Editor’s Note:

Improving healthcare is a wicked problem [1]. Healthcare’s many stakeholders can’t agree on a solution, because they don’t agree on the problem. They come to the discussion from different points of view, with different frames. Wicked problems can be “solved” only by reframing, by providing a new way of understanding the problem that stakeholders can share [1]. This article describes a growing trend: framing health in terms of well-being and broadening healthcare to include self-management. Self-management reframes patients as designers, an example of a shift also occurring in design practice—reframing users as designers. The article concludes with thoughts on what these changes may mean when designing for health.

—Hugh Dubberly

What is health?
From the point of view of today’s healthcare system, health is largely about minimizing illness. The healthcare system has evolved primarily for treating acute conditions. Despite flaws (including high cost and limited access), the system does a good job of curing infections, repairing injuries, and responding to emergencies. The healthcare system does less well in treating chronic conditions. It provides resources for managing aspects of systemic problems, such as statins for cholesterol, ARBs and ACE inhibitors for high blood pressure, and insulins for diabetes; but in most cases that means merely slowing the rate of decline. Yet health is “not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” In contrast, the World Health Organization defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being” [2].

Health as well-being depends not just on healthcare but also on employer practices [3], social policies [4], and self-management, the main subject of this article. Of course, health is “not the objective of living”; health is a resource contributing to the quality of our everyday living [5].

Traditional healthcare focuses on treating acute problems.

Traditional health management applies the tools of acute care to stabilizing chronic conditions.

Health is more than eliminating or managing disease; and its requirements extend beyond traditional healthcare.

Health is a means to higher goals — “a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living” — World Health Organization (WHO)

Identifying the Frame of Healthcare

The way we usually think about health today is bound up in the language of our healthcare system. We call individuals “patients.” We call physicians healthcare “professionals” (HCPs). Professionals “care for” patients—by observing symptoms, diagnosing diseases, and proposing therapies. Their proposals are not just suggestions; they are prescriptions or literally “physician orders.” Patients who don’t take their medicine are not “in compliance.”

In the relationship between HCPs and patients, HCPs dominate. HCPs do whatever is necessary, with patients playing a relatively passive role [6]. In some ways, the system reduces patients to the status of children—simply receiving treatment. The power imbalance may grow out of illness. When we feel ill, we may seek comfort or aid from others. When we feel afraid, we may hand responsibility to a confident expert. In a medical emergency, letting a physician take charge is probably the surest way to stabilize things and return to normal.

A heart attack requires quick action; it’s not the best time for discussion. The time for discussion is before a heart attack occurs—and after—finding ways to avoid the heart attack in the first place or at least avoid another one.

Yet the language of acute conditions (the frame of healthcare) is ill suited to managing chronic conditions or preventing disease (often framed as behavior change). The American Heart Association reports, “The No.1 problem in treating illness today is patients’ failure to take prescription medications” [7]. Patient behavior does not change on a physician’s orders. To expect behavior change on command is to misunderstand human nature. To blame patients (who respond to the very present pressures of busy lives rather than less tangible long-term risks) is unhelpful, unkind, and perhaps unethical. (Blaming patients—or clients—suggests that one doesn’t understand or respect their context and constraints and doesn’t share responsibility for outcomes.) According to social epidemiologist Leonard Syme, “We need to pay attention to the things that people care about, and stop being such experts about our risk factors” [8].

The language of acute conditions (the frame of healthcare) limits what we imagine. Discussions about improving healthcare focus mainly on improving assessment of patient conditions, improving HCP education, and improving therapies—since surviving a crisis depends mainly on the patient’s condition, the HCP’s skill, and the medical technology at hand.

We debate how to have more of the same rather than something new. We debate how to be more efficient and reduce cost rather than radically increase effectiveness and eliminate causes. Our goals remain modest. We seek little more than increased patient compliance and more knowledgeable consumers. We can do better.

The language of acute conditions (the frame of healthcare) is ill suited to achieving well-being (the frame of self-management). By its very definition, healthcare almost assumes both a present problem and an expert who intervenes. In that sense, well-being lies outside the scope of our current healthcare system. Wellness is more than absence of illness: It’s is a way of living. Well-being requires its own language, its own frame.

Self-management does not replace healthcare; rather it acknowledges the limits of what healthcare can accomplish and seeks structures that go beyond those limits.

Imagining the Frame of Self-management

Foucault attributes “the birth of the clinic” to the Enlightenment, when early versions of the current healthcare paradigm displaced a medieval paradigm [9]. The language of health had a beginning; it was invented. And like other languages, it can evolve; we can reinvent it [10].

Imagine reframing health so that it includes self-management.

Self-management suggests a fundamental shift of responsibility. Patients reclaim their role as adults responsible for their own well-being. The relationship between HCP and patient becomes more symmetric (at least outside of medical emergencies). Issuing orders gives way to discussing and collaborating. HCPs become coaches and assistants, shifting their stance from dispensing knowledge to learning from patients. As Melanie Swan reports, “a collaborative co-care model is starting to evolve for healthcare delivery…the patient’s role may become one of active participant, information sharer, peer leader and self-tracker, while the physician’s role may become one of care consultant, co-creator and health collaborator” [11].

In the parlance of “design for service,” HCPs begin to think of themselves as “co-producing” health and well-being with their patients. Imagining healthcare as a designed service is another way to reframe it. Kaiser and the Mayo Clinic employ design innovation teams; UPMC has teamed with CMU design students to reimagine patient experiences [12].

Self-management also suggests setting goals and measuring progress—the basis for managing and improving quality. Individuals decide what’s important to them, what well-being means, what they want to work on. Individuals record their actions; for example, meals eaten, exercise completed, medications taken, hours slept, time spent working or playing or commuting, and perhaps even interactions with others and media consumed (e.g., music played). Individuals also measure results; for example, hard values such as their weight, pulse, blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood glucose; and softer values such as energy, stress, pain, happiness, or mood.

Then they repeat the cycle. If they’ve made progress toward their goals, they may continue the same course of action or even speed up. If they’re diverging from their goals, they may change course. Individuals find and maintain a “healthy balance,” one that’s comfortable for them. They take an active role in their body’s process of homeostasis—including physical, emotional, and social dimensions.

This process is directed trial and error—experimenting, something like the Shewhart-Deming PDCA cycle, a simple application of the scientific method, a version of the design process.

Imagine patients as designers—conducting billions of tiny self-experiments, prototyping their own well-being. That’s the essence of a self-management approach to health [13].

Far-fetched? An impossible change?

Emerging Trends Support Self-management

Self-management has always existed. Americans spend billions of dollars each year on health foods and diet programs. A doctor reported, “20% to 30% or my patients are into some type of supplements or ‘nutraceuticals’” [14]. Deloitte reported that 20 percent of consumers used alternative therapies [15]. Kaiser reported that 33 percent of consumers had “relied on home remedies or over-the-counter drugs instead of seeing a doctor” in the past 12 months because of cost concerns [16].

Several factors have begun the process of reframing health as self-management. The U.S. healthcare system is out of control; managing costs requires a focus on what the medical profession calls outcomes. The public has a growing awareness that well-being is more than healthcare. The fitness and exercise movement, elements of the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) movement like the Quantified Self group, behavior-change programs like Weight Watchers, and more progressive programs for managing chronic conditions like the Stanford Cardiac Rehabilitation Program [17], all point the way to self-management.

The shift to self-management is also supported by changes in the Internet and related technologies. Melanie Swan reported, “Individuals are becoming more engaged in a variety of self-testing and self-management of conditions, symptoms, genomics and blood biomarkers, behaviors and personal environmental factors. Individuals could dramatically expand their use of web-based tools, devices and health-based social networking platforms as their awareness increases, costs drop, financial incentives arise and automated tools proliferate” [11]. The Internet and related technologies are also making it easier for people to have conversations that support self-management.

Imagine online social-network applications creating communities of support around diseases, chronic conditions, and fitness. Of course, health-based social networks have already begun; what’s surprising is just how many there are [18]. Other social network applications serve broader audiences while also offering health-related components [19].

Social networks are dynamic; they can generate collective action. In addition to individuals experimenting on themselves, groups of people with similar conditions—people joined together through online social networks—may sponsor or conduct research. Already, online social networks have begun to affect clinical trials, helping researchers find participants and helping participants compare outcomes.

Imagine several sensors monitoring each person. Already nearly continuous monitors are available for pulse, steps walked, and blood glucose, at relatively low cost. More types are on the way. Many of these sensors send data to the Internet, either directly or through mobile devices or desktop computers, which forward the data. Withings sells a Wifi Body Scale that sends your weight to Twitter each time you weigh yourself [20].

The sensor revolution will change the way we view data and ourselves. Children born in the next decade may look back across a lifetime of data. We won’t be able to ignore how we’re doing; we’ll always know. Continuous feedback may provide micro-motivation—the ongoing awareness we need to live healthier lives.

Imagine personal-health dashboards, applications for tracking your sensor data based on the Web or mobile phones. (Your mobile phone may become a server at the hub of your body-area network.) Health dashboards will provide trend graphs, comparisons with goals and norms, and alerts when things change suddenly or move toward unsafe levels. Health dashboards will be just one of several dashboards in our lives, including those for finance like mint.com, home networks like Pie Digital, and home energy management like the demo Intel showed at CES 2010. In a way, social-network sites, like Facebook, are also dashboards—for friends and message management. Health-based social networks and personal health dashboards seem likely to combine and reinforce one another.

Imagine big data-mining software learning from all the data stored in health dashboards. (Big data is computer-industry jargon for huge databases of information generated on the Web; data mining is jargon for the process of correlating data to generate value. Google’s page-rank algorithm, which bases relevance on counting links to a Web page, is a classic example of big data mining.)

Data that individuals collect will establish a baseline for comparing future measurements. Identifying personal norms is important, especially when we’re not average. For some, 98.6 may indicate a fever, especially as normal body temperature decreases with age. Collecting data will also enable individuals to compare themselves to others—to the entire population or to those sharing similar characteristics, such as age, sex, height, weight, conditions, genes, environment, and even behavior.

Ian Shadforth points out that once health data collecting begins in earnest, we can quickly generate population-wide norms and norms for many sub-groups. By collecting data on a range of age groups simultaneously, we may need just a few years to generate a picture of what’s “normal” across a lifetime [21].

