Design Cybernetics

By Thomas Fischer

I started reading about cybernetics because I stumbled upon Pask's 'Conversation Theory' and it helped me frame a lot of the work I'm doing around collaboration at Paylocity.

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Design as conversation

Design unfolds as a conversation between the "self" and various possible kinds of "other." Other can mean another person, a pen and paper, Figma, or whatever. The important thing is that whatever the "other" is, you allow it to speak back and accommodate the unexpected. This sets up a dynamic in which the self affects the other, and the other affects the self. It's this dynamic that defines the engagement as a conversation.

A conversation is a constructivist act. Meanings are not passed between participants in conversations—they are made by the participants together. Each participant creates their own understanding of what they believe their conversational partner means, and then they re-state it to that partner.

Communication vs. conversation

Communication and conversation are distinct and do not always go hand-in-hand. Communication is about transmission of signals through a channel, while various degrees of noise and interference muddy the signal and alter the message. In that sense, conversation does require some degree of communication. However, a good conversation result does not depend on good communication. A very poor signal can yield outstanding conversation, and a clear signal may not beget any conversation at all.

Conversation theory (Pask)

CT describes processes of continuous feedback and ongoing learning as a result of exchanges between conversation participants.

The "individuals" in any conversation do not necessarily have to be human.

Overarching goal of CT is to address processes of creating shared understandings and ongoing learning through a systemic and systematic approach.

Pask says conversations are goal-driven exchanges navigated through the conversation partners' states, conditions, and contexts. Possible outcomes include:

• A shared understanding is reached
• No agreement is reached
• Goals cannot be adjusted sufficiently and the system divides into decentralized clusters, which may interact at a later stage

The goal of design

Design is conversation. And ultimately, we are designing for conversation.

Very few design situations present with clearly-defined goals. So the designer's first challenge is to understand the situation, its constituents, and their context, and from that understanding help facilitate agreement on shared goals. Paradox: as designers act to achieve a goal, they often discover the need to change the goal.

The goals of a design process must be transparent so as to enable review and response.

System goals

Designers intuitively recognize that perfection is unattainable, and therefore don't seek a perfect solution; only one that is good enough.

The goal of the system is framed differently in first and second order cybernetics. In first order, the observer is outside of the system, and so is the goal. In second order, the both the observer and the goal are inside of the system. This makes it impossible for the observer to gain some kind of objective view of the system and its progress towards the goal. A system which looks perfectly stable from within may appear erratic when viewed from the outside.

Two levels of design

1. Design of things to be used, including tools we use to make other things
2. Design of situations in which others can create. Design for conversation.

Causal conversations

The designer affects the sketch and the sketch affects the designer.

Similarly the subject in a collaborative group affects a shared document, and the document in turn affects the other subjects. Design processes are causal conversations, usually held through a medium with another person/people, or with yourself.

New ways of seeing

Fostering new ways of "seeing" is a key part of design education because... if constructivist theory holds true, you can only construct your own world based on conversational encounters and experience. If you want a designer to be able to construct certain realities, you need to help them see in different ways. You don't receive understanding, you can only generate your own. Am I getting this?

Action also leads to understanding, and not the other way around. You don't begin by establishing understanding, you begin by taking explorative action. Understanding itself is designed, and is a direct outcome of the design process.

The design activity itself doesn't change much with this perspective, but the way we talk about and perceive our activities as designers changes. Design ceases to be about problem solving or optimization and turns into a way of navigating constraints. This makes sense to me because if you orient to a goal too early it will constrain your thinking. Constraints are not seen as limiting, but rather as opportunities. Outcomes of the design process may become secondary to the quality of the explorative design process.

Education

Education is not dispensing of given knowledge, where knowledge is seen as an objective and value-free commodity. Learning is a process of accommodation in which learners modify existing mental schemata in interaction with their environments.

Students are best motivated through awareness of the reasons why certain ways of thinking and acting are considered desirable, instead of the authority to claim objective truth.

Design is both a means to generate designed artifacts, and a means to understand.

"Knowledge of" vs. "Knowledge for"—The difference between knowing something to know it, and knowing something to act on it? Need to circle back on the differences here.

Reference

Design Cybernetics: Navigating the New. (2019). Germany: Springer International Publishing.