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InteractionAndCommitment

Assigned Reading

• Winograd and Flores, Management and Conversation, Using Computers (Chapter 11)
• Lucy Suchman, Do categories have politics? The language/action perspective reconsidered, Computer-Supported Cooprerative Work, vol. 2, 177-190
  online version includes also:
  • Terry Winograd, Categories, Discipline and Social Coordination, Computer-Supported Cooprerative Work, vol. 2, 177-190
  • Lucy Suchman, Speech Acts and Voices: Response to Winograd et al., Computer-Supported Cooprerative Work, vol. 3, 177-190

Additional readings of interest

• Lucy Suchman, Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication, New York: Cambridge U Press, 1987
• Lucy Suchman, Making work visible, CACM 1995
• Harriet Rubin, The Power of Words (Fast Company article about Flores, 1998)
• Katherine Streeter, Being and Overtime San Francisco Magazine 1997 about Flores.
• Action Technologies
• Flores, F., Graves, M., Hartfield, B., & Winograd, T. (1988). Computer systems and the design of organizational interaction. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst., 6(2), 153-172. doi: 10.1145/45941.45943

Comments - Before Class

On Media, Models, and Structure - Jeff Wear

What is Google Wave? - Mark Schar

The Coordinator -- Prospects in Research Labs and Construction Firms, and General Implications for Design -- Matt Garr

In light of my work experience, as a technical lead / project manager in a Department of Defense research lab, and as a Superintendent on a construction site, I found the discussion of the concept of control within organizations very interesting. Within management science, there is a separate body of literature dedicated to managing scientists and engineers (especially in research organizations), as a distinct process from managing in for-profit companies.

As a technical lead / project manager in a research lab, when running weekly status meetings for my project, I found that my role carried a very ambiguous level of authority. When conducting weekly review of each team member’s progress vis-à-vis their assigned action items, when items had not been completed, team members had little accountability. Additionally, I had little ability to enforce completion. This situation was due to two factors. First, the researchers in my organization had little taste for authority, and were more interested in the exploration process than in executing for sponsors. Second, as members of a matrix organization, the researchers had a line-management system as well as a project management system. There was a distrust of project managers, who were responsible to project sponsors, and a trust of line managers, whose primary job was to look out for the career development of their people.

In working as a construction superintendent, I found the presence of a strong hierarchy to be a huge relief from the ambiguous power structures I had dealt with in my research organization. Here, the lines of authority were clear, and the mantra was to “do what you say you are going to do.” When someone broke their word, it was significant, and led to that person being very closely watched and managed. Furthermore, it was clear who had what authority. I knew the span in which I could make decisions or delegate, and when it was required to cede authority to my superiors.

In reading about the Coordinator, it seems that it would apply very well to a construction firm, while not as well in a research organization (as was suggested in the text). Some additional reasons not cited, for why it would be difficult to apply to a research organization are: matrix organizations blur lines of authority and create ambiguity in commitments that are not allowed for in the Winograd-Flores model; scientists’ curiosity and independence is often stronger than their commitment to a hierarchy, and they may commit to things without really meaning it, in order to satisfy a boss; and when conducting research, commitments might not be what is wanted—freedom to explore and feel independent can lead to great insights and developments.

For a construction firm, a system based on the Coordinator would be a great match. Commitments need to be well understood, as a major construction project is a dance among hundreds, if not thousands of mutually dependent participants. Commitments also must be verified, checked up on, etc. Reducing ambiguity would lead to great improvements in efficiency and reduce coordination errors.

The discussion above serves as a good example of how models create blindness, and never have a perfect fit. Fit is a relative term, and a good fit would mean that there are improvements, overall, possible with a model. This type of fit, I feel, is what computer tools should strive for. The Coordinator model seems to be a natural fit for construction work, however increased authority could have potential downsides—perhaps an unstructured way of getting work done is leading to efficiency. In the balance, it probably would be worth adopting such a system. On the other hand, the system would not likely fit a research organization, and might even prevent the creativity and freedom required to generate new insights. Or perhaps researchers might become upset with the organization and leave for another position. In the balance, the Coordinator might not be worth implementing in this case.

