Organizations are tenuous phenomena; they can fall apart at any time. To navigate the landscape of organizational culture interaction designers need a set of practical tools, language & knowledge drawn from the world of cultural anthropology.

It’s happened to all of us. We walk into what we think is a Web redesign project, only to find we have unwittingly ignited the fires of WW III in our client’s organization. What begins as a simple design project descends – quickly – into an intra-organizational battle, with the unprepared interaction designer caught in the crossfire.

What is it about design projects that seem to attract such power struggles? Contrary to what you might think, being stuck in the middle of an internecine battle is actually an opportunity to effect meaningful change on your client’s organization. But it requires a set of practical tools to negotiate these battles and a more sophisticated language and knowledge to exploit these events to create meaningful change.

The Glue Inside Organizations: Taken-for-Granted Assumptions

Organizations are tenuous phenomena; they can fall apart at any time. It’s quite extraordinary, actually, that organizations don’t spontaneously disintegrate regularly. Organizations have no force of law or violence. They cannot force their members to remain within them. Their members are autonomous adults and can leave, reject, or even revolutionize the organization at any time. Yet organizations endure, held together by taken-for-granted patterns of social interaction.

These patterns of interaction are exactly what the organization must have to survive. Everyone must share what sociologists Berger and Luckman call a “common stock of knowledge” – like using “bandwidth” synonymously with “time” – for an organization to function properly. We could not waste time at every meeting explaining what “bandwidth” or “DTC” or “short selling” mean. Instead we rely on this common stock of knowledge; newcomers must be inculcated with this knowledge for the organization to function.

This common stock of knowledge is exactly what keeps an organization together. The sum of this knowledge is often called “organizational culture.” IBM, for example, would not have the same stock of knowledge as, say, Zappos. What is taken for granted at Patagonia is not the same as what is taken for granted at Ford. Organizational culture is key to keeping an organization intact. Without this sum of knowledge, members of the organization would spend too much time trying to figure out what to do or say in given situations.

An organization simply could not function without its members knowing what to do, say and wear day-to-day. Interestingly, organizations that send out the “dress code memo” are actually reinforcing this argument. If its members are routinely wearing shorts and flip-flops to work, this suggests that the “common stock of knowledge” supports this kind of clothing. The “dress code memo” usually causes tension, derision, and – paradoxically – greater social glue among the casually dressed members of the organization.

Knowing what to do or say in any given moment gives us comfort. It is less stressful. It is efficient. It is even pleasant. Organizations must have a critical mass of its members in this comfort zone to continue to function. In other words, organizational culture must be firmly cemented with a large enough number of its members for an organization to endure.

The downside of culture: change is hard

Culture is, by definition, resistant to change. We like to know what is “appropriate” or normal in everyday situations and the more we engage in these behaviours, the more “normal” they become. The French father of sociology Emile Durkheim even had a word for not knowing what to do: “anomie,” or the lack of norms. Modern life was plagued with anomie, Durkheim argued, causing alienation and confusion.

Organizational cultures like to stay the same, even when it seems irrational. In her painstakingly detailed analysis of the Challenger crash, Diane Vaughan showed that NASA’s major failure was not technical at all. Rather, it was systematic denial which lead to a distortion of the real risks involved in using rubber O-rings on a cold morning. NASA’s organizational culture systematically downplayed certain kinds of information because it threatened the way the organization currently functioned. In a sense, it was the organization’s attempt to endure which paradoxically sowed the seeds of its own demise.

Understanding organizational cultures

Interaction designers are accustomed to discerning individual preferences, particularly for interactivity. But they may not be as well versed in understanding cultural preferences. Anthropology offers us a very clear framework for mapping cultures against key values.

Florence Kluckhohn’s “value orientation model” describes culture as a set of values. To that end, she suggested that cultures have five key elements to them.

Figure 1: F.R. Kluckhohn’s Value Orientation Model

A culture’s value orientation to nature, for example, can be one which values being in harmony with nature. Japan’s penchant for miniaturist design, for example, may be explained by its value of living in harmony with nature.

