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 Embodying Metaphors in Systems

by

Sergej van Middendorp

Abstract

This study explores the role of metaphor in the system design process. It examines the

ways in which the metaphors that designers use in design conversations become embodied in

the systems that they are creating. It assumes that by making designers aware of their use of

metaphor, they can better cope with the complex and dynamic nature of the challenges

presented in design in a broadly ecological sense. The study focuses on inviting designers to

address the question, How do our joint improvisations with metaphors become embodied in

the systems that we are creating?

To create a frame for this collaborative exploration, literatures in system design, metaphor,

metaphor in system design, and organizational improvisation are brought in. Design

conversations, including reflections on those conversations, from a three-year action research

project in which three system designers, including the author of this study, created a new

method and a new system with awareness of the role of metaphor in the system design

process, are analyzed. The findings show how persistent improvisations with several

metaphors in the design process result in those metaphors becoming embodied in the system.

Guided by an interpretive analysis of the data and the findings, a review of the literature in

Schns (1983) reflection-in-action, Schns (1963/2011) displacement of concepts,

Johnsons (2007) meaning of the body, and Turbaynes (1971) metaphor to myth

transformation follows. Based on the insights emerging from this review, a model for

ii
reflexive reflections-in-interaction with meta-metaphors is created to support system

designers in becoming more aware of their use of metaphor.

The model is tested with three episodes from the action research data. The results of that

test suggest that the use of the model could have increased the awareness of the designers in

this case study of metaphor as metaphor. It is assumed that this would have increased their

capacity to consciously generate the system in a way better fit for its purpose. The study

comes full circle by offering three ways to further develop theory, research, and practice to

support system designers in consciously embodying metaphors in systems.

Key words: system design, embodied realism, social construction, conceptual metaphor,

generative metaphor, organizational improvisation, communication, complexity, emergence,

process, reflexivity, reflection-in-action, action research.

iii
 Copyright by

Sergej van Middendorp

2016

iv
 Author Note

In 2005, after 10 years of work in developing and implementing information technology

(IT) systems, I discovered the ideas of value networks, intellectual capital, and knowledge

management to better help me understand the value of intangibles in organizations. In order

to deeply understand the complexities inherent in these fields, I gathered a band of leading

jazz musicians and developed jazzinbusiness, a metaphorical experience of jazz

improvisation. This helped me to better understand how structure and flexibility work

together in each and every moment to help us evolve adaptive structures that foster

innovation, collaboration, and knowledge sharing.

In the past eight years, I performed PhD research while embodying the metaphor of

organizational improvisation and its generative capacity for human and organizational

systems. This document shares how I have experienced practice and research flowing

together in those years. My intent was to develop a process and practices that are helpful in

making better systems and in making systems better. I feel I have learned a few things about

this which are worth sharing. And if you have the courage to read this report, I hope you will

feel the same.

Between 2008 and 2013, my research was financially supported by a group of good

friends, all Dutch entrepreneurs, trying to change our systems for the better: Kalo Bagijn;

Roland Hameeteman with e-office: http://www.e-office.com; Johan Burgemeester and

Ronald Heerema; Herman van Middendorp; Marielle Sijgers and Ronald van den Hoff with

CDEF Holding: http://www.cdefholding.nl; and Charles van Gogh with Mise en Place:

http://www.mep.nl.

v
 In 2013-2014, I had the honor to serve as a research fellow with the CMM institute for

personal and social evolution: http://www.cmminstitute.net.

vi
 Acknowledgements

There are many people who have been guides on this quest, and I am deeply thankful to

all of them. Unfortunately, it is impossible to name everyone personally, but I do want to

highlight, first, the support of my wife, Thekla, and our kids, Sterre and Stijn, who

understood that this is my way, and who have always actively supported me in both good and

bad times during the process of making this and who have sacrificed many moments of our

life together to help make this happen.

Next, I want to thank Indranil Bhattacharya and Andr Kampert and all our colleagues in

Coena and Product Foundry during the time of the creation of Embodied Making and

Business Elements for engaging in this study with their full selves. Of course, I am also

deeply thankful to all the clients that trusted us to try out our emerging method with them.

During my Fielding journey, many faculty and friends have helped me shape this study,

especially Annabelle Nelson, Thierry Pauchant, Keith Melville, Barnett Pearce, Aliki

Nicolaides, Nancy Wallis, Dorothy Agger-Gupta, David Willis, Andrea Mc Kenna, Petrina

McGrath, Paula Rowland, Romi Boucher, Bart Beuchner, John Inman, John Baugus,

Deborah Scott, and Alex Yu. And of course, my dissertation committee: Fred Steier, Frank

Barrett, Jeremy Shapiro, Dan Maxwell, and Daan Andriessen.

Further, I want to thank the research supporters who have made this a financially feasible

project, because they believed in me and in my capacity to create something valuable for

them and for their organizations: Kalo Bagijn, Johan Burgemeester, Charles van Gogh,

Roland Hameeteman, Ronald van den Hoff, and my father, Herman van Middendorp. I also

want to thank the CMM Institute for Personal and Social Evolution who, together with

vii
Fielding Graduate University and Villanova University, awarded me with a CMM fellowship

in 2014, which helped to financially support part of this study.

I also want to thank Verna Allee, Charles Savage, and Oliver Schwabe for being guides on

my way to Fielding Graduate University. And the jazzinbusiness band who taught me much

about improvising during our years of bringing the jazz metaphor to life in organizations:

Paul Berner, Sylvi Lane, my brother Armand van Middendorp, and Folkert Oosting.

Also, I am thankful for the inspiration from my colleagues in the core teams and on the

boards of the Institute for Global Integral Competence and to my fellow boardmembers at the

CMM Institute for Personal and Social Evolution.

Thanks also to Alana Saltz; your help in editing the final product was invaluable.

And finally, I want to thank my mother, Mina van de Nadort, who always said I should be

a professor and who made me believe that I could choose to do anything, and my father,

Herman van Middendorp, who showed by example what it means to study and develop

yourself while working and being part of your family at the same time.

viii
 Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................... 1

Three Perspectives on Metaphor ............................................................................... 5

The Metaphorical Nature of Design Conversation ................................................... 7

Defining Systems ...................................................................................................... 8

The Case for Changing Systems ............................................................................... 9

Contextual Literatures ............................................................................................. 13

Organizational Improvisation ................................................................................. 14

Looking Forward to What is Coming ..................................................................... 18

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................ 22

Introduction ............................................................................................................. 22

System Design ........................................................................................................ 24

Metaphor ................................................................................................................. 30

Organizational Improvisation as a Metaphor for System Design ........................... 45

Summary ................................................................................................................. 52

CHAPTER THREE: METHOD ............................................................................. 55

An Action Research Approach ................................................................................ 55

Action Inquiry as a Method .................................................................................... 57

The Case of the Development of Embodied Making and Business Elements ........ 59

Research Design...................................................................................................... 83

CHAPTER FOUR: THE RESEARCH TEAM ANSWERS THE QUESTION .. 93

Gathering and Organizing the Data (Stepping 1) ................................................... 93

Identifying Metaphors Embodied in Embodied Making (Stepping 2) ................... 93

ix
 Identifying the Breakthrough Moments in the Design Session Recordings

(Stepping 3)............................................................................................................. 95

Choosing a Breakthrough Moment Together (Stepping 4) ..................................... 97

Transcribing and Analyzing the Breakthrough Moment (Stepping 5) .................... 97

Gathering and Organizing Relevant Design Artifacts (Stepping 6)........................ 99

Reflecting on the Analysis, the Design Artifacts, and the System (Stepping 7) ..... 99

Transcribing the Reflection Sessions (Stepping 8) ................................................. 99

Performing an Initial Analysis to Test and Refine the Method (Stepping 9) ........ 100

Fact-Finding About the Results of This Cycle (Stepping 10) ............................... 102

Kennings of this Stepping ..................................................................................... 109

CHAPTER FIVE: COMPREHENSIVE DATA ANALYSIS ...............................113

Using NVivo to Code and Analyze the Data (Stepping 11) .................................. 113

Using NVivo to Code the Research Teams Own Findings and Discussions

(Stepping 12)..........................................................................................................119

Using NVivo to Analyze Findings and to Code Options for Discussion

(Stepping 13)..........................................................................................................119

Using NVivo to Outline a Comprehensive Overview of Findings (Stepping 14) 120

Using NVivo to Organize the Options for Discussion (Stepping 15) ................... 120

Choosing the Most Present Options for Discussion (Stepping 16)....................... 121

Writing the First Full Draft of the Dissertation (Stepping 17) .............................. 126

Kennings of This Stepping.................................................................................... 126

CHAPTER SIX: RETURN TO THE LITERATURE ......................................... 130

Reflection-in-Action ............................................................................................. 130

x
 Partial Perspectives on Metaphor.......................................................................... 134

Schns Displacement of Concepts ....................................................................... 136

Turbaynes Metaphor to Myth Transformation ..................................................... 140

Johnsons Meaning of the Body in the Emergence of Metaphorical Thought...... 142

The Linguistic Perspectives Contributions and Critiques.................................... 146

Kennings of This Stepping.................................................................................... 147

CHAPTER SEVEN: DESIGNING A MODEL THAT INTEGRATES

REFLECTION-IN-ACTION WITH METAPHOR THEORY .......................... 150

Displacement of Concepts is Embodied Realism ................................................. 151

Metaphor to Myth in Relation to Displacing Concepts and Embodied Realism .. 161

MMIIRR ............................................................................................................... 163

CHAPTER EIGHT: TESTING THE MODEL WITH DATA ............................ 168

Circle, Square, Hexagon, River ............................................................................ 171

From the River of Forces to Business as a Landscape.......................................... 182

Keeping a River Alive ........................................................................................... 193

Reflections on this Application of MMIIRR to the Data ...................................... 201

CHAPTER NINE: COMING FULL CIRCLE .................................................... 202

Summary ............................................................................................................... 202

Answers from the Research Team (Cycle A) ........................................................ 203

Comprehensive Data Analysis (Cycle B) ............................................................. 205

A Return to the Literature (Cycle C)..................................................................... 206

Designing a Model that Integrates Reflection-in-Action and Metaphor Theory

(Cycle D)............................................................................................................... 207

xi
 Testing the Model with the Data (Cycle E) .......................................................... 209

Quality and Validity .............................................................................................. 210

Ideas for Further Exploration Generated by This Dissertation ............................. 221

References ................................................................................................................ 223

xii
 List of Figures

Figure 1: Action Inquiry's Meshing Territories of Experience and How its Three Perspectives

Play Out in Each Territory..59

Figure 2: Timeline of Key Episodes in the Embodied Making and Business Elements Design

and Research Process ..........................................................................................................63

Figure 3: First Visual Representation of Embodied Making ...................................................65

Figure 4: 37 Signals's Ryan Singer Presents How He Uses Alexander in His Design

Method67

Figure 5: Selected Forces, F(x), from the Design Context of a Contact Management

System ..................................................................................................................................69

Figure 6: Sergejs Paper River of Forces .................................................................................70

Figure 7: Andrs Digital River of Forces................................................................................71

Figure 8: Some Force Interactions in the River of Forces of an Online Car Marketplace in

India ....................................................................................................................................73

Figure 9: Force Interactions for Contact Management Framed in a Metaphorical Hotel

Lobby ...................................................................................................................................74

Figure 10: Sergej's Hexagon Ideas and a Short Analysis of Forces for Embodied Making

Itself ....................................................................................................................................76

Figure 11: Indranil's Application of Hexagons to Organize Solutions for the Dutch

Agriculture Project ..............................................................................................................76

Figure 12: Andr's First Hexagon and Octagon Try-Outs .......................................................77

Figure 13: Andrs Hexagon Design that We Selected for the Embodied Making IT

System.77

xiii
Figure 14: Embodied Making System Prototype October 2013 ..............................................79

Figure 15: Business Elements "Particle Language".................................................................80

Figure 16: Outcomes of Embodied Making Workshop with Farmers .....................................81

Figure 17: Embodied Making Bta Version After Redesign (Copyright Product Foundry)....82

Figure 18: Business Elements System with Embodied Making Results of the Farmer's River

of Forces (Copyright Product Foundry)..............................................................................83

Figure 19: Illustration of Reflective Margin Comments in a Transcript Section....................98

Figure 20: Illustration of Action Inquiry Analysis of Several Turns in the Reflection with

Indranil ..............................................................................................................................101

Figure 21: Action Inquiry's Four Territories of Experience Used to Reflect Further on the

Turns in the Reflection Transcript ....................................................................................102

Figure 22: Data Classification and Relationship Model ........................................................ 115

Figure 23: Illustration of Coding in Transcripts to Refer to Data (Recordings and Design

Artifacts and Outcomes) ................................................................................................... 117

Figure 24: Table of Design Team Analysis ............................................................................ 118

Figure 25: Options for the Further Discussion of Findings ...................................................120

Figure 26: Quantitative Selection of Options for Discussion ................................................121

Figure 27: Detail of Topic Breakdown of Metaphor Ontology .............................................122

Figure 28: Detailed Breakdown of CMM Topics for Discussion ..........................................124

Figure 29: Detailed Breakdown of Topics Related to the Literature Review ........................125

Figure 30: Conventional Way of Displaying Source and Target Domains in Embodied

Realism .............................................................................................................................153

Figure 31: Venn Diagram that Includes the Context of Target Domain ................................156

xiv
Figure 32: Two Interpenetrating Spirals ................................................................................157

Figure 33: Taiji Symbol .........................................................................................................159

Figure 34: Taiji as Two Koi Representing Yin and Yang in a More Dynamic Way ..............160

Figure 35: MMIIRR Model Represented on Taiji Art ...........................................................165

Figure 36: MMIIRR ...............................................................................................................168

Figure 37: First Embodied Making Visual Representation....................................................172

Figure 38: Andr's Hexagon Design for Embodied Making System .....................................173

Figure 39: My Handwritten Notes of Embodied Making Design Session on April 13,

2012...................................................................................................................................174

Figure 40: Web Logo for Embodied Making Site by Indranil ...............................................175

Figure 41: Particle Language Based on Sowa's Ontology for Business Elements System ...176

Figure 42: Hotel Lobby Canvas for Embodied Making Session ...........................................183

Figure 43: Several Forces Instantiated on a Hotel Lobby Metaphor Canvas ........................184

Figure 44: Business Elements Version 1.0 with Embodied Making Analysis of Farmers'

Workshop ..........................................................................................................................185

Figure 45: Design Artifact for "Mark" Business Element .....................................................188

Figure 46: Andr's Artifact for the Design of an Embodied Making System ........................193

Figure 47: Screenshot of Embodied Making System Prototype ............................................194

Figure 48: Screenshot of Embodied Making System Bta Version .......................................195

Figure 49: Sergej's River of Forces Exercise .........................................................................196

Figure 50: Andr's River of Forces Exercise .........................................................................197

Figure 51: Embodied Making Paper Prototype for Workshops .............................................199

Figure 52: MMIIRR ...............................................................................................................208

xv
 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

We need to increase our awareness of the role and the power of metaphors in the system

design process. If we understand how the metaphors that designers use in design

conversations become embodied in the systems that they are creating, our systems can be

redesigned to better cope with the complex and dynamic nature of the problems and

challenges of our current world.

Metaphor, as I use it here, means that a concept that has a concrete meaning in one

context is used to help us make sense of another context. For example, when we go to the

desktop of our personal computer systems, we use the more concrete concept of a physical

desktop to help us make sense of the more abstract concept of a personal computers system

for organizing data in a coherent way for users of that system. Or when we use Adam

Smith's (1796) idea of an invisible hand to make sense of the effect that an economic system

produces more wealth if every participant in that system looks after their own interest than

would be expected.

The systems that we currently use often embody metaphors that were used by their

erstwhile designers while creating those systems. Where these metaphors and the resulting

systems were valuable in their own day and time, they fail to adequately address the

complexity of our issues today. Success in the redesign of systems depends on the designers

conscious awareness of the often unwanted and undesired embodied metaphors in the old

system and on their ability to generate the required and desired metaphors for the new

system. The more aware designers become of the metaphors embodied in the system they

are trying to change, the better able they become at generating the metaphors through which

a new and better system can emerge

 2

But often designers are not aware of the metaphors embodied in the system that they are

trying to change, nor are designers always consciously aware of the potential of the role of

metaphors in generating the new system. As a result, they either fail to produce a system that

adequately addresses the design challenge, or they inadvertently sustain, or even amplify, the

undesirable effects of current systems. Our growing knowledge of the persistent and

systematic role that metaphor plays in our being and doing throws a new light on these

issues.

A growing number of studies, based on Lakoff and Johnson's (1980, 1999) notions of

conceptual metaphor and embodied realism, show us that we mostly conceive of our reality

metaphorically and nonconsciously (Crawford, 2009; Kille, Forest, & Wood, 2013; Morris,

Sheldon, Ames, & Young, 2007; Sullivan, 2015; Zhong & Leonardelli, 2008). Another

number of studies, based on Schn's (1993, 2011) notion of generative metaphor, examine

how we use metaphor generatively to consciously create new systems (Barrett &

Cooperrider, 1990; Barrett, Thomas, & Hocevar, 1995; Bright, Powley, Fry, & Barrett, 2013;

Casakin, 2012; Kelly, 2014; Madsen, 1988, 1994). It is in this estuary of nonconsciously

experienced conceptual context and consciously generated creativity where designers work to

make new systems. The question of how designers create new systems in this estuary of the

conscious and nonconscious has been approached in a number of ways, most prominently as

reflection-in-action (Kinsella, 2007; Schn, 1983; Yanow & Tsoukas, 2009) and more

recently as generative capacity (Avital & Teeni, 2009; Van Osch, 2013; Van Osch & Avital,

2010).

Metaphors, once consciously generative to the creation of our systems, have become

hidden beneath the surface of the everyday use of systems that we consider normal. Scholars
 3

have pointed out this movement of metaphors from the conscious to the nonconscious

(Turbayne, 1971) and their lifecycle from novel, to conventional, to dead (Lakoff, 1987).

Others have explored the cognitively unconscious dimensions of metaphor (Johnson, 2007,

2014). Critical metaphor analyzers explicitly or implicitly argue for us to become aware of

metaphors that have gone offline in order to address issues of design and power in our

systems (Barrett & Sarbin, 2007; Charteris-Black, 2013; Peterson, 2009; Rohrer & Vignone,

2012; Sarbin, 2003; Steen, 2014; Vignone, 2011).

From this short and high-level overview of the role of metaphor in system design, several

questions emerge. How do designers make sense of the limitations and problems in the

current systems? How aware are they of the metaphorical nature of those problems and

limitations? How do they think and talk about the design of the new systems that they are

creating to address today's challenges? How do they take changes to current systems into

account when designing the new? How do they choose and use generative metaphors to help

them make sense of the requirements for the new systems? And are they aware of forgotten

stories and hidden metaphors in the systems they try to change, and how these may be

holding them back from achieving their goals with the new system?

For example, consider the short exchange below. It is part of a longer conversation

between Indranil Bhattacharya and myself. Indranil and I were co-founders, together with

Andr Kampert, of Product Foundry, a company that produces software products that help

people in organizations work collaboratively with large amounts of data in complex contexts.

We are on Skype, a real-time chat service, after a working day in which we talked about our

strategy to provide some of our product open source:

Indranil Bhattacharya (I): How did you phrase it, Sergej? On intellectual property?
The thing you do is different from the way the thing is represented?
 4

Sergej van Middendorp (S): Intellectual property is based on the conceptual metaphor
knowledge is stuff. So the entailment of the metaphor is that it makes us believe
that the knowledge is in the stuff, and that therefore you can protect it. A more
embodied view would show that knowledge is both in the stuff, and in the ways
people interact with the stuff. So separate a developer from the code. Or a designer
from the design. Where does the knowledge go? Into the stuff, or into the person?
Knowledge from this paradigm is relational. It is in the code and with the
developers working the code. For example, when we say we want the best talent to
work on business elements, we make a conscious choice to go open source,
because we understand that this is the only way that talent is going to touch it. Not
talent we hire, but talent that is attracted to the Mars mission. So in making that
decision, we already (unconsciously?) apply a different metaphor for knowledge.
Knowledge is a situation, in which objects and processes act together. Makes
sense? A thing you can control. That gives comfort to those living in the
knowledge is stuff paradigm. But that paradigm may be strong in our conscious
experience. We now know (and smart leaders have always known) that a relational
view is more realistic.
I: Great stuff. Makes great sense. All material we can use. I put the updated version1
on the Dropbox folder. Page 42-50. We can describe a lot of these things as forces.
Property = Land Ownership metaphor.
S: Yes, we know our landowners ;-)

This short conversation is exemplary of the process that I studied in this dissertation. It

starts with a question (How did you phrase intellectual property again?), which lingered

after an earlier conversation during the same systems design process. It prompted my turn,

which contrasts two conceptual metaphors for knowledge (KNOWLEDGE IS STUFF and

KNOWLEDGE IS A RELATIONSHIP)2 and shows how each of those conceptual metaphors

has a fit with two existing ways for sharing knowledge in organizations (intellectual property

and open source). The fragment itself contains both nonconsciously and consciously used

metaphors (for example, MEANING MAKING IS SENSE MAKING; KNOWLEDGE IS A

RELATION; A SYSTEM IS A MARS MISSION). Some of those metaphors are used

nonconsciously (MEANING MAKING IS SENSE MAKING), while other are deliberately

used to generate new meaning for the design of the system (KNOWLEDGE IS

1
Indranil refers to an updated version of the design documentation for the system we are developing.
2
For the notation of conceptual metaphors, I use capitals as is the general practice in the field.
 5

RELATIONAL; A SYSTEM IS A MARS MISSION). Some of these metaphors find their

way into the design of our system (pp. 42-50 of the updated version in the Dropbox folder).

As designers, Indranil and I want our software product, which we called Business Elements,

to embody certain and specific metaphors that are in line with our intent: to radically and

profoundly change organizational information technology systems. To bring home that point,

at the end of our conversation, Indranil invokes the spirit of the landowners from The Grapes

of Wrath (Steinbeck, 1939)3, thereby generating the metaphor INTELLECTUAL

PROPERTY IS LAND.

This short conversation also presents the elements that form the design of this research

study, which aims to answer the question, How do our joint improvisations with metaphors

become embodied in the systems that we are creating?

