or cooperative situation” (Maturana and Varela, 1980, p. 53), the Maturanean account of “cognition” (in the sense of knowledge-based process)

is contextualized in terms of behavior or praxis, without recourse to the symbolic apparatus presumed by cognitivism. It is at this point that cognitivism might seem to have the upper hand with regard to IT artifact design, given the convenience of presumptively equating symbolic data presented on-screen with symbols manipulated by the user internally. The Maturanean account emphasizes observer operations in languaging, yet dismisses symbols as explanatory referents for these operations (Maturana, 1978). More problematically, Maturana has discussed languaging solely in terms of inter-observer engagement within a consensual domain for three decades now. For anyone familiar only with Maturana’s later writings his concepts of languaging and consensual domains might appear inapplicable to a scenario in which only one participant operates as an observer. This apparent exclusion is a result of expository, not explanatory, scope. One must delve back into the earlier literature to find: . . . the general case is that any pair of dynamic (mechanistic) systems with invariant organization but with plastic structure coupled to the history of their successive states can develop, through their mutual interactions, a domain of coupled consensual conduct as a linguistic domain in which they can converse (Maturana, 1974, p. 469),

so long as one bears in mind the attendant communication connotes not symbolic interchange but “. . . the coordination of noncreative ontogenically acquired modes of behavior” (Maturana, 1978, p. 55). Based on these and other points, I consider reasonable correspondence with the biology of cognition achievable through a mode of praxis in which the designer-observer: . may reasonably employ a conventional (input-output; functionally delineated) perspective, but only for heteropoietic/allopoietic referents; . must recognize she is personally constructive of, and hence responsible for, the descriptions and explanations entailed in her design; . must address the targeted subject(s) of intervention and the designed artifact(s) within the broader context(s) demarcated by the salient features and functions entailed in her descriptions and explanations; . should pursue this contextualization with primary regard to the joint user-system’s space of potential mutual trajectories of coordinations of (coordinations of . . .) behaviors; . should therefore prioritize descriptive or explanatory reference to the intended or desired such trajectory constituting the task or activity to be supported; . should treat symbolic data (e.g. representations, icons) not as semantically determinative elements but as affordances cueing the user-observer to potential subsequent actions; . may treat HCI as a “one-sided consensual domain” within which only one interactor (the user-observer) makes distinctions in languaging; and . must therefore give ultimate priority to the target task and task environment as distinguished and engaged from the first person perspective (1PP) of the user-observer(s).

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Illustrative cases of design praxis informed by the biology of cognition Two sample cases will now be presented to illustrate how concepts from the biology of cognition have yielded tangible innovations in design methodology or product designs. The first example involves KA, and the second involves a novel approach to designing interactive IT decision aids. Each case presentation will describe the evidence for constructive payoffs from the time and effort thus invested.

1564 Case 1: knowledge acquisition via “Nichepicking” Varela (1979) distinguished between “recursive” and “behavioral” viewpoints on a system. The behavioral view addresses a system as a simple unity and “. . . reduces a system to its input-output performance or behavior, and reduces the environment to inputs to the system . . . ” (Varela, 1979, p. 86). In contrast, the recursive view addresses the same system as a composite unity and “. . . emphasizes the mutual interconnectedness of its components . . . ” (Varela, 1979). Distinctions drawn with respect to a given object of reference must be contextualized with respect to whichever one of these cognitive points of view was in effect at the point of distinction. This orientation to the “topology” of operational domains (as observer-distinguished) was the basis for a novel KA method created for a 1995 business process re-engineering intervention. This methodology – designed to help in delineating a subject organization’s “niche” – was called nichepicking (Whitaker, 1996). The client was a research laboratory (hereafter labeled XLab) with a global reputation for its research capabilities and products. At the time, it was undergoing structural and functional change under conditions of duress. In 1994, XLab undertook a process of self-review and self-analysis. Two initial analyses by organizational consultants prescribed changes, but did not address the fundamental issues of XLab’s identity and role(s). XLab managers wished to model their own enterprise to guide structural and functional reorganization. To this end, XLab personnel and other researchers (including myself) employed conventional methods such as, e.g. brainstorming, concept mapping, and flowcharting for several months. The resultant detailed documentation on operating structures, goals, resources, and workload provided a foundation for multiple short-term management decisions, operational adjustments, and codification of previously unstructured workflows. However, it still did not satisfy the goal of modeling XLab’s identity and role(s). The KA tools and techniques provided systematically descriptive models of XLab’s situational status, but fell short of describing XLab as a systemically unified object of analysis. Progress required a new technique for facilitating exploratory construction of XLab’s “self-image.” A new approach to facilitating XLab’s self-definition was invented, based on three specific themes from Maturana and Varela’s work – the concept of “niche,” attention to “boundaries,” and Varela’s distinction between behavioral and recursive viewpoints. The notion of “niche” connoted the same factors as those at issue in this case: . a sense of operational role rather than static categorization; . a focus on the reciprocal relationship between the unit and its subsuming system; and . the notion that a unit may realize multiple niches within distinct operational situations or cycles.

The approach to delineating XLab’s niche within each operational domain would proceed by specifying boundaries through identifying relevant distinctions and then progressively refining characterizations of these distinctions and the entities thus distinguished. The structured presentations and documentation utilized would be organized so as to account for recursive versus behavioral vantages on each systemic entity addressed. The nichepicking process proceeded in a stepwise manner. First, subjects freely generated a mass of descriptive textual material to be sorted and organized for subsequent analysis and elaboration. There were no restrictions on the form or direction of their responses, and they were given the opportunity to continue this brainstorming until they were satisfied they had exhausted the possible descriptions. These descriptions were then merged, sorted and categorized. Each statement was analyzed as an instance of the form “XLab is a (Descriptor/Qualifier) (Object).” This involved parsing each statement into the Object (O) and its attendant qualifiers (Q1, Q2, . . .). The set of all client-identified Objects [O] was then sorted into subsets (Object Families) based on “family relations.” For example, the set of objects pertaining to XLab’s enterprise memberships (e.g. “division, branch, directorate, agency”) comprised an object family ordered with respect to prevailing organizational hierarchy. We then compiled and categorized the set of cited qualifiers [Q] to generate a set of factors or issues (hereafter termed Object Issues) the subjects had attributed to each such object family. The last stage was to bring together the objects and object issues in such a manner as to facilitate specification of XLab’s structural and functional boundaries within each of the domains in which it operated. Tabular displays were employed: . to illustrate and enforce contextual reference; and . to visually organize the subject matter to be comparatively analyzed. The subjects were guided through these structured displays and asked to specify the contrasts and similarities between XLab and other members of each object family with respect to the given Object Issue. Subjects were also asked to elucidate features, parameters, etc. which explained the relationships noted between XLab and the other given entity. A first pass through the displays was moderated to ensure each subject addressed each of the issues within each of the contexts. Thereafter, the subject was allowed to freely address any point desired, add new displays, etc. After this phase, results were merged and compiled into structured documentation summarizing the data using a hierarchical categorization of object family/object issue/self-generated sub-issue characterizations. In quantitative terms, the nichepicking procedure greatly surpassed the concept mapping technique previously applied in XLab’s management KA sessions. These sessions had involved four people for 2 to 2.5 hours at a time – a total of 8 to 10 person-hours per session. These sessions produced concept maps which, when translated into propositional statements in a Prolog logic base, comprised some four pages of single-spaced linear documentation per session. An equivalent nichepicking exercise with the same 4 people accounted for only 6.25 person-hours and generated some 29 pages of linear documentation in the same format. Nichepicking also surpassed prior techniques in terms of completeness for session results. In transcribing earlier (videotaped) concept mapping sessions into a Prolog logic base, we found that