As for the Suchman-Winograd debate, I agree that Suchman is a bit too concerned with the negative aspects of control. Winograd and Flores acknowledged that the model proposed is not a perfect fit for an organization, and that it could create blindness and other negative effects. Designing to minimize such effects should be a goal, and then an organization should only try a tool once it has been properly studied. The challenge in design, I feel is to anticipate what a user or organization really needs, and then iterating. Thankfully, computer software can be iterated upon in new versions to minimize problems, and remove particularly blinding features or lack thereof.

Nate

After reading about decisions. I went out and read a little bit about decision theory. I was fascinated by an argument by Barry Schwartz, where he proposes something he calls "the paradox of choice." Basically, his point is that the more you think about something, the better a decisionyoull make but the less happy youll be. To take an example from this weeks reading when the wife is trying to decide if she wants a new car, a used car, or to fix her old car, the more she thinks about weighing one possibility against another, the better decision shell make in the long run, but because shes more acutely aware of the trade offs shes had to make she will feel less satisfied with her final decision then if she had just went out and bought a new car without thinking about it.

Interestingly this paradox of choice may only apply to individual decisions. When decisions are made as a group or a company are people shielded from feelings of disappointment in having to make trade offs? I wonder if when using aDSS people will be tempted to use the machine as a surrogate expert, simply because they wish to avoid the paradox of choice. If they don't have to worry about all the trade offs, and still get to have faith that their making a good decision then they get the best of both worlds. Of course if the machine makes a bad decision then you're in trouble... but I wonder if the temptation exists because of the paradox of choice...

I feel like the more I read in this class the more I start framing computers as communication aids. The Coordinator is an interesting study because it makes explicit use of this metaphor. It seems that technology will change the role management plays in office work. Weather these technologies are found to be oppressive or not is going to depend on how they are used, and of course, as is pointed out, if their design is taken to be a "full account" of the situation its trying to model. "It is a dangerous form of blindness to believe that any representation captures what is meaningful to people in a situation." When designing any kind of tool its probably a good idea to be aware of anyblindnesses it creates, even if that tool is designed for just one user and not a group.

This reminds me somewhat of Professor Cheritons work. He tackles the problem of getting a large group of people to build cohesive scalable software. His thesis is that everyone in the group should be very restricted in the way that they are allowed to design classes and interfaces. For example, people should always use the "call upnotify down" model in place of an alternative model. Or more interestingly, no one is allowed to define public methods with names that are verbs. In other words he believes that objects should be thought of as state and not actions. Does his framework work? It seems too. Are there blind spots? Probably, I'm sure someone could think of a case where it would be a good idea to make a method name a verb. But is his system effective? It is, in that companies use it and they make money and their software works.

What is management - Forest

The Winograd Chapter 11 focus on organization responsibility and the work by Suchman exploring the affect of technology on organization politics presents a topic that is relevant with my background in construction. Matt's post looks at his experience as a research manager and a construction manager and how these industries have a differing perspective and role of managers. As a field engineer I also explored these three domains, as possible, in my capacity as a field engineer.

As the project began to wind down and the field engineers and superintendents were reassigned to new projects and at the same time by chance the project manager was proccupied with personal topics, and several senior managers retired well into their 70's, I found my self assuming greater roles of authority within the project. Additionally the role of technology began to have a greater bearing on the project daily operations, as the technically literate engineer this placed a funnel and spigot of data at my desk. At some point the companies practice of dividing the project management tasks amongst a number of people so that no one person had a full picture of what was happening was rendered null. This eye opening experience was at once interesting and also alarming as a stream of documents poured across my monitor and a fuller picture became clearer of how project value was moved around various departments. Similar to Winograd's "unintended transfer of power" I as a junior engineer had assumed the "power".