Three Perspectives on Metaphor

This study takes three different perspectives on metaphor in an attempt to understand how

they work and how they can be worked in the process of system design. The first, which I

frame as the embodied realism perspective on metaphor, sees metaphor as mostly

nonconscious thought that arises from a process of continuity of experience between an

embodied mind and the cognitive unconscious in interaction with others and a complex

environment (Johnson, 2007; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999). The second, which I frame as

the social constructionist perspective on metaphor, sees metaphors as consciously used,

generative means through which we deliberately create new realities, including new systems

3
The section of The Grapes of Wrath in which the landowners come to tell the farmers to get off the
land is masterful in its display of metaphor use. The landowners own the land of the farmers through
loans extended by the bank. In talking with the tenants, the bank is generated as a monster that
breathes profits and eats interest to survive, and that the men who make the bank cannot control it. See
also the extended quotation on page 38.
 6

(Barrett & Cooperrider, 1990; Gergen, 2009; Schn, 1993, 2011). The third takes a critical

perspective on the deliberate and non-deliberate use of metaphor and tries to uncover the

possible effects of our use of metaphor or our being used by metaphor (Barrett & Sarbin,

2007; Sarbin, 2003; G. Steen, 2014; Turbayne, 1971). These three perspectives do not

exclude one another; rather, they are complementary views on the same phenomenon. The

differences between the three are what make them valuable in understanding their roles and

power in the design process of new systems. The unique contribution of embodied realism is

to show us the workings of the embodied mind and the cognitive unconscious; the unique

contribution of the social constructionist view is to show how our conscious and deliberate

use of metaphor can help generate new experiences and systems; and the unique contribution

of the critical perspective on metaphor is to keep us awake to the limitations of theory and to

show us what can happen when metaphors move between the cognitive conscious and

unconscious, and what can happen when one party to the conversation is aware of the

potential of metaphor while the other might not be aware.

How do we, as designers, assert our conscious creativity to design in this complex

confluence of deliberation and nondeliberation, of conscious and nonconscious use of

metaphor, of using metaphors or being used by metaphors in our design conversations? How

aware are we of the metaphors embodied in our cognitive unconscious, in our relationships

with each other, in our environments, including the systems that we are attempting to change

with our design efforts? Awareness of the metaphorical nature of design conversations, and

awareness of how the metaphors used in these conversations become embodied in the

systems that are being created, is a way of finding answers to these questions.
 7

The Metaphorical Nature of Design Conversation

Three major ways in which metaphors show up in conversation emerged from the theory

and research introduced in this chapter. There is the deliberate and conscious use of

metaphor to create a new reality, the non-deliberate, nonconscious use of metaphor in

language, which the embodied realists claim sustains an existing, conventional reality, and

the critical perspective that helps us to surface those embodied, hidden metaphors to

consciousness.

If we place these three perspectives in the context of the conversations that designers have

while designing new systems, or when trying to change existing systems, we can become

aware of their power to create these systems and of metaphor's power to prevent us from

changing systems. This is especially relevant for designers aiming to create systems that

address problems in our current systems and who want these systems to help us create a

better world. In my preparations for this study, I felt that the joint power of the embodied

realism perspective and the social constructionist perspectives on metaphor could help

designers to do just that. Where social construction and cognitive science contradicted each

other in the past, the knowledge that is emerging from recent research in these two different

scholarly perspectives shows that social construction and cognitive science actually reinforce

each other. This convergence of social construction and cognitive science is discussed by a

growing community of scholars who try to build bridges between the seemingly

incommensurable paradigms of nature and nurture, the empirical and the cultural; between

constructivism, structuralism, social construction, and semiotics on the one hand and

cognitive science from the perspective of the embodied mind on the other (Flanik, 2011;
 8

Goodwin, 2000; Klinkenberg, 2015; Parrish-Sprowl & Parrish-Sprowl, 2014; Peterson,

2012).

By alternating between the leading edges of our knowledge as developed from the

premises of social construction and embodied realism, designers have the possibility to use

solid cognitive science to strengthen social construction's phenomenological foundations and

enrich cognitive science's empirical generalizations with the unique, situated, personal, and

cultural perspectives derived at through methods rooted in the humanities. As a result of this

fusion, designers can bring more integral awareness to their tasks, shed nonconscious

metaphors that keep us trapped in unwanted patterns of reality, and help us make systems that

embody metaphors that generate sorely needed new realities.

Defining Systems

In this dissertation, I conceive of systems as all possible outcomes of human activity. This

definition of system is narrower than the definition of a system in general systems theory

(Von Bertalanffy, 1969) and cybernetics (Wiener, 1948), which include both human,

organizational, and natural systems and their workings. A definition of system that comes

closer to how I want to use it in this study is provided by Luhmann (1995), who suggests the

term social systems be used for systems created in human beings. These systems can be

broad, globally used systems like the economy, law, art, healthcare, agriculture, and industry.

These systems were created by human beings in social interaction and, through the lens that

Luhmann provides, are recursively generated by human beings. At the same time, they have

a disembodied presence in human discourse and society, which, in-turn, recursively

influences how they are (re)created and changed.

 9

In this study, I specifically focused on the creation process of an information technology

(IT) system, a specific kind of social system defined by the Association of Computing

Machinery as a system that

...in its broadest sense encompasses all aspects of computing technology. IT, as an
academic discipline, is concerned with issues related to advocating for users and
meeting their needs within an organizational and societal context through the
selection, creation, application, integration and administration of computing
technologies. (Lunt et al., 2008, p. 9)

IT, according to this definition, concerns the development, both theoretical and applied, of

computer hardware and architecture, systems infrastructure, software methods and

technologies, application technologies, and organizational issues and information systems.

IT, therefore, is an integration of several independently evolved disciplines in computing that

cover the areas needed to deliver on the definition above. Another definition that helps frame

my definition of system in the context of this study is that of new media. Lister et al. define

new media as

...those methods and social practices of communication, representation, and

expression that have developed using the digital, multimedia, networked computer
and the ways that this machine is held to have transformed work in other media.
(Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant, & Kieran, 2009, p. loc. 463)

Both of these definitions provide a view of system broad enough to include the process of

system design and the elements that go into and come out of that process.

The Case for Changing Systems

Our current ways of creating and using systems are stuck in unsustainable dualities. On

the one hand, we have systems based on modern philosophies, architectures, and

technologies. These systems, often created for use in organizations that are centrally

governed through legal entities, assume rational control over data and information, top-down

modeling of enterprise architectures, a separation between design, development,

 10

implementation, and use of the system. In this paradigm, projects to create systems,

according to leading analysts in the industry, keep failing despite more than 50 years of

history and countless methodologies, advice and books (Carlton, 2014, Summary, para. 1).

A key reason for this that I recognize in my own 20 years of industry experience as a

consultant leading the process of systems design and implementation in organizations is the

organisations refusal to address complexity in the business process (Moore, 2015,

Complexity Leads to Failure, para. 1).

On the other hand, we have new media systems based on the networked computer and the

smart phone, like those currently provided by Apple, Facebook, and Google. These systems

have done much to help people outside the modern organization leverage their power by

allowing them to activate their social networks. In September 2015, the Dutch weblog,

Geenstijl, used different social media networks to easily surpass the minimum of 300,000

digital signatures required to enforce a national referendum, which resulted in a "no" to an

association agreement between the EU and Ukraine supported by the Dutch government

already ratified by the 27 other EU country governments. Social media also played an

important role in activating enough people to support the decision of the United Kingdom to

leave the European Union, and in addressing a large enough group of people in specific states

to vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election in the United States. These are

just a few of many examples of how people use IT to share knowledge and become more

powerful in their relationships with traditional power centers like the government. At the

same time, people working in large, centrally governed organizations, like governments and

globally operating businesses, use new media systems to become more powerful in those

complex contexts, for example by analyzing social networks to identify insurgency leaders
 11

and rounding them up to deflate emergent protests (Siegele, 2016) and by embracing cloud

computing, a recent trend that lets people and organizations store and share their

information on the internet instead of on their local computer systems. But in general,

centrally governed organizations remain stuck in a paradigm of control and technological

rationalism and have a hard time adapting to the emerging, networked will of the people.

We are also witnessing the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics in IT with the

event of AlphaGo, an IT system created by Google subsidiary, DeepMind, convincingly

beating the world champion in Go, a strategy game that knows 10250 possible moves, more

than there are particles in the known universe (A Game-Changing Result, 2016) and by the

appointment of an AI system with full voting rights to a management team at the public

Finnish company, Tieto, in October 2016 (Tieto the first Nordic, 2016). In order to beat

the world champion, AlphaGo had to mimic human intuition instead of being able to rely

solely on brute computing power. One reason to appoint AI to the board at Tieto is that an AI

system can process much more data that a human being is able to. The expectation is that AI

will at least add a new and surprising perspective to the management teams conversations

and decision making. We also see robots increasingly able to mimic human behavior, even

improvising music in ways that a human audience finds acceptable (Hoffman & Weinberg,

2011). Even though these highly specialized programs show great promise for the future

capabilities of systems, more generic capabilities of artificial intelligence remain distant, with

robots still tripping and falling during the simplest of human tasks (After the Fall, 2015).

Based on the yearly Loebner prize to test AI in random chats of 10 minutes set up according

to the Turing test, no computer has yet convinced as many humans that the computers are

human as Turing predicted in 1950 (Loebner 2013 Leaderboard Results, 2013; Turing,
 12

1950). Nevertheless, the popular media have presented the changing relationships between

humans and systems in thought-provoking ways, recently in feature movies like HER (Jonze,

2014) and Transcendence (Marter & Pfister, 2014). In politics and media, we find

discussions about the coming structural change to the market for white-collar workers and to

the perils of artificial intelligence for citizens in states with autocratic regimes (The Dawn of

Artificial Intelligence, 2015). The implicit and unproductive duality of people vs.

technology is feeding this frenzy.

The list of innovations that emerge from IT goes on and on, including the Internet of

Things, the sharing economy, big data, 3D printing, smart cities, and virtual reality. The point

of my introduction is not so much to be complete in identifying trends, but to point out that

the gap between the possibilities that IT affords and our capabilities as human beings is

widening. It is also not to choose which side to support: those who believe that IT can never

be as intelligent as human beings, or those who support theories like the singularity theorem

(Technological Singularity, 2016), in which artificial intelligence will surpass human

intelligence with potential unfathomable effects for humanity. There are differing

perspectives on these developments, and there are tensions between the real world

complexities that these developments generate and the ways that people organize to deal with

them. It is my intent to show that, underneath these surface phenomena, there is a deeper

way of nonconscious thought that both frames how we can think about these issues and

tensions that may afford us ways to better deal with them if we were to understand them

better. Peterson (2009), for example, did a great job at surfacing the nonconscious metaphors

that engineers at MIT's media lab used to conceive of Human 2.0 and critically analyzed the

power of these metaphors in attracting finance for their further development. My intent is to
 13

build on such metaphor surfacing and to offer practical ways to work with them more

consciously as we design our systems.

Imagine being able to see how we embody metaphors that nonconsciously determine how

we think about things, and using that knowledge to consciously and deliberately form our

systems in ways that are conducive to our highest potential as human beings. Imagine the

ability to consciously assess the systems design process by surfacing hidden metaphors,

critically analyzing them, and then redesigning them before they become embodied in an

upgraded version of our system. I see great potential, especially if we think about the

importance and influence of IT and other systems in today's world.

Contextual Literatures

To provide a context for the core concepts of metaphor and IT, I will review in more

general terms the literature in systems design, complexity/emergence, and organizational

improvisation. These three literatures situate the more focused topics of metaphors and IT,

and they also help us to situate the case study that provided the data for this study through a

three-year action research project, in which the metaphor of jazz improvisation was a

conscious frame for the design of an IT system that aimed to specifically support the

complexity of human processes in organizations.

The literature in complexity/emergence in organizations provides ways to understand the

non-linear nature of the context and helps us to act into these contexts while preserving their

inherent complexity (Corning, 2002; Kurtz & Snowden, 2003; Mitchell, 2009; Stacey, 2001;

Tarride, 2013). Gaining further knowledge of complexity/emergence will also help us to

understand the crystallization process of metaphors from their volatile form in conversation,

to their fluid form in systems designs, to their coagulated form in actual IT.
 14

The literature in system design, specifically in its recent form of design thinking, aims to

help managers and other nondesigners understand design skills and processes to create

products and organizations that have a better fit with the contexts in which they are used

(Alexander, 1979; Boland, 1978; Buchanan, 1992; Cross, 2001; Johansson-Skldberg,

Woodilla, & etinkaya, 2013; Kimbell, 2011, 2012.; Martin, 2009; Schn, 1983; Simon,

1996). The literature in system design, and in design thinking, provides a context to situate

this study in a broader way of thinking about the design process, which is the central activity

studied in this dissertation. In addition, some of the literature in design thinking has directly

influenced the process and the system developed in the case studied in this dissertation,

particularly the work of Christopher Alexander and colleagues, who aimed to bring life back

to architecture (Alexander, 1964, 1979, 2002; Alexander, Ishikawa, & Silverstein, 1977).

Organizational Improvisation

In addition to the literatures on metaphor and system design, reviews of which are

provided in Chapter 2, I will review the literature in organizational improvisation as a

metaphor for complexity and emergence in organizations and systems. This review provides

us with a way, reflexive of this dissertation's topic, to understand the complexity and

emergence in the contexts that current systems fail to address adequately. This literature also

helps to situate the case study that provided the data for this study through a three-year action

research project in which the metaphor of jazz improvisation itself was a conscious frame for

the design of an IT system that aimed to specifically support the complexity of human

processes in organizations.

The emerging scholarly subject of organizational improvisation (Barrett, 1998, 2012;

Hadida, Tarvainen, & Rose, 2015; K. N. Kamoche, Pina e Cunha, & Vieira da Cunha, 2002;
 15

Weick, 1998) as a field of organization studies provides a context and a metaphor to

reflexively understand the convergence of complexity/emergence in the process of systems

design in an organizational setting like the one studied in this dissertation. The literature in

complexity/emergence in organizations provides ways to understand the non-linear nature of

the context and helps us to act into these contexts while preserving their inherent complexity

(Corning, 2002; Kurtz & Snowden, 2003; Mitchell, 2009; Stacey, 2001; Tarride, 2013). I

think that some understanding of complexity/emergence will also help us to understand the

crystallization process of metaphors from their volatile form in conversation, to their fluid

form in systems designs, to their coagulated form in actual IT. The complexity and

emergence in the design process examined in this study was deliberately guided by the

metaphor of organizational improvisation, and the metaphor of organizational improvisation

was also a deliberate input for the system that was designed. My own seven years of

experience with the metaphor of organizational improvisation in workshops with a jazz band4

were foundational to our choice to design a system with a jazz architecture. I also intend to

use the metaphor of organizational improvisation to reflect from time to time on the process

of the creation of this dissertation itself.

Improvising a Dissertation

A key concept in organizational improvisation is that of minimal structure (Barrett, 1998;

Barrett & Peplowski, 1998). Minimal structure affords coordination around similarities

while leaving enough ambiguity and space for improvisations in which that structure is

4
Between 2005 and 2012, I performed around 25 workshops with a band, jazzinbusiness, that I had
gathered to help leaders in organizations experience the metaphor of jazz improvisation in the contexts of
collaboration, complexity, innovation, design, and other pertinent topics of management. The workshop was
based on Barrett's seven characteristics of jazz improvisation as described in Creativity and Improvisation in
Jazz and Organization (Barrett, 1998).
 16

innovated and changed. The key minimal structure in jazz improvisation is the song. The

song is a coherent whole of chord changes and melody, the basic pattern of which is shared

and assumed knowledge between experienced jazz musicians. This shared knowledge of the

song constrains players to know where everyone should be at any point in time and what

should happen next in a performance. Paradoxically, the minimal structure thereby creates

the conditions for each performer to create unique interpretations, embellishments, and

variations of the song. As long as the musicians create a groove strong enough to hold their

joint departures from the structure, even the structure itself may be subject to change. At the

same time, the identity of the song as a whole will remain coherent in some way and is

integrated into the performance every time it is being improvised.

In this study, I improvised on the minimal structure of the traditional six-chapter doctoral

dissertation: introduction, literature review, method, findings, discussion, and conclusion.

My improvisations on this structure retain this overall form as a movement from question to

answer. It improvises on the structure from Chapter 4 onwards by going through the cycle of

finding, discussing, and concluding several times instead of once. I did not linearly pass

through those chapters each time around but alternated between the perspectives that each

chapter takes. With each turn of the cycle, I alternated between literatures, weaved across

their overlaps, changed methods and techniques, alternated between finding, discussing, and

concluding, and wondered about the questions and the literature again. These alternations

were intertwined with streaks of writing, sharing with my chair and with my committee,

receiving responses that provoked new insights, thoughts, questions, searches, reviews, and

more rewrites. I alternated between taking a scholarly perspective on the process of

designing the system that is subject to this study with a team of co-researchers (an action
 17

research perspective) and my colleague business partners (a practice perspective of the same

people). Interim findings from the dissertation process informed the designing, and that

designing, in turn, provided data for the process of creating the dissertation. As a result of all

this, I find the complex relationship between this minimal structure and the messy process

that followed from it, and that (re)created it, important to highlight.

A benefit of minimal structure is that it helps to provide coherence to the messy process

that creates it. A risk of minimal structure is that it retrospectively hides the process of its

creation to the extent that we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that the process of creation

itself was as structured as its outcome makes it appear to be. Also, the form of the doctoral

student-authored dissertation hides the fact that it is a highly collaborative process between

researcher, co-researchers, and many others involved, either directly or indirectly. This is not

a problem if the structure solely serves to report the outcome. But if, as is the case with this

dissertation, the process of joint creation and its relationship to structural outcomes are

central topics, it does matter. Schn (1963/2011), for example, describes how we

retrospectively only remember the linear transformation we make when we displace one

concept to another. When he learned that polishing is actually a sort of scratching5, the

learning not only changed his concept of polishing but also his concept of scratching. This

learning is not the linear application of scratching to polishing, but a complex interaction

between the two that changes both concepts at the same time, even if the one is directed at

better understanding the other. This direction, in retrospect, orders and filters the process to

reflect its outcome as if we had always known it. We forget the change that happened to

our concept of scratching and remember the change that happened to our concept of

5
In the process of polishing, very small scratches, invisible to the human senses of eye and touch, are
made to a surface, thereby making it appear smoother than before the scratching.
 18

polishing. Possibly, this happens because our focus was on understanding the concept of

polishing, and the concept of scratching was only a means for understanding what we were

focused on, just like we forget about the interactional process of learning between our hands

and the walls of a cave when we use a stick for sensing our way in the dark. Once we know

how to use the stick, we forget about it and it becomes our hand (Bateson, 2000; Polanyi,

1967).

This realization was intuitively important for me at the start of this dissertation process,

and now I can use these examples to support this intuition with concepts from the literature,

displaced in time (I found them after I was supposed to write this, and they are not part of

earlier versions of this introduction) and space (they should appear in Chapter 5, and they do,

but they also appear here to make the point I am using them to make here). With the risk of

overdoing this in mind, I intend to provide reflections on the process of the creation of the

dissertation where it matters to the research question and to show how this dissertation was

improvised in several turns, keeping two major cycles alive in its structural outcome as much

as possible. I hope this will provide insights into the creation process of the chapters you are

about to read and illuminate how the metaphor of jazz improvisation is embodied in the

process and system of this dissertation as an authentic expression of the topic that this

dissertation tries to help us understand.

Looking Forward to What is Coming

From here, this dissertation unfolds in two major turns of literature review, method

explication, findings provision, and findings discussion before arriving at a conclusion and

reflection. The first turn is an action research project that answers the question. The second

turn is an interpretation of the data generated by the action research project that tries at a
 19

second time of answering the research question. As I held off the desire to retrospectively

rewrite Chapter 2 after the dissertation process was complete, the first literature review, in

Chapter 2, may feel thin to those at home in one or more of the literatures reviewed. I like to

think I make up for that in the second cycle of review provided in Chapter 6, which dives

deeply into several of those literatures to help us understand what the data of the case study

examined in this dissertation reflect.

Chapter 3 reports my research approach, methods, and techniques as they were used in the

cycles of data gathering and analysis. Some of the methods I planned to use were

complemented with other methods and techniques retrospectively to highlight the findings.

The research approach for this dissertation was action research (Greenwood & Levin, 2007;

Reason & Bradbury, 2001, 2008), and the specific methods that I used to give form to the

research process were action inquiry (Torbert, 2001, 2004; Torbert & Taylor, 2008), the

coordinated management of meaning (CMM; Barge & Pearce, 2004; W. B. Pearce, 2007; W.

B. Pearce & Cronen, 1980), and conceptual metaphor analysis (Andriessen & Gubbins, 2009;

Rohrer & Vignone, 2012; Schmitt, 2005).

In retrospect, the first turn of this research was true to the premises of action research: an

equal relationship between researcher and research participants, of direct value to the

practical situation of the research participants and aware of the need to select a mix of

complementary methods and techniques to fit the research question, context, and data.

Together with two business partners, I set out on a process to design a new method and

system, and we all knew that we wanted this process to be informed by the leading edge of

theory and research in improvisation, metaphor, and systems design. We also strived to have

the process reflect the improvisational nature of human and organizational processes, and we
 20

wanted the system to embody this improvisational nature. We also aspired for the process to

be researched and reflected in my dissertation in order to contribute to scholarship.

After the first turn of research and system design was completed and the first results could

be discussed, my business partners and I decided to end our business partnership and to move

on as friends. Therefore, we can no longer speak of an action research approach in the

second turn. The way that the second turn formed was guided more by the idea of reflecting

on action and by the process of using the findings to guide research of the relevant literatures

to surface new theoretical understanding and potential practical applications. This approach

is sometimes referred to as grounded theory (Bryant & Charmaz, 2010; Glaser & Strauss,

1999), and even if the process that I followed could be framed that way, I also conceived of it

as the drawing from, and the building of, a case study (Yin, 2009) and as a process of design

science (Van Aken, 2005; Van Aken & Romme, 2009). I rigorously analyzed the findings

using NVivo, a qualitative research software product, to make a detailed picture of our

conversations and their relationship with the design artifacts and the actual method and

system emerging from the designing at every step of the three-year process that generated the

data. I reflected on those results from different perspectives and went back to the literature to

help make sense of the data. This second turn resulted in the outline of a reflective practice

for becoming aware of the power of metaphor in the design of systems. The two turns evolve

after Chapter 3 and are composed of the following chapters:

Chapter 4 reports the key findings, selected for their ability to express the depth and

breadth of findings using the procedure laid out in Chapter 3. These findings illustrate how

we, as a research team, answer the research question ourselves, and it has my reflections on

those answers to illustrate my analysis of our self-reported outcomes.