An organization’s orientation to time may hold the key to understanding why your design project is mired in the mud. How the organization collectively values the future has significant implications for interaction designers, which after all are the harbingers of a thing called “change.” Toyota, for example, exemplifies an organization that values “becoming” or ever aspiring. Such an organization values “new-ness” as inherently worthy.  The French wine-making industry, by contrast, values the past (to a fault, if recent market-share figures are an indicator of success). Reverence for tradition, celebrating its members’ long tenures, and elaborate discussions of past examples are key indicators of a past-oriented organization.

Interaction designers should pay close attention to how their client’s organization values activity.

An organization’s orientation to social relations is also important for interaction designers. The typical interactive agency (or management consultancy for that matter) values individualism. Sociologist Alice Lam calls this kind of organization an “ad hocracy,” which is highly innovative and creative. But such organizations are also very vulnerable to its knowledge walking out the door when the latest “rising star” takes her talent and knowledge with her to the next organization.

By contrast, Lam argues, banks are collective in their orientation. They value consensus above all. This may make decision-making maddeningly slow but it also preserves the organization. It ensures that all members of the organization share in the common stock of knowledge and thereby maintains the organization itself. Interactive agencies may be highly innovative, but they are also highly volatile. Banks may not be innovative but they are stable.

Interaction designers are accustomed to discerning individual preferences, particularly for interactivity. But they may not be as well versed in understanding cultural preferences.

Interaction designers should also pay close attention to how their client’s organization values activity. Some organizations care nothing for what may become of a certain project, if only that something is happening. This kind of organization values “doing.” But perhaps more common to Western organizations is the implicit value on “becoming.” German sociologist Max Weber became famous for his analysis of “the protestant work ethic,” which is really an exposition on the Calvinist value of “becoming.” To be a competent Protestant, Weber argued, one must always be aspiring to work harder, accumulate more and above all, delay gratification. This spirit is so key to capitalism that Western, capitalist organizations may all implicitly value this notion. In such cases, interaction designers may find themselves in the midst of an ever-aspiring organization that wants “best in class” wireframes and project plans but seems strangely unconcerned with a relative lack of actual progress.

Interaction designers finding themselves in the middle or an intra-organizational war may be working with an individualistic organization that values competition above all else. This is common to sales-driven organizations, that offer individual incentives and bonuses to their members.

Organization Design: How To Incorporate It Into Interaction Design Projects

Before you start a design project, evaluate your client’s organization. This need not be a detailed research project but an intuitive ethnographic craft. Stakeholder interviews provide a great opportunity to gather insight about the values of your client’s organization. A colleague and I used to call this stage “business ethnographic gathering,” or BEGging. Do ask about business requirements and goals. But pay attention also to what is valued.

Past-orientation

Does your client spend an inordinate amount of time talking about the ways things have been done in the past? This may reveal a past-orientation. Honour that client’s value of the past. Celebrate past successes. Build “rituals of reverence” into your design process, where the organization’s members can savour the beauty and grandeur of their organization’s venerated history. Carefully frame innovation as putting icing on an already delicious cake. Above all, do not attack foundational elements directly. This is akin to throwing away the Mona Lisa.

Individualistic

Does your client take you into “confidence” frequently and reveal that everyone else in his organization “doesn’t get it”? Does he discuss how he would like to best his rival department? This client’s organization is individualistic and competitive. Consensus is still needed for collaborative design but this kind of organization makes collaboration difficult. For such a client, frame collaboration as an opportunity for him to be a “champion of innovation,” which all the individual glory thereto. Encourage him to be a “hero” for the organization and construct a narrative that allows him to be “victorious” but only if he becomes a collaborative, transformative leader.

Becoming

Does your client’s organization have many symbols of future plans? Perhaps the walls are plastered with posters of its “next generation” goods or services. Perhaps your client spends much time talking about her future “vision” and how she wants to “inspire” her colleagues and her customers. The value here is placed on “becoming,” and not necessarily on “doing.” Your challenge as an interaction designer is actualizing her vision. The idea with this kind of culture is to create some material reality out of the constant visioning, but at the same time allowing the client organization to engage in this imagination process continually. Allow them to savour future “dreams” in concrete form.

