Intro to Organizational Design and Management – Part 2

By the end of Week 1, I had within the palm of my hands the first textbook “Orchestrating Human-Centered Design”, which was written by Dr. Boy. I had been able skim through the entire book, and started reading Chapters 1 and 2. To my fascination, the book is relatively easy to read and understand. The chapters are complemented by a plethora of tempting references, some of which I hope to traverse during a future iteration of reading the book. But for the time being, I was compelled to stay on course.

The second ODM class of Week 2 began with a focus on the crucial issue of integration. It was highlighted that integration usually takes place at the end, where subsystems are unified to ensure that the overall system operates; however, Dr. Boy emphasized that integration needs to be anticipated through a holistic design approach.

From the beginning of the enterprise integration, the right information must be identified. Deep domain knowledge is essential at this early stage and a “what-if analysis” is needed to obtain the emergent properties from the interactions among individual components. This scenario-based design approach requires a thorough understanding of the system’s complexity in order to create reliable human-in-the-loop simulations (HITLSs), which can be used to elicit and capture emergent properties ahead of use time e.g. the evaluator may be able to determine the “invisible work” done by key entities that is necessary for specific organizational “use cases” to work effectively. Successful organizations put the right information in the right place e.g. Google, SpaceX…

While discussing the need to update the information in real-time to reflect the actual state of the enterprise operation, Dr. Boy introduced the Orchestra model as a dynamic, responsive, well-connected, transversal and synchronized alternative to the traditional, linear, top-down, pyramidal, army-type model of organization. In the Orchestra model, composers (human-centered designers) utilize music theory (a common language) to develop scores (coordinated requirements), which the conductors (competent managers, scientists or engineers) to coordinate musicians (specialized workers with autonomy or automata) who play (work) collaboratively to deliver a symphony (organizational output) that the audience (end users) can consume and appreciate to their satisfaction. This musical metaphor provides a usable framework for human-systems integration (HSI). It was noted that there are basically two organizations to account for in the system design i.e. (1) the makers of the technology, and (2) the receivers of the technology. Additionally, the culture, capabilities and environments of both organizations create crucial parts of the operational context.

In order to successfully bring products to maturity, business processes must be coordinated, high level requirements obtained, incremental testing employed, and human systems integrated with the key principles of safety, efficiency and comfort.

Standardized benchmarks have be used throughout industry to compare how effective organizations were at quality assurance and continuous improvement towards mature systems e.g. ISO 9000 series and the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). However, Dr. Boy questioned whether or not a product will be mature, usable and useful if the production processes are mature for all levels according to CMMI. His answer to this question was emphatically no, and he suggested that the keys to understanding why not can be found in his new book, “Tangible Interactive Systems”.

Dr. Boy pointed out that there were at least three (3) other levels, beyond the five (5) maturity levels set out in the CMMI. These extra levels are: (1) maturity of technology itself; (2) maturity of practise including various kinds of use of the technology; and (3) maturity of the organization or society to accept the technology. These extra levels of product maturity go beyond CMMI’s techno-centric levels in order to account for user experience and organizational adoption. Dr. Boy reinforced the human centered perspective of product maturity by stating a juxtaposed relationship between product maturity and user capability i.e. the less mature the product, the more expertise was needed to use it; and, conversely, the more mature the product, the less desire, if any at all, to know about the product in order to use it.

Steve Jobs understood planned maturity of practice, and maturity of the organization and society as strategies to guarantee product adoption. Apple started development of the iPod, which was very easy to use, robust and targeting a commonplace activity such as listening to music; then Apple introduced the iPhone, which was about the same size but provided more useful functions including playing music; then Apple increased the size of the iPhone and added more processing power to create the iPad. Hence, Steve Jobs used maturity to create a coherent family of products.

As I hinted in my previous report, Dr. Boy’s lectures are artistically blended with succinct visual models and memorable stories, and his narrative of his lost iPhone illustrated a covert emergent property of a mobile phone, which may not have been apparent at design time. In this unplanned use case, Dr. Boy lost his mobile phone, and during the event he realized that the mobile phone can be a life-critical system, because of the amount of personal information stored on the device. Therefore, he said, “Always check for emergent properties for safety critical systems.”

Two other principles of product maturity include efficiency, which should be measured, and comfort, which is related to usability, aesthetics, the emotional effect of the product, and its use within the organization and environment.

The next model presented for the architect approach was the V Model. In this model, the user needs and high level requirements inform the design rationale and strategy from very early. However, care must be taken when soliciting user needs and requirements because users’ articulation of their needs may be misleading. Prototyping and HITLSs are used to iteratively test the design(s). Actually, in the “multiple V model” (MVM), Dr. Boy proposed that the sequence of small-Vs provides constant feedback loops resulting in an agile approach that supports the observation of activity, formative evaluation, modular development and progressive integration. Generally speaking, if the requirements are well done, everything else follows smoothly.