 21

Chapter 5 reports on the options for discussion that emerge from a complete analysis of

the findings and discusses the three most important options in some detail in the context of

the research question and the findings.

Chapter 6 reflects on the findings and the options for discussion and reports on the second

round of literature review; it dives deeper into the three perspectives on metaphor and

discusses reflection-in-action as a process that we can use to contextualize the design process

of this specific case study.

Chapter 7 takes the outcomes of the second literature review and inductively surfaces a

model that unites the outcomes coherently.

Chapter 8 uses three episodes from the data to test the model to see how it may help us to

make further sense of the research question.

Chapter 9 provides a conclusion and reflections on the validity and limitations of the

study and suggests directions for future research.

 22

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

Introduction

This study seeks to answer the question, How do our joint improvisations with metaphors

become embodied in the systems that we are creating? The our in the question refers to

humanity in general, and to our team of system designers in Product Foundry, an

organization that designs and creates products for sensemaking and collaboration in complex

environments in which I was a partner between 2009 and 20146. This dissertation studies the

case of Product Foundry as our team goes through a full cycle of designing a method and a

system while remaining consciously aware of the working of metaphors in systems design

processes. Specific metaphors that we used to guide our systems design process were jazz

improvisation (Barrett, 1998, 2012), constructive communication (W. B. Pearce, 1989, 2007;

W. B. Pearce & Cronen, 1980), and living architecture (Alexander, 1964, 1979, 2002;

Alexander et al., 1977)7. Even though this study is limited by an in-depth investigation into

the findings of one particular case, understanding more about how metaphors play out in

design is important for human beings in general because we are all system designers in some

aspect of our lives. For instance, when we organize our work with others, when we setup our

workplaces, when we configure our computer systems and software, and when we craft the

agenda for our next meeting, we are all designing systematic solutions for working together

to achieve a purpose. In Product Foundry, we were more specifically tasked with designing

and creating information technology products that will be used by large numbers of users. In

such a particular context, the practice of designing may be more specific and formal than in

6
Product Foundry's predecessors, Coena and PerfectArch, were merged into Product Foundry in 2013.
For purposes of simplicity, I refer to Product Foundry, the current company name to represent the three, which
were cofounded and led by Indranil Bhattacharya, Andr Kampert, and me.
7
For a detailed discussion of these three metaphors as we used them, see Van Middendorp, 2012.
 23

the generic examples above. Nevertheless, both human beings in general and our particular

team work on different parts of the same spectrum where the designing, creating, and using

of systematic solutions is part of everyday life. In order to provide a rich context for

understanding the case study that will provide data to inquire into the research question, I

will review the literature on systems design and focus on the design of IT in particular.

As the overall question guiding this study shows, I presume that metaphor is a key

concept in systems design. Specifically, I assume that the metaphors people use in discourse

while designing systems will become embodied in the system that they are creating. I

believe this is true both for those metaphors that are used consciously and deliberately, and

for those metaphors that are used unintentionally and mostly nonconscious. Therefore, after

reviewing the literature in design, I review the literature in metaphor, specifically the

literature in embodied realism and the literature in generative metaphor theory, to help us

understand the duality between nonconscious, embodied metaphors and deliberately used

metaphors in systems design.

I also assume that the systems design context is complex and that the process of design is

emergent. Therefore, I will review some of the literature in complexity and emergence, and I

introduce the literature in organizational improvisation as a meta-metaphor that helps us

navigate complexity. Reviewing organizational improvisation is also important because it

was one of the key inputs for the design process and outcomes examined in this research

study.

The becoming embodied part of the research question refers to the transition of

metaphors from conversations to systems. The nature of systems design is that ideas that

systems designers talk about transfer from them as persons in conversation with each other to
 24

become embodied in the systems that they create in those conversations, which, as they are

completed, result in disembodied objects out in the world. Specifically, this study assumes

that the metaphors that designers used to generate coherence in their design conversations

about the system will become embodied in what remains after those conversations are

finished and the designers went home. But the becoming embodied process works in the

other direction as well. The metaphors available for designers to use in the design of new

systems became embodied in them as a result of their interactions with others in an

environment with existing systems. And in turn, the system that they are creating will

become available to others to support such interactions, bringing the metaphors they

embodied in the system into the embodied minds of their users. In assuming this, I am

claiming that the freedom of designers to create their systems is both enabled and limited by

metaphors.

System Design

System design has been defined by Fielden as the use of scientific principles, technical

information and imagination in the definition of a structure, machine or system to perform

pre-specified functions with the maximum economy and efficiency (as quoted in Walls,

Widmeyer, & El Sawy, 1992, p. 36), and as a prescriptive theory based on theoretical

underpinnings which says how a design process can be carried out in a way which is both

effective and feasible (Walls et al., 1992, p. 36). The first definition names the inputs

(scientific principles, technical information, imagination), the process (definition), and the

outcomes (structure, machine or system) and the value (specified functions, maximum

economy, efficiency), while the second names the process (how to carry out a design process

according to a prescriptive theory) with a research base that defines a criterion for the
 25

outcomes of that process (effective) and for the costs of producing that outcome (feasible).

This definition promotes the understanding of systems design as a duality between process

and outcomes and gives a first foundational grasp of the concept, but its theoretical focus also

provides a false sense of simplicity and control. In my own experience, systems design is not

as clear cut as Walls et al. have it. Therefore, it makes sense to add some additional

perspectives to do justice to both the huge amount of research on the topic and to complexify

the concept to include more of the real-life challenges that systems design studies.

In a review focused on the process of information systems design, closer to the context of

the case study in this dissertation, Hevner et al. (2004), conceive of information systems

design as a process guided by two literatures: behavioral science and design science. Hevner

et al. say that, In the design-science paradigm, knowledge and understanding of a problem

domain and its solution are achieved in the building and application of the designed artifact

(Hevner, March, Park, & Ram, 2004, p. 75). This definition focuses our attention more on

designing as a process than on its outcomes. Hevner et al. believe that the act of creating the

system generates the knowledge about systems, which they call design science. This

perspective, which is practice-focused, reminds us that the creation process and its outcomes

are intimately intertwined. Still, this perspective implies that the system designers already

know the outcome when they start, and that some linear process of going to that outcome

generates the knowledge about the system. Where Walls et al. focus on systems design

theory, and Hevner et al. focus on systems design application, Aier and Fischer (2011)

combine both perspectives in a review of the progress of system design theories and highlight

the unintended side effects of design as an additional component to take into account in

system design theory and design science. By acknowledging positive and negative side
 26

effects of system design, they include unpredictability in their definition of the concept. The

language of desired and undesired still implies that designers already know what outcome

they want for their process, so this way of defining system design is not helpful if we do not

know this (yet), which is often the case in complex contexts.

In another recent review of design science in information systems, McKay et al. (2012)

argue that the definition as used in information systems was too narrowly focused and should

be broadened to encompass intention; planning including modeling and representation;

communication; user experience; value; professional practice; and [] service (McKay,

Marshall, & Hirschheim, 2012, p. 125). McKay et al.'s contribution is to broaden our

perspective from a focus on the design of information systems to include the broader

perspectives of design in other disciplines, such as product design, architecture, and

organization design. Although it is fair to say that information systems design is complex

enough a discipline in its own right to reward a focused literature, the risk of focused

literature is that it excludes the broader perspective and takes on a life of its own. As I intend

to use the case study of one information system design process to learn more about system

design in a broader sense, following the example of McKay et al., I will introduce some

broader perspectives on system design now.

After emerging in the professions of engineering and architecture, design theories found

their way into the social sciences. By focusing on how the process of system design

influenced the outcomes, Boland and his colleagues shifted our focus from the product of

design to the process of designing, thereby bridging the gap between the behavioral and the

science sides of the design conversation (Boland, 1978; Boland, Sharma, & Afonso, 2008;

Yoo, Boland, & Lyytinen, 2006). More recently, Van Aken, Romme, and colleagues used
 27

design science, specifically the disciplined process of science informed engineering, as an

analogy to instill more pragmatism and empirical rigor into management science (Van Aken,

2005, 2007; Van Aken & Romme, 2009). By crossing disciplines, these scholars contribute

to a more complex view of design as a process that is applied across organizations, including,

but not limited to, the design of information systems. The most striking manifestation of how

design theory and design science found their way into practice can be seen in the current

trend of design thinking (Brown & Wyatt, 2010; Martin, 2009). Through design thinking, the

concept of systems design was adopted by many people outside its traditions of origin and is

now being applied to solve almost any problem8. In a comprehensive and recent review of

design thinking, Johansson Skldberg, Woodilla, and Cetinkaya (2013) review the literature

and conclude that it can be broadly conceived of as designerly thinking and design

thinking. Designerly thinking refers to the academic construction of the professional

designers practice [] and theoretical reflections around how to interpret and characterize

this non-verbal competence of the designers (p. 123), while design thinking is the

discourse where design practice and competence are used beyond the design context [], for

and with people without a scholarly background in design, particularly in management (p.

123). The idea of designerly thinking was introduced by Cross (2001), who argued that the

development of the scholarly discourse in design would benefit from designers taking

responsibility for inductively creating science based on rigorous reflection on their own work

as a discipline. Cross frames the field of design outside of designerly thinking as being

composed of scientific design, design science, and the science of design. According to Cross,

scientific design is the application of scientific knowledge to create or improve existing

8
"Design thinking" generates 5,710,000 results from a Google search on May 1, 2016.
 28

systems, while design science uses scientific knowledge to create a method for the design of

systems, and the science of design focuses on methodologically studying what designers do.

In their comprehensive review, Johansson Skldberg et al. (2013) argue that an

understanding and a taking of position in the designerly thinking conversation is a

prerequisite of scholars using or advancing the field, while design thinking has turned into a

fad with little or no grounding in the scholarly conversation. Despite that, the authors argue

that its popularity does say something about the importance of design in general, and they

make suggestions for how design thinking could create stronger links to the scholarly

conversation in order to preserve valuable concepts for practice once the trend passes over.

Though I could argue that the dichotomy between scholarship and practice that both Cross

and Johansson Skldberg et al. make is itself artificial, I do see how design thinking as a

trend reflects the positivist and ratio-technical premises of its scholarly predecessors, whereas

the frame of designerly thinking embraces a more complex paradigm where practice and

scholarship interweave.

Johansson Skldberg et al. (2013) identify five key scholarly conceptions of designerly

thinking and attribute those five conceptions to what they consider to be the key authors who

have defined those conceptions. They see Simon's (1996) science of the artificial as a

rational discourse focused on creating a positivist view of design where ontological rigor

fosters a factual understanding of the design context and artifacts as a way to advance the

designs. They see Schn's (1983) work with reflection-in-action as a pragmatist discourse

examining the process of designing where designers reflect upon their reflections in order to

consciously use different ways of seeing the design context to advance their designs from

concepts to practical solutions. They see Buchanan's (1992) work with wicked problems as a
 29

postmodern form of looking at design challenges, where design challenges are indeterminate

and require a process of cycling through many different placements as a way to create

enough coherence to move towards a design form. They perceive Lawson (2011) and Cross

(2001) as practice-focused in their observation of what designers actually do and in their

application of psychology to understand how designers use designerly ways of knowing to

advance their designs. Finally, they see Krippendorf (2006) as being focused on the co-

creating and meaning making in the process of designing using a hermeneutic epistemology

as the most important focus for understanding design. The authors argue that Schn,

Buchanan, Lawson, and Cross could be put together as practice-focused discourses, even as

they each have a different take on what practice means, while Simon and Krippendorf are in

contrast to both this focus on practice and in contrast to each other's focus (respectively) on

the systematic rational and the hermeneutic nature of designing. They suggest more

theoretical research is needed to further strengthen the relationships implicit in their

categorization. Nevertheless, their conceptions of designerly ways of thinking are helpful in

positioning this research study in the field. It is interesting to see how their definition of

designerly thinking differs from Cross's (2001) original use of the concept. Cross meant to

contrast the process of designerly ways of knowing with the techno-rational paradigm as

argued for by Simon (1996), while Johansson Skldberg et al. (2013) contrast the

superficially applied with the thoroughly researched.

I consider all five discourses described by Johansson Skldberg et al. to be relevant and

important as part of an understanding of the context for this study. I would argue, though,

that increasingly, serious scholars are focusing attention to design thinking. For example,

Kimbell (2011, 2012), Thompson, Steier, and Ostrenko (2014), and Jornet and Steier (2015)
 30

are but a few examples of scholars doing serious research into the application of design

thinking in multidisciplinary teams where design as a practice is displaced beyond its

traditional context. If we are all designers, as I would like to think, we can study the

occurrence of the trend of design thinking as a designerly way of knowing as well.

Of all the scholars reviewed in this section, Schn addressed the role of metaphor in

design most prominently (1983, 1993, 2011). Schn also argued that we needed to leave the

techno-rational perspective behind if we wanted to really understand the messiness of design

practice. Schn came closest to addressing a gap in the design literature, which hides behind

the word thinking, the embodied, unconscious, and metaphorical nature of experience that

gives rise to thinking.

Metaphor

In the design conversation between me and Indranil, as displayed above, we used several

metaphors that helped us make sense of what we were talking about. Some of these

metaphors were consciously chosen to make sense of a complex subject, while others flowed

into the conversation nonconsciously. Some of these metaphors were deliberately chosen to

achieve a certain effect, while others were non-deliberately used as vehicles for reflection on

the subject under discussion. In this literature review, I will discuss two different ways in

which scholars look at metaphors to make sense of what goes on in this design conversation:

conceptual metaphor and generative metaphor.

Conceptual Metaphor

Building on earlier work by Richards (1936) and Black (1955), Lakoff and Johnson

(1980) opened our eyes to the conceptual nature of metaphors in their theory of

experientialism, which later evolved into the theory of embodied realism (1999), also often
 31

referred to as conceptual metaphor theory (Gibbs, Jr., 2011). Conceptual metaphors help us

to make sense of new experiences by using our knowledge of earlier experiences

metaphorically. For example, when we say, "She is a warm person," embodied realism

would explain our use of "warm" in the sentence by saying that we use our experience of

physical warmth to make sense of the more abstract experience of sympathy or affection.

According to embodied realism, this metaphorical relationship between warmth and affection

emerges when these two experiences happen simultaneously and repeatedly.

For example, when a baby is held lovingly by her mother, both the mother and the baby

experience tangible physical warmth because of the closeness of another human body while

both also experience an intangible feeling of affection. This simultaneous experience of

bodily warmth and affection, which repeats multiple times a day over an extended period of

time, settles into the body and then appears in language as the metaphorical inference

AFFECTION IS WARMTH. Because the experience underlying this process happens

largely outside of conscious awareness, we are not conscious to the way in which this process

shapes our thinking. Nevertheless, it is easy to see how the repeated experience finds its way

into language: Warm personalities are not actually physically warmer than cold personalities,

but they do remind us of the physical warmth that a loving parent provided us with while we

were young9. Because of connections like these in our cognitive unconscious, we

automatically infer what warm means in such instances of everyday language. A few

hundred of such primary metaphors have been identified, including IMPORTANT IS BIG,

GOOD IS UP, SAD IS DOWN, and KNOWING IS SEEING (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p.

50).

9
I acknowledge that, unfortunately, this is not the case for all of us, and that a lack of such normal
circumstances may lead to very different perceptions of the effect of other persons later in life.
 32

Through a process called conceptual blending and integration (Fauconnier & Turner,

2000, 2008; Grady, 2005), we combine primary conceptual metaphors to create complex

conceptual metaphors for comprehensive concepts like love, time, mind, morality, and

causation. The diverse nature of human experience over time provides us with a rich source

of metaphors to help us make sense of abstract concepts. For example, we can make sense of

love by using the complex metaphors LOVE IS A JOURNEY (we each went our separate

ways; love in the fast lane), LOVE IS ENERGY (sparks were flying between them), and

LOVE IS AN ORGANISM (we are growing our love). We make sense of abstract concepts

as important as love by mapping experiences from other domains in infinite ways. Without

such complex metaphors, reasoning about love is almost impossible as the literal aspects of

love only provide us with the skeletal scaffolding of two people and feelings between10

them (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p. 63).

Most conceptual metaphors are conventional, which means that they provide long-time

established ways of sense making for abstract concepts. Conventional metaphors are part of

everyday speech, and because they are so common, they usually do not appear to our

awareness as metaphors. But when we deliberately think about them as metaphors, we can

easily derive the source experience that gave rise to them because the meaning of the words

used in the metaphor still carry their direct linguistic meaning in the source domain. For

example, the two main conventional metaphors for argumentation, ARGUMENT IS WAR

and ARGUMENTS ARE BUILDINGS, each carry the image and meaning of their source

domains. For example, when we say, She attacked my claims one by one, thereby

destroying the foundation of my argument, we can easily derive attacking as an act of war

10
Notice how primary metaphor creeps in to help me explain the literal scaffolding of love.
 33

and a destroyed foundation as something that will not support a building. These images are

mapped as meaning to the argument that we are making sense of by using these conventional

metaphors. Novel metaphors extend a conventional metaphor by using contemporary images

or linguistic constructs. The expression love in the fast lane, for example, is a novel

extension of the conventional metaphor LOVE IS A JOURNEY. By changing the basic-level

category image of the path or way into a highway, we extend our long history of journeying

along paths with the relative recent history of traveling on highways. Conceptual metaphors

therefore have a lifecycle from novel, to conventional, to death. For example, in the word

pedigree, which is derived from the French word for cranes foot, we can no longer see the

source domain of experience as it has lost its direct meaning for most of us11. In the past,

pedigree was used as a conventional metaphor to depict lineage in a family tree with a small

three-forked line (Lakoff, 1987).

Over the course of the past few decades, many have worked with Lakoff and Johnson's

(1999) theory of embodied realism and applied conceptual metaphor theory to gather

evidence for the workings of conceptual metaphors in general (Casasanto & Jasmin, 2012;

Crawford, 2009; Lizardo, 2012) and in a range of different domains, like intellectual capital

(Andriessen, 2004), social capital (Andriessen & Gubbins, 2006), political discourse (Ferrari,

2007), human enhancement (Peterson, 2009), and banking (Vignone, 2011). In addition,

scholars have been developing research methods and techniques for conceptual metaphor

identification and analysis (Andriessen & Gubbins, 2009; Rohrer & Vignone, 2012; Schmitt,

2005). As a result of all this, most scholars now accept that metaphors are as much a matter

of thought as a matter of language.

11
Etymologists, who study the origin of words, might still experience an active relationship between a
word like this and its source domain.
 34

Generative Metaphor

Where Lakoff and Johnson looked mostly at metaphor's embodiment and nonconscious

aspects, Schn (1983, 1993) examined metaphor's deliberate use and generative capacity in

problem setting and problem solving. He illustrates the working of generative metaphor in

an example where a group of product developers tried to address a problem with a synthetic

paintbrush that they were designing. The synthetic paintbrush applied the paint in an uneven

way that the designers described as gloppy. In order to solve the problem, they had been

trying to make the bristles of the synthetic paintbrush better resemble the bristles of natural

hair used in the traditional paintbrush. They noticed that the natural hairs had a way of

splitting at the end that they could not achieve with the synthetic bristles, and as they thought

that this splitting of the natural hairs was what made the paint stick better, they assumed that

they were now stuck with addressing the gloppy way in which the paint came out of their

synthetic paintbrush. Then, one of the product developers made the observation that they

could change their idea of a paintbrush. He suggested that a paintbrush could also be seen as

a sort of pump. This idea of the paintbrush as a pump was explored further, and it turned the

attention of the product developers away from problems with the end of the bristles to the

spaces between the bristles. If a paintbrush was a pump, the spaces between the bristles

would be its channels. Pressing the pump would then have the paint flowing through the

channels. This change in perspective had them look at the similarities and differences

between the channels in the traditional, natural paintbrush and the synthetic paintbrush they

were designing. They then noticed a dissimilarity between the natural and synthetic bristles,

namely that the synthetic bristles bent under a different angle than the natural bristles, and

that this angle hindered the flow of paint through the channels of their pump. By making
 35

synthetic bristles that bent more like natural bristles, the product developers were able to

improve the synthetic brush and solve the problem.

Schn (1983, 1993) calls the metaphor A PAINTBRUSH IS A PUMP generative because

the researchers chose to develop their seeing the paintbrush as a pump beyond the mere

metaphorical notion of a pump to identify specific entailments of the metaphor and apply

those to the design of the paintbrush. The experimentation that resulted from the conscious

effort to extend the metaphor through playing with the analogy between natural and synthetic

bristles is what constitutes the generative capacity of the metaphor. Schn acknowledges the

presence of other metaphors in the situation, and theoretically, like Lakoff and Johnson, he

conceives of metaphors as conceptual. But with his focus on the conscious process of seeing

one thing as something else and then applying the analogy in detail to that one thing to solve

a problem, he distinguishes generative metaphor from conceptual metaphor12. Schn (1983,

1993) wants to pragmatically solve problems by putting our understanding of metaphor to

work.

