Part III - Design
Chapter 11. Management and conversation
11.1 Management and decision making
p 145
Simon characterizes making a decision as a heuristic search among alternatives in a problem space of possible courses of action, with the aim of achieving a preferred set of consequences.
[...]
A variety of crucial questions need to be asked about the decision making model: Is it really the only way to be rational? What about other ways coping with hesitations, such as learning and behaving according to authority, rules, or intuition?
p 146
The bounded rationality approach does not assume that a decision maker can evaluate all the alternatives, but it takes for granted a well-defined problem space in which they are located. It is not clear for what observer this space of alternatives exists.
11.2 Decision making and resolution
p 147
The question "What needs to be done?" arises in a breakdown, in which the course of activity is interrupted by some kind of 'unreadiness.' It is often manifested in hesitation and confusion, and is always already oriented in a certain direction of possibilities.
11.3 Organizations as networks of commitments
11.4 Decision support systems
p 152-157
Dangers:
- orientation to choosing
- assumption of relevance
- unintended transfer of power
- unanticipated effects
- obscuring responsibilities
- false belief in objectivity
p 156: False belief in objectivity.
One immediate consequence of concealing commitment is an illusion of objectivity.
p 157
[From Gadamer's Truth and Method, p 9] It is not so much our judgments as it is our prejudices that constitute our being...
11.5 Tools for conversation
p 157
Organizations exist as networks of directives and commissives. Directives include orders, requests. consultations, and offers; commissives include promises, acceptances, and rejections.
p 159
There are surprisingly few basic conversational building blocks (such as request/promise, offer/acceptance, and report/acknowledgement) that frequently recur in conversations for action.
Chapter 12. Using computers: A direction for design
p 163
Ontologically oriented design is therefore necessarily both reflective and political, looking backwards to the tradition that has formed us but also forwards to as-yet-uncreated transformations of our lifes together. Through the emergence of new tools, we come to a changing awareness of human nature and human action, which in turn leads to new technological development.
12.1 A background for computer design
p 164
Phenomenologically, you are driving down the road, not operating controls.
p 167
As with breakdown, blindness is not something that can be avoided, but it is something of which we can be aware.
12.2 A design example
p 167
There are no clear problems to be solved: Action needs to be taken in a situation of irresolution.
12.3 Systematic domains
p 174
[...] language does not describe a pre-existing world, but creates the world about which it speaks. There are whole domains, such as those in financial markets involving 'shares,' 'options,' and 'futures,' whose existence is purely linguistic —based on expressions of commitment from one individual to another.