My column in University Affairs has finally been published. In it, I argue that social scientists have both practical and moral reasons to seek out work in the business world:

Social scientists can improve business outcomes by doing what they’ve been trained to do: examine the social practices around the product or service. We are studying the social practices first, and the product’s role in those social practices second.

Read the entire post…

Social media today can take some wisdom from past research into social networks. Mark Granovetter’s famous sociological study of how people hear about job opportunities found that “weak ties” to friends and acquaintances are actually more beneficial than “strong ties” to family and close friends. Social media marketers need to consider who has weak ties and strong ties before designing a social media strategy.

The Individual and The Network: Courtesy of Wikipedia

Weak ties are a product of social and psychological factors. Whether you’re designing an interaction, an experience, a marketing campaign or even an organizational itself, you should know what makes a “weak tie.” Weak ties are the source of precious information, like who’s hiring someone with your exact qualifications, where you can get the best deal on tires, or how good that new movie really is. Weak ties are the source of influence marketing, organizational innovation, and economic growth. In short, weak ties are the ties that matter.

What kind of person develops many weak ties? In his famous study, Granovetter did not measure certain psychological or sociological variables to determine if there was a systematic difference between those with weak ties and those with strong ties. But there are reasons to believe that there is such a systematic difference.

I come from a small town full of people with thick, strong ties have held that community together for generations. Originally a prosperous West Coast Salish Community, Sechelt continues to be archetypical of strong ties. There is economic development there, yet there is little innovation, dynamism or rapid change that occurs in cities.

I came to Toronto, where I knew exactly two people, both of whom were “weak ties” or friends I had known from school. Granovetter’s analysis would show that these were exactly the right kinds of people to help me find economic opportunities. And indeed, he was right; one friend graciously opened her home to me as I started my new job in this new city. 13 years later, I still live in this city (minus a two-year sojourn back home for my Master’s degree and to rack up even more weak ties), and here I am.

I now run this research company by developing and honing my weak ties. Weak ties have brought Copernicus new colleagues, new business, and new ideas. I have many weak ties throughout the city and the continent. What kind of person am I? What are the missing variables from Granovetter’s study?

• I am well educated, with four degrees and armloads of weak ties from each university experience. Did this help me develop a wide social network?
• I have cultural capital, having been trained which fork to use and when by my etiquette conscious mother. Did this help me develop a *quality* social network?
• I am an extrovert, who is comfortable meeting strangers and talking to acquaintances. Did this pre-ordain me to have many weak ties?
• I am a woman, who has been trained to consider social events part of my “gender job.” Does this encourage me to develop weak ties?
• I am white, and have been given white privileges like walking into office buildings, record shops, and convenience stores with nary a blink from a security guard. Has this helped me make new weak ties?

Sociologically speaking, weak ties are likely the result of a combination of social structures like race, gender, and social class. Psychologically speaking, weak ties are likely the result of constitutional personality traits, such as neuroticism or introversion/extroversion. Using both lenses, one can see that social capital is not built without a context; people are born into a personality, a body, and a social location which may — or may not — encourage the development of weak ties.

When you are designing a social media strategy, consider these social and psychological factors. Interaction designers would do well to gather insight around these variables specifically when doing design research, and incorporating them into their personas. Organization designers and HR consultants should consider that innovation does not happen simply because of “social media,” but because of specific social and psychological factors. And marketers should never believe that “if you build it, they will come.” Marketers should instead believe “if you build it, some of these specific types of people will come” to social media applications and campaigns.

The Essence of Interaction Design Research: A Call for Consistency

This post is reproduced from the original Interactions magazine article

It started with an innocent query to the IxDA listserv. Someone was sure they had read an article in Interactions magazine once but could not find it again: Wasn’t there something written sometime by someone about something like sample size in usability research? asked an expectant interaction designer. Woe is the hapless interaction designer who is unprepared for the firestorm that follows the dreaded “sample size” question. 106 replies later, and not only was the answer clearly left unanswered but worse, it left many scratching their heads in genuine confusion: what is the essence of interaction design research? Is it data-driven and “scientific”? Is it exploratory and qualitative? No consensus was reached. Again.

What's your sample size again?