In one example of how generative metaphor is applied in practice, Barrett and

Cooperrider (1990) tested a generative metaphor to help a group of managers who run a hotel

in a medical organization to use their experience of visiting a very well run hotel in another

state to liberate their creativity in addressing the challenges in their own organization. Where

they were stuck in the problems of their own context before the visit, seeing the other hotel

and discovering the differences in that hotel as a range of possibilities for their own hotel

fundamentally shifted their behavior and helped them to recreate their own organization. In

12
Lakoff and Johnson made one effort to address the creation of novel metaphor in Metaphors We Live
By (1980), where they generate the metaphor LOVE IS A COLLABORATIVE WORK OF ART. After that,
they have not further developed the pragmatic application of metaphor in their academic work.
 36

another example, in information systems design, the office desktop and filing cabinet are

generative metaphors that are deeply embedded in personal computing systems. However,

the desktop metaphor is in need of renewal because of the changes in computing that move

us from the office to the world as a location for mobile computing (Kaptelinin & Czerwinski,

2007). Other views on metaphor as a conscious, reality-generating phenomenon can be

found in Morgan (1998), Pearce (2007), and Gergen (2009). I argue that the generative view

on metaphor can be placed in the broader context of reality as social construction (Berger &

Luckman, 1967; Gergen, 2009; McNamee, 2011). As seen from the perspective of social

construction, generative metaphors, and metaphor-based interventions, provide us with

creative possibilities to make better social worlds. If metaphors are used consciously and

deliberately to foster positive possibilities for action in everyday speech, we increase the

chance for more positive experiences to occur, which in turn may help us to construct more

positive systems.

But using metaphor to generate new realities is not easy. Cornelissen and Kafouros

(2008) provide a review of how scholars have constructed metaphors for the concept of

organization over the decades, and how these constructions, despite being framed in novel

metaphors from a changing society, are still dominated by the primary metaphors of

organization as structures made up of objects. In our own team in Product Foundry, we have

also experienced the persistent power of conventional conceptual metaphors when we

worked with customers, applying the metaphor of organizational improvisation (Barrett,

1998, 2012; K. N. Kamoche et al., 2002; Weick, 1998). In workshops, we experienced the

change potential of this metaphor firsthand when customers, inspired by the experience of

live jazz music, generated new and profound ideas to change their organizations. But when
 37

our customers returned to their organizations after the workshops, the new, metaphorical

ways of seeing their organizations as jazz bands quickly receded into the background to make

room for their habitual concepts of separated functional departments, sales targets, and

reporting structures. The conventional metaphors that they intended to change through the

workshops quickly took over from the novel metaphors. The freshly generated new language

soon faded into the embodied, cognitively unconscious domain of conventional metaphors

and earlier experience.

It seems that a key difference between embodied realist and social constructionist views

on metaphor is that generative metaphors are consciously chosen as interventions in social

reality, while conceptual metaphors mostly work at a nonconscious, embodied level. It is

these conceptual metaphors that seem to sustain our current reality while designers struggle

to use generative metaphors to create new realities.

The metaphors that Indranil and I used in the transcript of our design conversation were

consciously chosen to achieve a certain purpose; A SYSTEM IS A MARS-MISSION and

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS LAND were mostly generative. We knew that by

mentioning them, we invoked images that generated a context that we could act into when

thinking about our work and that allows us to focus what we will think about next to fulfill

certain purposes that we find valuable: creating something way out there that is able to

change current problems with ownership. If we want to go to Mars, and we know that our

current systems can only take us to orbit around the earth, we open up a space in need for

solutions beyond the earth orbit. The metaphor opens up a space that we can start to use to

generate solutions. What will get us from orbit to the moon? What base do we require on

the moon to start us for Mars? What properties of Mars relevant to our mission can we
 38

already describe using our telescopes from earth? What will the view from the moon be like,

and what news will we learn to inform our designs from there? What vehicles would we

need to get there? The Mars mission metaphor also helps us seize the measure of our task. If

we spent five years creating a system for earth orbit or a moon mission, then the next

challenge, when framed in this metaphor, is of a different proportion.

The landowners metaphor is generative in another way. It refers to the landowners in

Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath, who chased the Oklahoma farmers off their land after the

Dustbowl and into a miserable journey fueled by false hopes for new lives in Californias

Central Valley (Steinbeck, 1939). It serves to highlight the possibly adverse parts of the

intellectual property system that we still have today, and that is not that different from the

system that was at play in that great work of art. We want our systems to move away from

how Steinbecks landowners used it, and by using the metaphor in this way, we are reminded

that even though we may care for our clients' concerns regarding ownership, we want to be

sure to not go with their desires all the way. Also, invoking Steinbeck reminds us of how he

himself used metaphor in masterful ways to show the ownership problem. In a passage, the

landowners own the land of the farmers through loans extended by the bank. In talking with

the tenants, the bank is generated as a monster that men can't control:

Sure, cried the tenant men, but it's our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were
born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it's no good, it's still ours. That's
what makes it ours--being born on it, working on it, dying on it. That makes
ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.
We're sorry. It's not us. It's the monster. The bank isn't like a man.
Yes, but the bank is only made of men.
No, you're wrong there--quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It
happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it.
The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it but
they can't control it. (Steinbeck, 1939, p. 38)
 39

By applying some metaphors that would usually be mostly conceptual and nonconscious,

we blend conceptual and generative perspectives on metaphor in our practice. By

improvising with conceptual metaphors, we increase our understanding of some of the

underlying experiences that give rise to these metaphors so that we can construct our system

in ways that help us achieve our purpose. In this dissertation, these two overlapping

understandings of metaphor from different perspectives are the two central theoretical

concepts.

Metaphor and System Design

Scholars have recently begun focusing on the role of conceptual metaphors in design.

Kelly (2014) looked at metaphors for resonance, a term used to describe the extent to which

someone feels attracted to something or someone else, in the design of visual

communication. She interviewed designers and used a form of conceptual metaphor analysis

to identify their metaphors for resonance and their role in communication design. This

application of conceptual metaphor to design can be categorized as a study into the work of

designers approached with the frame of conceptual metaphor theory. In another study,

Andriessen (2008) asked two groups to design solutions for a problem in knowledge sharing

where one group used KNOWLEDGE IS WATER and the other group used KNOWLEDGE

IS LOVE as metaphors. He found that the group using the water metaphor came up with

mechanistic solutions like canals, flushing, and tapping to help fresh water flow from source

to destination again. The group that used love as a metaphor for knowledge wanted to match

people's passions with their tasks and provide more time and space to share knowledge, and

even to swap partners to address problems where knowledge was not cherished, where there

was a lack of trust, and where there were attractive, unmarried, but lonely knowledge singles
 40

in a community of rivalry and forced marriages (Andriessen, 2008, p. 10). In reflecting on

the groups work, participants in Andriessens study who were managers in the organization

preferred the water metaphor, while participants who were employees preferred the love

metaphor. As a result, Andriessen noticed that there may be power differences at play in the

choice and use of metaphor. Casakin (2012) did something similar, and asked students of

architecture to specifically choose metaphors to design different solutions for a new

compound of 10 habitats in an Israeli city. He went a step further than Andriessen and

systemically examined the student's reflection on their use of metaphors. The students

reported that using metaphors consciously helped them to come to innovative designs based

on personal beliefs and to improve analysis and reflection on design problems (Casakin,

2012, p. 341). In these studies, conceptual metaphor theory was deliberately used to define

metaphor.

A recent example of the use of conceptual metaphor theory in design is Van Dijk's (2013)

exploration into what he calls embodied cognition design. After a comprehensive play

between theory in practice in which he designed and tested two prototypes for collaborative

brainstorming systems, he concludes, amongst others, that we must consciously make efforts

to leave the Cartesian metaphor of translating information into physical objects for retrieval,

storing, and representation. This is difficult, as the conventional conceptual metaphors for

computing, such as the distributed computation and representation metaphor, hinder a leap

into the unknown. Finally, Hoshi (2012) reviews the literature in embodied cognition,

conceptual blending, and human computer interaction and suggests an approach to human

experiential design that incorporates bodily experiences into developing interactive

systems (Hoshi, 2012, p. 171). Through these studies, of which there are only a handful to
 41

date, a sense emerges that using embodied realism and conceptual metaphor theory as

starting points for the design of systems generates knowledge that can help us further

understand the pragmatic applications of conceptual metaphors in practice.

There are more studies that use generative metaphor theory in system design than there

are studies that use conceptual metaphor theory in system design. Even though these studies

often acknowledge Lakoff and Johnson's (1999) perspective, they do not take it as a starting

point for their concept of designing. Madsen (1988, 1994) examined the design process of

library systems from the perspective of metaphor breakdown, which he defines as using

metaphor to become consciously aware of a design challenge. By generating, evaluating, and

developing metaphors, designers can set the situation, experiment with different ways of

seeing-as, and then develop the implications of a metaphor in a switch from what he calls

metaphorical design to literal design. Schroeder (2003) describes the design of an

information system where the metaphors used for information move away from the metaphor

INFORMATION IS OBJECTS towards INFORMATION IS RESONANCE.

INFORMATION IS OBJECTS is rooted in a spatial view of the world where information is

physical and objective. By changing the metaphor to resonance, the human subjectivity of

interacting with the information becomes part of the sensemaking about information. This

complements the objective view of information with a subjective, relational perspective on

information. Schroeders elaborate discussion includes both the conceptual and the

generative metaphor perspectives. In an action research project, Oates and Fitzgerald (2007)

asked information system developers to use Morgan's (1998) eight metaphors for

organization as means of exploring differing perspectives on the design context of four

systems development projects. The developers reflected on the effect of doing so and
 42

identified five areas in which they found the use of metaphors especially helpful: to increase

their understanding of the development context in different and complementary ways, to

drive decisions to take specific actions, such as deciding to do something in a particular way,

to decide on producing specific designs guided by the metaphor, to the development process

by invoking reactions from others involved in that process, and to identify ideas in hindsight

that could be taken into follow-up projects (Oates & Fitzgerald, 2007).

The number of research studies examining the use of conceptual metaphor and generative

metaphor in systems design is growing, even if their number at present is still small. Most

studies reviewed developed their own theoretical framework for metaphor in design, either as

a starting point for practice or as theory emerging from the examination of design practice.

There is not much coherence in the approach, methods, and techniques for using metaphor in

design, and there are only a few studies that combine the generative and the conceptual

perspectives on metaphor to understand or guide the system design.

The Case for Deliberate, Conscious, and Transparent Metaphor in System Design

Why should system designers be aware of both generative and conceptual metaphors? In

one of the studies that used Lakoff and Johnson's (1980, 1999) take on metaphors, Peterson

(2009) examined the language of engineers who participated in the MIT media lab's

conference, Human 2.0. This conference explored how the convergence of biotechnology,

nanotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science would help to enhance

human abilities. Conceptual metaphors that were prevalent in the engineers' language were

MAN IS A MACHINE, BRAINS 'R US, MIND IS A COMPUTER, and THE BODY IS AN

INPUT-OUTPUT MECHANISM FOR THE BRAIN. If we want to focus on creating

implants that have to work with a brain, it actually makes sense to generate the brain as a
 43

machine to see where we can fit the implant. And then, when we later want to examine the

effects of living with these implants, we might shift to using a metaphor that generates the

human and social aspects of coping with disability. This would work along the premises of

generative metaphor and design if people could choose and use metaphors consciously. The

research building on the premises of embodied realism, however, shows us that despite

efforts at using metaphors consciously, most of the metaphors we use to reason are deeply

embodied, generating thought and action nonconsciously. Some recent research studies show

that the workings of metaphors through the cognitive unconscious, embodied level is so

pervasive that we could assume the hard work of introducing novel and constructive

metaphors at best hindered and at worst impossible because of the embodiment of metaphors

in our cognition and in our current social systems.

In one study by Larson and Billetera (2013), six different experiments showed that people

who experienced physical imbalance while making a buying decisions made more balanced

decisions than those in a control group who were standing on solid ground while making the

same decisions. It appears that having to actively balance our bodies while making decisions

influences the way in which we make those decisions. In two other experiments by Zhong

and Leonardelli (2008), it was found that thinking about an experience of social exclusion

made people estimate the temperature in a room to be significantly lower than those who did

not think about social exclusion. In a third study, Kille, Forest, and Wood (2013) found that

people who sit on wobbly chairs and at wobbly tables perceive others love relationships as

less stable and would prefer stable psychological traits in potential romantic partners. Morris

et al. (2007) found that students who were asked to make investment decisions based on

agent metaphors, in which the stock market was conceptualized as a living being using
 44

subjective metaphors, made riskier investment decisions and drove up the value of their

portfolio more than students who invested based on stock market news with more literal and

objective metaphors.

What these studies show is that metaphorical concepts in language, whether experienced

through language itself or through other modalities, such as the embodied cognition of

balance or temperature, influence our perception and our decision making. As I assume that

researchers will find more such convergence from psychology experiments building on

embodied realism going forward, we must take seriously the notion that our embodied

metaphors have more influence over our experience than we like to think. We know that

many systems embody metaphors based on worldviews and on science from paradigms that

have shifted. These worldviews and paradigms are persisted by their once generative

metaphors. Over time, we tend to forget the stories that helped establish the system in its day

and age, and with the forgetting of the story, the metaphors shift from being mostly conscious

and generative to being mostly nonconscious and conceptual. Being nonconscious, these

metaphors retain influence on our everyday experience, hindering the establishment of novel,

generative metaphors created to overcome some of the problems in our systems. Therefore, a

conscious awareness of the workings of these embodied, nonconscious, conventional, and

dead metaphors may be a key to the successful application of deliberate, novel, conscious,

generative metaphors in the design of new systems.

In the worst case, metaphors are chosen deliberately to assert power and then disguised to

hide their effect. Barrett and Sarbin look at the metaphor of the war on terrorism and how it

generates action potentials, which in turn lead to the actual entailment of boots on the

ground that try to fight a phenomenon that, they argue, would be much better coped with
 45

through the metaphor of a criminal investigation into terrorism (Barrett & Sarbin, 2007;

Sarbin, 2003). Rohrer and Vignone (2012) uncover the metaphors that bank CEOs used to

defend their role in the recent financial crisis. They find that the systematic metaphor THE

FINANCIAL CRISIS IS A NATURAL DISASTER is widely used to conceive of the crisis.

Financial markets were shocked and collapsed, assets became frozen, houses are under water,

and the government provided a TARP (Temporary Asset Relief Program). Their critical

analysis of the metaphorical entailments of the metaphor shows that by framing the crisis as a

natural disaster, men cannot be held responsible for their actions, because a natural disaster is

out of their control. Even though there is no proof that these metaphors are chosen

deliberately to persuade, it is certain that they have systemic consequences that would be

different if the metaphors were different.

If we want to address some of the structural challenges in our current systems, one way of

doing so would be to become deliberate in our choosing metaphor as a means to generate

new ways of seeing the problems and of generating the solutions in our systems, to become

as conscious as possible of those metaphors, especially the ones hidden in our cognitive

unconscious, and to be transparent about our use of metaphor-as-metaphor in order to afford

those we work with in creating those systems and those that will use those systems to do the

same.

Organizational Improvisation as a Metaphor for System Design

According to the Merriam Webster online dictionary, improvising means

1. to compose, recite, play, or sing extemporaneously.

2. to make, invent, or arrange offhand.

3. to make or fabricate out of what is conveniently on hand. (improvise, n.d.)

 46

The word improvise comes from Latin, meaning unforeseen. Joint improvisation can

thus be defined as to work together to make, invent, or arrange what is unforeseen out of

what is conveniently at hand. As the first definition explains, improvising is often used in the

context of art performance where what is made is composed and recited in an improvised

manner and extemporaneously.

The significance of joint improvisation as a metaphor for systems design lies in its ability

to make practical sense of complexity, arguably one of the most cited challenges facing

systems designers13, and in its growing maturity as a metaphor applied to organizational and

systems design problems by both scholars and practitioners. In addition, its significance for

this particular study lies in the benefit of choosing an explicit metaphor as a guide for the

study when the study itself is about making sense of metaphors in the design process. In our

practice in Product Foundry, jazz improvisation is a guiding metaphor for our approach to

system design. By bringing improvisation itself on stage as a metaphor, it becomes available

for examination and interaction so we can continually critically assess its reflexive influence

on this study.

Complexity, Emergence, and Improvisation

Most scholars would likely agree that complexity is a given. In a recent review of

complexity, Tarride (2013) says that, Complexity seems to be present in all systems; we live

in a complex world, we are complexity immersed in complexity (p. 181). In another review,

Mitchell (2009) frames the study of complex systems as an interdisciplinary field of

research that seeks to explain how large numbers of relatively simple entities organize

themselves, without the benefit of any central controller, into a collective whole that creates

13
A search in Fielding's online library on May 1, 2016 yields 26,354 peer-reviewed journal articles
with the both the terms complexity and system design in their full-text.
 47

patterns, uses information, and, in some cases, evolves and learns (loc. 239-240). The

complex is often positioned as a realm between the chaotic and the ordered (Kurtz &

Snowden, 2003; Stacey, 1995; Tarride, 2013). The complex can not be understood in terms

of stable relationships between cause and effect or consistent relationships between parts and

wholes. The complex is frequently contrasted with the complicated and the simple, in which

the relations between the parts and the whole are knowable or known, and cause and effect

are understood as linear, and repeatable.

Emergence is a term that is closely related to complexity. In its simplest definition,

emergence points to the idea that wholes are more than the sum of their parts. As a process,

it examines how such wholes form from their parts and how these wholes, in turn, influence

the parts from which they evolve. In a review of emergence, Corning (2002) said that [i]f

complexity is currently the buzzword of choice for our newly minted millennium, as many

theorists proclaim, emergence seems to be the explication of the hour for how complexity

has evolved (p. 18). In tracing back the roots of complexity and emergence as scholarly

phenomena, I mostly arrive at the breakthroughs in physics at the end of the 19th and

beginning of the 20th century. In tracing back the roots of emergence, I mostly arrive at the

biological and evolution theories that emerged at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the

20th century.

Complexity tries to address issues with reductionism. Reductionism assumes that

continuing progress in the development of our knowledge and skills will ultimately uncover

the relationships between all parts and wholes. Complexity, on the other hand, assigns non-

reducible meaning to phenomena as they are inherently complex and emergent. I quote
 48

Tarride (2013) at length as he captures the ontological sense of complexity well when he says

that

Complex systems are indecomposable, complicated systems are decomposable; while

complex systems are essentially unpredictable, complicated systems are predictable;
while in the modeling of decomposable systems we can go from the complicated to
the simple through disjunction, in indecomposable systems we go from the complex
to the implex through conjunction. (Tarride, 2013, p. 182)

One challenge with the literature of complexity is that it reflects itself in being complex,

abstract, and, by its very nature, hard to grasp. As we have seen above, metaphors are useful

in helping us make sense of complexity, and improvisation is an often used metaphor for

making sense of complexity (Pina e Cunha & Rego, 2010; Pina e Cunha, Clegg, Rego, &

Neves, 2014; Pina e Cunha & Vieira da Cunha, 2006; Tjrnehj & Mathiassen, 2010).

Complexity theorists Shaw and Stacey displace complexity with improvisation when they

say that

Complex responsive processes of relating are, [] simultaneously processes of

communicative interaction, power relating and ideological evaluation in which
individual selves/identities and the global patterns of the social emerge at the same
time, each forming and being formed by the other at the same time. [] All this can
usefully be understood as improvisational activity. (Shaw & Stacey, 2006, p. 137)

The Metaphor of Organizational Improvisation

In the introductory essay of the special issue on organizational improvisation of

Organization Science, Karl Weick (1998) frames improvisation as a way to understand

creativity and innovation through the complexity of the act of jazz improvising as an antidote

to the planning paradigm, exemplified by the word organization itself, which "denotes

orderly arrangements for cooperation" (p. 543). Although scholars have been interested in

improvisation in organizations for quite a while (see, for instance, Eisenhardt, 1989, 1997;

Weick, 1993; Weick & Van Orden, 1990), it was not until 1998 that the exact term started
 49

appearing in the literature. Frank Barrett remembers a conversation with Weick in which he

asked him if he had ever considered bringing his experience as a jazz pianist to his

organization studies at Case Western (Barrett, personal communications), and in 1995,

Weick, Barrett, and a host of organization scholars and musicians were on stage at the

Academy of Management annual conference in Vancouver to lay the foundations of

organizational improvisation. The appearance of the Organization Science special issue

coincided with two publications by Moorman and Miner (1998a, 1998b), who also looked at

the role of improvisation in organizations. In 2002, the edited volume, Organizational

Improvisation (Kamoche et al., 2002), collected the work done so far, identified key

theoretical aspects of organizational improvisation, and set a research agenda for the newly

emerging field.

The authors in organizational improvisation use the process and the characteristics of

(mostly jazz) improvisation as an analogy that allows dilemmas that otherwise invite either-

or thinking to be balanced as both-and paradoxes. Amongst others, organizational

improvisation looks at structure and flexibility as co-emergent phenomena (Barrett, 1998;

Barrett & Peplowski, 1998; Kamoche & Pina e Cunha, 2001; Zheng, Venters, & Cornford,

2011), at innovation as both a process of micro-level interaction in the small group and a

macro pattern of innovation level (Faia-Correia & Pina e Cunha, 2007), and at strategy as

both planned and emergent (Pina e Cunha & Vieira da Cunha, 2006; Vieira da Cunha & Pina

e Cunha, 2010). In other words, a key contribution of organizational improvisation is to

allow topics that would otherwise be dealt with as dilemmas to be dealt with as paradoxes

that can be held. Also, by focusing on the messy process of activity in real-time

performance, it goes beyond the techno-rational approach to understanding organizations and

 50

systems. Finally, as a metaphor rooted in an embodied form of art, it offers the potential to

probe deeper into our human being than the surface phenomena of observed performance.

These characteristics make it especially suited as a metaphor to coherently discuss both the

process and the outcomes of system design in complex contexts.

Organizational Improvisation and System Design

Since the start of the field of organizational improvisation, applying improvisation as a

way to understand the design of systems in the face of complexity has been a central focus

for many authors. Moorman and Miner (1998a) found that improvisation can have a

substantial benefit on the outcomes of new product development if it is consciously applied

as an organizational strategy where its benefits and risks are balanced in a coherent way and

the context in which it is effective is well understood in the whole organization. Kamoche

and Pina e Cunha (2001) identify 12 minimal social and technical structures in jazz

improvisation and suggest 12 metaphorical entailments for implementing conscious practices

for new product development. According to Kamoche and Pina e Cunha, the social structure

of alternating between soloing and supporting in jazz entails the social structure of revolving

leadership, and the technical minimal structure of the song entails the technical minimal

structure of product concepts and prototypes on which to improvise (2001, p. 751). Zheng,

Venters, and Cornford applied the literature of organizational improvisation to understanding

the case of the development of GridPP, a large distributed computing system, and identified

the concept of collective agility as a way of understanding what they call enacted

emergence, which in turn is based on six paradoxes derived from the literature of

organizational improvisation: learned improvisation, reflective spontaneity, planned agility,

structured chaos, collective individuality, and anxious confidence (Zheng et al., 2011, p.
 51

308). Where these authors focus on improvisation in the systems design process and its

influence on the outcomes, Hoffman and Weinberg (2011) provide one of the few examples

where improvisation itself is embodied in a system, specifically in a robot capable of

improvising music on the marimba together with a human pianist.