As both an experiment in organization theory and as a necessary move to reduce a work burden I essentially set the field crews "free." This entailed instructing the foreman in edge organization theory and then assuming the role of facilitator rather than decision maker. In edge theory the core dogma is that the individual with the tool most ready at hand is the decision maker at that time and everyone else is facilitating their objective. To start this process I asked the foreman to give their large 4x4 company trucks to the laborers, being they needed the tools in the trucks. The foreman were then given light duty pickups, deemed lower in prestige symbol. As an engineer I am never near a tool and so always was a facilitator, a role that at first was difficult to balance with an ego. Similar to Matt's description of a research organization, the field crews were at this point self directing. To the point they were operating without formal plans or specifications and were only bounded by the project boarders and observer inspectors. A condition possible due to the project operating under a design-build contract. As an engineer I was only required to submit as-built drawings of what was built. The drawings and specifications that did exist were universally ignored since the crews were experienced in this work and could "see" and "know" what needed to be done.

The interesting observed affect of this organization shift was similar to that alluded to by Suchman. The political system of the project shifted as the categorization of field hands was changed from doers of categories to deciders of categories. as a field engineer my task became to keep up with the field crews and document what they had done and forecast what their current actions and tacit plans would likely lead too in the future. Several foreman could not cope with this new organization structure, they continually seeked direction and it became apparent they were incapable of self direction. Foreman who had at one time been the best on the project became the largest anchors and relatively quickly left the project, replaced by one of their journeyman who generally did not fill the "foreman" position. As the implementation of the new structure evolved and took hold they repeatedly and animatedly lobbied my manager that the project was falling apart and that all semblance of structure had ceased to exist. In any other scenario than that given in the introduction likely would have lead to my termination.

Causation and validation aside. It was observed that the project became increasingly profitable, and conflicts were nearly eliminated (at one point earlier in the project a former Navy SEAL attacked his foreman with a 6 foot level, lucky the foreman moved faster than his size suggested). The scheduled work was repeatedly completed in less than expected durations. Two senior managers, fairly unaware of the structural changes repeatedly asked what was occurring. One claimed that the project seemed to be a runaway wagon and he could not put the breaks on. The second lobbed the accusation of "sandbagging" or hiding a large contingency fund rather than that the project and become much more efficient. All of this could possibly be explained by learning curve or other attributes. One possible indicator of change is cell phone calls. At first the crews continually called with requests for permission to act or requests for detailed clarifications of the task they were working on that morning. After weaning them of this practice and at some point turning the phone off for periods of the day, the crews called only every couple of days and even then usually to ask for a meta-goal that was unrelated to that day or even weeks events. Though in contact on a daily basis as I closely monitored the project progress (at this point I was fairly responsible if the experiment went wrong), inquires from myself as to what they needed or if I could provide additional resources was usually met with an "all OK" type response, or even the request to remove resources they had found they were unexpectedly no longer using, often due to some innovative solution.

CSCW - Vala Dormiani

As a double major in MS&E and CS, the Suchman reading and the Winograd response definitely appealed to me because Winograd and Suchman were essentially debating the merits of Computer supported cooperating work and how it relates to modern management. The debate was occurring under the guise of the language/action perspective but I definitely tried to “read between the lines” and apply it to my own interests. I chose to double major in MS&E and CS because I am interested in this very idea of CSCW and specific products that apply CSCW ideals such as Google Wave or Adobe connect or even Facebook.

The Flores and Winograd idea that “technology is not just the design of artifacts but the design of practices and possibilities to be realized through artifacts” is fascinating. This is essentially saying that technology is not just stuff but an entity that impacts and alters culture and society as a whole. Take google for example. Google at its basic level is just a cataloged database of information but it has been culturally revolutionary by bringing all that information to the user's fingertips through the “search engine” model. The point that Flores and Winograd make about how Computer Scientists are not just designers of artifacts but designers for organizational systems as a whole makes me quite happy about my choice of major and potential career path.