The growth of online health-based social networks, bio-medical sensors, personal health dashboards, and health-focused big data mining applications will not of themselves or even in combination force a shift to self-management. They simply make measurement and tracking a lot easier. They lower the bio-cost of self-management. And they make visible—perhaps even cool—the practice of measurement and tracking. In this way, technology may set off a process of bootstrapping, which can lead to the broader changes we describe.

Parallels with Changes in Design Practice

Reframing health as self-management parallels similar trends in education, where we increasingly recognize that students manage (or design) their own learning, and design practice, where we increasingly recognize that users manage (or design) their own experiences. Perhaps these changes are part of larger trends, the democratizing of professionalism and the shift from a mechanical-object ethos to an organic-systems ethos [22].

Good teachers do more than pass on facts; they help students learn how to learn, so that teaching becomes what Paulo Freire calls the “practice of freedom,” a means to deal critically with one’s living and discover how to transform the world [23].

Freire also insisted on symmetry in the relation between teacher and student—or at least “deep reciprocity.” (Good teachers learn from their students.) Freire’s position echoes Horst Rittel’s assertion that the participants in a design project (all the stakeholders including professional designers) share a “symmetry of ignorance” (or knowledge) regarding the problem. Rittel’s point is that design problems are always “owned” by someone [1]. Design problems have no objective definition; their definition reflects the owner’s point of view. Here, Rittel challenged the orthodoxy of professional problem solving and opened the door to the design process, inviting users and other stakeholders to step inside.

The 1990s saw the flowering of user-centered design. Ethnography and other forms of research about users became standard practice in software design.

Some professional designers began to see their work as engaging stakeholders in a discussion. Liz Sanders and others have begun to advocate for participative design and co-creation—not just designing for users, but designing with them. Co-production has become a watchword in the emerging field of service design (or design for service), as designers recognize the integral role of “consumers” in producing services.

Shelley Evenson and others talk about creating conditions in which users become designers—creating spaces in which people can learn and grow. That means professional designers become meta-designers, designing open-ended systems, languages, platforms, APIs, construction kits, or kits of parts, which others configure or re-configure to their own ends. Wooden blocks, Legos, and train sets are classic examples, kits of parts with which we may play—and design. Herman-Miller’s Action Office is a kit of parts designed for others to design offices. (Sadly, it gives little design control to the office’s occupants.) Programming languages and code libraries like Java and Flash are kits of parts for others to design software. (How much design control can the resulting applications give end-users?) Even simple services like restaurants offer a menu of choices from which patrons may design a dish or a meal. Starbucks and Mini-Cooper offer a dizzying array of choices from which customers can design.

As with health (and education), reframing design will not be easy. For designers who have spent years perfecting their craft and who delight in making beautiful form, the notion of user as designer and designer as facilitator can seem frighteningly foreign. Yet this transition offers the opportunity to make the world richer—to create more options for everyone, including professional designers (and HCPs and teachers).

As the era of mass production ends, design practice must adapt to the new era of information. In order to create value, designers will increasingly have to frame their work in new ways.

Design for Health

As healthcare becomes a larger part of the economy and as healthcare practice and research biology both converge with computing, opportunities to design software and services for health abound. We should keep in mind that health is a means to a goal—one of the things that supports the quality of our everyday living.

Designers should ask their clients: How should we frame health in this engagement? Are we bound to the frame of traditional healthcare? Or can we apply a broader frame, such as self-management?

Designers should also ask themselves and their colleagues: How should we frame design in this engagement? Are we designing artifacts or services? Where might we create opportunities for users to design?

If the user is both designer and implementer (combining first- and second-order agency), what is possible? How can we help users act? Track results? Set goals? How do we “scaffold” tiny self-experiments, learning, and sharing?

Designers should also help users discover and understand both the short-term relationship between action and result (incremental changes that the individual can actually make) and the long-term consequences (big outcomes that matter over time).

Creating opportunities for users to design requires not only giving them responsibility for means and goals but also enabling conversations for:

• overcoming the barriers (bio-cost) of making incremental change through…
• making results, trends, and projections visible and…
• providing emotional support (such as family and community engagement) to maintain…
• higher-level strategic views of the entire process, to maintain goals and momentum, that in turn…
• create learning across time and circumstances that can be shared…
• improving the system for others

We’re on the brink of something new—the intersection of health and computing, design and service. What will we invent as these processes converge? What happens when health self-management meets meta-design?

About the Authors

Hugh Dubberly manages a consultancy focused on making services and software easier to use through interaction design and information design. As vice president, he was responsible for design and production of Netscape’s Web services. For 10 years he was at Apple, where he managed graphic design and corporate identity and co-created the Knowledge Navigator series of videos. Dubberly also founded an interactive media department at Art Center and has taught at CMU, IIT/ID, San Jose State, and Stanford.

Rajiv Mehta consults on exploring and commercializing radical innovation, driving ideas from concept to market. His work has ranged from photography to lasers, computer vision to wireless, and health, at companies from Adobe and Apple to Symbol Technologies and Zume Life. He studied at Columbia, Stanford and Princeton.

Shelley Evenson recently joined Microsoft’s FUSE (Future Social Experience) Labs as a principal in user experience design. Before FUSE, Shelley was an Associate Professor teaching interaction design at Carnegie Mellon University. Shelley taught courses in designing conceptual models, interaction, and service design, and collaborated in projects with colleagues from the Tepper School of Business and the Human Computer Interaction Institute. Shelley jumpstarted the study of service design in the U.S. designing courses, energizing students, and hosting the first international conference on service design-Emergence. Before joining the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, Shelley worked for more than 25 years in multidisciplinary consulting practices, working with on a wide variety of design and development projects.

Paul Pangaro is the CTO at CyberneticLifestyles.com in New York City, most recently working for clients in consumer internet and mobile computing. He has designed a search engine for poetry, interactive information strategies for medical services, and a framework of ontogenetic sharing for social networking. Paul has lectured at London’s Bartlett School of Architecture, São Paulo’s Instituto Itaú Cultural, École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, and MIT’s Media Lab and Sloan School of Management on design process, conversation theory applied to interaction design, and the cybernetics of innovation. He was CTO of several startups, including Idealab’s Snap.com, and was senior director and distinguished market strategist at Sun Microsystems. Paul has taught at Stanford University and teaches in the MFA program on interaction design at the School of Visual Arts, New York City.

Continuous Cycle of Health Self-management.

Self-arrangement augmented by conversation with others, sensors, and services.

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Examples and a good description such as those described by Gowan and Novak (in Learning How to Learn) are helpful for understanding concept mapping. An exercise in which you make a simple concept map (with eight to 12 terms) may also be helpful.

The first step in concept mapping is to generate lists of words related to the main concept. The list can come from research, reading, experts, brainstorming, or any other source. Sharing lists from members of a development team will help generate other words.

The second step is to edit the list. Some terms may be related to the subject, but not in a way that meets the project goals.

The third step is to define the terms on the edited list. This is particularly important with unfamiliar or technical terms. But it also helps with familiar terms, too.

A useful exercise is to create a matrix listing all the terms down one side and repeating the list across the top. The relationship between the terms is noted in the boxes where a row and column intersect. The resulting matrix of relationships provides a checklist for building the concept map.

Another important step is ranking of the terms. Simple “triage” may be sufficient. Some terms are key to defining the concept. Others are clearly details. Some fall in the middle. The ranking provides a way to begin to look at building a structure. Primary terms may be candidates for an armature sentence.

One approach is to ground the primary concept within a sentence that also contains the other two or three most important terms. A first sentence might set context; a second sentence might define the main term branching out at 90 degrees from the first sentence. The armature sentence provides a starting point for the map. From there, you can add secondary terms and then the details.

Another approach, is to look for a structure or model to underlie the concept map. For example, brand is a type of sign. Signs have three components. Those three components become the anchor points of the concept map. Innovation is a process which repeats, oscillating between convention and innovation. The process provides a structure for the concept map.

Making a concept map in an area that is well defined is sometimes fairly easy — if the information space can easily be found and if most authorities agree on it. For more ambiguous topics, a great deal of time may be needed to agree on scope (which terms are in or out) and on structure (how those terms relate). This process can take several weeks or even several months.

Once the terms and structure are agreed to, you can move to a second phase: giving the map an appropriate typographic form — to make the typographic hierarchy support the structure of the content.

Main steps in creating concept maps:

• List terms
• Edit the list
• Define the remaining terms
• Create a matrix showing the relations of terms
• Rank the terms
• Decide on main branches or write framing sentences
• Fill in the rest of the structure
• Revise
• Apply typography to reinforce structure
• Revise

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We are surrounded by things that have been designed—from the utensils we eat with, to the vehicles that transport us, to the machines we interact with. We use and experience designed artifacts everyday. Yet most people think of designers as only having applied the surface treatment to a thing conceived by someone else. Eli Blevis created an illustration to emphasize the gulf between the general public’s notion of design and designer’s views of design (Blevis et al., 2006) (see Figure 19.1).

Figure 19.1 – A caricature of the popular conception of design vs. all other concepts.

Ultimately, everything that has not come from nature has been designed—it just may not have been consciously designed. As early as 1938, Moholy-Nagy described design as more than just facade making. He suggested that design was “a complex and intricate task … and the integration of technological, social and economic requirements, biological necessities, and the psychophysical effects of materials, shape, color, volume, and space’’ (Moholy-Nagy, 1938). Most design definitions also include planning as a critical element. Janet Murray, author of Hamlet on the Holodeck, describes the designer’s role as making ‘‘something new that fits in with what already exists or changes it in a positive way.’’ This description of design is consistent with Herbert Simon’s seminal work in which he says, ‘‘Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones’’ (Simon, 1996). Marty Neumeier simplifies further by suggesting that ‘‘design is change’’ (Neumeier, 2009). Of course, change (or the process of change) can be changed. That is, change can be designed; thus, design can be designed.

Service

There are many definitions of service in the literature. On one hand, services are viewed as performances: choreographed interactions manufactured at the point of delivery that form a process and coproduce value, utility, satisfaction, and delight in response to human needs (Zeithaml and Bitner, 1996; Evenson, 2005; Engine, 2006). On the other hand, activities or events in a service process are described as forming a perceivable set or ‘‘product’’ through interaction with designed elements or resources from representatives of the service organization, the customer, and any mediating technology.