This brief review of the organizational improvisation literature shows the power of the

metaphor ORGANIZATION IS IMPROVISATION to help us make sense of complexity and

emergence in general and of complexity and emergence in the development of systems in

particular. But, according to a recent review of the field, "the cumulativeness of research on

improvisation in organizations remains low" (Hadida et al., 2015, p. 437). And, with the

exception of the robotic marimba player, there is no research in organizational improvisation

yet that actually examines the conscious implementation or use of that metaphor itself in

system design practice.

Improvising with Metaphors: Transcending and Including the Metaphor of

Improvisation

If metaphors are a designers power tools, then the metaphor of organizational

improvisation has the potential to be a meta-power tool for designing systems for complexity.

The design space generated by the entailments of improvisation as a metaphor promises ways

to balance many of the paradoxes inherent in the organization of system design. The

conceptual entailments of the metaphor are deeply rooted in a human practice of art that can

be traced back to the tribes of West Africa from which we all emerged (Austerlitz, 2005).

Both as an art and as a practice, improvisation is deeply embodied in our being and our

history. We improvise all the time, and when we allow the metaphorical entailments of

improvisation to become conscious for reflection, we gain a multifaceted perspective for

 52

thinking about the process of designing. As my review of the literature shows, there are not

many studies where improvisation was used as a metaphor to generate a system. In the

process of creating this dissertation, I studied a case where improvisation was consciously

used as a metaphor to guide the process of the designing and developing a method and a

system, and where improvisation was also intentionally used as one of several metaphors to

become embodied in the system being designed.

As embodied realism shows, important abstract concepts always have a spectrum of

different metaphors that we use to highlight (and obscure) aspects of their experience.

Improvisation as a metaphor for the design of systems that help us better deal with

complexity highlights many of those abstract concepts. At the same time, many other

metaphors exist that can be applied to highlight systems design for complexity from other

perspectives. Therefore, in this study, I will focus both on improvisation as a metaphor for

the design of systems that help us better deal with complexity and on the practice of

improvising with metaphors in the complex process of systems design. I will also focus on

improvisation as a metaphor for the process of designing systems and on improvisation as a

metaphor to be embodied in the system that is designed. The research question, How do our

joint improvisations with metaphors become embodied in the system that we are creating?

holds these multiple perspectives.

Summary

System design as a discipline looks at the concept, the process, and the outcomes of the

work of systems designers. This work ranges from the design of tangible physical systems,

like machines and physical structures, to intangible information systems and organizations.

The discipline has transcended its traditional boundaries to include its application to
 53

management science, and in the form of the trend in design thinking to almost every aspect

of life. In a useful overview of the field, the distinction between designerly thinking and

design thinking was proposed as a way to ground a study on designing in the literature. By

choosing Schns work in design as my starting point, I grounded this study in the field of

designerly thinking, and at the same time created a bridge between designerly thinking and

the role of metaphors in the design process.

In the discussion on metaphors in the design process, I made a distinction between

conceptual metaphors and generative metaphors. Conceptual metaphors are largely

nonconscious and embodied as a result of continuous human experience with self, others, and

the environment. Generative metaphors, although conceptual in nature, are always

consciously applied as a way of seeing-as to generate a design space in which the

entailments of the generative metaphor lead to certain design outcomes. I argued that

nonconscious conceptual metaphors often work against the creative possibilities offered by

deliberately used generative metaphors, because nonconsciously used conceptual metaphors

persist hidden and forgotten stories and thereby withhold us from creating sorely needed

systemic changes.

Next, I defined joint improvisation as a metaphor to support the design process of systems

that are meant to help users deal with complexity and emergence, and I reviewed the

literature in organizational improvisation with a focus on the application of that metaphor to

systems design. I concluded that even though improvisation has been used to make sense of

the systems design process in complex and emergent environments, there is no literature

where organizational improvisation was used as a design metaphor for the systems design

process and the systems design itself. I argued that greater consciousness of otherwise
 54

unconscious metaphors increases the generative design space, and that improvisation is the

generative metaphor on which such a practice could be based. In applying the metaphor of

organizational improvisation as a design metaphor to increase our consciousness of the

nonconscious metaphors, both the metaphor of improvisation itself, and the process of

improvising with metaphors, are important to take into account.

 55

CHAPTER THREE: METHOD

This study explores how our joint improvisations with metaphors become embodied in the

systems that we are creating, and this chapter outlines how I studied one case where

improvisation was used as a metaphor to consciously guide and shape the development of a

new design method and a new IT system. In this case, the designers of the new method and

the new system were consciously aware of the role of metaphors in systems design during the

research process. The case is the creation of Embodied Making and Business Elements, a

method and a system to support the design and development of systems that are better able to

address complexity than currently available business systems. The study covers the period

between 2011 and 2014 in which the idea for Embodied Making lead to its realization as a

documented method and to Business Elements as an IT system supporting the application of

the method. Embodied Making was created by Indranil Bhattacharya, Andr Kampert, and

myself, in close cooperation between our three firms while we worked on consulting projects

with clients in the same period. The creation of Embodied Making was also a conscious

effort to integrate the knowledge that I developed in my PhD program with Fielding

Graduate University.

An Action Research Approach

We used action research as an approach to answer the research question. According to

Reason and Bradbury,

A primary purpose of action research is to produce practical knowledge that is useful

to people in the everyday conduct of their lives. A wider purpose of action research is
to contribute, through this practical knowledge, to the increased well-being
economic, political, psychological, spiritualof human persons and communities,
and to a more equitable and sustainable relationship with the wider ecology of the
planet of which we are an intrinsic part. (2001, p. 2)
 56

Later, they add that action research is not so much a methodology as an orientation to

inquiry (Reason & Bradbury, 2008, p. 1). Greenwood and Levin point out that there are as

many definitions of action research as there are movements applying it. Nevertheless, they

say that all action research seems to jointly express three patterns: First, action research is

research with people, not research on people. This means that the knowledge and skills that

the researchers bring to a study is equally valuable to the practical knowledge that other

research participants bring to the study. Second, action research must produce knowledge

that is both useful to the people participating in the study in their everyday life, and useful to

the research discipline itself. Third, action research does not prescribe specific methods and

techniques but requires researchers to select and use the best method, or mix of methods, to

obtain answers to the research questions (Greenwood & Levin, 2007).

Defined in this way, action research fits well with the personal and organizational goals

that drove this study. As practitioners, Indranil, Andr, and I desired to fundamentally

redesign information systems in order to contribute to a better social world. For this we felt

we needed to develop our practice starting from the leading edge of research. As a result of

the process of making leading edge knowledge available in and through our system, we want

to advance our (and others) general knowledge by sharing what we have learned in the

process. Furthermore, the gaps addressed in the literatures reviewed mostly showed the need

to better understand the practical consequences of nonconscious metaphor use in systems

design and the application of the metaphor of organizational improvisation to the design of

systems. As a result, the study is primarily focused on how these concepts emerge in practice

and what practices can be developed to more consciously apply the research-theoretical

concepts in everyday organizational reality. Action research seemed a well-fitting approach

 57

as it allowed the systems design team to shift perspective, becoming a research team

reflecting on the design of their system to improve its practical application and set it in the

context, and allowing it to benefit from, leading edge knowledge. It also allowed me, as a

member of the design team, to be the lead researcher driving the study as part of my PhD

program and to be an entrepreneur helping to balance the research teams needs with the

practical everyday organizational life needs of the design team.

Action Inquiry as a Method

In the action research discourse, many methods were developed that made action research

practically applicable in a research context. Ludema, Cooperrider, and Barrett (2001)

developed appreciative inquiry as a way to turn our focus from problems to positive

potential, and Schein (2001) proposed clinical inquiry as a way to emphasize the research

participants self-capability for data gathering in research settings. These are only two

illustrations of dozens of different ways in which action research has been applied.14 For this

study, I chose to work with action inquiry, an action research method developed by Bill

Torbert and a community of colleagues over the course of two decades (Chandler & Torbert,

2003; Fisher, Rooke, & Torbert, 2003; Torbert, 2001; Torbert & Taylor, 2008). Action

inquiry is a method that interweaves first, second, and third-person perspectives on the

research context, which is conceptualized as consisting of four territories of experience:

outside events, our own sensed performance, action logics, and intentional attention

(Torbert, 2004, p. loc. 209).

Action inquiry fits well with this studys research question because its structure provides

three conscious perspectives for data gathering and analysis that correlate with the research

14
For an extensive overview of action research and action research methods, see Reason and Bradbury
(2001, 2008).
 58

questions shifts in perspective from second person (our joint improvisations; we are

creating) to third person (metaphors; the system), and the process by which the one becomes

the other (becoming embodied). Action inquiry also helped with maintaining a conscious

reflexive awareness of my two roles while participating in the research. In addition, action

inquiry provides ways to understand how our perspectives co-arise in the complexity of

every lived moment. Because of this, action inquiry also correlated well with the

improvisation metaphor that drove this study because, in improvisation, the minimal

structures of a song also co-arise in the moment with the unique improvisations of the

musicians playing those structures. Furthermore, action inquiry is inspired by integral theory

(Esbjrn-Hargens, 2006; Wilber, 2000, 2006) in how it accounts for the big three

perspectives of beauty, goodness, and truth through its research perspectives on first-person

aesthetic phenomenal experience, second-person interdependence, and third-person

objectivity. Through this, action inquiry embodies action researchs prerequisite to mix and

match methods that fit the research context. Action inquiry also fits with the integral

methodological pluralism that informs me as a researcher. Finally, action inquirys

perspectives also resonate with embodied realisms starting point that reason is a process that

arises from continuity between self (first person), other (second person), and environment

(third person).

Figure 1 is an adaptation and interpretation of action inquirys four territories of

experience and their related perspectives. It illustrates where each starts and shows how they

interweave into a complex, co-arising in each moment of lived experience. It demonstrates

ways in which we can choose to shift our attention from one perspective to the other, and
 59

how we can weave perspective after perspective into a holistic understanding of the whole

(ABCD, and the space around and in between created by the dashes).

Figure 1. Action inquiry's meshing territories of experience and how its three perspectives
play out in each territory.

The Case of the Development of Embodied Making and Business Elements

This research study focuses on the design process and outcomes of the design method

Embodied Making and the IT system Business Elements between August 2011 and July

2014. Embodied Making and Business Elements were developed by Indranil Bhattacharya,
 60

Andr Kampert, and myself. In August 2011, I was both a partner and an investor in Coena,

a software startup founded by Indranil in which we created and sold a supply chain

collaboration IT system. The idea for this research project emerged after we implemented

Coena for Versvandekweker, a network of 80 farmers working together to sell to consumers

directly from their greenhouses. We had asked Andr to help us with the technical

implementation of the project, and together we evaluated the results of the project in the

summer of 2011. One decision that came out of our evaluation was to document our way of

working as a new method for the design and development of IT systems to further improve

the quality of our products and of the way of working in our organization. We were

interested in using this method to develop a new system for the support of processes in

organizations that would do justice to the complexity and messiness of real-life processes.

Initially, Indranil and I met on Friday afternoons with an open agenda to share stories

about our experiences with the design and realization of organizational and information

systems in large and complex environments. After a few of these sessions, the first outlines

of a method emerged. Soon, we asked Andr to join our Friday afternoon sessions and

Embodied Making was developed further. We started applying Embodied Making in our

consulting assignments and in designing the IT systems for our own ventures. Indranil

applied embodied making in the development of a new enterprise architecture for one of the

worlds largest telecommunication companies, Andr applied embodied making to the

development of the IT systems of an internet authority in the Netherlands that supports the

functioning of the internet in Europe the Middle East and Africa, and I applied the method in

organizational and systems designs ranging from software startups to enterprises and non-

profits in education and healthcare, and in a global market leader in enterprise social
 61

networking software. We developed a number of ventures ourselves in which we applied and

tested the method to see its potential to generate systems that embody the complexity of the

challenges they were supposed to meet, like a redesign of the contact list, CarMindz, a

secondhand car marketplace in India, and the design of a real-time telco. During all this, we

continued getting together on Fridays to further develop Embodied Making as a method.

To document the method and to support its application in design projects for our client

and ventures, we used collaboration software from Google, but we soon realized that the

large amount of data we generated in our method was not well suited for linear display. In

the spring of 2013, we decided it was time to develop an IT system that would support

Embodied Making in a more structured and fitting manner that would allow us to extend the

premises of the method to business systems. This marked the start of the development of

Business Elements.

By July 2014, Embodied Making was a documented method15 and Business Elements

could be used as an IT system to support working with the method16. Over the course of the

period between August 2011 and July 2014, we had recorded most of our Friday design

sessions. We had all design documentation and outcomes that we created as part of the

process available. This made the development process of Embodied Making and Business

Elements a rich data source for this case study because we could examine our joint

improvisations with metaphors while designing the system, and we could examine the ways

15
At the time of editing, Embodied Making as it was further developed by Product Foundry since 2014
is available at http://www.embodiedmaking.org/
16
At the time of editing, Business Elements as it was further developed by Product Foundry since 2014
is available at http://www.embodiedmaking.com/
 62

in which we as designers made sense of how some of those metaphors became embodied in

the Business Elements system that we created.

Figure 2 below visually displays the timeline of the development of Embodied Making

and Business Elements. It shows the occurrence and the duration of key episodes on three

levels of our design and development process. On the bottom, it names key episodes in our

design conversations. In the middle, it names key outcomes of the design conversations in

the systems development process such as design artifacts, usable Embodied Making

documentation and Business Elements prototypes, bta versions, and the first full working

version of the Business Elements IT system. On the top, it displays key episodes of

reflection on both the design conversations and the systems development outcomes.
 63

Figure 2. Timeline of key episodes in the Embodied Making and Business Elements design
and research process.

The numbered red circles serve as a guide to the description of the process below and

indicate the coherence between key episodes in the process:

1. The first design sessions, resulting in the name Embodied Making, represented in

documentation by circles and squares and by the first emergence of a river as a

metaphor for processes.

2. The "Heraclitus" breakthrough moment in which we could suddenly conceive of

the river as a metaphor to integrate human experience and representations of

experience in one whole.

 64

3. The adoption of Christopher Alexander's idea of forces into the river metaphor

and experiments with that metaphor in the design of the method.

4. A longer period of applying and developing Embodied Making in client projects

and in our own ventures.

5. The start of the design of a system to support Embodied Making and the choice of

hexagons as a key form to design that system.

6. The extension of the scope of that system to include business processes in

addition to supporting Embodied Making and the emergence of the name

Business Elements. First system prototypes.

7. The use of Embodied Making as the design for a game in a workshop with

farmers and the visual redesign of Business Elements; first bta system.

8. Business Elements version 1.0.

9. Reflections on the metaphors in Embodied Making and Business Elements and

identification of breakthrough moments for those metaphors.

10. Sensemaking sessions based on first data analysis.

The eight episodes leading to the release of the first version of the system will be

discussed now. Episodes 9 and 10 are further discussed in the next section, Research Design.

1. The First Design Sessions

In our first design sessions, we shared stories about our experience with systems and

expressed our desire to create a system that would closely support the immediate human

experience of processes. In reflecting on the first sessions, we decided to distinguish

between immediate human experience and representations of experience. We also

 65

distinguished between the process of realizing outcomes and living with the outcomes as a

process. Indranil documented the results of these first sessions in the diagram displayed in

Figure 3 below.

Figure 3. First visual representation of Embodied Making. In this diagram, the key forms to
understanding the case study are the circles and the squares; the text of the diagram is not
important to the case study as presented here.

We chose a circle to represent immediate experience and a square to represent

representations of immediate experience. Inspired, amongst others, by the work of Pearce

and Cronen, and the global community of scholars working on the communication theory,

the coordinated management of meaning (CMM), we chose story as an interface between

 66

immediate experience and representations of experience (W. B. Pearce, 1989, 2007; W. B.

Pearce & Cronen, 1980). In these early sessions, we talked about a river as a metaphor for

processes: A PROCESS IS A RIVER. We were inspired by rivers from philosophy

(Heraclitus, 2003) and literature (Hesse, 2008). However, we were not so happy with the

dominance of the natural and linear entailments of that we perceived in the river as a

metaphor. We liked the notion of a process moving from A to B, like a river that flows from

the mountains to the sea, and we also saw value in a metaphor from nature, but we were

struggling to apply the idea of a river to systems in the same way that Hesse could make a

river work for Siddhartha. If we left human nature out of the river, it would be a more

natural replacement for the conveyor belt metaphors already embodied in the existing process

management systems we were meaning to redesign. We missed the human element in the

river, but we did not know how to address it.

2. The "Heraclitus" Breakthrough

We achieved a breakthrough on September 26, 2011 when we were on the Mont Blanc for

a team-building event with our software development team from Romania. The visual

designer on that team, who had studied philosophy, told us that Heraclitus may have meant

that the man stepping into the river not only changes the flow of the river, but that the flow of

the river also changes the man. Both change in their mutual interaction, the man by now

having the experience of having stepped into the river, and the river as it has flown with the

man. Where before Indranil and I had made sense of the river only from the mans

perspective, we could now see the man from the rivers perspective as well. This helped us

realize that the river metaphor, taken this way, could cohere the complex interaction between

humans and systems that we were looking for. We continued playing with the river as a
 67

metaphor for the design of Embodied Making in our sessions, now conceiving of it as A

PROCESS IS A HERACLITEAN RIVER.

3. Alexander's Forces

On November 25th, we achieved a second breakthrough. In earlier talks, Indranil had

suggested that we would use the work of Christopher Alexander (Alexander, 1964, 1979;

Alexander et al., 1977) as an inspiration for Embodied Making, but we were struggling with

applying his ideas in a practical way. Then Indranil shared a video he found about how 37

Signals, a software company, applied Alexanders work in their design process17.

Figure 4. 37 Signals's Ryan Singer presents how he uses Alexander in his design method.

17
See http://vimeo.com/10875362
 68

Their practical way of working with Alexander evolved around his ideas of context, form,

and forces. Alexander talks about identifying the forces that shape a design context and how

those forces should be balanced in the form of the design. In Notes on the Synthesis of Form,

Alexander (1964) resolves more than 140 forces into patterns for the design of an Indian

village. We were struggling with how to move from Alexander's long, linear lists of forces to

a synthesis in form. The way 37 Signals's Ryan Singer represented the forces in the context

around a design challenge was a great way to visualize forces, but the relative small numbers

in his example did not do justice to the larger numbers Alexander used and that we

anticipated using. Also, the way 37 Signals used the forces correlated strongly with the

concepts and heuristics of logical force in communication as developed in CMM, further

strengthening the coherence between the theories we were trying to bring into Embodied

Making (Cronen, Pearce, & Snavely, 1979). But the idea of 37 Signals, combined with the

river metaphor, provided us with the idea to organize the forces as streams in the river. As a

result of this, we moved from the metaphor A PROCESS IS A HERACLITEAN RIVER to

the metaphor A PROCESS IS A HERACLITEAN RIVER OF FORCES.

At this point, we had started a project that we used to test Embodied Making in practice.

The idea was that we would redesign the contact list in a way that fitted the ideas of

Embodied Making. We had identified around 60 forces in the context of contact

management, a selection of which is displayed in Figure 5 below. We used these to test out

the working of our new metaphor.

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Figure 5. Selected forces, F(x), from the design context of a contact management system.
 70

On December 1, 2011, we each worked on making a river of forces from the selected

forces from the context of contact management in Figure 5 above. The next day, we

compared the outcomes of this exercise, which are displayed in Figure 6 and Figure 7 below.

Figure 6. Sergejs paper river of forces.

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Figure 7. Andrs digital river of forces.

4. Applying and Developing Embodied Making

After this session, we started applying Embodied Making in our own product

development, our own ventures, and in our paid consulting work for clients. We applied

Embodied Making with startups and enterprises in oil exploration, education, healthcare,

software, and agriculture. We were happy to see early adoption of our ideas with a large

client in telecommunications who provided us with generous space for the application and

development of our emerging method. Many of the ideas in Embodied Making were

developed in concert with that first adopter, some of which were published (Bhattacharya &

Hartges, 2012) and presented (Van Middendorp, 2012). We kept getting together every
 72

Friday to further develop Embodied Making. The method at that point consisted of several

steps: 1. Gathering and documenting stories and anecdotes from the design context; 2.

Surfacing the forces from the stories and the design context; 3. Generating a metaphor to give

coherence to the solution space; and 4. Shaping solutions and solution patterns that balance

the forces elegantly.

There was no specifically developed IT system to support working with Embodied

Making during this period; therefore, we used easily available collaboration systems like

Google Sites to share the Embodied Making documentation and the information generated by

the application of the method, and we used designer tools like Microsoft Visio and Adobe

InDesign to visualize stories, forces, metaphors, and solutions. A few examples of Embodied

Making artifacts that were created in this "manual" period are displayed below.

Figure 8 shows a page from a Google Site from a venture to develop a secondhand car

marketplace in India with the working name AutoVenture. On the page, we see a

navigation column to the left that shows the different sections of the site. The content on the

page, on the right, shows several forces interactions with excerpts from stories from which

those forces were derived around force number 1: "The next car is the dream car. These

force interactions provide an analysis of a part of the river of forces for this car marketplace.
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Figure 8. Some force interactions in the river of forces of an online car marketplace in India.

Figure 9 below shows the result of putting the forces for contact management on a poster

that represents a hotel lobby. For the project in which we redesigned the contact

management system, we used the generative metaphor A NETWORK OF CONTACTS IN

AN APPLICATION IS A COMMUNITY OF PEOPLE GATHERING IN A HOTEL LOBBY.

We each created an instance of that metaphor that resonated with our own experience. In my
 74

case, I chose the Fielding community gathered in the lobby of the Fess Parker Double Tree

resort in Santa Barbara, CA. The yellow sticky notes represent hotel lobby structures, such

as the entrance, the reception desk, the concierge, the caf, the lounge area, the gift shop, the

elevators, and the staircase. The green sticky notes are the forces from the contact

management context analysis applied to the generative space of the hotel lobby metaphor.