I personally am not swayed by Suchman's arguments. She matter of factly claims that CSCW systems and the language/action model are “technologies of accountability” and social control. This seams to be one extreme with the other being the Winograd/Flores utopian ideal that with the acceptance of computer technology as “radically changing management and office work”, we can move towards designing similar change that can improve organizational life. Winograd/Flores seam to be arguing that these technologies are emancipating allowing management to provide extra freedoms rather that constrict with greater social control. Suchman attacks this idea by attaching meaning. What does it mean to say “designing change that leads to improvement in organizational life”? What is “organizational life”? Such linguistic attacks about linguistic ambiguity or vagueness are often the primary reason for philosophical debate and is actually the subject of my research paper. The language/action perspective is simply a necessary formal organizing entity like the bookkeeper ledger that makes certain types of coordination possible and Suchman seams to take if too far by arguing that it is constricting where speech act theory leads to “technologies of accountability”.

My support for the Winograd/Flores argument as opposed to the Suchman counter-argument comes of as backing our Professors ideas so I get a better grade :) However, honestly it is more a defense of my chosen career path. If Suchman is correct, then Computer Scientists are not as influential and are not making improvements in organizational life while managers are using technology for social control and accountability rather than emancipation.

Categories vs Ethnography? - Luke Dahl

In reading Suchman’s critique of Winograd and Flores’ model of conversations and its application in communication in large organizations, I noticed a curious dichotomy emerging. Suchman notes that categorization is a “a basic device for the analytic sciences” (p 181), but suggests that categorizations are inherently inadequate in the face of the “radical indeterminacy of the unfolding course of human interactions.” I assume that she meant to present ethnographic methods, which, as I understand them, involve holistic descriptions of human phenomena that are informed by involved interaction and interviews with the communities under study, as an alternative to the reductive and simplifying results of analysis.

I realize that Suchman does not state this explicitly, and that I may be setting up a straw man. In fact her main point, as I see it, is that categorization is a political act which can be used by all parties to gain power, and that we need to be aware of this when creating systems. Since I plan to write my term paper on methods for evaluating new musical instruments and interactions, and categories or typologies are common ways of describing things, I am curious about the usefulness or shortcomings of categorization.

I guess my real question is, do we have any other alternative? Categories can be gross simplifications of what actually occurs, but it seems to me that the goal of the sciences human and natural, or academic pursuits in general, is to understand, and that this understanding is done through systemization. One can make detailed descriptions of complex phenomena, attempting to evoke through metaphor or analogy those aspects which elude linguistic description, but to me such writing might be described more as art than science. However, even by the use of words we engage in a type of categorization (this is my understanding of some of Lakoff’s work), and so it seems unavoidable.

Perhaps a new question is then, how do we engage in responsible categorization/systemization? I suppose it is to be aware of the biases and preferences and agendas one brings to the task, and perhaps make them explicit. Even then, one cannot predict or preclude the ways that people may apply your work, including ways that may be contrary to one’s original intention.

Parallels - Chris Anderson

Chapter 11 starts by critiquing decision support systems, enumerating particular flaws that they, as a class of software, have. Just to list: they have an orientation to choosing, make the assumption of relevance, may unintentionally transfer power, have unanticipated effects, obscure responsibility, and rely upon a false belief in objectivity. It seems to me that what we might call “conversation support systems” can fall prey to many of these same criticisms. Here are a couple:

1. The assumption of relevance. We might rephrase a sentence in the chapter (p. 154) as: “A conversation system dedicated to structuring conversations along strict schemas, even one as well designed as possible, will be harmful if not complemented by heterodox practices and a permanent attitude of openness of listening”. In short, does the tool for conversation draw different speech acts to the forefront than the ones that are necessarily relevant? Can such a system obscure other possible forms of communication?
2. Unintended transfer of power. The people who build these tools for conversation will, like the people who build decision support systems, be distinct from majority of people using their products. They have conversations like everyone else, but their conversations are different than those of managers to their bosses or contractors or other managers. So their orientations and prejudices about speech and conversation can come out in unintended ways.
3. False belief in objectivity. Just as it is nonsense that computers are only objective, it is also nonsense that computers can objectively reproduce the entire illocutionary act of one member of a conversation to another. The original speech act is shown through the filter of the computer system to other members of the conversation, subject to the biases of the system’s designers. So while we may use such a system and believe that it is objectively reproducing the intended conversation, such a belief is poorly founded.

