Posts by Shelley Evenson

Feb 1, 2011

Design as Learning—or “Knowledge Creation”—the SECI Model

*Written for Interactions magazine by Shelley Evenson and Hugh Dubberly.* **Design** Designers often speak of design as a process. Typically, design thinking leads to design making, which leads to artifacts. Yet the design process also leads to something more—to new knowledge. Thus, we might characterize designing as a form of learning. Curiously, the converse is […]

Nov 1, 2010

Ability-centered Design: From Static to Adaptive Worlds

*Written for Interactions magazine by Shelley Evenson, Justin Rheinfrank and Hugh Dubberly.* *Editor’s Note: * *After a long career in systems engineering and design, John Rheinfrank died on July 4, 2004. * *John’s Ph.D. dissertation explored what he called “organic systems theory,” or what’s now called “complex adaptive systems”—bridging multiple disciplines and theoretical frames (e.g., […]

May 1, 2010

Reframing health to embrace design of our own well-being

*Written for Interactions magazine by Hugh Dubberly, Rajiv Mehta, Shelley Evenson, Paul Pangaro.* *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 […]

Feb 1, 2010

Designing for Service: Creating an Experience Advantage

Design — 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. […]

May 1, 2008

The Experience Cycle

*Written for Interactions magazine by Hugh Dubberly and Shelley Evenson.* In this article, we contrast the “sales cycle” and related models with the “experience cycle” model. The sales cycle model is a traditional tool in business. The sales cycle frames the producer-customer relationship from the producer’s point of view and aims to funnel potential customers […]

Mar 1, 2008

The Analysis-Synthesis Bridge Model

*Written for Interactions magazine by Hugh Dubberly, Shelley Evenson, and Rick Robinson.* The simplest way to describe the design process is to divide it into two phases: analysis and synthesis. Or preparation and inspiration. But those descriptions miss a crucial element—the connection between the two, the active move from one state to another, the transition […]