This schizophrenia is both a blessing and a curse. One the one hand, an interaction designer has the freedom to assemble her research program like an artist assembling an installation: whatever inspires her can indeed find a place in the final result. Yet, such a lack of standards leads to a distinct lack of consistency and expertise. If interaction design research is whatever you want it to be, what is to stop other occupations “colonizing” what ought to be the purview of the interaction research? See, for example, Dan Formosa’s article in this year’s January-February issue of Interactions, lamenting the intrusion of market research into the design field. When there are no standards, there is freedom.

As Sartre said, we are “condemned to be free,” meaning when there are no pre-defined codes of conduct, then we must tragically, wonderfully, horribly, create ourselves. The confusion over the essence of interaction design research is us, thrashing about as we desperately create ourselves.

You are condemned to be free: courtesy of http://artoftheprank.com/author/mibanez/

In this article, I explain how this lack of standardization affects the practice of interaction design research. In particular, I note that the dreaded “sample size” debate is actually indicative of a larger issue of theoretical training. I call on interaction designers to embrace standardization – not blindly, but with eyes wide open – for the benefit of the interaction design research and for the profession itself.

The Long and Winding Road

Most people stumble into interaction design. Unlike a profession such as medicine, for example, interaction design has a distinctively ill-defined apprenticeship. The proliferation of interaction design job titles demonstrates this lack of definition. A lack of standardization is liberating to many but has the unintended consequence of undermining the interaction designer’s autonomy. To become an, accountant, professor or engineer, individuals must meet compulsory standards, pass examinations, and prove their mastery of the profession’s “canon” of knowledge in order to practice it. Jobs that require a “canon” are typically called a “profession” instead of a mere “occupation.”

Indeed, a “profession” is not simply a job requiring skill. A profession differs from an occupation in that its members exercise exclusive control over a specific body of knowledge (Friedman, 2000, Greenwood, 1957, Larson, 1977). A profession must therefore have a clearly defined certification process, which in turn allows its members to exercise a sort of monopoly over the work itself. If a doctor is fired from a hospital, she continues to be a doctor. No hospital administrator can remove her ability to write prescriptions, for example. Only her peers can remove or grant this ability. Her peers have decided she has met the minimum acceptable standards to write prescriptions and practice medicine; the hospital administrator’s opinion is irrelevant. The power of the professional, then, is inextricably bound up with her knowledge and training.

The “community of practice” is no substitute for a profession. It is merely the poor man’s version of a profession; it refers to the informal knowledge sharing sessions of Xerox technicians, who bully each other instead of fighting for higher wages or more autonomy (Seely Brown and Duguid, 1991).  As with copier repair, there is no body of knowledge that is collectively recognized as comprising “interaction design,” much less “interaction design research.” In their 2006 survey, the IA Institute found 48% of self-identified information architects had no formal training, and almost 3% of those surveyed “weren’t sure” (!) if they had formal education (Information Architecture Institute, 2006).  It is for this reason that there is much confusion about what interaction design research should really look like. No accountant questions how to gather data for creating a cash-flow statement. Certainly, there may be debate about the “right” method, and perhaps there are several schools of thought to which individual accountants tend to subscribe. But in the end, there is no debate that a cash flow statement has X, Y, and Z and if it has A, B, and C, then it is not a cash flow statement, but a balance sheet.

Interaction designers have no such luxury. What exactly constitutes an “interaction”? Where does interaction design end and aesthetic design begin? These questions may seem overly theoretical to some, and indeed, they are theoretical. But it is this very line of questioning that defines the professionalization process. What constitutes a dentist over a dental hygienist? Dentists and dental professors themselves defined that difference – for their own benefit (Adams, 2003). Practitioners of a discipline must delineate the theoretical confines of a discipline (and the requisite knowledge that must be mastered to claim expertise in that discipline) in order to claim occupational autonomy. Simply forming a “community of practice” and gathering for “shop talk” is not sufficient. Xerox technicians have not successfully created a monopoly of knowledge over photocopiers, neither have they created a strong lobby for occupational control.

The HCI Connection

This is not to say that interaction design is completely bereft of an intellectual tradition. The IA Institute’s industry survey did find that, of the information architects that were formally trained, 40% of them had training in Library Science and another 12% in Human Computer Interaction. This suggests there is, at least, a significant number of practitioners (at least those identifying as “information architects”) with similar training. The HCI and Library Science disciplines inculcate their students with a distinctively quantitative approach to research. The November 2009 annual meeting for the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) included a full-day pre-conference workshop “infometrics” and “scientometrics,” which trained participants on a multitude of quantitative methods. The ASIS&T also maintains several “special interest groups” or SIGs that are specifically targeted around metrics, measurement and quantitative methods. Not one SIG specializes in “design” or “qualitative” methods. The Computer Human Interaction (CHI) SIG in ASIS&T professes interest in “online users and their behavior,” and not the symbolic, interpretive or otherwise cultural aspects of the online experience.