In this case, frame your need for concrete deliverables and milestones as “best in class project methodology,” or an “innovative service delivery process.” Convince her that being a “next-generation organization” is about constantly materializing her visions. Show her prototypes. Bring her evidence of the first-mover’s advantage. And above all, show her current, existing evidence of how innovative companies continue to produce innovations instead of simply thinking about it.

When Culture Isn’t Enough

Even sociologists tire of organizations that are continually dysfunctional. As an interaction designer, you can learn to recognize when these organizations are beyond the power of one designer. If the organization has a critical mass of values that are antithetical to your own, then it may be time to move on. Even better, however, is to use the value-orientation model to pre-screen potential clients. We may not all have the luxury of picking and choosing only the clients we want but using a systematic approach beforehand will surely reduce the number of wars we unwittingly ignite within our client organizations.

Research by anthropologists and sociologists has found that the introduction of an idea or innovation into a society creates two groups: utopians and idealists. The idealist has a conservative world view and is content with the status quo. The utopian on the other hand has a revolutionary world view and want to transform society with new ideas. Recent research has shown that this concept holds true for the introduction of new products and services.

Mannheim’s theory of culture change

This concept of utopians and idealists comes from Karl Mannheim, one of the founding fathers of sociology. Mannheim saw that the utopians wanted to make the world a better place by innovation and new ideas, while the idealists where worried that the world would deteriorate, if untested new ideas where introduced. His book ‘An Ideology And Utopia: An Introduction To The Sociology Of Knowledge‘ introduced the concept of sociology of knowledge.

He saw that if you shaped an idea to suit the needs of an idealist it would discourage the utopian, because the utopian wants change and their view of the idealists is that they are a barrier to change.

Mannheim studied the political movements in 1930’s Berlin, but more recent research has shown his concept holds true for products and innovations. An example of two products fitting into the utopians and idealists camps is the battle between Mac and PC. A general perception is that the PC user sees no need of paying more for a computer. The PC is good enough, and if they changed to Mac they would have to learn a whole new way of doing things, and it would be a waste of time. Equally, there is the perception that the Mac user belief is that the PC users spend far too much time dealing with technical issues, computer viruses, and many other things, and their life would be better if only they used a Mac.

Mac vs. PC

The battle between Mac and PC may not be as alarming as the battles between the Communists, and Nazis in 1930’s Berlin. But Apple through its marketing makes it just as revolutionary to some. Research by WPP’s, (the advertising conglomerate), BrandZ shows Apples brand messages actually puts off the idealists [PDF], but encourages the utopians. Apples adverting ‘call to action’ are a Revolutionary message to buy an Apple. The first Macintosh TV ad ‘Why 1984 will not be like 1984’ emphasised this message.  This was continued with the ‘Think Different’ campaign, followed by the ‘I am a PC vs. I am a Mac’.

Apple’s message is not that their products are simple and easy to use, as can be seen from Fred Beecher’s article in Johnny Holland, but if you invest the time in learning how to use their products then your life will be better. Apple’s users are utopian, so they will not only buy the products but also encourage others as well. This is part of their utopian world view that the world would be a better place if everybody had a Mac.

Microsoft’s challenge is that, because their users have become idealists it is hard for them to sell them new products. Microsoft tries to introduce new innovations in usability, like the infamous ribbon for Microsoft Office, but because their users are happy with the status quo, they hate the change. This is why even though Microsoft has some of cleverest brains in usability and design working for them, such as Bill Buxton; they still have a reputation of bad usability. When blind tests where done with Vista, users found that they liked the product and found it usable. The issue is that the users of their products don’t like change.

Microsoft Ribbon

Apple’s challenge according to the Mannheim theory is that these two world views eventually will synthesize to become one dominant world view. The revolution will become the status quo, and their users expectations will change.

Applying Mannheim’s theory to research and design

There is no right or wrong in being a utopian or idealist. Yet, knowing which category our end users or customers fall into helps us understand their behavior and enables us to improves the odds for getting the design right and the right messages for communication.

Modified version of the Ansoff Product-Market Growth Matrix.

The graphic above shows a modified version of the Ansoff Product-Market Growth Matrix . If you are introducing a new product into a new market, it is more suitable to identify and research the needs of the utopians for your product category. For example, for us at FeraLabs, we are developing Webnographer, a new tool for remote usability testing. It offers a new way to carry out user research. It was crucial for us to identify the utopians in the field of usability and information architecture, as they would be the people who would embrace change and try a new user research tool like Webnographer.