These are to say nothing of “unintended consequences,” one aspect of which Suchman deals with in her piece (albeit with a politicized agenda). In general, I mean only to draw parallels in the possible criticisms to the general idea of conversation support systems – just as the chapter is only criticizing the general idea of decisions support systems.

Much like decision support systems, tools for conversation can be useful when applied correctly. A system that allows for the flexibility to have many different kinds of conversation may be more useful than one that is more rigid. Winograd’s comment at the end of his reply, that Mozart was not limited by the system of musical notation in use, is valid. However, those who designed that system in the first place probably did not anticipate piano concertos. The virtue of their system is its flexibility and faithfulness to the fundamentals of human ability. The task of the designer of a conversation support system is much the same: capturing just those things that are fundamental.

Robert Graebert

At first I was not clear on how chapter eleven fits in with what we have so far talked about in terms of hermeneutics and phenomenology. It seemed to be out of place with our focus on us being rooted in our being and not having the capabilities to leave that background. Using a software application to formalize the conversation structure and intent based on speech acts appeared to be less grant of a goal compared to the challenges in AI and limiting in scope.

After reading the Fast Company article “The Power of Words” I see the connection more clearly. In this article the focus is solely on speech acts theory and how to improve communication with it inside organization. There is no mention of a computer implementation for formalization the conversation but rather how formalized conversations in general help to uncover the illocutionary point and moving us to utter commitments. I see a huge benefit in applying speech acts in any conversation that will incur commitments. You could however argue that all conversations incur commitments.

Personally I find untruthfulness and internal “politics” of companies very off-putting. This is one of the reasons why I have not aspired to work for a large corporation. Now, with experience in a smaller company I see the same problems happening just on a smaller scale. With the help of speech acts we can make ourselves more aware of commitments and speak more openly our opinions.

Now, does it make sense to computerize this? I think it does for large corporations and departments were control and aggregation of numbers is important. The cost of breakdown could be very high and certain managers a very much number oriented (good or bad) and this would be one more metric at their disposal. In smaller companies or cells I already see benefits from just using speech acts.

In that sense I do not share Suchman’s criticism of that by categorization implementers or managers exert control and that this is a bad thing. In my opinion it is one of the manager’s responsibilities to categorize and synthesize information at hand. In any case the categorizations expressed in The Coordinator appear to be sufficiently well defined in the background of office communication that they are not limiting or causing a new degree of control.

Finally, I wonder if The Coordinator as a tool is successful in circumstances that have not been exposed to Speech Act theory or if that is a requirement/facilitator.

On Media, Models, and Structure - Jeff Wear

Suchman's criticism of applications of speech act theory such as The Coordinator is mitigated somewhat by Winograd's assertion that speech act theory is not a "formal comprehensive model of behavior" but rather a "formal structure used in communication and recording" ("Categories, Disciplines, and Social Coordination" 191, author's emphasis). Winograd means to assert that The Coordinator and similar systems are not doctrines but rather tools to be used to facilitate collaborative action among workers.

Nevertheless, I am not convinced that Winograd fully explores the implications of using The Coordinator. In choosing to use The Coordinator, workers must form a commitment to its conceptual framework, that of speech act theory. Winograd draws an analogy between The Coordinator and accounting systems with the intent of showing how explicit structure can have a benign purpose - to facilitate coordination - but while accounting systems merely structure data, systems such as The Coordinator require that users impose a certain deterministic structure on their thoughts. As such, it may fall prey to many of the weaknesses in rationalistic systems.

If, as Winograd does, we accept that some structure is necessary, then the question becomes one of appropriateness: "The question is not whether to impose standardized regimes" - structure is a "necessity of continued operation" to large businesses, as well as a formalism required to enable the use of computers in communication at all - "but how to do so appropriately" (195). In the discussion that follows, Winograd establishes certain domains in which The Coordinator may be used most appropriately - those that are relatively structured already; those in which the workers are willing to participate in describing and composing the workflow structure; and, most crucially, as a component of a larger social structure - as just one tool of many.