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up to 50 percent of the relevant propositions uttered had not been captured in the concept map. Review of the nichepicking videotapes indicated only about a 2 percent incidence of utterances unreflected in the documented output. Nichepicking was uniformly judged a success in qualitative terms, too. The resulting structured documentation was judged to capture the “niche” connotations of XLab’s situation in a manner which was easy to comprehend, easy to extend, and easy to present and explain to others. Subjects liked nichepicking’s flexibility of expression, and they found even the final structured phase easy to do. They recognized nichepicking’s results (like those from the other methods) were descriptive, but they deemed the nichepicking results to be more usefully descriptive for their purposes. They unanimously judged nichepicking to have been more “constructive” (i.e. capable of knowledge creation) than the earlier techniques they would used. Finally, the clients judged (and review of earlier efforts confirmed) that nichepicking had detected and documented issues (e.g. budget constraints; XLab’s circumstantial peculiarities; interpersonal conflicts; differential empowerment) that had not been captured in any of the prior self-specification attempts. I submit this case meets the Batesonian criteria cited earlier for having successfully “informed” praxis. The application of these concepts, “made a difference” in terms of novel methodology, protocols, and tools. The “difference thus made” in KA activities in turn “made a difference” in terms of such quantitative metrics as could be assessed and, more importantly, in the qualitative evaluation of the methodology’s viability and value by the subjects/clients. Case 2: praxio-focal interface design The earlier section on biology of cognition and design concluded with a list of guidelines. I have adopted and employed these guidelines in my praxis from as the central component of a personal toolkit augmented with elements drawn from other sources such as Peircean semiotics and Scandinavian participatory design. In the course of eight years’ successive projects (1999 through the present) in military transport command and control I have created a series of interactive decision support designs that have been consistently judged innovative, valuable, and acceptable for development and deployment. Because my approach highlights the target worker’s praxis as the focal subject matter, it is termed praxio-focal. A more extensive review of praxio-focal design principles, framed with regard to phenomenology and hermeneutics, can be found in Whitaker (2007). The key to successful praxio-focal design is operating with regard to, and concern for, the subject worker’s 1PP. Such an emphasis on phenomenology and subjectivity derives from the biology of cognition’s focus on the observer. From a worker’s 1PP, work is an unfolding series of problem solving incidents. A useful IT tool should aid users in recognizing, analyzing and reacting to problems, and a design’s quality criterion is the degree to which it facilitates such problem solving. This requires the interface to reflect the way(s) in which the worker may optimally (most “transparently;” most directly) address problem situations. More to the point, my objective is to generate an interface artifact that instantiates a consensual domain of interactions specifically grounded in the situation or scenario associated with a critical juncture, subtask, or class of problems to be solved along the trajectory representative of the target worker’s praxis. I term such a grounded or

situated domain a demesne to distinguish it from the broader, more abstract construct of “domain” used in the biology of cognition literature. Specification of the technical infrastructure for instantiating such a virtual demesne is pursued by a sequence of analytical and design activities that from a more conventional perspective could be characterized as follows: . mapping the process path(s) representative of the target task as it is actually performed; . identifying those key points or junctures at which the target worker must proactively select a next procedural step or decide some part of the intended work outcome; . compiling the set of critical distinctions and referents the subject actually engages at each such juncture; . specifying the optimal point of view encompassing these distinctions and referents – a vantage from which all salient aspects of the subject matter are discernible; . augmenting the vantage display with means through which the user can; . manipulate the vantage display’s contents; . perform functions necessary to addressing and resolving the problem at hand; and . augmenting these components with affordances for generating products or navigating through the subsuming process path. This requires conceptualizing what is needed to address a given problem situation or scenario from the worker’s 1PP, and then projecting the characteristics and capabilities most desirable for addressing, engaging, and resolving a given problem. The intended result is an interface design concept that reflects the worker’s 1PP as much as possible – i.e. a design emulating the worker’s usual “vantage” on the work and the work subject matter. It involves considerable effort for a designer-observer to obtain sufficient understanding and appreciation of the target work and praxis to even approximate an actual workers’ 1PP. Tactics for obtaining such understanding have included, e.g. deep study of available documentation, direct observations of work praxis, extensive interactions with the target workers themselves, apprenticeship, and even undertaking the workers’ own training courses. So has this application of 2nd-order cybernetics/biology of cognition concepts met the Batesonian criteria? The formulation of a praxio-focal approach constitutes a major “difference” in my own design praxis, the practices of my colleagues, and the character of our research products (i.e. design concepts and software prototypes). This “difference” has itself “made a difference” in multiple ways. The inaugural design concepts were the key reason our clients allowed the original one-year project to unfold into a series of projects continuing through the present day. This class of IT artifacts and the ascribed process that produces them are now invoked as formal elements in the client enterprise’s requirements specifications. The client enterprise originally cringed at researchers’ presence and involvement; now we are an official part of their acquisition process. Finally, these projects’ outcomes have been sufficiently successful to motivate this approach’s description and promotion in terms of both a new type of

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IT artifact (work-centered support systems) and a novel form of design practice (work-centered design) (Eggleston et al., 2000; Eggleston and Whitaker, 2002; Eggleston, 2003). Summary and conclusions This paper has offered a compact summary of my experiences in attempting to apply principles and ideas from 2nd-order cybernetics – specifically from Maturana and Varela’s biology of cognition – to the design of IT artifacts. I believe these efforts have borne fruit. In closing, let me offer some broader conclusions I have drawn from this work: . Neither 2nd-order cybernetics nor the biology of cognition represent or specify a comprehensive design methodology; at best they can “inform” design praxis at certain points of thematic intersection. . It is possible to assemble a theoretical and methodological “toolkit” consistent with principles and ideas from 2nd order cybernetics and the biology of cognition. . It requires considerable effort and creativity to devise such a toolkit. . It requires no less effort and creativity to employ such a toolkit to constructive effect. . The merit in applying these ideas has been demonstrated in qualitative terms consistently and in quantitative terms occasionally. References Eggleston, R. (2003), “Work-centered design: a cognitive engineering approach to system design”, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. 47th Annual Meeting, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Santa Monica, pp. 263-7. Eggleston, R. and Whitaker, R. (2002), “Work centered support system design: using organizing frames to reduce work complexity”, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 46th Annual Meeting, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Santa Monica, pp. 265-9. Eggleston, R., Young, M. and Whitaker, R. (2000), “Work-centered support system technology: a new interface client technology for the battlespace infosphere”, Proceedings of the IEEE 2000 National Aerospace and Electronics Conference NAECON 2000, IEEE, New York, NY, pp. 499-506. Gabriel, R. and Goldman, R. (2006), “Conscientious software”, Proceedings of the 21st Annual ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, And Applications, ACM Press, New York, NY, pp. 433-50. Maturana, H. (1974), “Cognitive strategies”, in von Foerster, H. (Ed.), Cybernetics of Cybernetics, Biological Computer Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana IL, pp. 457-69. Maturana, H. (1978), “Biology of language: the epistemology of reality”, in Miller, G. and Lenneberg, E. (Eds), Psychology and Biology of Language and Thought, Academic Press, New York, NY, pp. 27-64. Maturana, H. (1997), “Metadesign”, article hosted by Instituto de Terapia Cognitiva INTECO – Santiago de Chile, available at: www.inteco.cl/articulos/006/texto_ing.htm Maturana, H. and Guiloff, G. (1980), “The quest for the intelligence of intelligence”, Journal of Social and Biological Structures, Vol. 3, pp. 135-48.

Maturana, H. and Varela, F. (1980), Autopoiesis and Cognition, D. Reidel, Dordrecht. Maturana, H. and Varela, F. (1987), The Tree of Knowledge, Shambhala, Boston, MA. Nissan, E. (1987), “Knowledge acquisition and metarepresentation: attribute autopoiesis”, in Ras, Z. and Zemankova, M. (Eds), Proceeding of the Second International Symposium on Methodologies for Intelligent Systems, North-Holland, Amsterdam, pp. 240-7. Varela, F. (1979), Principles of Biological Autonomy, Elsevier, New York, NY. Whitaker, R. (1996), “Nichepicking: a tool for (re-)designing self-organizing enterprises”, ACM SIGOIS Bulletin, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 21-2. Whitaker, R. (2007), “Applying phenomenology and hermeneutics in IS design: a report on field experiences”, Informing Science, Vol. 10, Special Issue: A double helix relationship of use and re-design in IS?, available at: http://inform.nu/Articles/Vol10/IndexV10.htm Winograd, T. and Flores, F. (1986), Understanding Computers and Cognition, Ablex, Norwood, NJ. About the author Randall Whitaker has been studying, promoting, and applying 2nd-order cybernetics and the biology of cognition for some 20 years. His PhD (informatics) was awarded by Umea˚ Universitet (Sweden) for research applying Maturana and Varela’s theories to group decision support, following course work and research at the University of Wisconsin as an Office of Naval Research Fellow in artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology. Prior collegiate studies were in anthropology and psychology (BA) and computer science (BSc; MSc). He is the founder and steward of, The Observer Web – the largest internet resource on Maturana and Varela’s work – and an officer of the American Society for Cybernetics. This vocation is funded by employment as a senior human factors and cognitive engineering researcher in the military sector. Randall Whitaker can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Rethinking the cybernetic basis of design: the concepts of control and organization