One Small Question: What is reality?

Underneath this focus on metrics and “behavior” is a set of implicit: assumptions within the HCI/Information Science tradition. This assumption cuts to the heart of the “sample size” debate: what is the nature of the world and what is the best way to research it? Most researchers subscribe, at least in part, to two established schools of methodological thought: quantitative and qualitative. While they may never be “purely” quantitative or qualitative in their research approaches, researchers tend to subscribe to the overall tenets of their school. The archetypical or “ideal type” quantitative researcher may not actually exist, but describing her methodological approach elucidates unspoken assumptions many researchers may have.

The archetypical quantitative researcher first starts with the assumption that the world is a “real” place that exists independently of human beings (Bryman, 2006). In other words, quantitative research has an objectivist ontology, one which assumes reality is an objective thing that can be researched. Accordingly, the ideal-type quantitative researcher also assumes that the scientific method is the best way to discover this reality, and that a researcher does not affect or shape the outcomes of the research, if appropriate steps to avoid “bias” are taken. On the whole, this approach means looking for the most “typical” occurrence, one which has a necessarily statistical description (Alasuutari, 1995).

Table 1: Qualitative Versus Quantitative Research Paradigms

By contrast, the archetypical qualitative researcher assumes the world is not an objective reality but something that is constructed by us humans, every moment of everyday (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000). Such a researcher considers how humans “make sense” of the world as having primary importance, so his methods are typically aimed at uncovering or “unriddling” this sensemaking process (Alasuutari, 1995). Numerical representations of the “typical” occurrence are irrelevant in this view because there is no typical occurrence.

One can see how “scientific” approaches to interaction design research evolved, therefore, from the objectivist, positivist research paradigm. In this paradigm, it makes sense to count and to find the “average.” And of course in order to do so, one must count sufficient numbers to make it statistically valid. But if one adopts the assumption that there is no such thing as “typical,” that how we make sense of language, for example, tells us how to build Web sites, then it is a logical choice to reject “sample size” as important. The process of sensemaking is more important to the constructivist, interpretivist researcher.

The Design Connection

It is unclear how many self-identified “interaction designers” would reject, wholesale, the title or description of “information architect.” Herein lies the problem. To reject “information architecture” in favor of “interaction design,” is actually to reject the positivist tradition of information “science” in favor of “design.” This is a significant turn.

Design spans both art and science, making its ontological and epistemological position unclear. Design requires both the “logical character of the scientific approach and the intuitive and artistic dimensions of the creative effort.” It spans both deductive and adductive logic; it is the “the process of creation and decision-making” (Borja De Mozota, 2003). Interaction designers draw on both the “science” of decision-making but also the art of creativity.

Is it any wonder then, where our collective schizophrenia comes from? We are fraught with existential angst by the very label of the occupation. We are not entirely sure if we are information scientists or if we are artists. We create our own professional identities as a bricolage, choosing pieces that suit us and rejecting those that don’t. If there are no standards, there is freedom.

Freedom Ain’t Free: A Call To Action

Interaction designers may feel blessed to draw on the scientific tradition for one research project, and on the interpretivist tradition for another. This may feel liberating. But it has its cost.

Professionals command higher pay, status, and autonomy precisely because they have agreed to subscribe to a canon of collected knowledge. They accept that they must prove their familiarity with, say, contracts law even though they do not plan to use it and could easily do without it, thank you very much. Professionals do endure such “irrelevant” learning because they recognize the benefits of having their occupation controlled, even somewhat, by their peers. They enjoy greater freedom at work (Greenwood, 1957). They have higher salaries (Larson, 1977). They can even withstand the slings and arrows of globalization and maintain their professional autonomy (Faulconbridge and Muzio, 2008). Professionals know that by sacrificing a little, they get a lot.

So a call to action. Interaction designers: now is the time to define the theoretical boundaries of your knowledge. What exactly constitutes an “interaction” and how exactly might one “design” it? What is the difference between an interaction designer and an information architect? What, by extension constitutes interaction design research? And finally, for once and for all, does an interaction designer need to care about sample size?