For purposes of this discussion, we put forth the definition described by Jean Gadrey and based on Peter Hill’s 1977 work (Gadrey, 2002): ‘‘a service may be defined as a change in the conditions of a person or a good belonging to some economic unit, which is brought about as the result of the activity of some other economic unit with the prior agreement of the former person or economic unit.’’ Gadrey goes on to explain that a service should first be considered a process, and illustrates service as a triangle that includes three primary elements: service provider, customer/client/user, and transformation of a reality (Figure 19.2).

Figure 19.2 – The service triangle as illustrated and defined by Jean Gadrey. (2002)

Are services in support of ‘‘changes in the conditions of a person’’ similar to changing existing situations into preferred ones? Are services change? Are people participating in the service designing as they cocreate the service? The concepts Gadrey presents with respect to service relations, interactions, operation, and activity are well suited for defining service as design.

We view designing for service as a meta activity: conceiving and iteratively planning and constructing a service system or architecture to deliver resources that choreograph an experience that others design. When a company provides the optimal mix it will have produced a resonating service system and delivers an experience advantage (Evenson, 2005).

Designing for service is a process that brings together skills, methods, and tools for intentionally creating and integrating (not accidentally discovering and falling into) systems for interaction with customers to create value for the customer, and, by differentiating providers, to create long-term relationships between providers and customers.

Figure 19.3 – A service as design triangle. After Gadrey. (1996A)

Experiences Matter

Our lives are shaped by—and emerge from—the experiences we have. How we are greeted when we enter a store shapes the experience that we will have while in the store. When Apple introduced the iPhone, they consciously designed the journey that their new phone customers would have—from learning about the features they would use on the phone in advance of sale of the phone, to making the activation (once a torturous event with most cell providers) a self- service affair that could be done at home with ease. Smart companies work hard to provide the appropriate resources for customers to have experiences that they value.

Pine and Gilmore (1999) suggest that we seek out experiences that fulfill our needs and satisfy our wants. Today (having satisfied many basic needs), people are looking for more (and more meaningful) experiences. Many people are willing to pay more for their coffee or their hotel stays if the brand reinforces their image of themselves. Consider the shift in just one generation’s experience. Many baby boomers grew up in small town America, purchasing through the Sears, Roebuck catalog. In that shopping experience, the catalog arrived and the customer poured over the pages to select just the right thing. The customer either called or mailed an order form back to Sears. Weeks later the purchase arrived and the customer was either pleased or not. If the customer was not pleased, there was a lot of work to be done to return the item and receive credit. Fast-forward to today: Nike offers customers the opportunity to design their own shoes (items that are notoriously hard to fit) online. Zappos also sells shoes online. From the get-go they understood the need for an experience that would exceed customer expectations (Taylor, 2008). They began by offering overnight delivery, which in part was made possible by the technical infrastructure they have in place. Customers report ordering shoes at 8 p.m. and having them arrive at 8 a.m. the following morning. Both examples contrast with the customer experience with Sears decades earlier. Customer expectations have changed dramatically, and if they want to be successful, organizations need to provide the resources for exceptional customer experience. Zappos and Nike are raising the standards for their competitors and for all online retailers.

But not only have expectations changed for online retail, expectations are changing in health care. In a recent McKinsey survey of more than 2000 patients with commercial insurance, ‘‘75% would consider switching hospitals to become better informed about treatments or if appointments were kept on time. If forced to choose between information and timeliness, 3 times as many patients said they valued information more’’ (Grote et al., 2007). Because there is so much more information available generally, people’s expectations have been raised to want better information, tailored for them personally.

People today also want experiences that support their values, whether it is their concern for the environment or their belief in natural foods. Perhaps this fulfillment behavior has gone too far (or at least lacks substance) when people with means can purchase ‘‘carbon offsets’’ to ease their guilt over behaviors that conflict with their personal value of not contributing to pollution. People are seeking meaningful experiences as part of a community as evidenced by the doubling in recent years of people who planned to volunteer on their vacations (Dalton, 2008).

Great experiences are leading to a demand for even better experiences. As expectations for service experiences rise—are the people participating or cocreating those experiences becoming more skilled at leveraging the resources for their experience and designing their service? If so, then what are the implications for designing-for-service experiences?

In designing-for-service experiences we must provide the opportunity for customers to have meaningful, compelling, and fulfilling experiences that address their needs and satisfy wants. We need to provide the resources for people to design, so that they can create their own experiences (Tempkin, 2008).

Given the current cultural, social, and economic contexts, the resources need to meet or exceed people’s expectations, and encourage participation so that customers become advocates for the brand. (In a sense, they invest in the brand, taking ownership and cocreating the brand itself.) The technology is now in place as a key differentiator in service delivery. What happens at Zappos today simply was not possible just a few years ago. They have raised the table stakes for all other companies.

Creating an Experience Advantage by Providing the Resources for Cocreation

Ganz and Meiren (2002) suggest a need for knowledge about social interaction activities. This is due to an intense awareness that service work is ‘‘people work,’’ and too little is known about the human aspect of both the provider and the client in service definition. The consideration of this human aspect is a key differentiator in the design of a service system. People-centered research can drive innovation.

Designing for service, from our perspective, assumes the participants are the starting point or lens for this exploration. This is essential because the service designer is providing the ‘‘clay’’ (or perhaps the potter’s wheel and kiln) for participants to design for themselves. Through the use of creative, human-centered and participatory methods, we model how the service could be performed or provided.

At the same time, service design identifies and integrates the means to provide a service with the desired qualities within the economic and strategic intent of an organization. Collaborators ‘‘visualize, express and choreograph what other people can’t see, envisage solutions that do not yet exist, observe and interpret needs and behaviors and transform them into possible service futures, and express and evaluate, in the language of experiences, the quality of design’’ (Service Design Network, 2005). As a discipline, service design should not be viewed in isolation, but as complement to service development, management, operations, and marketing (Service Design Network, 2005; Mager, 2002; Edvardsson et al., 2000).

In our approach to designing for service innovation, we integrate these activities across a service development process that includes exploratory, generative, and evaluative research that spans the entire development process—from discovery to release The process differs from conventional approaches, such as those defined by Booz and Hamilton (1982), Bowers (1985), Khurana and Rosenthal (1997), and Zeithaml et al. (2006), where strategy is defined prior to investigation, creating an outline of the service that has to then be filled in. We argue that the right strategy cannot be known a priori. Instead of trying to define a service from the top down, we start with exploratory or immersive research to lead to opportunities for innovation in strategy. This, in turn, provides context (or the fill) from which the service can be created.

People-centered Research Drives Innovation

The approach we have taken to service design is based on our experience in interaction design and approaches developed and published primarily in Europe (Erlhoff et al., 1997). At Carnegie Mellon University we have organized our approach within a conventional design process framework, leveraging exploratory, generative, and evaluative research methods along the way.

Exploratory Research—Uncovering and Understanding Latent and Masked Needs.
In exploratory research, techniques are used to define ‘‘what is’’ in the current situation or context. Methods used in exploratory research are typically drawn from ethnography and include shadowing, participant observation, and contextual inquiry. The goal of this type of research is to immerse the researcher–designer in the context of the inquiry and to provide a deep under- standing of not only the category of people under observation, but also their goals and needs.

In a recent project at Carnegie Mellon, students were asked to improve service flow at the Transportation Security checkpoint at the local airport. Students first documented stories of their experiences at the Pittsburgh airport and other airport checkpoints. This directed storytelling exercise immersed them in the context of the experience even before going onsite. After just a few hours of observation, the students uncovered a latent need and documented it. They found that passengers and their friends and loved ones had no place to say goodbye. The service as designed for the critical security-checking goal provided resources for security officials and a few for passengers to participate in the process, but the physical space, in particular the area leading up to the security checkpoint, the communication products such as the signs and cue markers, and the service providers offered little support for another fundamental activity in the traveling process—people simply saying goodbye.

Generative Research—Determining What Is Meaningful.
In generative research, the goal is to verify the framing of the ‘‘what is’’ and assumptions about how to respond to the needs identified with representatives of the service participants. Early on in generative research the activities are more projective and include exercises that help people express ideas, emotions, and desires around the service experience, The exercises are designed to help people express or explore what is usually hard for them to communicate—how they feel about the given service experience on an emotional level. Later activities are more constructive and are designed to validate specific reactions to service concepts, flows, and evidence. Figure 19.4 illustrates the projective and constructive faces of generative research (Hanington, 2007).

Figure 19.4 – Model of generative reserach (Hanington, 2007)

The later activities are usually design collaborations between designers and participants in sessions that may include people, process, and artifacts that encourage creativity and conversations (Sanders, 2000). In these sessions designers and participants engage in the meta-design of the experience resources when they coproduce prototypes and enactments of the service experience. In a recent project with UPMC (the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center) students teams engaged in two very different activities to elicit patients’ emotional needs with regard to their health-care experiences. In the first case, students provided patients with a set of stimulus cards that had images of different environments in which the ambiance ranged from a baby sleeping in a room to a pianist playing in a concert hall. The participants were asked to select images that best represented the experience they would like and to explain why. Another team took a slightly different approach. They provided respondents with sets of four images of the same thing, such as four orange juicers or four magazine covers, and asked respondents to compare the images to what they wanted from the service setting and explain why one of the images was most appropriate and another was least.

The resulting conversations from both of these participatory exercises helped the design team suggest appropriate resources (places, products, and people’s behavior) for the ultimate service users to design a health-care experience that would be right for them.

Evaluative—From Concepts to Recommendations.
Evaluative research helps validate whether the needs and expectations people bring to the service experience are actually met by the resources as designed. Ultimately, the goal is to determine if the resources provided for the experience are useful, usable, and desirable for the intended service users and providers (Sanders, 1992). Methods may be tightly controlled as in a lab experiment or loosely defined as an extension of generative activities (Hannington, 2007). The purpose is to evaluate the resources while they are still easy to change and before major investment is made in producing the service process, service products or evidence, or the setting for service delivery.

An Integrated Service Design Process

An integrated service design and implementation process is key to the success of any service experience. We have found a multidisciplinary effort with a modeling-centric approach to be most effective for service design. The process is illustrated in Figure 19.5 in the context of the previously described people-centered research model. Though the process as shown is illustrated in a linear fashion in practice, it is fluid and iterative.

Figure 19.5 – Integrated design process and people-centered research.

The Five Major Stages in Designing for Service.
There are many models of the design process, and many service design organizations opt for their own variations, while others prefer not to be confined to a single process. We have refined our process through practice, but admit that it is fluid and should change according to the design challenge (Evenson, 2005). The activities in the stages of our current process are described briefly in Table 19.1.