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Theodore Zamenopoulos and Katerina Alexiou Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis and Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, University College London, London, UK and Department of Design and Innovation, The Open University, London, UK Abstract Purpose – Even though design as a purposeful activity naturally fits into the realm of cybernetics, the emphasis on control has limited the scope of using cybernetic principles in design. The idea of organization, another fundamental concept in cybernetics, has received less attention in design research and seems worthy of further exploration. The purpose of the paper is to review the two concepts and clarify their role and meaning in design. Overall, using insights from complex systems science, the paper attempts to recast the relationship between cybernetics and design. Design/methodology/approach – The treatment uses category theory as a language and methodological approach in order to formally express the concepts of “organization” “control” and “design” and then study the relations between them. Findings – Organization is defined using the mathematical concept of sketch, i.e. as a characterization of the complementary relation between theories and models. The paper demonstrates that the peculiarity of design rests on the fact that the distinction between theories and models is an anticipated but emergent state. In contrast, control-based representations assume that the theory-model distinction is given in advance, as an intrinsic characteristic. The paper demonstrates that design is a distinct paradigm in relation to control, yet it falls within the domain of cybernetic and complex systems enquiry. Originality/value – The paper contributes to the understanding of design as a distinct type of problem in cybernetics by exposing differences between control and design problems. The paper also further lays the foundations for developing a cybernetic theory of design based on the concept of organization. Keywords Organization, Control, Complexity, Design theory, Category theory, Emergence Paper type Research paper

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1570-1589 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684920710827607

1. Introduction Cybernetics was instrumental for bringing into the fore the systematic study of purposeful behaviour, using concepts like feedback, control, observation and organization as critical tools. According to Glanville (1998) cybernetics has also been design’s “secret partner in research”. Among the different concepts, the idea of control in particular, has been considered as an indispensable aspect of goal-oriented behaviour, as well as a powerful model for engineering and management. Design, being a purposeful activity itself, fits naturally into the realm of control and cybernetics. The link between design and control has been considered since the early days of design research as documented in the writings of Archer (1970). Archer considered the design process as a kind of complex iterative control process which, roughly stated, involves generating and manipulating a set of

(decision) variables in order to satisfy a set of objectives. Although the concept of control intuitively conveys important aspects of design, it is an open question whether it can account for design as a distinct type of problem. The concept of organization (both as a process and as a state) has been a fundamental term in the theoretical development of cybernetics (Ashby, 1962; von Foerster, 1984; Atlan, 1974). However, it has received much less attention in design and seems worthy of further exploration. There are two ways to perceive the concept of organization: (1) as a distinguishing or characteristic quality of a system that we need to understand; and (2) as an epistemological and methodological concept. In the first case, organization refers to a unique characteristic which can be used to identify design artefacts and processes, while in the second case it refers to the adoption of a different level of abstraction for investigating and describing design problems. These two interrelated perceptions of organization have become central to the emerging science of complex systems. In the following we will further focus on the concept of organization in order to clarify its role and meaning in design. More specifically, we will first offer a general review of the concept as it appears in cybernetics and see how it can generally relate to design. To better illustrate the main ideas we will present a model developed for studying a particular design problem – that of distributed design – and use it to further motivate the discussion. Then we will develop a formal treatment of the notion of organization so that it can be turned into a useful tool for representing design problems. In the final section we will offer a categorical view of design as an organizational capacity and revisit the concept of control and its ability to express design problems. Overall, using insights from complex systems science, the paper will attempt to recast the relationship between cybernetics and design using the concept of organization. 2. An introduction to the notion of organization The term organization generally alludes to the conditions (relations or distinctions) that generate, preserve and constrain an arrangement of entities into a distinct whole. Oxford English Dictionary Online (2006) lists several general definitions of organization such as: “The development or coordination of parts in order to carry out vital functions” “the action or process of organizing, ordering, or putting into systematic form; the arrangement and coordination of parts into a systematic whole” “the condition of being or process of becoming organized” and “systematic ordering or arrangement”. Although we usually tend to associate the term with human organizations, it is in reality used to refer to a large variety of phenomena: physical, biological, social, or abstract. For example, the organization of a society might refer to traditions, customs, or laws that generate and also constrain certain social structures, behaviours and functions. The organization of a brain might refer to the network of neural activities that generate or constrain certain operations. The organization of a building might refer to an arrangement of spatial entities (rooms, walls, windows) that generate or constrain the interdependence and sequence of activities.

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In these examples, organization appears to be more of an abstraction or theoretical quality, rather than a material or observable object. An important question is therefore whether organization is the product of an observer that interacts with an observed system, or it is an intrinsic quality of the system. Let us explore for a while the cybernetic view of this question. Ashby (1962) and von Foerster (1984), who examined in depth the idea of organization and self-organization as a characteristic of complex systems, both emphasised the role of the observer. They both contented that self-organization is a deceptive term as in reality a system can only increase or improve its organization by being coupled with another system with which it interacts and exchanges energy (its environment). Maturana and Varela (1980) who studied living organisms (autopoietic systems) and their high-level cognitive abilities, also maintained that living systems: . . . cannot be understood independently of the part of the ambience with which they interact: the niche; nor can the niche be defined independently of the living system that specifies it (Maturana and Varela, 1980, p. 9).

Rosen’s (1985, 1991) elaboration of “modelling relation” is also very instructive in this context. Modelling relation as a scientific endeavour refers to the establishment of relations between a natural system (an aspect, member, or element of the external world we wish to study) and a formal system (a system we create in order to represent, model and draw inferences about the natural system). The endeavour of modelling relation refers to the consistent encoding of a natural system into a formal one so that the inferences developed within the formal system become predictions about the natural world (Figure 1). The crux of the idea is that the natural world is constituted by a set of perceptible qualities, and linkages between qualities, which we call observables: As such, then, a natural system from the outset embodies a mental construct (i.e. a relation established by the mind between percepts) which comprises a hypothesis or model pertaining to the organization of the external world (Rosen, 1985, p. 47).

Rosen associated complexity with the concept of error (the discrepancy between a system and its model) and related the appearance of bifurcation (emergent phenomena) with our ability to produce enough independent encodings so as to fully describe a given natural system. For a more detailed treatment of modelling relation see also Cariani (1989).

Decoding (prediction) Causal Entailment

Figure 1. Rosen’s diagram of modelling relation

Natural system

Formal system Encoding

(observation and measurement)

Inference Entailment

The notion of organization seems therefore to be tightly linked to the notions of emergence and complexity and has become an important part of the science of complex systems. Casti (1986, p. 146) for example, also adopts a view of “complexity as a latent or implicate property of a system, a property made explicit only through the interaction of a given system with another”. He explicates the idea by pointing out the existence of two levels of complexity: design complexity, which is the complexity of the system in relation to the observer, and control complexity which is the complexity of the observer relative to the system. The complexity of a system depends crucially on the nature of the observables that describe it, the observables of the system that observes it and their modes of interaction. Thus, the complexity of a system S in relation to an observing system O corresponds to the number of non-equivalent descriptions (i.e. descriptions that are not reducible to each other) that O can generate for S. Another view which associates emergence with the creation of new descriptive and observational categories is provided by Baas (1994). Baas sees emergence in relation to hierarchical organization: as the creation of higher-level structures through the mediation of observational mechanisms. Central to his argument is the study of emergence by considering three basic notions: structures (as the primitive entities), observational mechanisms for evaluating, observing and describing structures, and interactions among entities. He offers a definition of emergence which can briefly be described as follows: a property P is emergent at a certain level (S2) – which is constructed from the set of primitive entities and interactions among them – if the property can be observed (and described) at this level but not at the level below it (S1) using the same observational mechanisms. The definition captures the idea that although the higher-level structure is constructed by the interaction between entities at the lower level, new observational mechanisms are needed in order to describe the property P. He further distinguishes deducible or computable emergence, where the observational mechanism is an algorithm or deductive process, from observational (non deducible) emergence where the observational mechanism is a semantic meaning function or a truth function. It is also interesting to note that Baas considers observational mechanisms to play the role of some type of selection process that guides evolution towards higher order structures and he explicitly links this process to the subject of design. As an overview, organization in cybernetics and complexity science has been defined and studied at different levels of abstraction by looking at the complementary relation between certain basic concepts. At a macro level, organization is defined as a statistical quality that characterizes the balance between ambiguity and redundancy (Atlan, 1974). In particular, the meaning of organization is identified with a complementary relation between degrees of freedom (ambiguity) and constraints (redundancy). At a meso level, organization is defined as a logical/computational quality that characterizes the balance between randomness and order (Wolfram, 2002). The meaning of organization in this case is identified with the complementary relation between a language, that generates a space of possible expressions, and a machine, that decides whether this expression satisfies certain syntactic rules. Alternatively, organization is characterized as the logical effort needed to generate a specific possibility (Bennett, 1985). Finally, at a macro level, organization is defined as an algebraic/relational quality that characterizes the balance between reducible and