These questions must be answered. We must answer them. I’m not suggesting that interaction designers drop everything and begin furiously debating in the pages of academic journals. Rather, I am suggesting that design educators begin instilling clear and defined canons of knowledge in their students, that practitioners begin adopting (gasp!) standards when hiring, and that collectively, we pursue a consensus.

I present two illustrative examples of professionalization: engineering and medicine. Engineers structured their occupation and thereby collect some benefit, but physicians gained exclusive rights over key aspects of their practice, making their professionalization process much more successful. David Noble traces the professionalization of the engineer in his fascinating history America By Design (Noble, 1979).

It was businessmen, not university-based researchers, which lead the drive to professionalized engineering, resulting in engineers becoming “company men” instead of independent practitioners. Engineers successfully controlled entry into the profession but oftentimes rely on engineering employers for a professional identity. By contrast, physicians professionalized their occupation as a group of independent practitioners. Indeed, it is physicians that all other professions look to emulate (Ritzer and Walczak, 1988). While there have been many recent changes that limit physician autonomy (O’Connor and Lanning, 1992), physicians continue to maintain a near monopoly over the legal ability to prescribe drugs (in the United States, nurse practitioners can prescribe some drugs).

The lesson from these two professions is first to ensure practitioners, not companies, drive professionalization. The Interaction Design Association and the Information Architecture Institute are great starts in this direction. But secondly, interaction designers must gain exclusive control over a certain body of knowledge. For example, interaction designers may seek to “own” accessibility-compliant Web site design. Interaction designers may end up with several schools of thought, which is perfectly acceptable (there are, after all, Jungian psychiatrists as well as Freudians). But at the very least, we will never waste another single pixel on the dreaded “sample size” question!

About the Author

Sam Ladner is a sociologist with an interest in the design of technology and its effect on organizations. She mixes private-sector consulting work with academic research and teaching. Using a range of methods including interviewing, observation and ethnography, she consults on digital product design, organizational change, and the social aspects of technological innovation. She holds a PhD in sociology from York University. She currently works for her own firm as consultant and principal with Copernicus Consulting Group and frequently partners with design firms.

References

ADAMS, T. (2003) Feminization of Professions: The Case of Women In Dentistry. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 40.

ALASUUTARI, P. (1995) Researching Culture: Qualitative Methods and Cultural Studies, Thousand Oaks, Sage.

BORJA DE MOZOTA, B. (2003) Design Management: Using Design to Build Value and Corporate Innovation, New York, All Worth Press.

BRYMAN, A. (2006) Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Research: How Is It Done? Qualitative Research, 6, 97-113.

DENZIN, N. & LINCOLN, Y. (2000) Introduction: The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research. IN DENZIN, N. & LINCOLN, Y. (Eds.) Handbook of Qualitative Research. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, Sage.

FAULCONBRIDGE, J. & MUZIO, D. (2008) Organizational professionalism in globalizing law firms. Work, Employment and Society, 22, 7-25.

FRIEDMAN, M. (2000) Autonomy, Social Disruption and Women. IN MACKENZIE, C. & STOLJAR, N. (Eds.) Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

GREENWOOD, E. (1957) Attributes of a profession. Social Work, 2, 44-55.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE INSTITUTE (2006) Information Architecture For The World Wide Web Industry Survey. Seattle, Information Architecture Institute.

LARSON, M. (1977) The Rise of Professionalism, Berkeley, University of California Press.

NOBLE, D. F. (1979) America by design : science, technology, and the rise of corporate capitalism, New York, Oxford University Press.

O’CONNOR, S. & LANNING, J. (1992) The End of Autonomy? Reflections of the Postprofessional Physician. Health Care Management Review, 17, 63-73.

RITZER, G. & WALCZAK, D. (1988) Rationalization and the Deprofessionalization of Physicians. Social Forces, 67, 1-22.

SEELY BROWN, J. & DUGUID, P. (1991) Organizational Learning and Communities of Practice: toward a unified view of working, learning and innovation. Organization Science, 2, 40-57.

“© ACM, (2009). This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in PUBLICATION, XVII.2 – March / April, 2010,

Designing an innovative organization doesn’t necessarily mean a “flat” organization. We tend to believe that innovation and hierarchy are antithetical, but in truth, innovation often thrives in hierarchical organizations. Here are the key ingredients to an innovative organization, whether hierarchical or not.