But in hedging the use of The Coordinator as such, Winograd begs the question, why use The Coordinator at all? It does not seem that it is a very intuitive tool, despite the attempts by proponents of speech act theory to ground the theory in observations of actual conversational flow. Suchman references field reports that suggest that users of The Coordinator "selectively appropriate and ignore aspects of the system in an ad hoc fashion" (186). And in doing so, is not the purpose of The Coordinator - to structure the whole network of commitments - defeated? If The Coordinator, used as intended, is not the sole medium of communication, it seems as if information will be fragmented. But users have been drawn to other methods: Suchman continues from above as saying that "users' failure in these cases to use [The Coordinator] as intended by its designers could be seen as a failure of the design, or of the compliance of users. On the other hand, it could be taken to reflect the desirability of systems that lend themselves to various ad hoc forms of customization in use." I must note that many other communicative media - email, Twitter, IM - do not presuppose any semantic categorization of speech at all but just, well, let participants speak. In doing so, they are more flexible, more accommodating of various forms of speech, and ultimately - more ready-to-hand - crucial to effective communication. It seems that these models have prevailed, while speech act theory as a prescriptive communicative tool has not.

Comments - Seng Keat Teh

I am interested to know if the design concepts and motivation of the proposed "coordinator" system have had much success in being adapted in some form in current practice. It is a well-reasoned idea, and I certainly agree that the issue of communications is often a key factor in the success and failure of a business process. While reading about the "coordinator" and the authors' reasoning and justifications for its design, I kept trying to reflect on how aspects and concepts of the system might already be applied unconsciously in the working environment. Certainly, from my short stints at working, there is a strong emphasis on goals and milestones, and the semi-annual "performance reviews" reflect certain aspects of a "coordinator" system. Instant messaging systems and emails are often used as a means of tracking a "conversation" to accomplish a business process: a manager would create an email on the task to be accomplished, and sent it out to the staff involved, and participants would contribute to that "conversation" of an email thread or chat room session. Of course, what is missing is an explicit tracking of request & commitments, and a missing direct, explicit statement of the illocutionary force (though one may argue this could be reflected when a manager activates the "important" flag of an email conversation). In such existing practices, perhaps they might benefit from a "To-Do List" software tracking the requests and commitments of the working group while a "conversation" is on-going through email and instant messaging. Unsurprisingly, certain groups in practice use common groups wikis to track the progress, to-dos, problems and commitments of each individual group member for the benefit of the collective view of the group.

Chapter 11 mentions a few of the weaknesses with decision support systems, such as the false belief in objectivity that accompanies the usage of such systems. I strongly agree with the statement, but I would reflect to say that perhaps it is a larger symptom of human beings trying to treat what they do not understand as a "black box phenomena". We do not know how it works inside, but we know what to give it as inputs, and what to expect as outputs, and because its outputs have been reasonable in the past, hence we consider that whatever computational processes that goes on within these "black boxes" to be reasonable. The authors mention disastrous military calculations to be one example, I would add to that the failed valuations of complex, hardly understood financial instruments that were responsible for the recent financial crisis. Financial "professionals" who were responsible for creating and selling these credit derivative instruments kept on using valuation computer models (that they themselves understood very little) that failed to account for the possibilities of massive loan defaults and financial breakdowns that accompany a weakening economy. What worked during the preceding few years of a good economy collapsed when these financial breakdowns began to occur.

In Chapter 12, it is mentioned that "we cannot directly impose a new structure on any individual, but whenever we design changes to the space of interactions, we trigger changes in individual structure". Does good design then means creating structures that will help direct an individuals' self-adaptation and evolution towards styles of working/doing that we judge to be better and more effective?