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irreducible structures (Ashby, 1962). At this level, the meaning of organization is also defined as a complementary relation between the co-ordination of entities and the sub-ordination of entities (Bar-Yam, 2004). In all, the identification of the notion of organization is motivated from the epistemological stance that complex systems have properties, behaviours, or characteristics which cannot be deduced from (or reduced to) their constituent parts, and thus need to be viewed and studied as complete functional wholes. Cybernetics and complexity research assume that organization is a distinct quality with crucial explanatory information. The representation and study of organization is fundamental for the understanding of design as a capacity (knowledge and distinct method of action), but also as a property of a designed entity. In this sense, the concept of organization (and complexity) is inextricably linked with that of design in two ways: (1) Organization is as a product or effect of design(ing). The act of design is considered to generate some sort of organization which refers to the characteristics of an observed system or designed artifact. (2) Organization is a condition or cause of design(ing). Design problems and the capacity to address such problems are caused by certain organizational qualities of the design system (whether it is the human mind, the society or an artificial system). In this study, we are interested in both aspects of organization and strive to develop an organizational-level theory and method for design able to describe and explain design by looking at organizational characteristics and properties. Before we turn to the formal elaboration of the concepts of organization, design and control we first will present an example from design in order to illustrate the idea of organization as an explanatory concept. 3. Design as organizational capacity – an example Collaborative design or more generally design tasks that involve multiple participants (whether designers, interdisciplinary groups, communities or stakeholders) are particularly complex in nature: they depend on distributed and often conflicting knowledge, resources and goals, and involve distributed processes which operate in different levels and at different times. The authors have been preoccupied with the problem of distributed design (particularly in the domains of architecture and urban planning) and have been working on the development of a prototype system that can generate spatial plans using knowledge learned through human-computer interaction. In this system spatial plans are represented in a VR space and they are composed by objects/cuboids introduced and controlled by users and artificial agents. The overall design system consists of a network of human and artificial agents that propose configurations or changes over the design space. In particular, agents manipulate the structural (dimensions and location), functional (colours) and behavioural (reactions/changes) characteristics of the different objects. Agents interact (indirectly) with each other as they receive reactions to the proposed changes. The way human actors (or their models) manipulate the objects in the design space constitutes the knowledge source for artificial agents. In other words, the artificial agents learn decision-making rules by observing the objects (their interaction and

change of behaviour) and then use these rules in order to generate new configurations. For the experimental set-up simple artificial reasoning systems were used to represent human actors. More specifically, the workings of the artificial agents are based on a distributed learning control architecture. Each agent has a neural network that learns behaviour patterns and uses this knowledge to formulate expectations and goals for the design problem. Additionally, each agent also has a control mechanism that aims to steer the overall design configuration towards individual goals by avoiding conflicts and disturbances coming from other agents. The main difference between traditional type of control and the view adopted in this thesis, owed to conceptions of distributed artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems, is an interest in micro level processes and interactions and a focus on decentralised decision making. In this view, coordination is perceived as a distributed learning control process, which emerges out of local actions carried out on the basis of local knowledge and with the aim to satisfy individual goals. For more details about the model see Zamenopoulos and Alexiou (2003). The reason that this model is discussed here is because it can help better illustrate the role of organization as explanatory concept and methodology in design. In the described system, design cannot be associated with a distinct cognitive designer (human or artificial), but may be seen as a characteristic property (attribute or ability) that depends on the organization and complexity of the system as a whole. The experimentation led us to the formulation of a view of design as distributed decision making where the notion of coordination is used as an abstraction and indicator of system organization. According to this view, coordination is defined both in relation to the formation of individual expectations and configurations that avoid conflicts at the micro level; and in relation to the emergence of collective (macro) behaviours and structures, which constrain the degrees of freedom available at the micro level. In this context, coordination is associated with the creative capacity of the overall system, and refers to the ability and process of achieving a particular critical state (a particular organization) that enables the emergence of design decisions. We will not get into much detail here but, briefly, this state represents a balance between a process of dividing/adding (decomposing) agents and objects into independent units (functions), so as to achieve more variety and cover a larger set of alternatives; and a process of grouping (composing) agents and objects into larger units that work together in a coherent way (have a common function). Let us now discuss the mathematical meaning of organization and explore how an organizational level and theory of design can be developed. 4. A formal treatment of organization based on category theory The development of an organizational level theory here (including definitions of basic concepts and tools) is based on category theoretic constructions. Category theory is a mathematical approach for studying the (organizational) properties of mathematical structures. The theory uses abstract diagrams in order to represent, study and unify different mathematical systems. On that basis, category theory is primarily used in order to define and represent “species” of (mathematical) objects, relations between “species” and ultimately construct theories regarding their properties and

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interdependence. But while category theory is a tool for defining and studying species of systems, it is also a mathematical structure itself. More precisely, a category is defined by objects, arrows and compositions of arrows. Each arrow f:A ! B is constructed by two objects: the domain object A and the co-domain object B. Objects are defined as identity arrows (e.g. 1A:A ! A). Compositions of arrows are also defined such as for example f+g:A ! B ! C. Two main axioms are generally applied: first, the composition of arrows is associative when defined. Second, the composition of an arrow f:A ! B with an identity arrow (i.e. 1A:A ! A or 1B:B ! B) is reduced to the arrow f:A ! B. For a general introduction to category theory the readers may consult Lawrere and Schanuel (1997) and the classical textbook by Mac Lane (1998). The definitions that follow are based on the work of Barr and Wells (1985, 1990) and Wells (1994). The idea of developing a category theory of organization can be traced back to the work of Rosen and even more explicitly to the work of Ehresmann and Vanbremeersch (1987). The following treatment introduces the notion of sketch as a way to define organization. We first discuss the meaning of organization and explicate the underlying concepts of organizational descriptions (i.e. distinctions/relations, ambiguity/constraints and abstractions/instantiation). We then offer a definition of organization using the concept of sketch. 4.1 Outlining a general approach to organization The main premise behind our treatment here is that the meaning of organization alludes to a special quality: a quality that determines the correspondence between the rules of a system, and the constructed interpretations of the system. In this sense, organization expresses the degree to which different realizations of a system “play by the rules”. This intuitively expresses the ideas about organization we encountered in Section 2. In order to explain this intuition, it is first useful to make the distinction between models, that express the properties of the objects described or realized within a universe U (e.g. the properties of an apartment building), and theories, that express the properties of the description of the universe U (e.g. the defined principles about apartment buildings). Models are often considered to assign specific semantics to a theory. Conversely, theories are considered to describe families of models, where each model constitutes an instance of the theory. A theory is in correspondence with a model when it is possible to deduce the properties of the model from the theory, and, respectively, it is also possible from the family of models to induce the theory. Organization is then a quality that characterizes the correspondence between the properties of the objects described (i.e. the models, or semantics) and the properties of the description (i.e. the theory or syntax). In this sense, organization is a characterization of the capacity of an observer to construct theories that complement his/her interpretations (models), but also a characterization of the capacity of an observed system to take different interpretations/instantiations that can be explained by certain rules (theories). For instance, a city is considered to be ordered when we can easily derive the observed properties of its street structure from a (formal or informal) description of rules that determine morphological changes in the city. A complex city is one whose observed structure cannot easily be derived from such rules, or more generally, one for which a simple set of underlying rules cannot be easily constructed.

The proposed meaning of organization – as a characterization of the complementary relation between theories and models – is related with different organizational approaches discussed in Section 2. The concept of sketch introduced in the next section builds on these ideas – found at the core of the micro, meso and macro conceptions of organization – in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of organization.

