A philosophical approach to user requirements

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A philosophical approach to user requirements

• BCS Methods and Tools Specialist Group
• Manchester
• 20th September 2004

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Aristotle

• Every story should have-
• A Beginning
• A Middle
• An End

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BEGINNING

• setting the scene

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Why are you listening to me ?

• some history

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Descartes

• Objective - certain knowledge
• Method - challenge all beliefs
• Result - Dualism mind body split

I think therefore I am
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Phenomenology

• Phenomenology is based on our experience
• The world we are given
• we experience a mind in a body

Experience gives us the Lived-World
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Does philosophy have any relevance to industry ?

• Business ethics
• Action learning groups
• MacMurray The self as agent
• Activities not thought
• Reaction to Descartes
• Management science theory of ALGs
• ALGs in practice

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Subjective and Objective

• Science seeks objectivity
• . and ignores personal feeling
• Phenomenology explores the lived-world
• . which includes personal experience

The lived-world is the pre-scientific
experience of the world, before we have learned
to detach ourselves from it and view it as having
a separate objective existence
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What Im not claiming

• Originality
• An answer

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MIDDLE

• Architectural design, users and IS requirements

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Phenomenology and user requirements

• Dovey on architecture
• Parallels with IT/IS
• . and differences
• Change management techniques

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Simplified building process

• Idea (client ?)
• Budget approval (client)
• Design (architect)
• Construct (builder)
• Inhabit (user)

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Dovey

• Putting Geometry in its Place Towards a
  Phenomenology of the Design Process

• Suddenly everybody expressed a feeling that they
  didnt like it the plans looked alright, I mean
  plans always look alright, but a lot of people
  cant and I cant put a plan into bricks and
  stones
• Client reaction to start of construction

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Doveys questions

• How are environmental and design problems
  experienced by those who dwell in a place?
• How is that experience shared with designers?
• How does one know that the agreed design proposal
  will deliver a better environment?
• How can designers avoid incidents where clients
  are surprised and disturbed when a design becomes
  a reality?

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Lived space vs. Geometric space

• Geometric space is abstract, measured
• Lived space is experienced

The cycle of lived space
Building requires a transformation from lived
space to geometric space and a further one to
return to lived space
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Disjunctions in the Cycle of lived space

• What goes wrong when we go from lived-space to
  geometric space and back to lived-space?

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Problem areas

• Conflict between client and user
• Miscommunications of Lived-space
• Dominance of professional Cognoscenti

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Conflict between client and user

• The client (or customer) has the money
• The user (or consumer) gets to dwell in the
  result
• Consider a council building flats for its tenants

The requirements of client and user are (usually)
different
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Miscommunications of Lived-space

• Clients do not fully understand the design before
  the process moves into construction
• Users pretend to understand when they dont
• Designer may want this as it gives them freedom
  to do what they want
• Architect wants to rush the client to increase
  profit

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Dominance of professional Cognoscenti

• The architect designs for the approval of other
  architects

not for the user
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Integrating the Cycle of Lived-space

• Doveys proposed solutions

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Architecture some solutions

• Elaborating the designers role
• Participatory design involve the user
• Improve communication between Designer, builder
  and client
• Simulating Lived-space
• Piecemeal change
• Evaluating Places in use

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Participatory design

• Client and user often have different requirements
• May not be in the clients (perceived) interest to
  get the users view
• The designer listens to the client () may not
  be allowed access to the user
• Listen to the user
• Designers must learn the language of the users,
  listen to their definition of the problems and
  elaborate possible designs within that context

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Improve communication

• The designer, builder and client have-
• Different objectives
• Different knowledge and skill bases
• Different languages
• Different involvement in the project
• Different access to, and understanding of,
  documentation

The designer must ensure effective communication
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Simulating Lived-space

• Scale models
• Computer models
• Full-scale mock-up

None are perfect .
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Piecemeal change

• The greater the gap between current and future
  lived-experiences the-
• Greater the difference between model and
  actuality
• Greater the likelihood of a client / user split
• Harder it is to imagine the future experience
• Midstream changes are possible but typically
  expensive

Piecemeal changes breakdown the scale of change
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Evaluating Places in use