As the book draws to a close, it recaps on a few of the important arguments that it has been articulating, such as the authors' criticism of descriptions of human thought as "decision making" and language understanding as the manipulation of representations. This prompted me to think back and reflect, that yes, perhaps the rationalistic approach has been a bit tad naive, but perhaps it was a product of its time. It is obvious to us today that the human mind and the human interpretation of language could not be explained in terms of a simplistic logical machine following a set of formal rules, accounting for the complexities of the human mind, its numerous dependent factors, context and background. But perhaps it has been a useful approximation or a very rough preliminary cut at simulating the human mind and language understanding. Certainly, the failure or incompleteness of this rationalistic approach has been highly educational, for it has directed us to explore alternative paths for a model of understanding, with the phenomenological approach being one possibility.

Post class comments - Forest (draft)

For anyone interested in edge organizations, I relied on the following two literature sources during the previously described implementation.

• USMC NCO Field Manual
• Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/product-description/0316881465

More recently a publication dedicated to edge organzations has been published

I failed to mention that the organization restructuring included a shift in the leadership level. In the initial condition each foreman was responsible for a crew of 3 to 5 journeyman. Based on the USMC NCO field manual "rule of three" for edge organizations, the crew was increased to 12 journeymen. The foreman was directly responsible for only three people, a role that had not been utilized called the "leadman". Each leadman was then responsible for three journeymen. In practice the leadman was usually the most experienced or a particularly talented journeyman, with three journeymen providing assistance such as prepwork, feeding material, and post cleanup. This allowed the leadman to focus on more difficult aspects of the work while the other journeymen were able to observe how problems were approached and solved as well as "learning by doing" on simpler aspects of the work. The leadman assumed the role of instructor (leadmen often were journeymen who refused to assume the role of a manager), passing on their knowledge of construction to the less experienced journeymen. Note that leadman, journeyman and foreman are terms, these were actually men and women. The previously mentioned crew-trucks were given to the leadmen, who typically never left the worksite during the day, rather requesting any deliveries of knowledge, material, tools or food from the foreman, i.e., work facilitator (also assuming role of instructor to leadmen). The crew trucks were left at the jobsite at the end of the shift. Foremen traditionally take their company trucks home.

The journeymen's requests were acted on, sometimes even if they seemed flippant. While conducting a site walk to monitor project progress I came across a crew loading k-rail. Asked how they were doing, one abruptly said "why don't you go get us lunch." So, I drove over to the fast food restaurant, bought five meals and returned. It turns out they had been working all morning and had to miss their lunch so they could load out all the k-rail that day and meet the schedule they wanted. As a result they were in a mood consistent with someone who had missed lunch and was working in the hot sun all day. After some food they were more agreeable and likely working in a safer environment. Buying lunch, on that afternoon, was facilitating the edge to perform.

Metaphor: the organization structure was put into reverse

Counter: would this organization work in a non-physical world, e.g., design office?

Question: could designers self organize and communicate with facilitating support?

Suchman tie-in: The project communication was largely through formal processes encoded and represented as ghantt charts, codes and standard forms. It appeared that consistent with Suchman's proposed issues with social control. Placing a level of abstraction between the field crews and these documents provided a benefit and reduced politics. Rather than detailed plans to follow the crews were given goals that they could see and knew how to achieve.

Post-Class Comments - Matt

Reflecting on the discussions we had in class on the Coordinator in interesting in the context of this week's readings on design. The Coordinator does a relatively good job of modeling action language, and staying out of the realm of organizational design and hierarchies. However, in our discussions we came up against a number of problems that even this general model must face. We discussed that in some corporate cultures, selecting "refuse" might not be socially acceptable, and that the "counteroffer" could be modified in practice to be a flat-out rejection (I counteroffer that I won't do it). This drove in the point for me that design is and must remain a fluid, iterative process. Getting a product like the Coordinator out early allows for users in different cultures and markets to find what they like and don't like about a product, so that designers can react quickly. Speculating on whether it works well or does not in an academic setting, while interesting, is ultimately limited--the question of how good it is can only be answered when users use the product, and it can be compared with existing workflows or competing models.