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4.2 Introduction to sketches: the basic concepts of organization For the purpose of formally defining organization the core issue is to identify a mathematical construct that characterizes the complementary relation between theories and models. More specifically, the idea is to find a special construct – an “archetypical” model – that provides a finite specification of a family of models, while on the other hand it also provides a (concrete) representation of a theory. We propose that an appropriate concept for this purpose is the category theoretic concept of sketch. But, what short of construction is a sketch and how is the interplay between theories and models specified? The following (dual) concepts are posited as the basic concepts embodied in a sketch: distinctions/relations, ambiguity/constraints and abstractions/instantiations. The purpose is to use these concepts in order to provide a finite specification of possibly infinite many models and therefore to create a representation of a theory. Note that the category theoretic concept of sketch is a conceptual analogue of the concept of sketch encountered in design research (Goel, 1995; Gross et al., 1988). Nevertheless, the intention in this paper is clearly not to use the concept in order to address theoretical questions about sketches and drawings, but as a way to capture the meaning of organization. Let us now briefly review these properties that specify the (mathematical) construct of sketch. 4.2.1 Distinctions and relations. A sketch is a construction that determines a space of (syntactic and semantic) possibilities generated by a structure of distinctions and relations. A distinction expresses the capacity of an observer, or observed system, to differentiate a system (or itself) from its environment, or a system from another system. On the other hand, relations express the capacity of an observer, or observed system, to designate (inter)-dependencies between parts, or between parts and wholes. In particular, an arrow f from A to B (depicted as f:A ! B) is thought as an action (an observation or a transformation from A to B) that designates: relations between entities A and B (e.g. causal relations, spatial relations, scaling relations, logical relations, semantic relations) and distinctions between entities (e.g. separating different objects and sub-objects in a universe A based on their image in B). The space of possibilities determined by a sketch is formally expressed by a graph GS. Definition (graph): A graph G(G0, G1) is defined by a set G0 whose elements are called objects, a set G1 whose elements are called arrows, and two types of functions called source and target. The function source:G1 ! G0 assigns an object A to each arrow, and the function target:G1 ! G0 assigns another (but not necessarily different) object B to each arrow. In a graph G, a path from a node A to an node C is a sequence of arrows {f1, f2, . . . fk} such that the source of fi is the target of fi2 1. For instance, an arrow f:A ! B and a arrow g:B ! C generate a path of arrows: A ! B ! C.

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Let us consider a design world constructed by objects which are distinguished in terms of behaviours Beh, structures Str and functions Func. The design process typically involves different phases, tasks, or operations, which can be expressed as arrows connecting behaviours, structures and functions. For example, we can consider the following processes: synthesis syn:Beh ! Str, analysis ana:Str ! Beh, evaluation eva:Func ! Beh and problem reformulation ref:Beh ! Func (Gero, 1990). A sketch of this design world is given by the graph shown in Figure 2. Syntactically, a graph has the capacity to represent a number of different compositions of arrows depending on the way paths of arrows are defined. For instance, one possible expression generated by the graph GS is the task syn+ana+syn+eva:Beh ! Str. Every possible composition of arrows is a specific instantiation of a design task within this space of possibilities. Semantically, graphs have the capacity to take different interpretations, assuming that the structure of the graph is preserved. For instance, arrows may be interpreted as actions over a set of structures, performance criteria, and functional descriptions, which are carried out by a design agent in order to generate alternative configurations. 4.2.2 Ambiguity and constraints. A sketch is a construction that also imposes constraints within a space of possibilities (within the graph Gs). Constraints generate classes of equivalent paths of arrows, namely define congruence classes of arrows. In this sense, constraints specify a balance between “degrees of freedom” (ambiguity) in Gs depending on the number of congruence classes, and “mutual information” (redundancy) depending on the size of the class of equivalent paths of arrows. Taking the above example, the synthesis and analysis tasks can be composed in two ways (Figure 3). On the left diagram, the composition of synthesis and analysis arrows are constrained by a target arrow that specifies desired behaviour (TBeh), while on the right diagram, synthesis and analysis are constrained by a target structure (TStr). The two diagrams express the constraints (equations) ana+syn ¼ TBeh and syn+ana ¼ TStr. Alternatively, the two compositions of arrows can be thought to provide a measure of deviation, or error, from desired behaviours or structures, respectively. Such diagrams (i.e. constructions that impose constraints within Gs) are more formally defined as follows: Definition (diagram): A diagram d is a graph homomorphism. Given a graph D and a graph G, the graph homomorphism d:D ! G is a diagram of shape (or form) D in G. The shape or form D of a diagram d generates constraints in G in the following sense: Definition (commutative diagrams or constraints): A diagram d:D ! G is commutative when for any two alternative paths {f1, f2, . . . fk} and {g1, g2, . . . ,gk} in D between the objects x and y, the alternative paths in G are reduced to one path between the objects d(x) and d( y); namely the following constraint is applied: d( f1)+d( f2) . . . d(fk) ¼ d(g1)+d(g2). . .d(gk).

ana

Figure 2.

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A diagram is therefore a special type of arrow that gives a form in G and whose commutative properties induce certain constraints. Assuming that d is an action of observation, or transformation over D, the set of commutative diagrams essentially generates congruence classes of arrows in G. To put it simply, the observation d reduces or interprets a family of observables (say f and g) into a “quality” represented by a new arrow denoted as [f ] or [g ]. Such actions reduce the ambiguity of a system by identifying constraints. The creation of congruence classes of arrows is a fundamental aspect of observation and theory generation in science and mathematics (see for instance the generation of quotient categories in Rosen (1978) and Barr and Wells (1990, p. 71)). 4.2.3 Abstractions and instantiations. Finally, sketches are constructions that create abstractions. In general, the term abstraction refers to the properties that are shared by a family of entities. The entities that share this property are said to instantiate (or participate in) an abstraction. Entities are therefore instances of an abstraction. Abstraction then is the capacity of an observer or observed system to generate entities that define the properties of a family of entities. In category theory, universal constructions such as limits and co-limits represent this situation: diagrams specify properties in Gs and universal arrows specify instantiations (up to isomorphism) that share the specified property. More specifically, cones (and co-cones) specify descriptions of families of arrows. Definition (cones): Given a diagram d:D ! G of shape D, cone is a family of arrows of the form ck:i ! d(k) that is indexed by the nodes k of D where i is an object in G (Figure 4). The dual concept of co-cone is similarly defined by reversing the direction of arrows. A commutative cone is a cone ck:i ! d(k) such that for each arrow a:k ! k0 in D the diagram in Figure 5 commutes.

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Figure 3.

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Figure 4.

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Figure 5.

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Based on this construction in G certain universal properties are possible to be defined. The important characteristic of such a construction is that the specified object i in G is an instantiation (i.e. a solution or realization) of the properties specified by the diagram d:D ! G. 4.2.4 Putting everything together: sketches of organization. A number of fundamental concepts that underlie organizational descriptions have now been identified and defined mathematically: graphs of relations and distinctions; diagrams that determine constraints; and cones that generate abstractions. These concepts will be said to define a sketch of an organizational description. More formally, a sketch is defined as follows (following Wells, 1994): Definition (sketch of organization): A sketch S is a graph GS together with a set DS of diagrams, a set LS of cones in GS, and a set CS of co-cones in GS. Namely, S ¼ kGS, DS, LS, CSl. 4.3 A definition of organization using the concept of sketch This section is concerned with the mathematical construct of sketch as a way to describe the relation between theories and models and offer a definition of organization. The main focus is therefore to define the interplay between the properties of a universe (a theory of the universe) and the properties of the objects described in the universe (models or semantics of the universe) which are generated by a sketch S ¼ kGS, DS, LS, CSl. It is possible to demonstrate that for each sketch S a universal property is constructed that gives a precise definition of the meaning and relation between a sketch, a theory of a sketch, and its models (Barr and Wells, 1985). In category theoretic terms, the notion of theory is more explicitly identified with the concept of category that satisfies certain properties; while the notion of model is identified with the concept of functor. More specifically, for each sketch determined by kGS, DS, LS, CSl it is possible to construct a category that has as an underlying graph the graph Gs; as commutative diagrams the set Ds; and as limits and co-limits the type of cones and co-cones defined in Ls and Cs. This category, denoted as Th(S), is defined as a theory of a sketch S. For a sketch S and for a theory of a sketch Th(S) there is a functor i:Th(S) ! C that preserves the aforementioned properties of the theory. This functor is defined as a model or interpretation of a theory Th(S). In the same line of thought, a model of a sketch S in C is a graph homomorphism m:GS ! U(C) such that GS is the graph of the sketch S; and U(C) is the underlying sketch of the category C. This definition implies that: whenever the diagram d:D ! GS is defined in GS, then m+d:D ! U(C) is a diagram in U(C) and a commutative diagram in C. Whenever the diagrams l:D ! GS and c:D ! GS are cones and co-cones in S, then they are cones and co-cones in U(C) and limit and co-limits in C. Based on this notation, the following universal property is defined: For every sketch S and every model of a sketch m:S ! U(C) there is unique functor i:Th(S) ! C for which the diagram in Figure 6 commutes (i.e. m ¼ U(i) h): This property states that there is a natural bijection between models of a sketch m:S ! U(C) and interpretations of a theory i:Th(S) ! C (i.e. an adjunction between a theory functor Th and the underlying functor U ), which is denoted as: ModðS; U ðCÞÞ ø FunðThðSÞ; CÞ

