A Brief History Of Information System Design

Design is too often viewed as a single stage in IS development, where we give form to an IT architecture. I present a history of IS design approaches over time, explaining how design goals become subverted by technocentric approaches and how to retrieve them for human-centered design, in order to provide an “information architecture” that is meaningful to the system’s users.

Boundary-Spanning Design

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

Wicked Problems Explained

Wicked Problems, Explained Wicked problems are problems that defy definition. They are too complicated for any one person to understand in their entirety, they span organizational and group  boundaries, and call upon knowledge from multiple, specialized areas of work. We

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

The Problem of The Problem

The co-design of business & IT systems is like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle without the picture. Most people fudge this by kludging viewpoints together under a single goal, with multiple objectives that reflect the main things that stakeholders seem to value. Objectives move in and out of the picture, as the focus shifts. A better approach is to use systemic analysis, which uses a divide-and-conquer strategy. The parts of the jigsaw puzzle are assembled separately, then the analyst can piece together the whole.

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

Virtual Knowledge Exchange & Online Learning

Whenever we have a group of people collaborating virtually, whether in online learning or in virtual project collaboration, their work and organizational roles become invisible. We therefore need to design in aspects (affordances) of digital technology that enable group, coordination,

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