For example, as an instance of force 11 from the analysis, which reads, "Preference to be

contacted in a specific manner," my design says, "with Fielding folks, I prefer to use my .edu

address."

Figure 9. Force interactions for contact management framed in a metaphorical hotel lobby.
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5. First Sketches of an Embodied Making System

The manual period provided us with a lot of experience in applying Embodied Making.

We used that experience to refine the method, but the tools we used to support Embodied

Making were increasingly in our way. In some projects, we identified up to 500 forces, and

working with linear lists and manual comparisons became tiresome. We also felt that the

ways in which we were using Embodied Making were now stable enough to warrant its own

IT system. On June 7, 2013, Indranil, Andr, and I started thinking about a system to support

Embodied Making. Andr suggested the form of a hexagon as a way to capture and display

stories, forces, and solutions. Together, these hexagons could form an infinite canvas to

support the application of Embodied Making. We each went home to think about how such

forms could support the method. On June 14, 2013, we got together again to compare our

notes. The figures below show the diagrams that Indranil, Andr, and I came up with for that

session. We thought that Andrs hexagon diagrams, as shown in Figure 13, were best fit for

capturing the river of forces metaphor, and we chose to further develop his idea.
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Figure 10. Sergej's hexagon ideas and a short analysis of forces for Embodied Making itself.

Figure 11. Indranil's application of hexagons to organize solutions for the Dutch agriculture
project.
 77

Figure 12. Andr's first hexagon and octagon try-outs.

Figure 13. Andrs hexagon design that we selected for the Embodied Making IT system.
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6. Embodied Making Prototype and the Birth of Business Elements

We tasked our newly formed software development team in India with the creation of a

prototype system, and in October 2013 the whole company got together in Valencia, Spain,

for a few days of teambuilding. In one of our workshops, Andr and the Indian team

presented the first prototype of the Embodied Making system which, at that time, looked like

Figure 14 below. The prototype was based on an infinite canvas on which you could put and

organize stories forces and solutions as hexagons. The system addressed a number of the

issues we had with the manual Embodied Making: It allowed us to organize Embodied

Making artifacts visually, it had no limits as to the amount of information we could put in one

canvas, and it allowed the easy display of content.

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Figure 14. Embodied Making system prototype October 2013.

In August, we started developing the process support IT system that we originally wanted

to make, and for which we had first developed Embodied Making as a method. Indranil had

come up with the idea of Business Elements as a metaphor for a business system that would

allow each instance of information to have a unique form based on its life as an instance in

the system. The analogy with the periodic table of the elements, which allow any existing

object to be a unique instance, but which is always based on a finite set of molecules,

Business Elements would allow every product, person, interaction, and so on in an

organization to have a unique form represented in the data of the supporting IT system.

There is more to this, but for the purpose of this dissertation, it serves to say that as one

design artifact for the creation of Business Elements, Indranil suggested a particle language
 80

based on the ontology of John Sowa, a knowledge engineer (2000). These particles are

shown in Figure 15 below.

Figure 15. Business Elements particle language.

After some experimentation with this particle language, we decided to start developing the

first business elements product and person, and we decided that the IT system supporting

Embodied Making would be the same IT system supporting Business Elements. The process

of designing products would then be on the same canvas as the information about actual

products, thereby creating an integration between the method and the IT system.

7. Embodied Making as a Game and Redesigning the IT System

There were quite a few technical and usability issues with the prototype, so we decided

we would not use this version of the system with clients. Instead, we asked our newly hired

designer in the Amsterdam team to make a new design for the IT system that would serve as

the basis for the actual product. At the same time, we were applying Embodied Making as a

method to create a game for workers in the Dutch greenhouse sector. This game would be

used to let teams in greenhouses create solutions for operational problems themselves under

the guidance of a gamehost (their manager). Our new designer wanted to understand

different ways in which we were using Embodied Making, so he went with me to the

workshops with the farmers. In the workshops, I used Embodied Making as a paper
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prototype that can be played on the table. Figure 16 is a picture that we took at one of the

workshops. It shows one story (S025) with several forces [F(x)], and three solutions [C(x)]

on the table.

Figure 16. Outcomes of Embodied Making workshop with farmers.

Around the same time, our designer came up with the redesign of the IT system

supporting Embodied Making and Business Elements. Figure 17 below shows the

redesigned bta18 of Embodied Making.

18
A first working version of a system is often called a bta to indicate that it can be used, but that it
will still be rough around the edges.
 82

Figure 17. Embodied Making bta version after redesign (Copyright Product Foundry).
Screenshot taken from embodied making on December 5, 2013. Reprinted with permission.

8. Version 1.0 of Business Elements

Under the guidance of Andr, the bta was re-engineered from the bottom up to arrive at

the first fully working version of Business Elements in the spring of 2014. This version

supported working with Embodied Making and the first business elements of Product and

Person. Figure 18 below shows a screenshot from the working IT system displaying data

from the Embodied Making workshop with the farmers as discussed above.
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Figure 18. Business Elements system with Embodied Making results of the farmer's river of
forces (Copyright Product Foundry). Screenshot taken from Business Elements on July 5,
2014. Reprinted with permission.

Research Design

Research Team and Roles

In the spirit of action research, we conceived of ourselves as co-researchers and practicing

business partners at the same time. The research team and the system design team were the

same three people acting in different roles. I think it is fair to say that Indranil and Andr

identified more with their roles as business partners and members of a system design team

than with their roles as members of a research team. For them, more so than for me, the

research perspective on the design process was a means to the end of creating the design

method and the IT system.

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For all three of us, it was paramount that leading edge knowledge should inform the

design of the method and the system, but for me the whole process was also a means to

creating my PhD dissertation. The knowledge coming to the system through the PhD

program was more than welcome, but many of the formal requirements for the creation of a

PhD dissertation were not as valuable to them as they were to me. Nevertheless, because

both Indranil and Andr knew the PhD program was also important to me personally, they

gracefully committed to co-creating the dissertation and to applying the outcomes in the

creation of Embodied Making. To manage this complex balancing act between the

requirements of practice and the requirements of research work, I took the role of lead

researcher in the research team. In that role, I performed as a facilitator for catalyzing the

knowledge from the PhD program into Embodied Making. During this process, we

frequently reflected on how the research and the practice were informing and helping each

other and on how we could improve on this.

After July 2014, our relationships changed because I decided to leave as a partner in

Product Foundry, the organization in which we developed Embodied Making and Business

Elements together from September 2013 to July 2014. The research team was dissolved and

all further analysis of the data, discussion of findings, literature review, and concluding were

solely performed by me.

Role of the Dissertation Committee

Over the course of the creation of this dissertation, I met with my committee seven times.

In these meetings, different versions of the emerging dissertation were discussed and the

formal deliverables were reviewed. Often, in these meetings, dilemmas emerging from the

tension between research and practice were discussed and ideas were conceived for how to
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deal with them. I experienced my committee as an extended research team that influenced

the form that this study took in significant ways. Rather than leaving this role in the

background as inherent to the creation of a dissertation, I highlight several points in which

the committee's feedback has significantly influenced the contents or form of the dissertation.

Research Process

The data gathering and analysis for this study were performed in the following way:

1. Lead researcher gathered and organized 2.5 years of recorded design session,

design documentation, design artifacts, and a finished system during the design

and development of Embodied Making and Business Elements.

2. Research team identified metaphors embodied in the Embodied Making design

artifacts, method documentation, and finished system and recollecting Embodied

Making design meetings and breakthrough moments19 in those meetings for the

metaphors identified (episode 9 in Figure 2).

3. Lead researcher transcribed the metaphor identification session, listened to the

identified sessions, created indexical notes for metaphor breakthrough moments in

those sessions, highlighted those moments that fit the research teams

recollections, and suggested several breakthrough moments for reflection.

4. Research team chose one specific breakthrough moment as a starting point for

analysis.

5. Lead researcher transcribed and analyzed the chosen breakthrough moment for its

improvisational dynamics and its generative and conceptual metaphor use.

19
While performing this procedure, my good friend and fellow scholar, Romi Boucher, was working
on her dissertation on breakthrough moments in design (Boucher, 2014). Romi's work has influenced me
profoundly but was not finished before we made these steps, so I did not have the benefit of using her work to
inform me formally.
 86

6. Lead researcher gathered and organized related design artifacts and systems

components generated from the breakthrough moment as data for further analysis.

7. Research team reflected on the analysis, the design artifacts, and the system

(episode 10 in Figure 2).

8. Lead researcher transcribed the research teams reflection sessions.

9. Lead researcher performed an initial pilot study analysis to test and refine the

method.

10. Research team, dissertation committee reflected on the results of the pilot study

and recommended ways for further analysis going forward.

11. Lead researcher used NVivo20, a software application that supports academic

research, to code and analyze the metaphor identification session, breakthrough

moment, design artifacts, system components, and reflection sessions.

12. Lead researcher used NVivo to identify and code the research teams own findings

and discussions about the research question.

13. Lead researcher used NVivo to analyze, identify, and code ways to further discuss

the research teams findings and discussions in the light of the literatures reviewed

in this dissertation.

14. Lead researcher used NVivo to write up and organize his own findings.

15. Lead researcher used NVivo to identify relevant emerging options for further

discussion.

20
NVivo is software that supports qualitative and mixed methods research. It is designed to help
researchers organize, analyze and find insights in unstructured, or qualitative data like interviews,
open-ended survey responses, articles, social media and web content: http://www.qsrinternational.com/
 87

16. Lead researcher chose options for discussion that related best to answering the

research question.

17. Lead researcher wrote first full draft of dissertation.

18. Dissertation committee provided suggestions for ways to further discuss findings,

to further structure the dissertation, and for reviewing additional literature

relevant to the emerging research findings.

19. Lead researcher reviewed additional literature.

20. Lead researcher analyzed and modelled the findings from the discussion and the

additional literature.

21. Lead researcher tested the emerging model with relevant episodes from the data

and submitted the second draft of the dissertation.

22. Dissertation committee provided feedback on second draft dissertation.

23. Lead researcher wrote conclusions and reorganized the dissertation structure to

make it more accessible.

From Step to Stepping

The conceptual metaphor that gives coherence to the previous section is what Lakoff and

Johnson (1999) call the location event-structure metaphor. This conceptual metaphor frames

long-term, purposeful activities as journeys in which

States Are Locations (interiors of bounded regions in space)

Changes Are Movements (into or out of bounded regions)
Causes Are Forces
Causation Is Forced Movement (from one location to the other)
Actions Are Self-propelled Movements
Purposes Are Destinations
Means Are Paths (to destinations)
Difficulties Are Impediments To Motion
Freedom Of Action Is The Lack Of Impediments To Motion
External Events Are Large, Moving Objects (that exert force). (Lakoff & Johnson,
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1999, p. 179)

The metaphor emerges in the "way in which" the analysis was performed and in the "23

steps" taken on that way to reach the final conclusion. The strength of the journey metaphor

is that it helps us keep track of long-term activities and structure them in a linear fashion, at

least in retrospect. A weakness of the journey metaphor is that it hides much of the

complexity in the lived experience of those making each step in the journey. When looking

back, it is easy to see where locations and changes from one location to another were made in

the journey. But while moving through a location on the journey at the time, the experience

of change was more gradual and complex. So, even though the 23 steps above help us make

sense of the structure inherent in the research process retrospectively, additional metaphors

will help us integrate more of the complexity of the lived experience of this research.

Lewin (1948) used a cyclical metaphor when he suggested that activities in action

research follow a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action,

which in turn may "serve [...] as a basis for modifying the over-all plan" (p. 146). In this

study, a circular process was present throughout the whole process. In retrospect, six cycles

of planning, action, fact-finding, and plan-changing can be distinguished in the 23 steps

outlined above. Adding these cycles is helpful in understanding the different locations that

this study found/made on its journey:

a. The research team answers the research question (steps 1-10);

b. A comprehensive data analysis (steps 11-18);

c. A return to the literature (step 19);

d. The designing of a model that integrates the discussion and the findings (step 20);

e. A test of the model using some data from the case study (step 21);
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f. Restructuring the whole study and concluding (steps 22-23).

These six cycles emerge in retrospect from a reflection on the research process. Lewin's

cyclical metaphor helps us understand that each research activity changes our knowledge,

and with this change in knowledge, we may want to change the course of our journey. It also

helps us to see the value of journeying as inherent in the process as well as in the outcomes

because cycles never really reach a conclusion; they can always be continued. But when we

lay out each cycle linearly, we still make journeys with steps. The cyclical metaphor cannot

uncover the complexity of the lived experience of the research process to an extent that helps

understand and appreciate the layers of reflexivity that we found and made in this study. In

order to make this happen, I suggest we change the way to a river.

Heraclitus says,

The river
where you set
your foot just now
is gone--
those waters
giving way to this,
now this. (Heraclitus, 2003, p. 320)

And later, he says,

Just as the river where I step

is not the same, and is,
so I am as I am not. (Heraclitus, 2003, p. 431)

As we discovered earlier in our design process21, Heraclitus fragments are useful in

highlighting the complexity of purposeful activity. Stepping into a river adds complexity

over stepping because water always flows. Every time you step in that place again (as in a

cycle), you know the water has changed even if the pattern of the river may still seem the

21
See page 69 above, which describes the Heraclitus breakthrough moment in the design of embodied
making.
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same. The second fragment adds the complexity of the relationship between stepper and

stepped-in. The experience of stepping changes the man as well as the river. Furthermore,

stepping-in, rather than stepping-on, provides more depth-of-experience in the moment. A

final contribution of Heraclitus formulations is that they are still coherent with the conceptual

location event-structure metaphor. From here onwards, I will therefore use the word

stepping instead of the word step to invoke stepping into the river as a generative

metaphor to understand the steppings in each moment, each cycle, and the whole journey of

this research study.

From Concluding to Kenning

In personal communication, Steier (2015) offered the Old-Norse word kenning to help

make sense of condensed knowledge in visual metaphors. In an earlier article, Steier (1992)

defined kennings as deeply condensed metaphors [...] that imbue the sagas [of Norse

mythology] with much of their flavor and character. (Steier, 1992, p. 3) Wikipedia says

that kennings are "a type of circumlocution, in the form of a compound that employs

figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun (Kenning, 2016). As

such, kennings are useful when naming a phenomenon that would lose some of its

complexity if it were named with a single noun.

Like above, where the complexity of the process of this study benefits by changing step

to stepping, here, the complexity of what comes out of this study will benefit by changing

from concluding to kenning. Concluding means to end. Kenning means to know in a

way that cannot be named in one word. Kenning allows being at a place in a stepping that

marks a natural boundary between one stepping and the next, whether at the end of a step, a

cycle, or in the midst of being in the river. A kenning can occur at any time to signify the
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integration of knowing that comes from passing through a complex learning. But instead of a

conclusion, and an end, a kenning points out the longer duration of the process of becoming-

familiar-with. Also, by combining kenning with stepping, we do justice to the ongoing

reflexive relationship between knowing something new and continuing wondering about

what that new means. Together, stepping-kenning, as a new kenning, affords ways to make

more complex sense of the integration of three embodied metaphorical experiences of

purposeful activity: taking a step, coming full circle, and being/becoming in real-time

reflexive complexity. Therefore, I will use the terms stepping and kenning where relevant to

mark the movements and the outcomes of the research process.

See-Through Reflexivity

A third point worth mentioning before moving into the next chapters is that of see-through

reflexivity. According to Steier,

Reflexivity, or a turning back onto a self, is a way in which circularity and self-
reference appear in inquiry, as we contextually recognize the various mutual
relationships in which our knowing activities are embedded. These include, for
example, a relationship between language and experience that allows to see
individual experience as socially constructed, rooted in languaging activities whose
possibilities for becoming our experience provides. (Steier, 1991, p. 162)

In this research, reflexivity played a large role, both in the desire of the researchers to

learn about metaphor while applying it and in the required understanding of metaphor while

applying it, as well as in the developed knowledge about metaphor after applying it, which in

turn informs how the research team understands and works with metaphor. This reflexivity

leads to instances in the data and in the analysis where metaphor, at times, seems subject

matter, theory, and method at the same time. This may be what we get when we make up a

research team like this one, but it is also good to say that this may not be usual. It affords, I

hope, the generation of new knowledge because of this reflexivity, but it can also be
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confusing for the reader when the data or the analysis displays this reflexive switching

between different meanings and orientations of the same concept in a single paragraph of

transcript. One way of thinking about this that may be helpful is to see through this

reflexivity, as if when a layer of metaphor is reflected that obscures the clarity for the reader

to see through the reflective layer as if it is on a window that was well polished, and therefore

reflects the subject, while a shift of focus will help us see through the mirroring to what is

beyond. If we embrace this confusion and try to see these moments as see-through

reflexivity, I hope we can move on and trust that integration and reflection to kennings that

are comprehensible will follow.

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CHAPTER FOUR: THE RESEARCH TEAM ANSWERS THE QUESTION

Steppings 1 to 10 of the research activities performed in this study were planned and

tested in a pilot study in 2013 and early 2014. These steppings worked well in achieving a

first set of answers to the research question. What follows is a summary of the pilot study

process with a focus on the lessons learned from that process (Stepping 10) and the way in

which those findings changed steppings 1 to 10 and informed the next research cycle

(Chapter 5: CHAPTER FIVE: , Steppings 11 to 17).

Gathering and Organizing the Data (Stepping 1)

The data required for the first research steppings consisted of the recorded design sessions

of the creation of Embodied Making and Business Elements between August 2011 and June

2013. I identified all the recordings in the Livescribe Desktop application that supports the

Livescribe Pulse recording device that I used to record our design sessions. All design

meetings were marked with their date, the participants, and a title that roughly described the

key themes discussed in that session. As the research team was still working on the further

development of the resulting method and system, as well as using the method and system on

an almost daily basis, I assumed that we would have a fresh enough memory of their

appearance before starting the next stepping.

Identifying Metaphors Embodied in Embodied Making (Stepping 2)

On November 7, 2013, the research team consisting of Andr Kampert, development lead,

Indranil Bhattacharya, system designer, and Sergej van Middendorp, research lead, reflected

on the Embodied Making method and Business Elements IT system around the following

questions:
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What metaphors do we see in the method and the system, in the design artifacts, and in

the design documentation?

Which of those metaphors did we consciously try to embody in the method and the

system?

Which metaphors do we see that we put in nonconsciously?

What design sessions do we remember where we had breakthrough moments that further

clarified how we would use metaphors that we consciously embodied in the method and

the system?

I recorded that session and made a rough transcript. Below are several turns from that

transcript that serve to illustrate how we identified the circle, the square, and the hexagon

(see also Figure 3 above, which is referred to in turn 9 below).

1. Sergej (S): What metaphors did we put in consciously? What metaphors do we see
that we put in unconsciously? What sessions do we remember where we had
breakthroughs?
2. Indranil (I): Circle and square. Hexagon is sort of a hybrid between circle and square
3. S: Did we make a conscious choice for this metaphor?
4. Andr (A): No more practical.
5. I: Andre pointed out that the mathematical nature of the hexagon was practical.
6. S: What was the first moment we came up with the circle and the square?
7. I: I remember the call with the [client name] guys. It was the first time we presented
it. We came up with it the week before I think.
8. A: I recall that you [points at Sergej] came up with it. In a Friday session where we all
three, you came up with it. We were discussing how we are going to make visible
what we mean by embodied making. I recall that you drew the circle and the square
with the overlap right?
9. S: I remember we were at [client name] and we presented it to an external audience.
The first time I remember was when Indranil made a first very rough sketch, over
dinner you were drawing some first forms. It emerged after a brainstorm session. The
first time I saw them materialized was in a Visio22 file. There were many circles and
squares on that sheet.
10. I: Oh yes, I had forgotten about that. Now that you mention it.
11. S: Summarizing: the first moment was a session in Wijk bij Duurstede, at some point
there was a Visio file, and then, a first moment was when we had the [client name]
22
Visio is a software application that supports the creation of diagrams that we used at that time.
 95

guys on the call and I drew a circle and a square on paper. Andr, you mentioned the
two overlapping.

In the session, we identified several artifacts that we considered metaphorical in nature,

specifically IMMEDIATE EXPERIENCE IS A CIRCLE, REPRESENTATIONS OF

IMMEDIATE EXPERIENCE ARE SQUARES, INTEGRATION OF EXPERIENCE AND

REPRESENTATION IS A HEXAGON, EXPERIENCES ARE STORIES, FORCES ARE

CAUSES, A COLLECTION OF STORIES IS A TAPESTRY OF STORIES, A

COLLECTION OF CAUSES IS A RIVER OF FORCES, A NETWORK OF CONTACTS IN

AN APPLICATION IS A COMMUNITY OF PEOPLE GATHERING IN A HOTEL

LOBBY.

In this reflection session, we did not apply a formal metaphor identification method like

those developed by Steen et al. (2010) and Rohrer and Vignone (2012), but we relied on our

individual conceptions of metaphor and our shared meaning about metaphor as developed in

the design of embodied making itself, which was informed by the literature as reviewed in

Chapter 2 above. We most extensively discussed the circle, the square, and the river of

forces as metaphors as they struck us as being most present in the method and the system. In

the reflection session, we also identified the design sessions and named breakthrough

moments in those sessions in which these metaphors first emerged or were developed further.

As a result of this session, I could now find the relevant session recordings and look for the

identified breakthrough moments for further analysis.

Identifying the Breakthrough Moments in the Design Session Recordings (Stepping 3)

After I had made a rough transcript of the reflection session, I found the three recordings

of the design sessions that we identified in our reflection. I made indexical notes of these
 96

recordings while listening to them. In listening, I punctuated moments with more or less

natural beginnings and endings, noting down their start and end times. For each moment, I

listened for occurrences of the metaphors identified in the reflection session. All the while, I

kept rough notes of what we were saying so it would be easy to validate the applicability of

the selected episodes with Indranil and Andr. The result of this step was a mindmap with

indexical notes where all moments that had relevant improvisations with the metaphors

identified were marked in red. In doing this, it became clear that the river of forces metaphor

had the clearest presence in our improvisations, providing 10 episodes alone in the first two

meetings, and it being the central theme of the entire final meeting with the most exciting

improvisations related to our current system starting at minute 33 of that recording. Below is

a short excerpt of those notes at minute 33 that serves as an illustration of the level of

analysis I was making from the recordings at the time. These were rough so that I could use

them in my next step to choose together with Indranil and Andr what to transcribe in more

detail. See also Figure 6 and Figure 7 above, which are two of the design artifacts referenced

in these notes.