Table 19.1 – Process Overview

Service designers must account for the complexity of service resources that must be accessible to the appropriate participants to design the service experience for themselves. Methods that service designers use to address this complexity in particular are service ecologies, experience prototyping, and service blueprinting. Service ecologies are maps of the participants and entities affected by a service and the relationships between them. Ecologies or mappings of the research findings reveal new opportunities and inspire ideas, and they help to establish the overall service concept (livejwork, 2004). Experience prototyping brings the service experience to life. First designers, and then stakeholders in the experience, act out the service experience with specific roles and rough props. This is similar to Brenda Laurel’s design improvisation (Laurel, 2003). The goal is theater that enables the designers to better understand the contextual level of the design experience. This understanding is crucial because experience emerges from the activity of persons acting in a setting and is embedded in context and ongoing social practices.

G. Lynn Shostack developed service blueprinting. She states, ‘‘a service blueprint allows a company to explore all the issues inherent in creating or managing a service.’’ She goes on to explain that there are four aspects to the blueprint. They are process identification, isolation of fail points, establishing the time frame, and analyzing profitability (Shostack, 1984). We have extended this approach to include opportunities for service innovations that are derived from immersive research.

Service Design Languages

Just as spoken languages are the basis for our conversations with people, so design languages are the basis for conversations with services—they are building blocks of the service experience. People use spoken language to express themselves; services designers use service design languages to express the service, what it does, how it is to be used, and what experiences or journeys are made possible through it. Service design languages are used to visualize, express, and choreograph the resources that mediate the service experience. A design language consists of a system of elements (with associated meanings) through which designers signal purpose and users ‘‘read’’ intent (interacting with expectations), for example, ‘‘grip here’’ or ‘‘this is a button that can be pressed.’’ A design language also includes a set of organizing principles (the rules and conventions) for combining elements.

Spoken languages consist of words and rules of grammar. Design languages consist of design elements that are combined into constructs, such as a touch point, and the principles for their combination. Spoken language supports the production of meaningful expressions by allowing people to combine well-known sets of words and rules of grammar to create previously unknown but usually comprehensible expressions. In addition, spoken language is generative and inherently open. Research into creating a service language, so it is similarly open, will be invaluable.

With a service design language it is possible to visualize, express, and choreograph the resources for interaction. Design languages are general to a servicescape, such as a coffee shop with a condiment station for tailoring the coffee that has a flat place large enough to hold several drinks, trash receptacles, sugars, creamers, and so on, and specific to a particular brand (e.g., in the way Starbucks expresses a condiment station) (Bitner, 1992). Essentially, design languages are the means by which

• Designers build meaning and create coherence in the service interface
• Service interfaces express themselves and their meanings to people
• People learn to understand and use the service and engage in experiences associated with the service journey
• Companies establish new industry standards for quality, market presence, and customer satisfaction

When an effective service design language is deployed consistently, people who use or access services become fluent in their interactions with the service. Designers and developers are also articulate and skilled at the production of the resources for service delivery. Research into design languages is likely to influence service design in multiple ways. An exploration of service design languages will augment or change existing business process description or blueprinting methods that are used for describing the current state of service experiences. This work is a natural compliment to research into specification, choreography, improvisation, and, most importantly, implementation.

Cocreating and Experience Advantage – Designing Design

Approaching service as designing will lead to new ways of thinking about service innovation. Service as designing means service itself is fundamentally a creative process. As service designers we are engaged in meta-design—designing design—and are producing resources for people to creatively engage with a service. The position explains why the metaphor of choreography that is so often used with service experience may not be a metaphor at all. The choreographer creates a plan for the dance, but the dancer also creates the dance as he brings his own point of view to performing it.

What will the impact of a ‘‘service as designing’’ mindset be on the design of services such as a healthcare experience? In recent projects with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the Mayo Clinic, Carnegie Mellon students have shown that a design approach and design mindset can lead to innovative solutions to serious service challenges. At a small scale it can mean simply better understanding the relationships that are created through interaction around the service. This is illustrated through the suggestion that catheterization lab team members wear ‘‘gear’’ that unifies them as a group and allows the patient and family to see them as their team. On a broader scale, the service as design mindset leads to service innovation concepts that put the patient more in control of their experience—both in proactive and in chronic primary care situations. In this case, the patients would then be provided with the resources to change their existing situations into preferred ones. We hope that more efforts to frame service as design can lead to even more innovative solutions for these and other important challenges.

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Editor’s Note:
In last year’s January + February issue Usman Haque, Paul Pangaro, and I described several types of interaction—reacting, regulating, learning, balancing, managing, and conversing. In the July + August 2009 issue, Paul Pangaro and I described several types of conversing—agreeing, learning, coordinating, and collaborating—and we proposed using models based on Gordon Pask’s Conversation Theory as a guide for improving human-computer interaction. Peter Jones responded, noting that there are other models of conversation and prior work in bringing conversation to human-computer interaction in particular Winograd and Flores 1986 work with The Coordinator. We agree on the importance of The Coordinator and invited Peter to outline the history of models of conversation and their relationship to HCI. His response follows.

—Hugh Dubberly

This article will step back in time to retrieve alternative, influential views of conversation for design, and then bring the discussion forward to current situations where we might learn from this history.

Three historically parallel pathways can be shown as influenced by a common circle of systems theorists: the well-known language/action perspective (LAP) [1], Rittel’s argumentation perspective [2], and the dialogic design school, emerging from Christakis’s structured dialogue [3] and Warfield’s science of generic design [4].

Distinctions between these three perspectives are readily apparent in the embodiments of their design languages in software, with very different routines for conversation modeling. They also share a central concern with the role of generative conversation for design outcomes. The current article series attempts to coordinate common elements and concerns among perspectives in the attempt to establish a workable common ground.

This article focuses on the theory of conversation embodied in LAP—an influential framework of phenomenology, pragmatics, and speech act theory. While LAP has received significant attention in prior ACM publications, the framework deserves further consideration in light of renewed interest in the systemic view of conversation in design. The emergence of massive social media networks has inspired interest in social design and social systems, particularly in applications to network systems, including business models, online social activism, and organizational systems.

A Conversation about Conversation

What are the contexts for conversation? Most theories of communication assume a dyad model of information exchange: two individuals talking with each other. Cherry defined “communication” as the exchange of normatively defined meanings and creating understanding between purposeful social participants [5]. Conversation is seen as a form of communication in which a particular exchange takes place between at least two people at a time, representing individual interests or intentions, or collective interests represented by individuals.

In everyday parlance, we subscribe to a more inclusive view. In fact, many and perhaps most conversations occur as or start with small talk. Known as phatic communication, it is present to some extent in most real conversations, and is identified as orientation” in the LAP model. While its power to reinforce relationships should not be minimized, here we focus on purposeful conversations that enable the coordination of multiple perspectives in the activity of designing.

Any design activity is guided by the intention to change a situation in accordance with a communicated desire or intention. Conversations for design must reflect and preserve the positions and contributions of multiple participants included (and excluded) in the model of change. By “merely” speaking, the designer creates a context for the relative inclusion of stakeholders or users, an ethic explicitly revealed by his or her conversational model. By extension of this assumption, the way we converse may also be seen as, perhaps unwittingly, reflecting our working philosophy of designing.

Several implicit models of conversation can be identified that guide participation in very different ways. Three epistemological orientations include the rational, pragmatic, and phenomenological.

The rational perspective may be viewed as an instrumental and purposive individual communications system used by designers to achieve sophisticated design outcomes. Conversation can be understood as a set of patterns employed as skillful means in facilitating the relationship between designers, stakeholders, and product or materials. This is the mainstream perspective in our technological culture, and perhaps the way most readers view conversation in design. This perspective is observable in practices that employ a well-defined set of methods and communications with every problem situation.

A pragmatic perspective considers design an inherently communicative practice, where design activities enact the creation of a linguistic system of meanings applicable to a problem in context. In practice, we create a unique coupling of appropriate language to the design situation, following stakeholders and their lifeworlds rather than promoting our own language of design. When we customize design methods to suit a particular purpose, rather than pull methods “off the shelf,” we reveal a pragmatic philosophy.

A phenomenological perspective acknowledges that all meaning arises in language, that human activity is not separate from language. This view suggests that design itself is a conversation, products and services are networks of other conversations, and designing acts are performed and recognized by language. Conversation is not a tool for outcomes; rather, language uses us, shaping and constraining our work and experience.

These are not mutually exclusive perspectives; designers may adopt different perspectives to calibrate responses to a situation, while scholars may be adherents of one school of thought. And while not an inclusive list, perspectives from sense making and constructivism, for example, range beyond this current focus of conversation for design. Elements of all three perspectives, and more, could inform responses to a single problem. The language/action artifacts appear to embrace elements from all three schools, even though the foundation text presents a phenomenological perspective.

Conversation as Designable Action

Readers of interactions and Communications of the ACM may be familiar with Winograd and Flores’s (1986) LAP work [6]. Flores demonstrated successes in software (The Coordinator and Action Workflow), education (Logonet and Landmark), and management (Business Design) based on an integral philosophical system. While LAP’s critique of the artificial intelligence field had an enormous humanist impact, its longevity was disrupted by critiques of the embedded conversational model in The Coordinator. Today we may consider the irony of how the LAP, a critique of the micro-cognitive and rationalist view of AI, was itself critiqued as socially deterministic (macro-cognitive) and insensitive to natural human interaction. However, LAP reenvisioned cognition and agency as responsive to action in the world, a humanistic concern. Winograd and Flores’s unit of analysis for

Table 1: Three Perspectives

embodied cognition was conversation, expressed in an explicit phenomenological approach known as ontological design. Ontological design was construed as a practice of formulating conversations to invent new modes of being and co-create action. Conversation was deemed the appropriate way not only to explore the possibilities invented in design activity, but also to generate those possibilities in reality by intentional speech acts.

Types of Speech Acts

LAP adopted Searle’s speech act theory, wherein language performs an action represented by the content and intent of the utterance. Performative speech acts instantiate the action referred to in speech itself. Five basic speech acts, called illocutionary points, are specified as:

• Assertives commit a speaker to the truth of an expression.
  
• Directives (such as requests, commands, and advice) cause the listener to follow a requested action.
  
• Commissives (such as promises and oaths) commit the speaker to future actions.
  
• Declarations change the circumstances of reality to accord with a proposition (e.g., pronounce a couple as married).
  
