Boundary-Spanning Design We talk about organizational design and change problems as if they were given — as if there is only one problem that could be defined for any situation and only one best way to design a solution. This
Emergent Design
Emergent Design Why is design improvisational? Modern organizations are complex, and the sorts of problems that remain to be resolved using process redesign, IT systems design, or the combination of both that we call the co-design of business & IT
Coordination, Cooperation, and Collaboration
I was musing about the differences between these three concepts. They are not explained clearly in any resource I could find (although many people take a stab at this), so I thought I’d try bending my brain around the problem.
Defining Organizational Problems
The way in which problems are defined is critical to producing a good enough solution. Most people don’t stop to think about the constraints they introduce to problem-solving by defining problems in a certain way. If you ask how something
Knowledge-Sharing In Collaboration Across Organizational Boundaries
Knowledge-Sharing In In Collaboration Across Organizational Boundaries Susan GassonCollege of Computing & Informatics,Drexel University Please cite this paper as:Gasson, S. (2007) ‘Knowledge-Sharing In Collaboration Across Organizational Boundaries.’ Working Paper. Available from https://www.improvisingdesign.com/knowledge-sharing/ Last updated 08/15/23 Sharing Knowledge in Collaborative Teams
Human-Centered Design
Human-Centered Design In the last few years, the terms human-centered and user-centered have become synonymous in HCI and IT design, with a focus on disciplines such as “user experience” and “interaction design.” Here I will argue that neither discipline really
Managing Organizational Knowledge
Managing Organizational Knowledge This thread of my work explores the forms of knowledge shared across organizational boundaries, the mechanisms for sharing knowledge that are employed, and how human-sensemaking is mediated by processual, technical and informational artifacts. My work draws on
Distributed Sensemaking
Boundary-Spanning Design Distributed Sensemaking in Wicked Problems When collaborative innovation groups span knowledge domain boundaries, we have the additional complexity of distributed sensemaking. Boundary-spanning groups find it difficult to develop a common language for collaboration — often because they use
Human-Centered Collaboration
Human-Centered Collaboration An information system (IS) is not simply an assemblage of hardware and software. As organizations increasingly deploy computer-mediated technology,we see tech-objects displacing people as relationship partners. This provides challenges for technology users, especially in work that requires decision-making
Home
Improvising Design This website provides a tour of how to enable IT-related change in complex business organizations (nonprofit and for-profit). It is focused around improvisational design, as improvisation is the result of dealing with wicked problems. Wicked problems are the