The Internet: A Democratic Utopia We tend to believe that hierarchy kills innovation and creativity. This is particularly true for organizations that design and build technology. The cultural heritage of the Internet is one that implicitly values a utopian vision of anti-authority.

The initial plans for ARPANET explicitly included a commitment to the open architecture concept, with “no global controls at the operations level” (Leiner, 1998). In other words, those that designed the Internet designed it explicitly to have no central authority.

Stickin' it to The Man

This decentralized structure connoted a sense of democratic administration. The hacker ethic has reinforced this implicit belief in democracy. In his 1984 book Hackers, Steven Levy (Levy, 1984) traced how the “laid back” culture of universities, such as Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence lab, spread to other technology start-ups. Technological innovation came to be culturally synonymous with an explicit rejection of hierarchy.

The Innovation World Is Not Flat But this is cultural myth of “democratic” innovation is merely a representation of innovation, and not a necessary ingredient for it. Take, for example, Apple Inc. Apple’s legendary innovative reputation is not contingent on democracy – far from it. Indeed, it appears that Steve Jobs and his senior leadership team have a iron-grip of control over innovation projects. This hierarchical order is ironically represented as democratic, a fact that The Onion happily lampoons in “Apple Employee Fired For Thinking Different.”

The reality is that large organizations in today’s global economy require some form of hierarchical control. This is a requirement of both capitalism and the sheer scope of modern corporate life. Alfred Chandler (1977) showed how the growth of the railroads required detailed project management, making 20th century management both rational and hierarchical. 21st century management must grapple with the same issues of synchronizing the schedules of employees across multiple time zones, and grappling with constant changes in the competitive landscape and the economy. “Democratic” innovation is messy, time consuming, and difficult to manage. For this reason, many companies like Apple have created controlled environments in which innovation can occur.

Innovation Within A Hierarchy If your organization is hierarchical (and in most cases, that will be true), there are features of innovation that can be embedded within this hierarchical system.

Creating Flow Through Non-Time Measurement:

Clocking in at Creativity Inc.

Innovative teams are those that are insulated from time-based metrics of productivity. Working for one hour on a rote task is not equal to working for one hour on a groundbreaking project, yet oftentimes organizations treat these hours as exactly the same.

My research on time in interactive agencies found that time-based metrics frequently interrupt “flow,” making it difficult for designers to work creatively. Organizations that want to optimize creativity must abandon time-based metrics of performance.

Stop Lying About Democracy: rare is it today that an individual truly doubts the need for some form of hierarchy in a profit-seeking company. But pretending that hierarchy doesn’t exist is corrosive. Organizations that continually fail to live up to their democratic ideal must continually tell lies to mask this gap. Over time, this gap renders real democracy meaningless (after all, the Bullshitter cares nothing for the truth).

Ruthlessly Commit To Project Resources and Timelines: many people are familiar with the agile development notion of the “sprint.” A group of people are dedicated exclusively to a software project for a specific, discrete period of time. Their attention is devoted completely to this project and they are enormously productive as a result. Why do innovation project often fail? Simply because individuals are pulled in too many directions or senior leadership changes priorities, seemingly on a whim. If you mean to combat the negative aspects of hierarchy, then you must commit to a project and let nothing get in the way. Individuals must be dedicated. The project length must not be shrunk. And collectively, the organization must stake its reputation on this commitment.

Be Democratic When It Matters: creative people can take direction, even when it infringes on their work. But they must have a say in what infringements are negotiable. The biggest mistake managers can make is assuming that the bounds of hierarchy is understood equally by everyone; they are not. Accept that democratic rule can and should happen, even when it affects timelines. Be unfraid to collectively identify what is negotiable and what is not. Most people do not question the legitimacy of authority, but they do question the legitimacy of lack of debate. In the end, innovation can occur in hierarchical organizations. The democratic ideal provides an aspirational model but don’t be afraid to accept that it is an ideal, at times.

References

Chandler, A. D. (1977). The visible hand : the managerial revolution in American business. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press.

Leiner, B. e. a. (1998, Februrary 20, 1998). A Brief History of the Internet.   Retrieved April 10, 2000, 2000, from http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.html

Levy, S. (1984). Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. New York: Penguin Group.