The defined adjunction gives a precise meaning to the interplay between theories and models generated by a sketch S. In order to intuitively explain the meaning of this construction let us briefly discuss an informal example. Let us imagine an architect designing a building. Let us suppose that a sketch S is a typical architectural sketch of a building. Then, the category Th(S) is a theory that describes all possible models of the sketch, namely different plan configurations that satisfy the properties of the sketch. The category U(C), called underlying sketch, is a description of the properties of a specific instantiation (a building) in C. Then, the defined property (adjunction) simply states that the properties U(C) of a specific building in C are deduced by the sketch S (i.e. they are plausible instantiations of S) if and only if the configuration in C is derived from the theory of possible built forms Th(S). Based on the introduced notation and the identified property (adjunction), the meaning of organization can be now more precisely elaborated. The core idea is to identify the property of adjunction with a “perfectly ordered” organizational state. Namely, an “ordered” organization implies that all properties of every possible model are known and deducible from the theory (there is no uncertainty in the system). On this basis, a “random” organization is identified with a situation where there is no adjunction: there is no sketch of a theory or sketch of models. A “complex” organizational state is identified with a situation where there is a weak adjunction. A weak adjunction is an adjunction where the arrow i:Th(S) ! C in the above universal construction is not required to be unique (MacLane, 1998, p. 235). A weak adjunction therefore implies that there are multiple interpretations of a theory (i:Th(S) ! C) in relation to a specific model of a sketch. In this sense, complexity is associated with a situation when there is a certain ambiguity generated by the multiplicity of possible interpretations. Informally, it is convenient to assume that the theory functor Th (or likewise the model m and interpretation i ) “forget” or “ignore” some of the information described by the sketch. It is also convenient to think that such functors introduce certain additional structure not originally included in the sketch. Organization then is defined as follows: Definition (organization): Organization is the sketch that generates the relation between theories and models. The main concepts introduced in this section and the proposed characterization of organization can now be used to further develop a categorical treatment of design as an organizational capacity.

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5. Design as an organizational capacity: a categorical treatment The premise behind our treatment is that design arises in response to a certain “problematic situation”: when/where there is a desire, need or an idea that something should or could be different in a world W, but the means to achieve such a change are h

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not immediately known. This premise is commonly held in design research (Archer, 1965; Mitchell, 1990; Smithers, 2002). The situation is the result of inconsistencies that emerge between beliefs about the past, current, and future states of the world, and the expressed desires or needs regarding the states of the world. The introduced notions of theory and model can be used here in order to explain this premise: a problematic situation arises when desires about the world generate expressions of theories or models that do not follow the correspondence between theories and models as this is established by the belief system. Take for instance the desire for “an air conditioning system that exploits natural resources in order to create certain environmental conditions”. A problematic situation arises when the available theory concludes that the desired properties (i.e. certain environmental conditions) cannot be achieved with known models of air conditioning systems; and/or the known models do not have the desired property of being able to exploit natural resources. As another example, in the system presented in Section 3, a problematic situation arises because of the initial inability of individual agents to achieve their individual desires and goals, given the theories and models that they already maintain. In other words, what drives design is the realisation that the desires and goals of each agent cannot be achieved given their current theory about the behaviour of other agents and the specific models or instantiations of the world. Figure 7 is an informal illustration of this situation. More formally, a sketch S in design is a representation of the organizing principles of a design object or process. The theory functor Th determines a category Th(S) that describes a language of plausible or desirable interpretations of a sketch. The functor U determines a category U(C) that describes the set of properties of a specific interpretation of a theory Th(S) in C. Models m:S ! U(C) are those interpretations of the sketch that satisfy these properties. Hence, in category theoretic terms, a problematic situation appears when the developed theory Th(S) of desired objects/processes yields instantiations in C (i.e. i:Th(S) ! C) whose underlying properties U(C) cannot be (uniquely) derived by the sketch S (i.e. m: S ! U(C)). The need to design therefore arises when the theory and model functors contain – so to speak – noise, or errors, and hence there is no natural bijection between Mod(S,U(C)) and Fun(Th(S),C). That is, there is weak adjunction (no unique correspondence) or no adjunction: ModðS; U ðCÞÞ
FunðThðSÞ; CÞ The “broken” adjunction between theories and models explains why the means to achieve a design change “are not immediately known”. In our view, and to borrow Smithers’ (2002, p. 7) argument, this broken correspondence “neither specifies what is Th S

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Figure 7.

i C

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required, nor defines a problem to be solved” and it is “what makes designing a particular kind of activity”. In response to a problematic situation, the “problem” of design is identified with the generation of theories and models of sketches that bring beliefs and desires into correspondence. This expresses another generally accepted premise regarding the nature of design. For instance, according to Smithers (2002) at the core of design(-ing) lies an apparent paradox: designing has to do with arriving at a solution to a problem which is not a-priori specified. In other words, although design is driven by a need or goal, this goal is actually constructed by the very process of design. According to this view, the task of design involves the need to synthesise requirements and concepts regarding the desired objects, as well as to synthesise plans of action regarding the design process (i.e. to sketch objects and processes and to develop theories of such objects and processes). Additionally, the task of design also involves the need to generate specific interpretations of the synthesised requirements and plans into specific objects or actions (i.e. to synthesise models and give specific interpretations of the developed theories). In category theoretic terms, the core “problem” of design is to bring into complementary relation two tasks: the generation of a sketch S whose models are expected to satisfy any instantiation of the theory Th(S), and the generation of a theory Th(S) whose interpretations are expected to be models of the sketch S. What surfaces from this discussion is that the peculiarity of design lies in the fact that sketches, models and theories are developed in some way independently from each other. More precisely, the postulation of a weak or no adjunction implies that the construction of theories and the construction of models from a sketch also lead to certain expressions of desired objects/processes that are not uniquely derived from the specified sketch. In this sense, design necessitates the (paradoxical) capacity of generating theories and models of a sketch in preparation of their aforementioned adjunction, i.e. before such correspondence is constructed. In other words, design requires the capacity to generate sketches in anticipation of theory-model adjunction. A more detailed examination of the meaning of this capacity to respond to a design task – and the conditions that explain it – is outside the scope of this paper. For a discussion on the meaning of anticipation in design see Zamenopoulos and Alexiou (2007). The main results from this treatment can now be formally summarized. Definition (design situation): A design situation is defined as an organizational state where the existing models (i.e. m: S ! U(C)) of an organizational description S and the interpretations (i.e. i:Th(S) ! C) of the existing theory Th(S) are not complementary, i.e. there is a weak adjunction or no adjunction: ModðS; U ðCÞÞ
FunðThðSÞ; CÞ Definition (the “problem” of design): Given a design situation, the “problem” of design is to establish an adjunction Mod(S, U(C)) ø Fun(Th(S), C) through the generation of a sketch S whose models are expected to satisfy any instantiation of the theory Th(S), and the generation of a theory Th(S) whose interpretations are expected to be models of the sketch S. Definition (design capacity): Given a design situation, design is the capacity to sketch in anticipation of an organization, namely in anticipation of a complementary relation between models and interpretations of the theory.

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In this sense, the adjunction Mod(S, U(C)) ø Fun(Th(S), C) is an “emergent” state and not a given description of it. This is a crucial point for understanding the suitability of various abstractions for representing or expressing the problem of design. As we will see in the next section, assuming the existence of this adjunction is what limits the ability of control to express design as a distinct type of problem. 6. Revisiting the concept of control in design In this section, the notion of control is examined in order to evaluate whether the “problem” of control is appropriate for capturing the “problem” of design, as discussed in the previous section. For this purpose, we will first examine the meaning and role of control in cybernetics. Cybernetics is generally perceived as the “science of effective organization” (Beer, 1974, p. 13). According to Ashby (1956, p. 3) “cybernetics envisages a set of possibilities much wider than the actual, and then asks why the particular case should conform to its usual particular restriction”. Within this context, the conceptual paradigm of control aims to describe and explain how a particular structure is formed out of a given organization (i.e. the conditions that determine a family of possible structures). In particular, control is concerned with the development of a theory of variety or entropy reduction. It is often noted that in the first cybernetic studies there was a bias towards top-down theories of (purposeful) variety reduction. The reduction of variety was described and explained on the basis of a clear organizational distinction between a controller and a controlled system where goals were embedded in the controlling system itself. In later studies, a bottom-up approach to variety reduction was developed which brought into play the issue of spontaneous variety (or entropy) reduction. This led to questions regarding the plausibility of self-organization (von Foerster, 1984); the meaning of self-observation and self-steering, where a controller acts within the same system that it aims to control (Baumgartner, 1986); and generally to the recognition of a complementary relation between autonomy and control (Goguen and Varela, 1979). In a broad sense then, control theory is concerned with the explanation of the purposeful or spontaneous generation of structures such that a given identity (or a vital performance criterion for survival) is preserved. The identity of a system is identified with the organization of the system. Hence, the capacity to control alludes to the capacity to act within, or upon, a system so as to preserve its organization under changing circumstances (Geyer and Van Der Zouwen, 1986, p. 215). From this discussion, it follows that the “problem” of control arises within a situation where there is a specific (controller-controlled system or system-environment) distinction and consequently a specific organization (identity) that needs to be preserved. Following Varela’s (1979) argument, the designation of a distinction between a system and its environment is tied up with the formation of a complementary relation between the description of the organization of a system and the description of the structures that satisfy this organizational description. Following this argument, the meaning of organizational invariance is alternatively defined as the invariance over the complementary relation between organizational and structural descriptions. More formally, Goguen and Varela (1979) identify the very meaning of this complementary relation with the category theoretic concept of adjunction.