• Expressives convey a speaker’s attitudes or emotions about a proposition (e.g., praise, gratitude).

The applicability of performative speech acts in design was pointedly critiqued, essentially based on the hermeneutic problem that a listener might interpret an illocutionary point different from the speaker’s intention [7]. However, Searle’s model provides a descriptive power of language as action helpful in understanding and even guiding the messy dynamics of design practices. And since conversation (and hermeneutics) is recursive, continuous, and correctable, the interpretive critique seems overwrought.

Speech Acts in Conversation

While a conversation must be “about something,” conversations often have no purpose other than social mediation and acknowledgement of phatic communication. Conversations that lead to action exhibit intentionality, and differences in conversational structure are apparent.

Winograd describes three types of purposeful conversations based on the LAP model. His nomenclature reveals intention by the preposition for,” as conversations for”:

• Orientation
• Possibility
• Action

Orientation is maintained by conversation that mutually regards a shared referent object (e.g., the weather), “creating a shared background as a basis for future interpretation of conversations.” The intent of this so-called phatic communication is merely acknowledgement.

Conversations for possibility include interpersonal queries, inquiries, and propositions that “open a context.” Winograd notes the importance of common ground(background), including prior intent, upon which speakers can instantiate new contexts for conversation. There are no “goals” in conversations for possibility, but rather the co-construction of understanding and novelty.

A conversation can be observed as moving through progression of stages, where an opening affords the potential for action. The coordination of action requires meeting what Searle calls conditions of satisfaction [8]. Conditions may include some agreed outcome, and agreements about necessary quality and future dates. While some may consider these conditions goals, LAP does not refer to goals in the objective sense . This difference is crucial, as LAP suggests that we honor the commitment, as if spoken between persons, not the objectives.

This model has much in common with the discovery orientation in design practice. Designers are taught to “challenge the brief” and to help clients reformulate a problem as given so that the right framing of a problem is adopted in a design project. The skills for mediating conversations for possibility are learned through the experience of navigating different frames of possible visions or outcomes in conversation. Other distinct “conversations for” that were not proposed in LAP show in a designing context, as they occur as patterns of sense-making between committed participants. Conversations for understanding (or dialogue) and for clarification (convergence) are two that might be further distinguished.

Figure 1: Conversation for Possibility

Figure 2: Conversation for Action

Moving the “right possibility” toward a conversation for action is another embodied skill. The ability to move stakeholders in social design situations is not seen as a rhetorical, persuasive skill, but one that turns on what Searle identifies as illocutionary force. This is the extent to which action is performed by words, not by the semantic content, but by the speaker’s intent. The variable capacity to move together toward action is embodied by the speaker at the time of utterance. This distinction is inherent in LAP’s formulation of ontological design—design actions are co-created by speaker and listener at the time of conversation in a mutual grounding of understanding and agreement.

Learning from The Coordinator

A 2006 issue of Communications recapped the language/action perspective, but it included no mention of the early email activity management system released by Flores in 1986 The Coordinator was (primarily) designed for ultimately managing conversations for action, by instantiating requests, offers, counter-offers, promises, and other commitments as mediated transactions. These illocutionary points were identified in Flores’s earlier research on effective business conversations in the workplace, and were formulated in his notion that “organizations exist as networks of directives and commissives.”

Early email systems followed a slow adoption curve, given the limitations of computing and networks. Free-form email was initially perceived to be unnecessarily constrictive, a “cold” medium that was not at all conversational. During the years The Coordinator was available, early conventional email systems were used for sporadic and discretionary communications. The ubiquitous acceptance of email required a span of five years to alter communicative practices, even in dedicated organizations. While The Coordinator did not fit the cognitive style or tasks of existing organizations, even unstructured electronic communications were fraught with resistance and halting advances. Since The Coordinator also required a commitment to managing accountable communications, its use was limited to fairly small and dedicated networks.

The design and flaws of The Coordinator might still teach us about structuring conversations and accountable communicative actions. Perhaps the system’s intent was, as Lucy Suchman said, “to remedy the carelessness of organization members regarding their commitments to each other through a technologically based system of intention-accounting” [9]. Yet this critique focuses on the functions of The Coordinator, as originally designed. Speech act theory was certainly not perfectly matched to the intended domains of conversation. Searle’s explicitly-described theory does not preordain a “rationalist” implementation. As a conversation theory, it retains constructive power for formulating social (and therefore design) commitments as acts by their very communication.

One can agree with the underpinning concern of Suchman’s critique while identifying significant exceptions. For one, regulated organizations could benefit from Searlean communication by filtering today’s overwhelming volumes of data by displaying information by action: requests, commitments, dates, and implicit promises to network participants.

LAP-structured conversations might enhance communications in complex, high-reliability organizations. Winograd’s 1987 case study of hospital conversation flow foresaw the usability nightmare of electronic medical records systems. In regulated environments the coordination of commitments is as important as data quality. In operations such as healthcare, transportation, and the military, the ability to manage and respond to commitments fosters operational resiliency by managing actions that occur “as speech,” such as orders, responses, announcements, and outcomes. The entire chain of commitments following a medication order would be tracked as a directive conversation, rather than as “workflow.” It instantiates a process based on verbs, action, rather than nouns and objects. While Google’s adoption of the “conversation” as unit of communication appears to build on this perspective, in practice, few email threads are true conversations. The meaningful verbs that prompt action are hidden in today’s electronic communications.

While The Coordinator software passed into collective memory without further enhancement, Winograd and Flores’s bold experiment in organizing communication should be evaluated from an innovation perspective. Consider the audacity of introducing a dedicated, tightly structured email system in the late 1980s. As an early adopter, I found its most significant difficulty was the macrocognitive problem of its lack of organizational fit (as suggested by Suchman’s critique) and the necessity of changing communicative practices. For it (or any email system) to be of value, all participants in an action network had to agree to use it consistently.

Figure 3: The Basic Conversation for Action
This diagram translates Winograd and Flores’ original state diagram into a flow diagram, in the hope of making it more accessible.]

Conclusion

A major contribution of LAP was creating a design language for the construction and monitoring of commitment. As Web-based systems have greatly enabled the ability to collaborate, people are easily overloaded by multiple communication channels. Managing commitment and attention remains the weak link in our technology panorama. A conversation design perspective can enhance our coordination of attention as well as action.

With respect to The Coordinator, I would make the personal observation that successful software systems are rarely treated as newsworthy in scholarly publications, and failures are typically ignored. Successful software products are discussed only peripherally. With no venue for cooperative constructive critique of social and interactive artifacts, we collectively risk losing the value of learning from the wisdom embodied in such artifacts and their adoption by real users. We also suffer the loss of shared meaning from collective memory by not sustaining an academic tradition of a balanced interpretive review and critique of artifacts we design and endorse. Perhaps interactions might host such a critique as a shared conversation toward creating a critical discourse, in support of creating a constructive shared memory.

Finally, the emerging perspective of purposive design, of “designing for” (e.g. sustainability, thrivability, transformation, care) shares an ontological basis with “conversation for” in terms of intentionality and social teleology. When designing for a purpose, our “conversation for” that purpose brings it forth, a distinctly different view from a design method perspective. These and other proposals ought to be considered in the emerging reconfigurations of design thinking and practice.

About the Author
Peter Jones, Ph.D. founded the Redesign innovation research firm in 2001, and conducts independent and client-based research. Redesign, specializes in information and process strategies for scientific, organizational and healthcare practices. Jones is writing Design for Care (Rosenfeld Media. 2010), exploring how new design thinking is transforming healthcare. He resides in Toronto, where he is on faculty at Ontario College of Art and Design. Find Peter at Design Dialogues.

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Much of human behavior is directed toward goals: finding food, selling services, curing cancer, making meaning.

Achieving goals requires action. Action requires effort. Effort requires energy and attention applied over time. Effort overcomes obstacles. Obstacles tax our patience, sap our resolve, and cause us stress.

English (as well as many other languages) includes many metaphors that frame effort as a cost:

• I enjoy spending time with you.
• You’re wasting your energy.
• You’re not paying attention.
• This job is not worth the stress.
• It all takes its toll.

These metaphors suggest an economics of human behavior—a framework for understanding the human cost of living and the trade-offs we make momentby- moment as we choose one course of action over another. This paper begins the development of such a framework for everyday living and suggests how it might be applied to business and design. The authors hope to provide a means for us all to learn to act in better accord with our interests and thereby improve productivity and satisfaction, both individually and in concert with others.

Bio-cost measures human effort

Bio-cost is the energy, attention, and stress that people expend over time to achieve their goals—to get what they want” in Ashby’s sense. [Ashby 1956]

All of life’s activities carry some bio-cost. Most often, we “feel” bio-cost when we meet resistance—when we can’t enter a flow and act simply to get what we want. We experience the drain of bio-cost every day— when we find a stone in our shoe; when traffic slows us; when we struggle to change a channel with a remote control; when the bureaucracy requires we submit another form; when the boss makes contradictory requests; when the stock market sends mixed signals. Bio-cost limits what we can achieve because we may not have the resources to get what we want, or we might spend too much for what we get in return. This is true for individuals, groups, organizations, and species. While we may not be able to quantify bio-cost with precise measures— whether in anticipation of expending it or after the fact—the authors have found considerable utility in construing bio-cost as comprising distinct quantitative components.

Bio-cost is a function of time

All tasks take time to accomplish. The effort required to complete a task can be mapped against time (in basic cases, at least). Graphing against time we see an ebb and flow of effort—e.g., walking to a destination requires relatively constant bio-cost expenditure over time, while flagging down a cab and getting in requires an initial burst of effort followed by a period of relative rest during the ride, as in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Bio-cost of physical effort to travel by taxi (cyan) versus walking (black)

Bio-cost has physical, mental, and emotional components

In the case above, the physical effort can be measured as calories—the greater the effort, the more calories required. There are limits to our physical efforts; when taken to an extreme, we can experience muscle fatigue or exhaustion.

Bio-cost also has a mental component. Mental effort means attention paid to perform a task or even to think about how to perform it. As with physical effort, this use of our brains and all the components of our nervous system that coordinate our thinking and acting also requires effort and also has limits. Some tasks require more concentration than others, so the attention we pay will vary.

Similarly, we reach emotional limits as palpable as physical and mental ones when we get “stressed out” due to factors such as uncertainty and fear.

