Category: improvisation

  • Improvising Design

    Improvising Design

    Why is design improvisational?  We talk about design as if it were fixed: as if there were one best way to design everything. We celebrate designers who produce especially elegant or usable artifacts as if they were possessed of supernatural powers. Yet design should be easy. It is the application of “best practice” principles to a

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  • Chapter 1 of Book Available

    Chapter 1 of Book Available

    Chapter 1 for the Improvising Design book has been uploaded. The first chapter discusses why we need better models and methods for design … and why design is improvisational. Doubtless, stuff will be shifted around a little, as I complete my write-up of research findings chapters. But this is a good introduction to why we

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  • Design as the Serendipity of Location

    Design as the Serendipity of Location

    As I ruminate on design processes, I can’t help but reflect on the similarities between research methods, processes and outcomes, and design methods, processes and outcomes. I read an article which argued that there were two types of people: people with tidy offices and people with untidy offices1. Tidy-office people are organized and so can

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  • Design as a trajectory of goal-definitions

    Design as a trajectory of goal-definitions

    The focus of IS design has moved “upstream” of the waterfall model, from technical design to the co-design of business-processes and IT systems.  This focus requires an improvisational design approach.  IT-related organizational innovation deals with wicked problems.  Wicked problems tend to span functional and organizational boundaries as business process and information management problems are intertwined. 

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