Control is then associated with the capacity to generate structures that preserve the adjunction between theories of a given organization Th(S) (i.e. the set of structures that satisfy an organizational description) and the sketch S that describes the organizational conditions of a system (its identity). Namely, control preserves the natural bijection between Mod(S,U(C)) and Fun(Th(S), C)): Mod(S,U(C)) ø Fun(Th(S), C)). It is often convenient to think this bijection of arrows as a universal construction: for every model m:S ! U(C) (i.e. any organizational description derived from S) there is a unique interpretation i:Th(S) ! C (a unique structure definition derived from Th(S)) such that the left diagram commutes (i.e. m ¼ U(i )h). The same principle is applied for the right diagram (Figure 8). The main results from this treatment can now be stated as follows: Definition (the control situation): A control situation is defined as a specific organizational state S that needs to remain invariant under perturbations. Definition (the “problem” of control): The “problem” of control is the generation of models (i.e. arrows of the form m:S ! U(C)) that maintain the natural bijection (i.e. complementary relation):

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ModðS; U ðCÞÞ ø FunðThðSÞ; CÞ Definition (control capacity): Assuming an organizational description S, the capacity to control is identified with the existence of the arrow Cont:U(C) ! H(S, U(C)) which selects models m within H(S, U(C)) that satisfy the adjunction Mod(S,U(C)) ø Fun(Th(S),C) (i.e. satisfy the equation m ¼ U(i )h derived from the universal construction above). The following diagram is therefore the “archetypical presentation” of control systems (Figure 9). It is worth noting that a more general definition of control would also involve some form of learning: while control involves adapting an environment or reality to a certain representation of identity (control action), it also involves adapting this representation to the given reality (learning action). In this case, control additionally involves the capacity to generate a theory of the system to be controlled. This capacity is identified with the existence of an arrow Adap:Th(S) ! H(S, Th(S)) that selects a range of structures (i.e. determines a theory of structures) within a set of possible structures Th(S) constrained by the adjunction Mod(S, U(C)) ø Fun(Th(S), C). The diagram (Figure 10) is then added in the above diagram of control systems. h U(Th(S))

S

Th(S) m

U(i)

U(C)

Th(m)

i C

e

Th(U(C))

Figure 8.

U(Th(S)) U(i) h m S

U(C)

Cont

H(S, U(C))

Figure 9.

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In design research, cybernetic theories of design have been, by and large, coupled with a control theoretic understanding and identification of design. Especially, in the early days of design research, the conceptual category of design was identified with control and the designer was defined and studied as a controller. The design task was then defined as a process that transforms design object configurations with the objective to maintain a principle idea or function and to satisfy certain performance criteria, despite uncertainties and exogenous disturbances. There are several theoretical contributions in design research that explicitly or implicitly aim to explain the capacity to design as a control capacity. For instance, as mentioned in the introduction, Archer developed a model of design activity as a control problem. In particular, he considered that designing is an iterative process of generating and controlling a set of (decision) variables in order to optimally fulfil a given set of objectives. Another less obvious example can be found in Yoshikawa’s (1981) general design theory which builds on set and topology theory. In particular, the theory is based on certain assumptions and definitions about the nature of designed objects (their structural attributes and their functions), which are followed by certain theorems about the nature and possibility to design. Design is defined as a mapping from a function space to an attribute space. This implies that design is seen as an algorithmic process of finding a specific structure in the attribute space that preserves certain topological relations in the function space (Reich, 1995, p. 9). An important point in Yoshikawa’s theory is provided in Theorem 10 which states that the capacity to design is possible if the attribute space is topologically stronger (i.e. it has greater variety) that the function space. This is strongly reminiscent of the Law of Requisite Variety, and implicitly suggests that design ability is comparable to controllability. However, the formulation of control provided above can help us understand fundamental limitations when the concept is used as a paradigm for design. As we argued, the problem of control is defined as a problem of preservation or maintenance of a particular organization based on the existence of a complementary relation between sketches, theories and models; while the problem of design is defined as a problem of creating a particular organization, when the complementary relation is broken. In other words, when the idea of control is transferred to design it implies that ideas or performance criteria that drive the design process are given in advance (i.e. they are intrinsic in the problematic situation), and hence are not part of the design process itself as it is commonly accepted in contemporary design research. Based on this analysis therefore, design surfaces as paradigm that needs to be differentiated from the notion of control and acquire a distinct place in cybernetics: as a distinct problem and capacity. 7. Summary and conclusions The purpose of the paper was to recast the relationship between cybernetics and design using the concept of organization. For this purpose we reviewed and formally elaborated the concepts of organization, design, and control and investigated their relation.

Figure 10.

S

F

Th(S)

Adap

H(S, Th(S))

We discussed that control is linked to the notion of organizational invariance, while design is concerned with organizational emergence and change. More specifically, control starts with an organizational description that determines the identity of a system (i.e. an ontological distinction between controller and environment) and that needs to be preserved. Design, on the contrary, starts from a situation where such an organizational description or identity needs to be created. We further argued that the emphasis on control within the field of design has in this sense limited the scope of applying cybernetic principles in this field. We believe that the concept of organization (as elaborated in this paper) gives us a way to understand design as a unique type of problem, and create a more fertile ground for developing a cybernetic basis of design. References Archer, B.L. (1965), “Systematic methods for designers”, in Cross, N. (Ed.), Developments in Design Methodology, Wiley, Chichester, pp. 57-82. Archer, B.L. (1970), “An overview of the structure of the design process”, in Moore, G.T. (Ed.), Emerging Methods in Environmental Design and Planning, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 285-307. Ashby, R.W. (1956), An Introduction to Cybernetics, Chapman & Hall, London. Ashby, R.W. (1962), “Principles of the self-organizing system”, in von Foerster, H. and Zopf, G.W. Jr (Eds), Principles of Self-Organization, Pergamon Press, London, pp. 255-78. Atlan, H. (1974), “On a formal definition of organization”, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 45 No. 2, pp. 295-304. Baas, N.A. (1994), “Emergence, hierarchies, and hyperstructures”, in Langton, C.G. (Ed.), Artificial Life III, Addison Wesley, Reading, MA, pp. 515-37. Barr, M. and Wells, C. (1985), Toposes, Triples and Theories, Springer, New York, NY. Barr, M. and Wells, C. (1990), Category Theory for Computing Science, Prentice-Hall, New York, NY. Bar-Yam, Y. (2004), “Multiscale variety in complex systems”, Complexity, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 37-45. Baumgartner, T. (1986), “Experiences with the steering of particular social systems”, in Geyer, F. and Van Der Zouwen, J. (Eds), Sociocybernetic Paradoxes, Sage, London, pp. 9-25. Beer, S. (1974), Designing Freedom, Wiley, London. Bennett, C.H. (1985), “Dissipation, information, computational complexity and the definition of organization”, in Pines, D. (Ed.), Emerging Syntheses in Science, Addison-Wesley, Redwood City, CA, pp. 215-31. Cariani, P. (1989), “On the design of devices with emergent semantic functions”, PhD thesis, Department of Systems Science, State University of New York at Binghamton, New York, NY. Casti, J.L. (1986), “On system complexity: identification, measurement, and management”, in Casti, J.L. and Karlqvist, A. (Eds), Complexity, Language, and Life: Mathematical Approaches, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, pp. 146-73. Ehresmann, A.C. and Vanbremeersch, J.P. (1987), “Hierarchical evaluative systems: a mathematical model for complex systems”, Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, Vol. 49 No. 1, pp. 13-50. Gero, J.S. (1990), “Design prototypes: a knowledge representation schema for design”, AI Magazine, Vol. 11 No. 4, pp. 26-36. Geyer, F. and Van Der Zouwen, J. (Eds) (1986), Sociocybernetic Paradoxes, Sage, London.