Bio-cost reveals trade-offs

Because the chemical and hormonal pathways overlay the nervous system, feeling has impact on thinking and vice versa. [von Forester 1973] A second-order awareness of the toll that a task is taking—whether in physical, mental, or emotional terms—may add further stress or alleviate it. This becomes part of a feedback loop that helps us to estimate the bio-cost expenditure required to be successful. When the task is to “save our life”— for example, to undergo invasive surgery to remove a tumor—our stress is increased because the stakes and uncertainties are high. When there are negative consequences for not completing a task by some deadline, such as getting to the airport in time to board a flight, perceived limitations of time can contribute to stress. Even non-time threatened situations raise our stress levels: Will I get fired for that mistake? Will I pass the test? Will she like me?

By reflecting on the bio-cost of specific activities in our daily lives, we can usually make trade-offs among the components—time, energy, attention, and stress as shown in Table I—to minimize the overall cost of getting what we want or need. At any point we may also decide to spend money to lower one or more dimensions of bio-cost. (Here we note without further exploration that this has the side benefit of allowing us to calculate a monetary equivalence for bio-cost, at least in a specific context. For example, avoiding the additional time and physical effort of walking is often worth the $10 monetary cost of a taxi—plus the stress of not knowing whether we can find one in time and whether traffic will cooperate.)

Table 1: Bio-cost components.

Can we replenish our “reserves”?

Clearly, we cannot recover time once spent, but given more time, we may be able to replenish our energy, our ability to concentrate, and our capacity to absorb stress.

After periods of intense activity, we often seek a better “life balance,” that is, we seek to counter-act activities that carry significant bio-cost with those that allow us to restore our physical, mental, and emotional systems. For example, we often say that we “make time” for family and friends, so that we can “recharge our batteries.”

Sleep appears to restore our energy, refresh our brains, and reduce our stress such that we can use our time more efficiently and make better choices. Many other activities also fit this category, such as meditation, the pursuit of sports, crafts, and the arts, or even mastery of a skill.

How do we assess bio-cost trade-offs?

In monetary transactions we commonly consider cost versus gain. This paper argues that the same is true for actions that involve the expenditure of physical, mental, and emotional effort, and that explicit awareness of this affords us the opportunity to reflect on trade-offs and improve the choices we make.

It is important to keep in mind, however, that we can’t always easily calculate the value of reducing bio-cost in monetary terms nor can we translate or commute a given valuation to other circumstances or individuals. Still, we maintain a belief in the gain and a sense of the cost, and we remain capable of generating an opinion as to what we will base our actions on right now. Put another way, we think the view is worth the climb.

In order to characterize a progression of variations of goal setting, taking action, and reaping rewards, the next set of figures start from a single participant and proceed to cover cases of cooperation and collaboration with others.

1 Bio-cost for single participant

Figure 2 draws from Pask’s model of goal/action systems [Pask 1975; Pangaro 2003], reinterpreted such that the “goal” level (L1 in Pask’s original) becomes the gain, while the “means” level (L0 in the original) becomes the cost. Per Pask, the goallevel controls the execution of procedures at the means-level, as indicated by the vertical arrow on right side. Results from execution are returned and compared to the original goal, as indicated by the line on the left with comparator sign.

Figure 2: First canonical form shows goals are achieved via separate means, where the means has a cost and achieving the goal creates a gain.

2 Bio-cost for cooperative participants

The next case involves a distinction between Participant A, who sets the goal, and Participant B, who agrees to perform the actions required to achieve that goal. The components are the same as in Figure 2. However, in Figure 3, there is a clear division (the vertical line) as goal-setting and action-taking are executed by different participants.

Participant B expends the bio-cost to achieve the goal on behalf of Participant A, who compares the result of B’s actions with the goal. We call the interaction cooperation” because there are clear roles and actions for A and for B—they co-operate, that is, they operate together but within agreed boundaries.

Figure 3: Second canonical form shows the allocation of goal-setting to Participant A, and action-taking to Participant B.

3 Bio-cost for collaborative participants

The third case also involves two participants but is more open-ended in that the distribution of roles and actions between participants is not predetermined. Rather, participants A and B collaborate— they “co-labor” or work together—to create and agree on the goals themselves, as well as to agree on who does what to achieve them.

In Figure 4, participants A and B converse at two levels: about goals (upper horizontal loop) and about the means to achieve them (lower horizontal loop). They likely also cooperate about means, and use feedback to check whether goals have been achieved (loops that cross from upper to lower level). In an ongoing collaboration, participants may maintain some sense of the trade-offs across time and situations, and they may seek a balance over time.

Figure 4: Second canonical form shows the allocation of goal-setting to Participant A, and action-taking to Participant B. Third canonical form shows that A and B “co-labor” to create goals and share bio-cost to achieve them.

Bio-cost in business and design

Society has benefitted greatly from—one could say society can arise because of—the sharing of bio-cost. As early as the Stone Age, social groups learned how coordinated action could achieve goals that would otherwise have been impossible. A group could successfully hunt a swift and powerful animal for food, whereas a single hunter might have only a slim chance of success and a high risk of injury or death. By sharing such responsibilities, groups could achieve net bio-cost reduction thereby freeing up resources to explore new lands, create new arts and cultures, and develop new means of associating and collaborating.

Since the Renaissance, the corporation has provided one such structure for collaboration. The success of modern corporations is a measure of the huge scale on which they reduce collective bio-cost expenditures. Yet, modern corporations also exact a huge toll in frustration and stress from their employees. In other words, working in a corporation often comes with a high bio-cost. For example, on a mundane level the noise and interruptions of cubicle life” can make focused attention difficult. On a more critical level, uncertainty about goals and criteria can lead to rework; uncertainty about roles and responsibilities can lead to unproductive conflict; and uncertainty about continued employment can lead to fear. Such bio-costs are an extraordinary and persistent waste of “human resources.”

Transforming a corporation from a current state of high bio-cost to a more efficient state requires a complex system that learns as it goes—and the bio-cost of learning, even for those who thrive on it, is very high. [Geoghegan and Pangaro 2003] This appears to be one reason why corporations often fail to find new paths to success when markets change. [Dubberly, Esmonde, Geoghegan & Pangaro 2002]

On the other hand, “strong teamwork” means that there is mutual trust (itself a huge bio-cost reducer) as well as clarity of direction, role and proper action (all proxies for low uncertainty and hence low bio-cost situations). At best, the beliefs and goals of the individuals in a corporation are highly aligned.

In addition to applying the framework of bio-cost to organizational design, we can also apply it to product and service design. Minimizing or at least reducing a user’s bio-cost can be an important design goal. Even though the precision of bio-cost measures is limited, a focus on bio-cost permits a deep conversation during the design process. Instead of seeking to make products “simple” or intuitive”—laudable goals but not very specific— designers can use the dimensions of bio-cost to participate in a more directed design process where trade-offs are made explicit and clear.

Why bio-cost is important

We see an opportunity for organizations to create value by focusing on bio-cost. First, bio-cost provides a framework for improving productivity; by getting better at understanding bio-cost, we can get better at reducing it. In addition, bio-cost provides a framework for innovation; identifying bio-cost is identifying inefficiency, identifying an unmet user need, identifying an opportunity for new products and services.

In summary, it is our conviction that reducing biocost leads to:

• greater efficiency in achieving goals, which leads to…
• greater capacity or resources in the system, which allows the cultivation of…
• greater variety, which means…
• greater ability to generate higher-level plans for reducing bio-cost even further, resulting in…
• even lower bio-cost—a positive feedback loop and a virtuous cycle.

Reducing bio-cost creates value. It expands the space in which additional choices may be generated and evaluated. It can be an ethical motivation in the design process and lead to a more humane world. We believe that a bio-cost economy underlies all exchanges of value, and it always will, because it involves the management of the least fungible and most valuable aspect of life: how we spend our time.

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edited by Jon Kolko
Oxford University Press

Dubberly Design Office consults on development of software and services. We follow a user-centered process that often involves mapping. We use concept maps to represent factors that influence the product development process. We regularly map user goal structures and user interactions; business models and resource flows; and hardware and software infrastructure and information flows. Increasingly, we are called on to map data models and content domains.

Many of today’s new software applications and online services integrate content more deeply than earlier desktop productivity applications. As Nicholas Negroponte predicted, content, computing, and communications have converged.

A concept map is a collection of terms related to a main idea. Links between terms form a structure—something like an outline, but with some branches connected. Labeling a link with a verb creates a noun-verb-noun chain that can be read as a sentence. Thus, concept maps present a series of propositions related to each other and a main idea. Mapping a content domain—creating a concept map—is an effective way to understand a domain.

Sharing a concept map with project stakeholders is an effective way to identify errors in understanding and reach consensus on content definition, structure, and boundaries. Mapping a content domain is a good way to prepare for designing or redesigning a content rich web site, application, or service.

The Benefits of Concept Mapping

Deepening Understanding

We developed a concept map of Java as a way to understand Java. The map helped us prepare to redesign and re-launch Sun’s main web site for Java developers, java.sun.com. Concept mapping was one of many tools that we used in the design process, including auditing the existing site, reviewing site traffic logs, and interviewing Java developers. This case study focuses on the Java concept map and does not describe the other tools or the larger site redesign effort.

The main question that we faced was this: How should we organize java.sun.com? What should the information architecture be? Answering these questions was not trivial, since the site contained more than 110,000 pages. It couldn’t be reorganized by simply reading a few pages and moving them around. What we needed was a deep understanding of Java—what it is, how it’s used, how it changes, and why it matters.

The trouble was: We knew little about Java except that it was a programming language that runs in many environments. We developed the Java concept map so that we could learn what we needed to know. The knowledge we gained making the map enabled us to propose revisions to the site’s infor-mation architecture with confidence—and helped us backup our proposal with reasoning built on a firm foundation—reasoning built on a definition of the content domain (i.e., the Java concept map) already accepted by the client and his many internal constituents.

Building Trust

Like any large corporate project, the redesign of java.sun.com encountered political issues. First, it was a visible project in a decentralized company. That meant the project had a lot of vocal stakeholders. In addition, java.sun.com was managed by Sun’s Developer Relations Group, which had recently been formed by consolidating several previously separate departments. Not everyone was happy about the new organization.

As we began to meet internal stakeholders, we encountered considerable skepticism about the site redesign project and our ability to execute it. Developing the concept map became a way to engage known stakeholders, discover new ones, and build trust.