33:00:

I think this is the way to go

Paper for workshop
When you do it on screen
Paper elements people can move them around
(Workshops and design of workisgaming)
Based on the discussion do it later anyway
I'll stop, eat Sergej
I did this one, then this one, and I recorded and we can go back to what I was
thinking. We dont need to now right?
Rigor says we should maybe go back and around and around
I think a better way, already many lessons learned
But what I think we should so is...
Valuable things for me, these little indexes next to it
The river is important
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Overall view is very important

Paper based for workshops
Then putting it to digital format and extending the...
What are the key arrows around which things converge

Choosing a Breakthrough Moment Together (Stepping 4)

Once I had created the indexes and marked the relevant episodes, I suggested to Andr

and Indranil that, for the pilot study, we would choose the river of forces metaphor for further

reflection. After briefly taking them through the indexical notes I made, I suggested that we

settle on episode 0:33 of the December 2nd session as the breakthrough moment for the pilot

study. In this moment, we were comparing two different designs for a river of forces that

Andr and I had created individually to decide which one would serve for the further

development of the system, and we were very excited about each design's differing strengths

in supporting the method in either a workshop setting or as a digital reference system. We

chose the moment because of our progress on both the method (supporting the workshop)

and the system, as well as the serendipity that at the time of making our choice for a

breakthrough moment, we were also implementing an early version of the system with clients

using both a paper-based workshop process and the computer-based system.

Transcribing and Analyzing the Breakthrough Moment (Stepping 5)

I transcribed the identified episode and thought about how to visualize the improvisational

nature of that episode and the metaphors in that episode to get at answers to the how were

we improvising with metaphors in the breakthrough moment subquestion. I made several

versions of the transcript while re-listening to the episode a few times. The most fitting

technique I could think of to indicate the improvisational dynamic is through logical force, a

heuristic from the coordinated management of meaning (CMM), which uses four forces that

work on every conversational turn: prefigurative force, contextual force, practical force, and
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implicative force (W. B. Pearce, 2007). Together, these forces shape what can happen in the

turns we take. In applying this heuristic, it seemed most logical to look at how turns either

increased the flow of conversation through logical force or how turns in the conversation

changed the depth of the flow or changed the direction of the conversation. Below, one

annotated version of this transcript serves to illustrate the outcomes of this step. In the

transcript, the color codes show this improvisational dynamic. I also kept notes about my

own meaning making of the dynamic, which are displayed as comments in the margin of the

transcript as displayed in Figure 19 below.

Figure 19: Illustration of reflective margin comments in a transcript section.

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Gathering and Organizing Relevant Design Artifacts (Stepping 6)

This breakthrough moment was central to the further development of Embodied Making.

In order to prepare for the reflection session with the design team to determine how the

metaphors in the breakthrough moment became embodied in the system at the time of

reflection, I gathered related design artifacts that were discussed in the breakthrough moment

and that resulted from the breakthrough moment as interim steps towards the finished system.

I gathered all these in a presentation to help guide our reflection. This presentation included

Figure 6, Figure 7, Figure 12, Figure 13, Figure 16, and Figure 17.

Reflecting on the Analysis, the Design Artifacts, and the System (Stepping 7)

As a next step, I planned and chaired two sessions, one with Indranil and one with Andr,

to reflect on the analysis so far and on the current state of the method and system around the

question, What sense do we make of our improvisations with the river of forces metaphor in

the design process as reflected by the breakthrough moment and design artifacts on the one

hand, and the embodiment of that metaphor in the method and the system as it is today on the

other hand? The reflection session with Indranil was on March 9, 2014 and the reflection

session with Andr was on March 28, 2014. I recorded both sessions with the Livescribe

Pulse smart pen.

Transcribing the Reflection Sessions (Stepping 8)

Both reflection sessions provided very rich data. I decided to make full transcripts of each

for further analysis as I felt that both these reflections held substantial answers to the research

question as conceived by the research team. I also wanted to ensure the working of action

inquiry as a method for analysis of this data, so I first transcribed the reflection session with
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Indranil and performed some initial analysis on that transcript to develop a sense of how the

method worked.

Performing an Initial Analysis to Test and Refine the Method (Stepping 9)

I analyzed about 18 turns of the reflection with Indranil using a specific setup of action

inquiry to see whether the method helped me with analyzing the data to find answers to the

research question. My intent was to analyze enough of the data to make a judgment about

the working of the method and the implications of working with the method in this way on

all the data. I also wanted to receive feedback from my dissertation committee about the

research design before analyzing all the data in this way. Figure 20 below shows one page

from this analysis and serves to illustrate the level of analysis I was getting at with turns 4 to

10 of the reflection transcribed in the left column and reflections from the three perspectives

of action inquiry (individual, interactional, and organizational) in the right hand column.
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Figure 20. Illustration of action inquiry analysis of several turns in the reflection with
Indranil.

Figure 21 below displays a further analysis of turns from the same transcript using action

inquiry's four territories of experience as explained above. It serves to illustrate the level of

analysis that the full application of action inquiry would afford. I reflected on the data using

action inquiry's three main perspectives: first-person individual experience, second-person

interactional dynamics, and third-person organizational perspective. I also recorded my

reflections on the application of the method to the transcript of the reflection with Indranil.

This way of analyzing helped me test the applicability of action inquiry to the data and reflect

on this way of analyzing data using action inquiry.

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Figure 21. Action inquiry's four territories of experience used to reflect further on the turns
in the reflection transcript.

Fact-Finding About the Results of This Cycle (Stepping 10)

At the end of the pilot study, I recorded my reflections on the research design for

discussion with the research team and my dissertation committee. After receiving feedback

from the team and the committee, I made several changes to the research design. My

reflections and research design changes are discussed in the next section.

Relevance of the Available Data for the Research Question

Firstly, the choice to study the process of creating Embodied Making and Business

Elements turned out to provide more than enough data to explore answers to the research
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question. Because of the enormous amount of data gathered over the years, we were required

to make choices in the research process that limited the amount of data to a manageable size

for analysis.

By starting with the system and the method as they came out of the design process, we

were able to use the metaphors we identified to focus only on the data that were relevant to

those specific metaphors. In effect, we could distinguish between rough data (recordings,

design documentation) and data identified as relevant by our first reflection (recordings and

breakthroughs we thought relevant for metaphors now embodied in the system and design

artifacts that were used to create those metaphors or parts of the system). By further focusing

in on the data in each successive step of the research process, the amount of data slowly

became manageable. For example, by focusing on one specific breakthrough moment in the

whole process and then using that moment to gather relevant data from all the sources

available, we succeeded in building a rich and coherent set of data representing the design

process and its outcomes that we could then use to guide further design team analysis in our

reflections.

Limitations of the Data

Despite the amount of data we had recorded and available, we sometimes missed a

recording for a breakthrough moment that we remembered. For example, the first recordings

that I found with relevant content for the pilot study were of October 2011, two months after

we had started the process of creating Embodied Making. Fortunately, this first recording

was itself a reflection session looking back at the first 2 months of Embodied Making, which

was helpful in recovering details about design artifacts such as the circle and squares diagram

in Figure 3.
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While listening to recordings, associations with other systems that we created were

sparked and possibilities for discussing certain literatures were identified. So the listening

for one thing (improvisations with metaphors for designing the system up to that point) also

invoked ideas for others (new metaphors for designing the system going forward). Noting

these ideas was important so we could choose to revisit them, and for taking other routes

through the data in a later stage. For example, while listening to the reflection with Indranil

of October 2011, around minute 0:44 of that session, I found us referring to John Sowa's

work on analogical reasoning (Sowa & Majumdar, 2003). As described above, Sowa's work

later became a cornerstone for the creation of Business Elements. I noted that Sowas work

in analogical reasoning might later become important for discussing the findings of this

study.

In deciding on next steps during the pilot process, we were not regularly having Friday

afternoon Embodied Making sessions. I often had to take Andr and Indranil through steps

separately. In addition, I did not record every part of our pilot journey, but I did record the

reflections themselves. There seemed a difficult balance between recording everything while

remaining practical and goal focused, both for research and for practice.

Challenges with the Detail-Level of Analysis

While transcribing the breakthrough moment, I was reminded that there are many levels

of depth and detail at which one can analyze a conversation. The 18 turns that I analyzed of

the transcript of the reflection session with Indranil were valuable, but this level of analysis

created too much data to be a feasible approach. I also considered applying Goodwin's

(Goodwin & Goodwin, 1987) conversation analysis techniques, which have ways to describe

non-verbal gestures, pauses, and other data enriching features. At this point, it seemed to
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make sense to apply such techniques to only some of the data, especially where we felt

something really important had happened in the larger unfolding story of how a metaphor

emerged or took root in the method and the system. Striking a good balance between breadth

of process coverage and the depth of analysis seemed very difficult. I discussed this

challenge in several conversations with my dissertation committee who all shared this

concern.

For conceptual metaphor analysis, I followed an analogous route. It is a method that is

suited to uncover the nonconsciously improvised conceptual metaphors in the breakthrough

moments. I explored the effect of applying a rigorous conceptual metaphor analysis using

the leading edge method developed by Rohrer and Vignone (2012). I tried to gain access to

the automated systems that were becoming available for conceptual metaphor analysis

(Barnden, Glasbey, Lee, & Wallington, 2003; Barnden & Lee, 2001; Huang, Huang, Liao, &

Xu, 2013). However, in personal communication with both Vignone and Rohrer, as well as

with Barnden, I learned that applying a manual analysis required a focus on detail that would

obscure the broader question posed by this dissertation. Current automated systems for

metaphor analysis only work on corpus content. A too detailed or technical level of analysis

would divert the focus from the interactional nature of generative and conceptual metaphor in

the context of systems design that I hoped to get at in the data. What emerged was that

action inquiry, as a cohering middle ground between relevance and rigor, would provide

enough structure to make sense of how the metaphors became embodied in the system that

we had created.
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Recursion and Reflexivity

At points, I wondered if I could use our own method, Embodied Making, as the research

method. It was designed specifically for making sense of complex situations. I quickly

concluded that this would make things too complex. It could lead to a form of recursive

reflexivity in which it would be impossible to distinguish between practice and research.

Integrating research and practice, by doing action research in our own organization with me

as both a co-designer and a researcher of the method and the system we are investigating,

which themselves are made to make sense of complexity, and then using that method and that

system to do the research, sounded attractive in one way but way too complex in another.

Some recursive reflexivity is already embodied in Embodied Making. Several of the

sources that informed its creation, like CMM (Pearce, 2007), organizational improvisation

(Barrett, 1998; Hatch, 1998; Weick, 1998), complexity theory (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003;

Shaw & Stacey, 2006; Stacey, 2001), systems design (Schn, 1983), and architecture

(Alexander, 1964, 1979, 2002; Alexander et al., 1977) also feature in the literature review

that frames the case study above.

Rather than getting lost in this recursive reflexivity, I reminded myself of the practical

goals of our research team. Why did we think it could be important to increase our

awareness of our improvisations with metaphors while designing a system? Because fitting

generative metaphors embodied in a system can help the people using it more easily generate

a better world. Nonconsciously embodied conceptual metaphors embodied in a system

would work through the cognitive unconscious to reduce or even prevent this generative

capacity from emerging. Refocusing on the abducted relevance of the research helped me

regain the right level of analysis.

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Dynamic Between Consciously Generative and Nonconsciously Degenerative

I provide one illustration of how the pilot data lead to findings and a discussion in the

research team that, in turn, reflected back on our practice. This illustration also shows how

such findings lead to new directions to further literature review for making sense of the

findings.

In my reflection session with Andr, we noticed that, in his early designs for our

Embodied Making tooling, he chose blue as the color for forces (see Figure 13 above). This

color was induced by the generative metaphor of the river of forces. In the bta version of

Embodied Making, however, forces were red/orange (see Figure 17 above). Andr wondered

why this was so. A few turns from the transcript illustrate our finding and our discussion of

the situation:

1. Sergej (S): Then I have this one, which is a paper based workshop as part of the
Workisgaming project. And which you can also consider a system, even though it's
rough right. Hexagons cut out...
2. Andr (A): Mmmh.
3. S: Got the colors wrong.
4. A: Yeah.
5. S: Yeah, you see? Because these are the solutions.
6. A: Well, wrong...but yeah, yeah,
7. S: And these are the forces. Anyway, different.
8. A: Yeah.

A few turns further, we reflect on this:

59. A: Well actually [...] a lot of the metaphor is lost.

60. S: Mmmh.
61. A: Right, so even if something happened unconsciously or consciously. But at one
point we said like OK, we keep talking about the river of forces. In which solutions
emerge right? By which solutions emerge. So then we made the analogy with the real
river, and we say OK, but what does emerge in a river you know. Well, based on
currents you can have different... so you can have a collection of branches, or
whatever.
62. S: Yes.
63. A: Or you get dirt or whatever, collecting because of the forces. And then with the
colors for example, we made a direct translation, initially, to say OK forces are blue,
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and solutions are yellow, which is the color of sand or mud, or branches you know?
Dirt in the water. Could be green.
64. S: Mmmh.
65. A: So, we added, some of the metaphor really directly impacted the visual
elements.
66. S: As you created this one for example.
67. A: Yeah, that was the reason for the call actually. So that matches the metaphor
here. And you will only see it when you know it. But you see the forces look like
water.
68. S: Yeah, streaming around something, in this case a solution element, yeah.
69. A: But then that got lost because we didn't share the same metaphor with
[designer]. So he just sees colors and replaces it with something else.
70. S: Yeah, so to a sense it also gets lost in additional design conversations. If we
don't persist the metaphor consciously to the next designers.
71. A: Yeah, so if we invited [designer] and say like OK, we see this as a river of
forces. And because of this river of forces we see solutions emerging based on these
forces, then maybe we could, would have a different look and feel. By bending the
metaphor, you see it goes quickly, you know?

In another data artifact, we found a hint at an answer to the question of what might cause

such a shift in the generative power of the river of forces metaphor. In this picture, we saw

the results of a workshop that I facilitated with a group of farmers (see Figure 16 above). As

our tool was not ready by that time, I had created a paper prototype. Under some time

pressure in the morning before that workshop, I cut out hexagons (a key shape in Embodied

Making) in three colors: red, blue, and yellow. Without much conscious thought, I assigned

red to forces and blue to solutions. In the workshop, our newly hired designer was also

present. He was the designer of the interface for the redesign of Embodied Making and

Business Elements and he never saw Andrs original sketches for Embodied Making. He

only had the workshop experience with me and the tools and experience that he as a designer

brought to the task of creating the interface for the system. Considering the conceptual

metaphors implicit in this story, we could argue that blue-colored forces as an entailment of

the river of forces metaphor is more apt then red-colored forces as an entailment of the river
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of forces metaphor, but that red is a more apt color for the idea of forces than blue. We could

also argue that solutions being blue is more apt in the context of a river metaphor than

solutions being red.

If we follow color theory, it is possible that my unconscious color switch was influenced

by conventional conceptual metaphors for red and blue (OConnor, 2011). Whatever the

cause, my choice was now embodied in our system, despite all our work on the generative

metaphor of the river of forces. Perhaps conventional forces persisted through conceptual

metaphor and kept our design from being generated with our desired metaphor. When I later

inquired with our designer, he mentioned that his conscious choice for red/orange for forces

was driven by another generative metaphor that he chose to support the identity of our

organization: the chakra system. In this system, orange and red are the base and forceful

chakras (Douglas, 2002). This feedback enriches the discussion with another applied

generative metaphor in which forces are indeed red/orange.

Kennings of this Stepping

The data gathered and identified as relevant for the metaphors embodied in Embodied

Making and Business Elements were enough to analyze the process of how they became

embodied from design conversations, via design artifacts, in the system.

The two reflection sessions on the river of forces metaphor with Indranil and Andr

provided enough data for answering the research question from the research team's

perspective to a satisfying degree.

Action inquiry continued guiding us through the complexity and the amount of the data.

It offered enough breadth and depth to cover the overall case study and to dive deeper into

the specific dynamics between personal, interactional, and organizational levels.

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If desired, specific findings could be analyzed in more detail later using more detailed

techniques from CMM and CMA.

I decided to continue the analysis of the full reflections transcripts to identify and reflect

on all relevant findings.

According to the research team, our improvisations with metaphors result in several forms

(circle, square, hexagon) and a coherent generative metaphor (A PROCESS IS A

HERACLITEAN RIVER OF FORCES) that became embodied in the system that we were

creating (Embodied Making and Business Elements).

Even though we have improvised with many differing metaphors in the process of

creating Embodied Making and Business Elements, in retrospect only a few of those are

clearly emerging throughout the whole process as being embodied in the method and the

system itself. These are the forms and metaphors that we have consistently returned to at

different moments in the design process.

Indranil and I were well-read in Embodied Realism when we started the study, but we

conceived of the meaning of metaphor in different ways. For example, Indranil and Andr

did not see the circle, the square, and the hexagon as metaphors while I did see them as

metaphorical. Indranil and Andr pointed out the practical nature of mathematical form,

while I saw a clear analogy between the concepts (experience and representation) and the

sources (circular and square) that we used to reason about them. It seems that the potential of

our knowledge in making sense of meaning through metaphor is itself subject to a process of

social construction even if we start from the same definitions and try to work with them in a

consistent way. These differences in our meaning making of metaphor have not prevented us

from embodying consciously chosen metaphors in the system.

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The persistent improvisations with the river metaphor resulted in adaptations of the

theories, methods, and practices integrated into Embodied Making and Business Elements

that were helpful in applying those methods together coherently. By integrating the logical

forces of CMM and the contextual forces of Alexander's design method as forces in the river,

one new way of describing both communicative and architectural forces emerged. The

consciously chosen metaphors work to integrate other concepts into the system coherently.

The persistent improvisations with the river metaphor resulted in a method and a system

that are quite different from existing methods and systems, especially in the interface used to

interact with the method and the system. Where we initially listed forces linearly using

existing IT systems (like in Figure 5 above), the river metaphor, aided by the circle, square,

and hexagon forms, slowly changed this list into a hexagonal grid with colors representing

river-type functions: brown stories, blue forces, and yellow solutions. This change in the

form of the interface was supported with systems components coherent with a river metaphor

on every layer of the systems architecture23. This supports the idea that a generative

metaphor has the potential to create an IT system that is quite different from current systems.

Although we consciously tried to generate Embodied Making and Business Elements on

the metaphorical entailments of a river applied to a system, unforeseen changes occurred that

only became conscious in retrospect. The changes in the color of forces and solutions

occurred because our new designer was using a different metaphor for redesigning Embodied

Making and Business Elements. And even though that metaphor was consciously chosen for

23
In the dissertation, I do not expand on the layers of the technological architecture under the interface
of Embodied Making and Business Elements, but it seems that either selective perception, or a broader trend
towards process as central to technology, was emerging at the same time that we were developing the method
and the system. For example, a return to functional programming (away from object oriented programming)
helped us to choose development languages that were more conducive to flow than to form.
 112

the design of a different system, the logo and house-style of Product Foundry found its way

into Embodied Making as well. In our own analysis, this occurred because we were not

consistently sharing the metaphor of the river with our designer at the time of this redesign.

This supports the idea that the generative force of a metaphor may become nonconscious

after a longer period of use by designers who take it for granted, especially as they feel the

task of embodying it in the system is done. When new people join the design team, other

metaphors generate more force than the embodied metaphor, changing the system in a new

direction.

In this specific case, I changed the color of the system myself at one point as well. This

occurred in a moment where the river metaphor was not consciously present. This may have

reinforced our designer's decision to persist his metaphor in the redesign, and it only occurred

to the design team in retrospect while reflecting on the research question.

Reflective practice, as exercised in the context of this dissertation, increases the capacity

to notice such changes in the embodiment of metaphors into the system. Reflective practice

also provides possibilities to more consciously generate the desired metaphors for the system

and to mitigate the effect of undesired metaphors on the system.

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CHAPTER FIVE: COMPREHENSIVE DATA ANALYSIS

This chapter describes how I proceeded with the study after concluding the first cycle of

data analysis. In September 2014, I had decided to leave my position as a partner in Product

Foundry. As a result, my perspective changed from being intimately involved in the research

team to being an independent researcher interpreting the findings of the research team. The

research team, while supportive of my task of writing this dissertation, was not so much

interested in the reflections back to the literature as in answering the research question to

improve their practice. While they acknowledged the profound way in which the literature

had informed the design of Embodied Making and Business Elements, the specific type of

rigor required for writing a dissertation about the process was beyond their purpose. This

growing tension was one of my reasons for choosing to leave our partnership.

The cycle described in this chapter takes a more rigorous and objective perspective on the

data generated in the case study with the goal of identifying ways to reflect the results

reported in the previous cycle back to the literature. What options for discussion emerge

from the analysis of the findings? What questions remain open from the research team's

reflections that are not satisfied by the literature review?

This chapter also marks the boundary between an action research approach and a different

approach to this research study, even though for me as a consultant interested in the design

process of systems, it is part of an ongoing action inquiry into my own designing and

reflecting on designing.

Using NVivo to Code and Analyze the Data (Stepping 11)

From the pilot study and the reflections on that study by the research team and dissertation

committee, it was clear that there were many options for further exploration of the data to
 114

arrive at possible answers to the research question. As I continued analyzing the data, I

became overwhelmed with the range and depth of possibilities and was at a loss for how to

record them and keep track of them. When I reflected on this feeling of being overwhelmed,

I noticed that it was not so much the time it would take me to process multiple perspectives,

but that the tools at my disposal to record and organize findings according to the mix of

methods I was using would be very limiting in their capacity to support a comprehensive

analysis. Once I realized this, I recalled that there was qualitative research software available

that might support me with this complexity. After a brief review of several options, I decided

to use NVivo to continue the data analysis.

After exploring NVivos features in a trial period, I felt assured that it would be able to

help me apply multiple methods to the data while at the same time enabling me to organize

the data and the analysis in ways that other tools could not. I first used NVivo to gather all

relevant sources for analysis and to create a model of the relationships between the sources to

guide an initial analysis. This model is displayed below in Figure 22. Data classification

and relationship model.

