Week #23 of 2022

Hi everyone, hope you are all doing well & safe!

Here's what happened on the twenty-third week of 2022.

📆 On Tuesday 7 June, we had a great informal discussion on the concept of Placement developed by Richard Buchanan in his paper Wicked Problems in Design Thinking, JSTOR Design Issues, Vol. 8, 1992. The discussion originally started on our Slack server (join us here), and we connected Placement with constraints and direction in complexity thinking:

Placement is “direction with no predetermined destination”. [Buchanan] describes design as a probabilistic approach, defined by the relationship between context and practitioners (the boundary), unlike a scientific approach which works by isolation of cause & effect.

📆 Jeudi 9 juin, nous avons discuté de la façon de concevoir dans des environnements spécialisés (domaines expert) tels que les cabinets d'avocats et de notaires, et comment apporter de la nouveauté et échapper au paradigme(s) dominant(s) en cartographiant le paysage actuel, en recherchant des patterns dans d'autres domaines et en trouvant des moyens de les transposer & recombiner pour changer les interactions dans le système.

Shared by the community

Here's what community members shared & discussed on our Slack server these past few days, sorted by channel.

#Links

TBM 25/52: In Defense of Frameworks (and Process)

In this post I am going to defend frameworks and processes. “That’s unlike you,” remarked a friend. “I thought you were all about flexibility and inventing your own frameworks!” Read on… You have a process—no matter what. It may be flexible. It may be implicit. It may involve a lot of spot-judgment.…

The Beautiful MessJohn Cutler

#Topic Critical Thinking

Shared by @Vinish:

Perspective—10 Iceberg Situations: Sonder more to be less cranky

10 Iceberg Situations

Sonder more to be less cranky.

This Week's Top TenJessica Hagy

#Topic Design

Shared by @(Kevin)SkepticalDesign:

A response to McKinsey’s report “Redesigning the design department” by GK VanPatter from humantific.

5 Keys for Organizational Leaders

Happy spring and welcome back Humantific Readers. This week we are sharing some reflections on the question of redesigning design departments.

LinkedInGK VanPatter

Interesting articles that bridges design and complexity theory, by Kasey Klimes

When to Design for Emergence

Market applications on the long-tail of user needs

rhizome r&dKasey Klimes

Design Needs Complexity Theory

Despite Christopher Alexander’s notable application of complexity theory in design during the 60’s and 70’s, the two fields have mysteriously grown apart.

rhizome r&dKasey Klimes

#Topic Ethics

Shared by @Vinish:

Joint investigation into location tracking by the Tim Hortons App: https://priv.gc.ca/en/opc-actions-and-decisions/investigations/investigations-into-businesses/2022/pipeda-2022-001/#toc3-1

#Topic Innovation-change

Shared by @(Kevin)SkepticalDesign:

7 principles of sense-making in strategy:
1. Focusing on describing the evolutionary potential of the here and now.
2. Mapping that space without making more assumptions than are necessary and with as much objectivity as possible.
3. Using new language for new concepts, avoiding language that carries too many assumptions.
4. Focusing change on multiple small projects, some of which contradict each other but which overall have coherence.
5. Getting to the right metaphor is important.
6. All voices need to be heard but not all voices should be tolerated.
7. Any approach to strategy needs to be dynamic and non-linear in nature.

Sense-making in strategy: opening - The Cynefin Co

I’ve been much occupied of late, developing the methods and tools around Estuarine Mapping, the third sense-making framework along with Cynefin and Flexuous Curves. As a part of that, I’ve also been working on a range of typologies which includes enhancing constraint mapping from its very early day…

The Cynefin CoDave Snowden

Shared by @Jonathan:

Analternative to causal/goal directed thinking?

Effectuation: Elements of entrepreneurial expertise (book by Sarasvathy)

Effectuation: Elements of entrepreneurial expertise Saras Sarasvathy Effectuation This book explores how entrepreneurs† think about business problems and how this style of thinking might differ from conventional business thinking. The book is written by an academic for academics, so includes many de…

Innovation GardenEffectuation

#Topic Org-teams-governance

Governance for Resilience: How Can States Prepare for the Next Crisis?

In contrast, a few governance “super-factors”—such as control of corruption, societal trust, and high quality political leadership—are exceptionally powerful in enabling a country to augment its resilience through multiple pathways.

Governance for Resilience: How Can States Prepare for the Next Crisis?

As policymakers look ahead, they must find a way to balance the need for inclusive resilience with the imperative for meaningful reform.

Carnegie Endowment for International PeaceFrances Z. Brown

Thanks for reading!

Kevin from Design & Critical Thinking.

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