We interviewed a series of Sun employees involved with both Java and java.sun.com. We began with a small group, who in turn suggested others. Eventually the number of employee interviews exceeded 50. We also asked the stakeholders to review the concept map as we developed it.

At a project meeting a few weeks into the process, one of the key stakeholders reviewed the map and said, “Not bad. It looks like you’re ready to meet the Java Distinguished Engineers.” Before that, no one had mentioned these high priests of Java; they turned out to be a powerful constituency. The map helped us find them and gave us entree—both permission to meet and something to discuss. Those meetings went well; the Distinguished Engineers were intrigued by the map. (It’s not often someone turns up with a map of your baby.) We also entered the discussions with more credibility than we had at the start of the project, since we had clearly done a lot of homework to get the map to where it was. The organization did us a favor by revealing the Distinguished Engineers only when we were prepared to meet them.

The most important benefit of the map, though, was that we were able to discuss the structure of Java with the Distinguished Engineers (and other stakeholders) on its own terms, apart from its instantiation in the web site. In other words, we were able to discuss the structure of Java and ensure that we understood it, rather than discuss a menu system or page layout, which might have conflated issues—the structure of Java, the site information architecture, and the appearance of the navigation interface.

By separating content from expression—by mapping—we were able to establish relationships and build credibility and trust, before proposing changes to the client’s baby, the Java web site.

Other Uses

While the main goal of the concept map was to help the design team understand Java so that we could reorganize java.sun.com, it soon became clear that the map might have wider uses. Our working version of the map looked like a sketch, which reflected the constant changes we were making. (It was messy.) The sketch form invites comments—where a more polished form may inhibit comments.

When we reached consensus on the content, we formalized the map’s appearance. Eventually, the map went through two printings and was distributed to more than 25,000 Java developers. We also created an interactive in Flash version of the map.

The Process of Concept Mapping

At the beginning of the java.sun.com redesign project, we asked to see Sun’s models of Java. We were unable to locate detailed models, but we did find slides from marketing presentations—”marketectures”, versions of technical architectures simplified by marketing people. One of these marketectures depicted Java as the Parthenon; three steps supported a few columns capped by an architrave and a pediment. This model included less than a dozen elements. It became our starting point.

Set Goals

Setting goals is the key to managing. Rick Robinson points out that all research should begin with a clear goal, what he calls a “hunt statement”. Likewise, mapping should begin with a clear goal. A simple way to clarify a map’s goal is to write a “working title.”

We set six goals for the Java concept map:

1. Develop an understanding of Java shared among the java.sun.com redesign project’s stakeholders.

2. Inform both the logical organization of java.sun.com and its integration with other sites.

3. Develop a framework by which changes to Java can be understood.

4. Open a dialog with senior Java stakeholders.

5. Provide an overview of Java to people familiar with computing but unfamiliar with Java.

6. Develop a map that an average Java programmer would consider accurate.

Identify Terms

The first step in developing a concept map is to identify terms that could be included. In this phase, the goal is to quickly explore the domain. Write down whatever you find or think of. Editing comes later.

Our first list of terms came from the team’s own experience, from glossaries of Java terms, and from the indices of books on Java.

We kept our list of terms in a spreadsheet. We printed each term on a label and affixed the label to a colored sticky”, so that it could be moved and grouped later. We then placed the stickies on a 4-by-8-foot foam-core board, so that we could move the whole group around the office easily.

• Our initial list included roughly 400 terms.

Figure 1: Early grouping of Post-it notes.

Prioritize Terms

We prioritized the terms, creating more manageable clusters:

• 11 first priority
• 45 second
• 157 third
• 136 fourth
• 51 fifth

Triage is a similar strategy. Which terms are critical? Which terms can we deal with later? And which terms are not relevant?

Figure 2: Armature study.

Figure 3: Armature with next level of elements added.

Define Terms

We defined each first-, second-, and third-level term, adding definitions to the spreadsheet. The list of definitions served as a foundation for later work. In discussions with reviewers, the definitions allowed the team to focus on individual words, without referring to the map. The list of definitions was particularly useful in conversations with reviewers who didn’t understand that map, especially when they reviewed early versions.

• 205 definitions were collected from 8 sources.

Figure 4: Early composie.

Figure 5: Final composite; content basis for final design.

Organize Terms

We organized the first-, second-, and third-priority lists into a single outline. We experimented with several variations. For the most part, category titles in the outline were first-priority terms.

Test Armatures

When the number of terms in a concept map exceeds 9 or 10, introducing levels or hierarchy may make reading easier. Large concepts maps (more than 50 terms) are almost impenetrable without attention to both semantic and visual hierarchy.

We like to organize large concepts maps around an “armature”, a primary sentence or two. A good place to start is with a horizontal sentence placing the main concept in a context; then add a vertical sentence defining the concept. Other terms link off the armature.

An armature should include the terms most fundamental to the concept being mapped. These fundamental terms and relationships serve as the backbone for the rest of the map, providing structure and hierarchy. The armature is often a starting point for readers.

We experimented with several armatures. The client and the design team chose the armature with the most meaningful relationships and the one that provided space (both physically and logically) for the rest of the terms.

Add Terms

We added second- and third-priority terms. New terms suggested changes to the armature.

Review and Revise

Once we had an armature fleshed out with second-ary terms, we reviewed the map with the client and a small group of Java experts. They suggested additional reviewers. From this early stage, reviews were ongoing. We continued to interview stakeholders while we developed the concept map, asking them to review and comment on the current version.

Reviews took place in one-on-one interviews, on the phone, or via email. We sent drafts of the map to groups within Sun. We also posted large, printed copies in high-traffic areas at Sun; reviewers wrote directly on the map or attached yellow stickies.

Marked-up maps were returned to us. Several people reviewed the map multiple times.

• 36 people reviewed the map in one-on-one interviews.
• 10 people provided feedback via posted maps.

Subdivide Large Maps

As we added terms, the map became unwieldy and difficult to consider as a whole. So: We divided the map into logical sections.

Subdividing the map increased efficiency. We distributed sections to members of the team who refined their sections simultaneously. They added terms and modified relationships, and, in some cases, created secondary armatures. We reassembled the sections around a refined armature, paying special attention to relationships between the sections.

• At its largest, the map measured 3 x 8 feet.

Refine the Typography

Jim Faris and Harry Saddler proposed several options for the form of the map. The team adopted Sun Sans as the primary typeface, conforming to Sun’s corporate identity standards.

Early sketches produced some new typographic devices that were eventually applied to the map. One device was a sort of footnote or hypertext link, which allowed us to indicate more relationships without drawing more long lines across the map.

• Refining appearance required 7 complete revisions.

Check Again

Throughout the project, we worked with a copy editor. She checked each comprehensive revision for spelling, grammar, and sense. Sun’s legal and trademark department also reviewed the map several times, as did an attorney working for our client’s department and two subject-matter experts.

At the end, Sun’s marketing department asked for a few visual changes—and we faced a nerve-racking few days when a senior manager questioned whether the map contained too much proprietary information. Luckily we were able to show that the information was all already available on java.sun.com.

• The map went through a total of 53 numbered versions—releases.

Figure 6: Early visual style sketch.

Figure 7: Final poster.

Print and Distribute

The map was printed at Color Graphics in San Francisco. Sun initially distributed the map at the JavaOne conference in Japan.

Project Stats

The final map contains:

• 235 terms
• 425 links (relationships)
• 110 descriptions

We began the map in October 2000 and delivered printed copies in September 2001.

The process required:

• 49 weeks
• more than 50 interviews
• more than 100 meetings
• more than 2000 emails

The team that created the map included:

• Audrey Crane, project manager, interviewer, researcher, mapper

• Paul Devine, content expert, mapper

• Hugh Dubberly, interviewer, mapper

• Jim Faris, mapper, graphic designer

• Paul Pangaro, our client

• Harry Saddler, content expert, mapper, graphic designer

• Ylva Wickberg, interaction programmer

More Information

For more on concept mapping, read Gowin and Novak’s Learning How to Learn.

For more on teaching concept mapping, read Dubberly’s The Baseball Project: A Step-by-step Approach to Introducing Information Architecture.

See the Java Technology Concept Map which inspired this article.

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Editor’s Note:
This article proposes several models of community, including a model of “mobile community”—an extension of physical community merged with online community. The authors also provide examples of how these models have contributed to the development of community applications in their work at Samsung.

—Hugh Dubberly

For the past decade, mobile phones have been used primarily to make phone calls. However, with an increase in the number of mobile phone users and improvements to mobile phone technology, new forms of interaction and new kinds of applications become possible. Now the role of mobile phones is expanding to support forming and maintaining “community”—both geographic based communities and communities based on diverse cultural interests—creating new ways for people to connect and communicate.

The rise of online communities is one of the most exciting commercial and social opportunities of this decade. Today anyone working in the converging worlds of communications, media, and technology knows that communities are perhaps the most influential factor and value-added service in the emerging market, potentially exceeding games, voting or polling applications, or music and video downloads because of their long-term sustainability. In fact, a public report estimates that the market value of community will be around €673 billion by 2010 [1].

Traditionally, the term “community” defined a group of people living in a common location [2]. But as the Internet reduced the limitations of distance, “community” has expanded to include groups organized around common values and common interests. Early Internet community applications limited online interaction for members—the community was active only when members were in front of a personal computer.

In contrast, mobile phones support interaction virtually anywhere, but until recently mobile phones did a poor job of supporting community. A new generation of mobile phone applications is beginning to support not just one-to-one communications, but also one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many communications—an essential part of creating, reinforcing, and managing a community (see Figure 1).

Expansion of Mobile Communication
Figure 1. Mobile communication has focused on one-to-one connections for many years; however, the role will expand to group communication, which is needed for efficient and effective community management.

Consumers expect mobile devices to support rich forms of media: audio, text, photo, and video. And they expect to use rich media to communicate. Consumers will also expect mobile community applications to support rich media. And they will expect applications to be aware of users’ context—both their physical environment as well as their virtual environment:

• their location,
• the tasks in which they are engaged,
• the information they are browsing,
• the people with whom they are interacting,
• and the history of each.

These contextual elements (location, task, domain, contacts, and history) may combine to “trigger” realization of both individual and group goals. Some goals and activities will already be “in play”, while others will emerge from interaction. Browsing a library shelf may lead to the discovery of a new book. Stepping into a cafe may involve running into a friend. Mobile community applications become especially valuable when they support serendipity—spontaneous or unplanned events—and aid the formation of ad hoc communities or “flash groups” (which may dissolve after the event). This last feature is a main difference between mobile communities and communities in the online and physical worlds.