• Designers frequently fail to find out about
  whether their design resulted in an improved
  lived-world

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Parallels with IT/IS

• For both there is a representation of what will
  happen in the lived world
• And transformation between lived world,
  representation and back to lived world

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Representation in IS

• Much is written documentation
• Words are representations
• Diagrams arent the formal structures of geometry
• Sometimes there are rules
• Flowcharting
• sometimes the representation is ad-hoc
• A diagram drawn on a flipchart

lived-world representation lived world
transformation still occurs
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Business process design

• Document and create as-is and to-be
• Selected group of users to create the process
  using post-it notes.
• The result shown to groups of other future users
  (a fair)
• good business process design involves the users

Link to requirements if you arent going to
change the business, why are you doing it?
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IS role in business process design

• What can IS contribute to the design?
• users are experts in their area, but not in the
  total process
• often the best knowledge of a complex
  multi-functional business process is in the IT
  department

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More on business process

• Good process design is about making the overall
  process work, which may make it harder for some
  of the people in it
• Often possible to reconfigure existing computer
  systems to work with the new process

Where does this leave considering the lived world
?
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Similarities (1)

• There are design, build and use phases
• Design is typically done by an expert, who will
  not be the user of the final product
• The build phase is typically done by some one
  other than the designer, but isnt the final user
  
• For the people who deliver one of the 'steps'
  their end product is not what the user will end
  up with, but an intermediate

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Similarities (2)

• the people involved with the intermediate step
  may
• Be loosely connected with the end product
• Want to perfect the output for this step, rather
  than ask 'is it good enough for the end purpose'
• Rarely get to see the final product and review
  whether what they did resulted in a good end
  product
• especially compounded when work is sub-contracted
  as the people often aren't around at the end of
  the project

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Similarities (3)

• The user often feels that their day to day
  experience could have been better if the designer
  had thought about them
• The client (person with the cash) isnt
  necessarily the same as the user (person who has
  to live with the results)
• If the client and user are different then what
  they think of as a good result are likely to be
  different

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Similarities (4)

• The design is, in some form, reviewed by the user
  
• The design is usually documented in a form the
  user cant translate into daily experience
• The expert cant see why the users cant see
• What the user asks for isnt what they want
• and having used it what they wanted isnt what
  they would now like

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Similarities (5)

• Both offer mechanisms for prototyping, showing
  the user what might be delivered
• In both there is an element of behind the
  plumbing and electrics in a building, the
  processor and software for IT

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Differences

• Architectural design is 3D geometry, computer
  system design is typically flow diagrams and
  words
• There is a much stronger aesthetic element in
  building
• Architecture can be seen as a form of art
• Computer systems do have some aesthetic aspects

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Different scenarios

• Simplest
• user, client, designer, builder are all the same
  person
• Excel spreadsheet
• Most Complex
• Multiple (unknown) users, multiple clients,
  different teams for each project phase, global
  scope, packaged solution
• ERP in a multinational company

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The WORD Lived-world

• Perhaps we could start by thinking about an IT
  system which isnt related to a process
• To what extent can the user control their
  experience when creating a document ?
• For example choice of which toolbars to see, what
  is shown on the toolbars, where the toolbars are
  positioned on the screen, text size
• Attempts to adopt to the user by showing latest
  files used and only recently used drop downs.

How easy do new users find it?
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END

• . Some parting questions

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Surprisingly the results are often OK or better .
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Does Phenomenology help us understand how to
build better systems ?

• . Id like to say yes

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Development dualities
How would you characterise current practices ?

• Objective / Subjective
• Rational / Creative
• Structured / Unstructured
• Logical / Emotive
• Process driven / Responsive to people
• Focus on delivery / Focus on whats delivered
• Business benefit / better place to work

Is there an opportunity to be different ?
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Doveys questions

• How are environmental and design problems
  experienced by those who dwell in a place?
• How is that experience shared with designers?
• How does one know that the agreed design proposal
  will deliver a better environment?
• How can designers avoid incidents where clients
  are surprised and disturbed when a design becomes
  a reality?

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We already know this

• Knowing and acting are different .

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How well do current practices for requirements
gathering and definition reflect the lived world
of the user ?