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Glanville, R. (1998), “Re-searching design and designing research”, Design Issues, Vol. 15 No. 2. Goel, V. (1995), Sketches of Thought, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Goguen, J.A. and Varela, F.J. (1979), “Systems and distinctions: duality and complementarity”, International Journal of General Systems, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 31-43. Gross, M.D., Ervin, S.M., Anderson, J.A. and Fleitscher, A. (1988), “Constraints: knowledge representation in design”, Design Studies, Vol. 9 No. 3, pp. 133-43. Lawrere, F.W. and Schanuel, S.H. (1997), Conceptual Mathematics: A First Introduction to Categories, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. MacLane, S. (1998), Categories for the Working Mathematician, Springer, New York, NY. Maturana, H.R. and Varela, F.J. (1980), Autopoiesis and Cognition. The Realization of Living, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht. Mitchell, W.J. (1990), The Logic of Architecture: Design, Computation and Cognition, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. (The) Oxford English Dictionary Online (2006), Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Reich, Y. (1995), “A critical review of general design theory”, Research in Engineering Design, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 1-18. Rosen, R. (1978), Fundamentals of Measurement and Representation of Natural Systems, North-Holland, New York, NY. Rosen, R. (1985), Anticipatory Systems. Philosophical, Mathematical and Methodological Foundations, Pergamon Press Ltd, Oxford. Rosen, R. (1991), Life Itself. A Comprehensive Inquiry into the Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life, Columbia University Press, New York, NY. Smithers, T. (2002), “Synthesis in design”, in Gero, J.S. (Ed.), Artificial Intelligence in Design, Kluwer, Dordrecht. Varela, F.J. (1979), Principles of Biological Autonomy, Elsevier, New York, NY. von Foerster, H. (1984), Observing Systems, Intersystems Publications, Salinas, CA. Wells, C. (1994), “Sketches: outline with references”, available at: www.case.edu/artsci/math/ wells/pub/pdf/sketch.pdf Wolfram, S. (2002), A New Kind of Science, Wolfram Media, Champaign, IL. Yoshikawa, H. (1981), “General design theory and a CAD system”, in Sata, T. and Warman, E. (Eds), Man-Machine Communication in CAD/CAM, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam. Zamenopoulos, T. and Alexiou, K. (2003), “Computer-aided creativity and learning in distributed cooperative human-machine networks”, in Chiu, M-L., Jin-Yeu, T., Kvan, T., Morozumi, M. and Jeng, T. (Eds), CAAD Futures 2003, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 191-201. Zamenopoulos, T. and Alexiou, K. (2007), “Towards an anticipatory view of design”, Design Studies, Vol. 28 No. 4, pp. 411-36.

About the authors Theodore Zamenopoulos is a professionally qualified architect and is currently employed as a Research Fellow at the Open University in the Department of Design and Innovation. He is also affiliated with the Bartlett School of Graduate and the CASA in UCL. His research is concerned

with design theory and the development of mathematical representations of complexity and design. Other research topics include artificial intelligence in design, design and planning support systems, knowledge representation and spatial cognition. Theodore Zamenopoulos is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected] Katerina Alexiou is a RCUK Academic Research Fellow at the Open University in the Department of Design and Innovation. She is also affiliated with the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis in UCL. Her main research interests lie in the area of intersection between design and complexity research. Particular interests include collaborative design, design and planning support systems, artificial intelligence in design, spatial cognition and simulation.

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Special announcements 14th International Congress of Cybernetics and Systems of WOSC Wroclaw, Poland, 9-12 September 2008 Organised by . WOSC – World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics . Institute of Information Science and Engineering, Faculty of Computer Science and Management, Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland International Honorary Committee E. Andreewsky A. Andrew P. Auger E. Bernard-Weil C. Bilciu B. Bouchon-Meunier N. Bulz Y. Cherruault G. Constandache A. Danzin D. Dubois D. Dutta Majumder R. Espejo L. Feng J. Forrest C. Franc¸ois W. Gasparski F. Geyer A. Ghosal B. Guo Qing H. Haken

Kybernetes Vol. 36 No. 9/10, 2007 pp. 1590-1593 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X

J. Kacprzyk T. Kaczorek G. Klir A. Lopes Pereira M. Manescu I. Mirita M. Mulej M. Najim A. Nigro E. Otlacan J. Ramaekers G.P. Rao J. Rose B. Rudall M. Schwaninger L. Sifeng M. Smith V. Stefanuk R. Vallee´ J. van der Zouwen L. Zadeh

Organising Committee J. Jozefczyk – chair D. Orski W. Thomas M. Turowska D. Gajsior G. Filcek M. Kowalski Previous Congresses of WOSC 1st Congress, London, 1969 2nd Congress, Oxford, 1972 3rd Congress, Bucharest, 1975 4th Congress, Amsterdam, 1978 5th Congress, Mexico City, 1981 6th Congress, Paris, 1984 7th Congress, London, 1987 8th Congress, New York City, 1990 9th Congress, New Delhi, 1993 10th Congress, Bucharest, 1996 11th Congress, London, 1999 12th Congress, Pittsburgh, 2002 13th Congress, Maribor, 2005 Congress topics . Artificial intelligence . Behavioural sciences . Biological and medical cybernetics . Cognition and systems . Complex systems . Control theory and engineering . Cybernetics and art . Cybernetics and economy . Dynamical systems . Ecological systems . Education and systems . Epistemology and praxeology . Fuzzy systems . General and mathematical systems theory . Grey systems . History of cybernetics and systems . Information and communication systems . Intelligent systems

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Management and cybernetics Manufacturing and transport systems Pansystems Social systems Systems modelling, control, management and decision making Uncertain systems

Important dates . Submission of invited sessions proposals – January 15, 2008 . Submission of 2 pages-long extended abstracts and application forms – February 29, 2008 . Notification of acceptance of papers on the basis of submitted abstract, and providing additional organisational information – April 15, 2008 . Submission of the full text of papers and Congress fee – May 31, 2008 Submission of papers . Submissions should describe original completed or ongoing research work not submitted or published elsewhere. . The submitted abstracts and full papers should be prepared according to the templates available at: www.wosc-congress.pwr.wroc.pl . Accepted full papers should be no longer than 8 pages. . Accepted papers will be given 20-30 minutes for the presentation and discussion. . Accepted papers will be published in the Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Cybernetics and Systems of WOSC. The Proceedings will be available at the Congress. . The author responsible for correspondence, including the author’s name, telephone, fax number and e-mail address, has to be identified. . One of the authors of each accepted paper should register and present the paper at the Congress. Address for submission . Authors are requested to submit their extended abstracts and full texts electronically as a PDF file by following the link instructions at the Congress home page: www.wosc-congress.pwr.wroc.pl . E-mail submission is also possible at: [email protected] Congress fee The fee for the participants will be 250 EUR. It covers admittance to all sessions, single copy of the Proceedings, refreshments and social events. The Congress fee is exclusive of accommodation charges. Contributions cannot be included in the Proceedings, unless registration, full payment and full texts are received by May 31, 2008. This deadline should be strictly respected.

Congress language The working language of the Congress is English. Copyright Extended versions of selected papers will be published in Kybernetes (the official journal of the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics) or in Systems Science (journal published in Poland in English). The Editors of the journals will take the final decisions about the publications after the papers have undergone a usual reviewing procedure. Accommodation Information about a hotel reservation will be available by May 31, 2008. Details will be announced on the Congress web site. Congress venue The 14th International Congress of Cybernetics and Systems of WOSC will take palace at Wroclaw University of Technology. Wroclaw is the capital of Lower Silesia region located in south-western Poland, known for its over one hundred of bridges and over 1,000 years history with Polish, Czech, German and Austrian influences. Now it is known as a very young city with over 100,000 students from almost twenty universities and academia. Foreign visitors are offered direct international plane connections to Frankfurt, Munich and London. Congress web site For more information about the 14th International Congress of Cybernetics and Systems of WOSC please visit the web site: www.wosc-congress.pwr.wroc.pl Contact addresses Jerzy Jozefczyk, Wroclaw University of Technology, Wybrzeze Wyspianskiego 27, 50-370 Wroclaw, Poland, Tel.: þ 48 71 320 38 84; Fax: þ48 71 320 38 84; E-mail: Jerzy. [email protected]

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