In order to describe the use of HITLSs in complex systems, Dr. Boy used the national airspace system and the exponentially increasing air traffic as an example. Some airports e.g. Atlanta are oversaturated with arriving and departing aircraft. This phenomenon has been spreading to other airports and therefore needs to be studied. One problematic question that has emerged in this complex system is, “how will air traffic controllers (ATC) organize the volume of traffic in the sky?” The ATC organization has been adapting from the inverted pyramid, and becoming more like an orchestra. After alluding to an analogy of observing the birds at the beach, Dr. Boy postulated that the birds may have sensors for detecting obstacles and “to feel the direction of the flock”. Similarly, he suggested that aircraft may be equipped with sensors for traffic awareness and collision avoidance. Dr. Boy also referenced the coordinated flight of a flock of drones being researched at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Boy proposed three practical solutions to manage the unending increase in aircraft to manage: (1) to build more airports but this is expensive and not preferred; (2) to build bigger aircraft e.g. A380 but this requires organizational and infrastructural changes; and, (3) managing aircraft as a flock of birds as is being done with NextGen satellite-based technology and Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR).

To extrapolate his initial question of drones for human transportation, Dr. Boy identified stability and gravity as compounded challenges of aviation. He stated that passive stability is basically accomplished through quadcopters, whereas active stability remains as the work function of the pilot. In my research of the EHang 184, this octo-copter has redundancy in its design and organization, and can be flown by the onboard pilot, a remote pilot through an aircraft-network interface or by automation.

A graph of the Safety Maturity Curves illustrated that since the early 1970’s there was a significant decline in the number of hull losses with conventional aircraft. Dr. Boy attributed this decline to the gain in the feedback and knowledge from prior accidents and research. Further, the graph depicted a second curve which represented hull losses with automated aircraft. As was expected, this graph generally showed a fraction of the hull losses with the automated aircraft. However, Dr. Boy identified the problem was the nature of the accidents. After a generalisation of the metrics (inverse of safety, efficiency and comfort) on the y axis, Dr. Boy highlighted that the maturity period can be determined through modeling and simulation (M&S). Knowing this maturity period is important because delivering the product to market too early will lead to an unsafe product; whereas, delivering the product too late may allow the competition to overtake.

Dr. Boy recounted on his early work with the A380 and its family of Airbus aircraft. He jokingly remarked about the interactivity of the A380’s modern cockpit through a discussion he had with a colleague. During the exchange, they noticed the shift from physical interaction in older mechanical aircraft to a style of mediated human computer interaction (HCI) that led to the pilot’s virtualized interaction with the information in the user interfaces; thereby, leading to emergence of tangibility issues related to interaction.

As the modification of technology led to more manipulative technology amidst modification of the organization and the people therein, competence remains an important factor for being able to understand the systems and their emergent properties. Even though automation is being involved to minimize errors, the systems must be designed for people to be active players in the solution; therefore, technology should allow humans to play a “sufficient” role. Dr. Boy linked this to a critical level of motivation that is needed before the human lapses into the very dangerous state of complacency.

Expanding on the topic of motivation at work, a positive correlation was noted between autonomy and performance (i.e. autonomy increased performance). Also through cultivating mastery and doing a good job, the worker feels better. However, the fundamental motive is why! It is this reason or purpose which engenders satisfaction.

As the world evolved, there have been changes in technology and media (e.g. writing) and these changes have profound impacts on society and the organization of people. The concept of authority in the organization pivots on dimensions of control and accountability. A problem arises when there are loops in the chain of control e.g. democratic voting and the election of members of parliament (MPs) by the people where the MPs would, in turn, govern the people. Who is accountable and who is in control is this circular paradigm? Likewise, in aviation, technology such as the flight management system (FMS) modifies the accountability of the pilot. The FMS therefore has an emergent property on the pilots i.e. the pilot now has to manage the FMS rather than fly the route. Also, the role of the ATC who controlled the aircraft in the airspace is now managing a complicated flock of aircraft with multiple trajectories.

The most enjoyable concept came around the end of the class i.e. Cognitive Functional Analysis (CFA). Dr. Boy described three (3) types of interaction in multi-agent systems n.b. agents could be humans or automation:

• Supervision e.g. interaction with MS DOS where the supervisor could be artificial or even a book.
• Mediation e.g. a “virtual desktop” or database can act as a diplomat desktop between human and computer.
• Cooperation by common/mutual understanding e.g. professor in the classroom using Google predictive search to learning about a topic.

What reconnected all of the dots throughout Week 2 was that “emergent properties are likely to arise as changes are made between these types of interactions”. I totally agree!

With examples ranging from cars to elevators to aircraft cockpits to phones to knives, at the end of Week 2, there were several key take-aways which I’ve summarized below:

• The main obstacle to innovation is our persistent cognitive patterns or habits
• The Orchestra model is becoming more common due to technological influence
• Composers may not know how to play all instruments but they integrate them
• Product maturity is about maturity of TOP (technology, organization & practice)
• Human centered designers design for people (not users). We are people!
• People are highly nonlinear and unpredictably generate emergent properties
• Emergent properties appear from the activities among the interactions of entities
• Safety and security are important factors to test for emergent properties
• HCD has a legal component especially with accident causation and technology

With these new concepts appended to my ODM conceptual model, I happily prepared for Week 3 by checking up on my two (2) outstanding books:

• Tangible Interactive Systems
• The Handbook of Human Machine Interaction

I was also eager to search for and watch the 2001 movie called “The Space Odyssey”, which was encouraged by Dr. Boy.