If on the other hand your product is aimed at existing market then you need to focus on using Idealists for your research.

How to find utopians or idealists

To find your utopians and idealists you will have to follow the advice of famous anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski:

“…the Ethnographer has not only to spread his nets in the right place, and wait for what will fall into them. He must be an active huntsman, and drive his quarry into them and follow it up to its most inaccessible lairs.”

Research is the key to gage if a user is utopian or an idealist. For our product we carried out ethnographic research, both digital and traditional. We asked people their views of current methods, and we looked at their online communication and attitudes to help us understand them better. If their view was that new methods are needed, or that the old methods need change they were classified as a utopian willing to change the world. This qualified them for becoming of our research panel, and we considered them to be potential customers.

Bronisław Malinowski during his ethnographic research

We very quickly were able to identify utopians: the people, firms and consultancies that were open to new methods. There is a minority that believes that user research needs new tools and techniques, while the majority sees no need for change. Our target audience are of course the users that believe that change is needed.

Both, the usability utopians and usability idealists, believe that life is made too difficult by products that are hard to use. Where they differ is in the Solution. Usability Idealists believe that if only people developing products used the techniques already developed then the world would be a more usable place. On the other hand usability utopian’s belief is that if these techniques where so good then we would not still in the 21st Century have so many hard and difficult products. Our research shows that their view is that usability and user research techniques are too time consuming and expensive.

We found that the utopians believed that usability had to become more compatible with its end users, management and other people involved in the development of a product. The results had to be understandable by people outside the profession. While the idealists believed that the consumers of user research had to work harder to understand the views of usability.

Who is who?

The usability idealists view is led by gurus such as Jakob Nielson, who argue that “usability is a very stable field.” That the idealists view is led by guru’s is obvious when you consider that they have spent years perfecting their reputation as the expert in the legacy techniques making them “gurus”, “superstars”, and “ninjas”. A new method for conducting research can be a scary thought, as it means new learning, and being a novice again.

Malcolm Gladwell has shown in his book ‘Outliers: The Story of Success‘ that to become an expert in a field takes 10,000 hours. When changes happen, which the utopian believes is important, you might be throwing those 10,000 hours of hard work away.

There is of course a small majority of experts with 10,000 hours that are utopians and strive for new things and are willing to throw that hard work away. Finding the utopians is hard. For example Apples market share is less than 10% therefore if you where to conduct user research with just 10 people the likelihood is that only one user would be a Mac user.

Focusing the research

Having identified the utopians we focused our research on their desires and perceptions. This has allowed us to make Webnographer better, as we could make the product that fitted the needs of the users most likely to use it. For example the utopians wanted a simple way of reporting metrics to management, which makes it easier for the user to be heard.

We saved time and money by focusing our research on users that were open to a new method, and could ignore the feedback from people that even if we catered to their every whim would never change their ways. It is worth pointing out that if your product is aimed at the current market then you should focus on the idealists.

Yet, the research is never finished. It is not fixed whether someone is a utopian or idealist. As Mannheim’s theory explains the two world views of utopians and idealists eventually synthesize to become one dominant world view. The revolution will become the status quo, and their users expectations will change. This means research must always be ongoing, collecting information, analysing people’s perceptions, validating findings, and collecting more information.

Not a new question

At the end of the month we will presenting our talk (‘Effective Ethnography Techniques for Low Budget Projects‘) at the EuroIA conference. It is fitting that the conference is in Copenhagen, as Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet of Denmark had to make the choice between being an utopian with the life of action (“to be”), or being a idealist with the life of silent acceptance (“not to be”).

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?”

So when we visit Denmark for the EuroIA, we will visit different districts of Copenhagen and instead of visiting the museums we will be looking at the supermarket shelves and look at the percentage of new products. We will walk the streets and observe the number of people adopting new fashions. Do the restaurants cater for new culinary dishes, or do they go for the traditional cuisine?

There is no right or wrong in being a utopian or idealist. But it can be both fun, and useful to understand the behaviour for both work and pleasure.