A mobile community, therefore, can be defined as a group of people with shared interests (i.e., health, safety, entertainment, and so on) getting together first online and then in person to define common goals, agree on actions to achieve them, and then carry out their plans. A mobile community can be built up in private (consisting of friends, family, or colleagues—people who are well known to each other) or created in public (a flash group assembled because of shared interests and coincidences of space and time).

Broadly, the mobile community model encompasses two varieties: those centered on relationships and those centered on tasks. The former are typically informal, grassroots-oriented communities that revolve around shared interests, ideas, topics, and goals. In these communities, the development of relationships is the primary goal. In contrast, task-centered communities tend to be more structured and impersonal. The relationships established or augmented online are a means to a mutual end, such as efficiently making a satisfying purchase.

More specifically, the communities are established

• between business partners,
• between businesses and their customers,
• between different groups of customers within companies,
• and between individuals and groups devoted to particular topics.

Based on two continuums—for profit versus nonprofit (or financial capital versus social capital) and strong personal ties versus looser social connections—the model articulates four types of communities (see Figure 2). Any individual might be a member of all four types of communities; this case is visualized by the face in the center of Figure 2.

Mobile Community
Figure 2. Mobile communities lie within a space defined by two dimensions: focus of community goals and community longevity or stability. Mobile communities in the first column (1 and 3) focus on financial goals (more explicit transactions), while those in the second column (2 and 4) focus on social goals (softer, less tangible exchanges). Mobile communities in the first row (1 and 2) are longer-lived and change slowly, while those in the second row (3 and 4) are shorter-lived and more ad hoc. Most people are members of all four types of mobile communities.

Groups of people in the left-hand column (the first and third quadrants) are likely to value “efficiency” more than groups in the right-hand column (the second and fourth quadrants). On the other hand, groups in the right-hand column are organized around social goals, not profits or business interests. For example, moral obligations or personal connections can motivate and sustain community. Almost by definition, communities require high levels of interaction between members to remain viable. Members of a family interact with each other according to defined social roles. We expect that groups based on common interests will also develop shared social norms for interaction.

Groups in the top row (the first and second quadrant) are more stable or fixed by nature than groups in the bottom row (the third and fourth quadrants). The goal of friend and family groups existing in the top row, for instance, is to maintain relationships and reinforce the tribe through active participation. Those goals often lead members to share memorable events. Likewise, members of a work group make efforts to reinforce team spirit and build relationships in support of shared goals, such as project milestones, market share, or net income. On the other hand, the group-formation process in the bottom row is relatively dynamic and temporary. An auto service (in the third quadrant) can improve its service by adding individual personalization. One who has an accident, for example, requires a speedy and systematic interactive service of a community, composed of hospital, police and emergency services, and insurance company. The systematic service and interactivity supported by these parties forms a temporary community around the “event” (the accident) and the specific time and place where it happens.

The need for rich and affordable communication increases as a community grows and matures. This circumstance suggests we may be able to develop rules or heuristics regarding communication within community services. Of course, flexible and easy-to-use user interfaces for sharing media and collaborating on projects are prerequisites for creating successful new mobile experiences. New opportunities for mobile community require rich, affordable, and effortless digital interaction for sharing, contacting, collaborating and being entertained.

Communication within a community is not limited to the explicit dialogue between members; rather it must also expand to include delivery of tacit knowledge in a broad sense, including sharing events, emotions, and experiences across time and place, which bring closer relationships and increased trust. We call this range of exchanges rich social communication. For example, sharing views on a wide range of issues with some or all members of the group may be more important to building and maintaining community than optimizing direct communication, such as SMS or calling. That may be because exchanging members’ intentions or views encourages creating tacit knowledge that leads to more and deeper interactions among community members. Likewise, a single video file of combined clips created by siblings becomes another form of tacit knowledge, standing for family love and encouraging interaction between family members. Sharing one’s status or schedule with other community members implies that one wants to meet or keep in touch. Broadcasting personal music or video (whether to friends or to people unknown) presents a virtual identity and may lead to forming a flash tribe around a favorite song, band, or genre. All these functions can be summarized by three key features—sharing, contacting, and collaborating (see Figure 3).

A Taxonomy of Mobile Community Activities
Figure 3. Key features of mobile community applications include sharing, contacting, and collaborating—all of which support socializing. In addition, other functions (for example, personal information management and voting as personalization) are added to deal with information generated in a community.

When designing a UI to support rich social communication, there can be a deliberate process for fashioning features, such as sharing, contacting, and collaborating [3]. This process is started by writing a sentence that describes a social behavior pattern. Sharing, for example, is characterized as a subject-verb-object construct. (Families share photos, or fans share music.) Similarly, constructs are made for other relevant social behavior patterns. (Friends exchange information about their whereabouts, or members create new videos.) To conclude, three core components (people, goal, and content—or actor, action, and objective) are wedded coherently together in order to visualize three key features of socializing (see Figure 4).

A Conceptual UI for Mobile Community
Figure 4. UI components are created by composing sentences that suggest ways to organize community features.

With these three constructs, UI for mobile community is conceptualized (see Figure 5). The top row sets up a community’s common goal. Sharing, contacting, and collaborating with people in the group who have something in common is automatically located in a second row, along with user actions dealing with the goal (features).

Figure 5. Collective (e.g., friends or family) decisions are visually presented and delivered to the members within a voting or polling application.

Finally, content such as various multimedia objects and text are attached at the bottom.

Additional features necessary for community activity, such as schedule sharing and personal broadcasting, can be customized for various mobile devices. For example, an SMS thread in Figure 6 entitled “rolling paper” expresses tacit intention through messages collected from the participants. A group schedule-sharing application shows members’ schedule status from the community server, which encourages participation.

Figure 6. Actual screen shots of the implementation of the UI on a mobile device, which required us to modify the original “wireframe” due to specific requirements of the device; however, the key features are consistent with those described earlier.

The infrastructure of a mobile community consists of hardware, software, an interface, and services that knit together everything. People working in the mobile device industry already understand the importance of user interface and interaction for complicated mobile services. We hope our approach contributes to this understanding and suggests ways of adding new and exciting features that encourage end-user adoption, without sacrificing ease-of-use.

Ultimately, all characteristics, including environment, people, objects, and processes, should be considered when tailoring a UI to the specific needs of a community. While the communication tools available for communities are often highly attractive, we must keep in mind that the tools should fit the community, not the other way around.

As we previously pointed out, mobile devices have been designed primarily for private communication for the past decade. Thus most mobile phone UIs are optimized for private (one-to-one) use. The role of a mobile device as a personal multimedia manager is now expanding into social media and connecting groups of people. These emerging applications ask us to develop features that support rich social communication, both within and across applications. We believe that our novel UI approach is capable of enabling rich interaction for groups of people who are forming and maintaining community.

About the Authors
Dr. Youngho Rhee is a senior UX designer at SAIT (Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology). His main research interests are in the areas of context awareness, agents, and social networking. He has been actively engaged in numerous projects dealing with mobile Internet service design and methodologies for subjective evaluation of mobile applications. He holds a Ph.D. in industrial system engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is on the program board for Human Interface and the Management of Information at HCII (Human Computer Interaction Institute).

Juyoun Lee is a UX designer at SAIT. Her main research themes are pervasive computing, context awareness, social networking, augmented reality, and interactive media. Recently, she has been working on service design and user behavior studies of mobile Internet services. She has a degree in industrial design and computer science from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).

Mobile Devices Should Be About Neither Mobility Nor Devices. Discuss.

Written by Paul Pangaro.

In the beginning every human-to-human connection was unmediated and local. We lived each day in communities where contact and conversation helped us to share goals and coordinate actions. With today’s complexities, it ain’t that simple. Today technology mediates, enables, and spreads our conversations across divergences of time, space, and experience. Despite touch-based UX and because of cloud-based connectivity, human networks have intricate fractal structures, making our interactions fragmented and fl awed. The complexities of distributed communication mean that we’re as confused as we are elated when we add tweets to SMS or GPS to GSM.

Is there any way ahead here?

I’ve found that by returning to universals it is possible to see beyond the latest add-on app and to situate collections of features in the unifying context of human need. This is what Youngho Rhee and Juyoun Lee have done by using “sharing, contacting, and collaborating” as the basis for designing wireframes and developing UI features. The result is a clear hypothesis of benefits, and a clear relationship between intent and design. Which raises the question, how far can we go with universals? For example, can universals say more about mobility and community? I believe so.

One universal we may forget is that our bodies are naturally untethered—that is, wireless is our natural state. Being tied to a desktop computer and then to a wired connection was a temporary, historical anomaly. Having our devices always with us—as if part of our bodies—and seamlessly connected to the human network is much more “biological.” Put another way, to be mobile is to be human. Let’s get beyond the thrill of mobility; we’re only getting closer to what it should have been all along. So I suggest we say, “Noted. Thank you. Can we move on?”

Here’s another universal: Human beings live in a social world, which they co-create in conversation. Enriching our conversations with shared experiences brings us closer together. We naturally want to share our photos and videos and ideas and to meet together. It is in our nature. And when we share experiences, we increase trust, which lowers anxiety and frees up mental and emotional bandwidth to live freer and potentially better lives.

So just as “mobility” is a natural state and hence a distinction we can lose, “social networking” is a natural state, to which 50 years of computing is just now catching up. Since all media is social media, I hope we can move beyond the vague and redundant “social” tag and focus on better ways of living together, through shared experience, through better conversations—even those mediated by technology. For example, how can we make these fabulous digital channels carry more than 140 characters of “great burger at shake shack just now”? Where do tweets fit with everything else we have? And what’s missing? In the universals, answers may be found.

Mobile devices, check. Social media, check. Next up, shall we have a go at expanding the number of cool apps, or perhaps design for being human? Think about this and then ask what it would mean to carry a thousand friends in your pocket?

About the Author
Paul Pangaro is the CTO at Cybernetic Lifestyles in New York City, where he consults at the intersection of product strategy, marketing, and organizational dynamics. He is recognized as an authority on search and related conversational impedances in human-machine interaction, and on entailment meshes, a highly rigorous framework for representing knowledge. He was CTO of several startups, including Idealab’s Snap.com, and was senior director and distinguished market strategist at Sun Microsystems. Paul has taught at Stanford University.

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