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Figure 22. Data classification and relationship model.

The data are classified into five categories. Design sessions are represented by the design

session recordings and the handwritten notes captured by the Livescribe Pulse smart pen. All

sessions were exported as Livescribe .pdfs and then imported into NVivo.

Design artifacts are all materials that we developed in order to create the system and range

from images, drawings, .pdfs, documents, screenshots of Wiki pages in our teams

collaboration system, and presentations prepared for design meetings. The system consists of
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the formal descriptions of the method as published in documentation at the time of analysis

and the working system at the time of analysis. Metaphor identification sessions consist of

recordings and handwritten notes, transcripts, and mindmaps. Reflective sessions consist of

session recordings and notes, as well as the transcripts of the reflection sessions.

Once all the data were organized this way, I redid the analysis of the metaphor

identification session and coded all relevant data that we mentioned in that session using

NVivos labelling system. Whenever a design session, design moment, or design artifact was

mentioned, I made a cross reference to that data point and coded it accordingly. This way, I

created a network of paths through the data that is logically related to the reflections we made

and was therefore easy to navigate in many different ways. For example, in the short excerpt

displayed in Figure 23, all data points are marked with a red highlighter and contain links

back to their referents.

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Figure 23. Illustration of coding in transcripts to refer to data (recordings and design
artifacts and outcomes).

I then organized the coding to reflect what relevant data the research team had identified

as reflected in Figure 24.

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Figure 24. Table of design team analysis.

This way, I was able to identify 34 sources in which (eventually) 193 observations

relevant to the research design were made. These were organized as identified breakthrough

sessions and moments, design artifacts (that we created ourselves), design inspirations

(resources that we used to create the system), metaphors we used to create the system, system

components that we named that embody the metaphors, and reflections on the research
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process made by the design time during the data analysis (which could be important to revisit

for the purpose of validation).

Using NVivo to Code the Research Teams Own Findings and Discussions (Stepping 12)

As a next step, I used NVivo to analyze the transcripts of the two reflection sessions with

Indranil and Andr twice more. I first analyzed the transcripts from the perspective of us as a

research team. Whenever we found something ourselves, I coded it as design team analysis.

When the finding was a sense making of how the metaphors had become embodied in the

system, I coded the finding as such. This resulted in 50 points where we as a design team

made sense of the embodiment of the metaphors in the system.

Using NVivo to Analyze Findings and to Code Options for Discussion (Stepping 13)

In a second round of analysis, I changed perspective to myself as a lead researcher and

looked at the design teams analysis and sensemaking. I wrote two memos describing the

findings and thoughts about options for further discussion. I coded the memos with these

labels and went through each coded passage to assign a literature that I thought relevant to

ground the options for discussion. The results of this step are displayed in Figure 25, which

shows 35 findings and 89 options for further discussion categorized under 11 topics.
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Figure 25. Options for the further discussion of findings.

Using NVivo to Outline a Comprehensive Overview of Findings (Stepping 14)

I copied the memos that I created while analyzing the transcripts of the reflection sessions

as well as relevant passages from the reflection session transcripts to illustrate the findings

and to show the design teams sense making at work.

Using NVivo to Organize the Options for Discussion (Stepping 15)

I analyzed the data references labeled with options for discussion to regain a feel for their

underlying data. I also made a quantitative assessment of the number of times an option for

discussion emerged and used this to identify four main topics for further discussion.
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Choosing the Most Present Options for Discussion (Stepping 16)

Figure 26. Quantitative selection of options for discussion.

Throughout the above presentation of findings, options for discussion emerged. Using

NVivos function to label data, I composed a model of the options that I could use as a

starting point for making a coherent discussion of the findings. Figure 26 above shows the

model that summarizes the options for discussion with a quantitative value for each option

that shows how often that option emerged while analyzing the findings.

In total, the analysis reveals 84 options for further discussion of the findings. The four

options with the most references to the data are

Metaphor ontology;

CMM;

Reflection-in-action/reflection-on-action;

The theoretical framework.

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Metaphor Ontology

Figure 27. Detail of topic breakdown of metaphor ontology.

In my analysis, I used the three perspectives on metaphor as discussed in the literature

review above: conceptual metaphor theory, generative metaphor theory, and linguistic

metaphor theory. As displayed in Figure 27 above, I found several subjects in conceptual

metaphor theory applicable to differing findings and generative metaphor theory applicable

in a more general sense to about 10 of the findings. If we look at the specific data that I

labeled from these perspectives, there are several moments in which conceptual and

generative metaphor theory come together. In my analysis of the reflection with Indranil, I

note that

Our semantic structures for [...] movement, obtainment, etc. are quite abstract
metaphors under the surface of the system's functional user interface. It would be
interesting to explore the literature on metaphor in systems design to see if there are
similar reversals from source to target where source becomes more abstract than
target.
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This is a reflection on the following exchange in the reflection between Indranil and me:

34. Indranil (I): And of course, the final step to come up with the solutions. So if we
look at applying embodied making, then the role of metaphor is very strong. And then
we faced a lot of challenges, as find the shortcoming of a metaphor, of an analogy in a
solution space. I'm struggling a bit now with the hexagon canvas on business
elements, with the next bunch of things that we have to do. The complexity there is
quite high, and.. you find, you know just because we're not product ... Yeah, so a
product is an informational entity. So the metaphors you apply there are how you
think about information. So, a product for example is, let's say, a bottle of shampoo to
a car, and then you want to identify the information that's common between these two
because you want one architecture for product yeah?
35. Sergej (S): Hmhm.
36. I: So say you have things like identity, how you can identify it, so all the
intentionality that goes around the product yeah?

For the design of our system, and for the purpose of creating a more coherent review of

the literature, it might have been relevant to find an answer to the questions Indranil poses

above. This is also supported by the earlier conclusion that the design team held differing

conceptions of metaphor despite having started from the definition of metaphor as suggested

by embodied realism. In many reflections, we wondered and differed about the meaning of

the concepts metaphor and analogy and about their mutual relationships. A more thorough

discussion of metaphor might help to be more coherent in using metaphor in the design

process.

The Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM)

In the literature review, I argued that generative metaphor is related to social construction.

CMM is a communication theory that embodies the philosophy of social construction (Barge

& Pearce, 2004; W. B. Pearce, 2006). As discussed in the methods chapter, CMM is

concerned with how communication creates our social worlds. According to CMM, we get

what we make and we make it in communication. CMM provides several tools that can help
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a researcher take a communication perspective to show how the turn by turn communicative

action of people shapes their selves, their relationships, their culture, and their systems.

Figure 28. Detailed breakdown of CMM topics for discussion.

The data that are labeled with CMM and specific CMM heuristics invite further analysis

into the specifics of our sensemaking. Logical forces analysis might reveal differences and

similarities in style between us as designers in alternating between future orientation (more

practical and implicative force) or the desire to better and deeper reflect on the past (more

contextual and prefigurative forces). LUUUUTT analysis, which explores the tensions

between stories lived (L), stories told (T), and storytelling (T), might further inform our roles

in the design process, especially by identifying the unheard, untold, untellable, and unknown

stories (UUUU) that did not become become part of the design process. An analysis of the

nature of the speech acts in our turns might reveal style differences in our improvisations,

especially when framed in the four categories of speech acts suggested by developmental

action inquiry (DAI): framing, advocating, illustrating, and inquiring. This might also reveal

in more detail how we improvised with metaphors. The outcomes of such deeper analyses

might then in turn be reflected off the literature to make more sense of the joint improvisation

section of the research question.

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Reflection-in-Action and Reflection-on-Action

The findings that are labeled for discussion through Schns concepts of reflection-in-

action and reflection-on-action (Schn, 1983; Yanow & Tsoukas, 2009) synthesize between

the applications of metaphor in our design process and the way in which we improvise with

these metaphors. Discussing these data points from these perspectives and relating them to

the two sections above, as well as relating the findings from that discussion to the literature,

offers a reflexive way of looking at the improvisations as they happened in real-time and in

retrospect, helping us to better make sense of the improvised nature of the design

conversations and the process of embodiment of the metaphors in those improvisations from

conversation to system.

Theoretical Framework

In the findings, several sections are marked for direct relationships with the theoretical

framework introduced in the literature review. In addition to the relationships discovered in

this study above, these additional direct relationships reveal the following:

Figure 29. Detailed breakdown of topics related to the Literature Review.

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Writing the First Full Draft of the Dissertation (Stepping 17)

After identifying the options for discussion, I decided to write a first full draft of the

dissertation so I could obtain feedback from my committee. Based on my own reflections

and inquiries and their feedback, I could analyze the situation as it stood at that point and

decide on the plan of the next cycle going forward.

Kennings of This Stepping

In the academy, it is not a habit to include direct comments by the dissertation committee,

but I do want to highlight the process of feedback, reflection, deliberation, and emergence of

the way forward that was induced by the conversation with my committee in a way that helps

me and my readers make sense of how this not only provided input for planning the next

steps, but also how it structured the process of writing this dissertation. In doing so, I believe

I do justice to the action research approach that I embraced and to the complex nature of the

process that is a central topic in this dissertation. Therefore, I chose to add the current

section, which shows how I worked with the feedback on the first draft in creating a design

for the second.

Based on the first draft, the committee challenged me to choose one topic as central to the

discussion and to use the other options as means to support that central topic. My committee

also urged me to scale back on the amount of detailed reporting that was present in the first

draft. What follows is a summary of how I made sense of this feedback and how I mapped

my way forward.

In reflection on the comprehensive data analysis, the concept of reflection-in-action

seemed the central process around which the others revolved. Metaphor ontology was the

most central concept that emerged from the analysis. Reflection-in-action emerged as central
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because it fits well with the improvisational process of system design. In the data which I

labeled with this term, we continuously shift levels between designing, thinking about the

design method, wondering about the meaning of a term we use, and then making a concrete

decision as to what form the reflection would get in the system. Schn (1983), who

developed the concept, was a musician himself and used improvisation as a metaphor to talk

about reflection-in-action. As the developer of the concept of generative metaphor, he also

provided a bridge between improvisation and metaphor (Schn, 1993).

CMM could have been another way to achieve the same result, not as a topic for

discussion, but as a method for further analysis. CMM provides ways to look at the design

process data that could have surfaced more of the improvisational dynamic in our talks, and a

further analysis using CMM might have provided support for (and raised new questions and

challenges to) the conclusions of Chapter 4. However, in my view, these conclusions provide

more support for a return to the literature than for further data analysis. Another way in

which CMM was suggested as a topic by the comprehensive data analysis was as data itself.

As CMM was one of the sources inspiring Embodied Making and Business Elements, it

might be interesting to look further into how it became embodied in the method and the

system. This, however, would expand the relevant scope of the data again and might trap us

in the recursive reflexivity identified as a risk earlier.

In Chapter 4, I conclude that each of us in the research team differs in perspective on the

meaning of metaphor at many points during the design process. The comprehensive data

analysis supports that point by showing how we differ at many other points and that we also

pose many questions that a further review of the literature about metaphor might answer.

The dissertation committee also challenged the literature review about metaphor.
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Specifically, Frank Barrett wanted to see a better understanding of Mark Johnson's (2007)

later thinking about embodiment and also suggested looking at the work of Turbayne (1971)

and Sarbin (2003) on metaphor and myth, and to the work of Avital on the concept of

generativity (Avital & Teeni, 2009).

I found it logical that the literature framework itself could not be a central topic for

discussion. As far as I was concerned, the role of the literature framework in the discussion

was to provide coherence when bringing the discussion back to a bigger picture, to fuse

scholarly discussions to reflect findings back-to and as an instrument to help guide the

decision making for what to focus on in the discussion. The gaps in the literature that I saw

at this point were between the ideas of organizational improvisation and the ideas of

embodied realism. A specific search on those two terms yielded no results on Google

Scholar. A search with the synonym "conceptual metaphor" and "organizational

improvisation" yielded only 11 results on Google Scholar (two of which are my own

contributions, one of which is Romi Boucher's, and one of which is Daan Andriessen's; both

close colleagues, friends, and one a member of this committee). The article that addressed

both concepts most relevantly discussed them in the context of Weick's (1998) disciplined

imagination, which is a reflexive practice for design that uses metaphor as well (Cornelissen,

2006). This search result felt like a guidepost that supported the idea of making reflection-in-

action the central topic as it reinforced the argument already made to use it as a bridge

between improvisation and metaphor.

Using NVivo to make a comprehensive analysis of the data worked well because it

created some level of control over the complexity and the amount of the data. It provided

ways to create paths through the data and to reflect on the data all the while leaving trails that
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could later be used to explore the richness of insights that we made throughout the three

years of designing Embodied Making and Business Elements. Without using software like

NVivo, choosing what to discuss would have been a mostly intuitive process. NVivo enabled

a quantitative assessment of the topics emerging most clearly from the data and thereby was

helpful for choosing what to do next.

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CHAPTER SIX: RETURN TO THE LITERATURE

This section discusses the findings of a further and deeper engagement with the literature.

First, I review the literature on the concept of reflection-in-action. Then I provide a further

review24 of the generative, rhetoric, and embodied aspects of metaphor to further increase our

understanding of this concept.

Reflection-in-Action

As I discussed in the literature review, Schns work was influential in the scholarly

conversation about metaphor and design. My reflection on the findings in the data gathered

and analyzed in this dissertation, which endeavors to understand how we can consciously use

metaphors to generate a new system while existing systems influence us nonconsciously to

sustain their currently embodied metaphors, surfaced the process of designing and our

reflections in and on action as a central topic for understanding this process of transformation

of metaphor to system.

Schn is a key author in both the literature on the process of designing and the literature in

the role of metaphor and analogy in design. Schn (1983) says that reflection-in-action is the

process through which professionals reframe the setting of a problem in order to come to

better fitting solutions for a complex and uncertain situation. In contrast with what he calls

the paradigm of technical rationality, in which research is separate from practice, thinking is

separate from doing, and means are separate from ends, reflection-in-action treats all of these

as part of an artful, complex, integral, interactive, largely tacit, creative process.

24
Chapter 2 of this dissertation provides a review of metaphor. The review in this chapter expands that
review along the lines of the kennings of the first two research cycles. As a result, it may occur that
some of the review in this chapter is perceived as repetitive. This repetition only serves to provide
context for the expanded discussion in this chapter.
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Schn induces the qualities of this process of reflection-in-action from a number of case

studies that vary across professional disciplines including architecture, psychotherapy, town

planning, and management. He sees the common elements of the process emerging in the

shared characteristic of how professionals reflect-in-action between cases selected from these

professions. Independent of the language, priorities, images, styles, and precedents inherent

to these specific fields, the process of reflection-in-action starts when professionals are

interrupted in the flow of their work. They come to a dead-end in the problem solving

relative to their work situation. In a reflective dialogue with the situation, often in interaction

with others, they turn attention back from solving the problem to the setting of the problem.

Professionals surface the way the problem was set and reframe it so that a new context for

problem solving is created. They re-approach the situation, well aware that they are dealing

with a unique instance of a phenomenon that they have much experience in, but which

requires a unique approach. By approaching it as a new case, they are open to the differences

of the situation. After reframing the situation, professionals try to understand the unique

features in the situation this time around. After assessing the features, they conceive a

direction for solving the problem and perform a global experiment to feel if this direction

holds. Next, they weave a web of possible moves in the newly framed situation through

which they develop a system of consequences, appreciations, and implications for further,

more detailed moves. They adapt the situation to the frame and examine unintended

consequences. By stepping into the situation, and by imposing an order, professionals

examine how the situation talks back and further shape the solution to fit the gestalt of the

emerging conversation with the situation. Through a process of detecting and correcting
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errors in the web of moves, and through a continuous re-appreciation, re-invention, and re-

drawing of the solutions, they make their way forward.

In his framing of reflection-in-action, Schn conceives of the process as a shifting from a

global what-if? to a recognition of local implications for the situation, back from an

involvement with the local unit to a consideration of the total, and from exploration of the

situation to commitment to the solution. This shifting back and forth and back again is

guided by a reflexive awareness of the designer's intent and the surprises that surface in the

process of conversation with the complexity and uncertainty in the situation.

In the process of reflection-in-action, Schn notices an additional four qualities that help

professionals accomplish this complex act: evaluating, experience, experimenting, and

inquiry. Professionals who engage in reflection-in-action continuously evaluate their ability

to deal with the situation by appreciating the feedback from the context they try to shape.

They look for coherence and direction emerging from their reflecting, and they keep inquiry

moving to ensure that the process keeps taking turns and moving towards a convergent

solution. The professionals who engage in reflection-in-action recognize their previous

experience with similar situations and use this experience as a guide to discover the

differences that make this particular situation unique. Professionals who engage in

reflection-in-action engage in a form of experimenting, testing their reframing of the

situation by alternating between exploratory experimentation, move testing, and hypothesis

testing. The alternations between intent and surprise either lead to confirmation of the

emerging solution or, when experimenting, yield undesired surprises to a re-exploration.

Professionals who engage in reflection-in-action through their experimenting often use

virtual worlds to envision their experiments, either in-memory, on paper, on whiteboards, or

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on other mediating technologies, visualizing the context, the setting, the solution, and the

way forward. Perhaps most critically, Schn mentions the reflective practitioners stance

towards inquiry as reflexive of both themselves and the situation. In professionals reflecting-

in-action, there is an appreciation that by engaging with the situation, they are shaping it

while they are also being shaped by the situation. Schn (1983) ends his description of the

process of reflection-in-action by highlighting the willingness of the practitioner to

continuously keep confusing himself:

[The practitioner] must be willing to to enter into new confusions and uncertainties....
He must act in accordance with the view he has adopted, but he must recognize that
he can always break it open later, indeed, must break it open later in order to make
new sense of his transaction with the situation. This becomes more difficult to do as
the process continues. His choices become more committing; his moves, more nearly
irreversible. As the risk of uncertainty increases, so does the temptation to treat the
view as the reality (Schn, 1983, p. 164).

This focus on attitude directly relates with the theories and research in metaphor as

discussed above and below because metaphors are central to the process of generating the

new from a situation, while they are also central to how the old tries to persist itself through

the situation. Vice versa, because of the natural way in which metaphors work with us, they

are themselves reflexively conducive to the process through which the new can quickly

become the familiar, or the new old that we commit to. In order to explain this, I will

further detail the theories and research in metaphor building on the introduction of the

concepts in the literature review. After this, I will return to reflection-in-action and place

Schns original work as presented here in the context of the latest insights from the

literature.
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Partial Perspectives on Metaphor

My own engagement with metaphor started when Daan Andriessen said that I should take

a look at Lakoff and Johnsons (1999) philosophy in the flesh. He said that if he would have

read this book during his own dissertation process that it would have turned everything on its

head (Andriessen, 2005, personal communication). I tend not to take such strong advice

lightly, and as someone playing with ideas for his own dissertation, I dove into the book right

away. For a long time since that advice, Lakoff and Johnsons perspective, first called

experientialism (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), and later embodied realism (Lakoff & Johnson,

1999), dominated my sensemaking of metaphors. Around the same time as Daan gave me

his metaphor advice, I had founded jazzinbusiness, a jazz band with which I helped people

experience the metaphor of improvisation through experience with the art and engaged

dialogue with the band and between the participants about how they could use that

experience to make sense of complex issues in their work-lives. My feeling since those days

has been that if metaphor is so important to how we think, then there should be theory and

research out there that helps us understand how we make metaphors work in practice.

However, the literature that I found from that time onwards seemed to fall into either one of

three broad categories, only some of which used Lakoff and Johnsons perspective on

metaphor in systems design (Oates & Fitzgerald, 2007; Tippett, 2004). The work either built

on Lakoff and Johnson's embodied realism and engaged in uncovering the metaphors in use

for important subjects (Andriessen, 2006; Andriessen & Gubbins, 2006; Casasanto & Jasmin,

2012; Herrera-Soler, 2006; Inns, 2002), performed psychological experiments that observed

the entailments of metaphor in peoples perceptions or behaviors (Kille et al., 2013; Larson &

Billetera, 2013; Morris et al., 2007; Sullivan, 2015; Zhong & Leonardelli, 2008), or looked at
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metaphor in design but did not refer to Lakoff and Johnsons work (Indurkhya, 2006;

Kaptelinin & Czerwinski, 2007; Melles, 2008). It is fair to say that over the past few years,

more and more work is emerging that does address the issue specifically from the perspective

of conceptual metaphor, even if it does not take a deep dive into the entailments of embodied

realism (Bakker, Antle, & Hoven, 2011; Casakin, 2012; Hoshi, 2012; Kelly, 2014).

Fred Steier pointed me to Schns (1993) chapter that introduced me to the notion of

generative metaphor. Schns way of seeing metaphor was exactly what I had been looking

for in explaining the working of metaphor when used to design interventions with metaphor

consciously, but searching with the specific term of generative metaphor did not yield

much in terms of literature other than the work of Barrett and Cooperrider (1990) and

Srivastva and Barrett (1988), who seem to be the few that have followed up on working out

the implications of metaphor in this specific term.

In writing the first version of the literature review for this dissertation, I got stuck on

gathering support for the duality that was emerging in my mind between the conscious and

nonconscious applications of metaphor. Also, in the first version of the literature review, I

had not fully reported on Mark Johnsons evolving work after 1999 (Johnson, 2007, 2014).

Johnsons work in further exploring the nonconscious dimensions of embodiment is a great

way to better understand some of the questions left open by the experimental psychology that

based itself on embodied realism. Nonetheless, my search was for literatures that would help

me better relate the two worlds of conscious and nonconscious, as well as the application of

metaphor in designing new concepts, especially in information systems. I was lucky that

Frank Barrett, in reviewing my dissertation draft, pointed out the work that he did with

Sarbin (Barrett & Sarbin, 2007; Sarbin, 2003), which bases itself on Turbaynes (1971) view
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of metaphor. Turbayne's work provides a great perspective on the interplay between the

deliberate and non-deliberate use of metaphor and the way that the conscious and

nonconscious operate interactively in the minds of the metaphor creator and receiver to move

metaphor from its innovative first use to being taken literally. I also went back to the

reference lists of the literature in generative metaphor to see if I could go back further and

find out how this notion of metaphor had first emerged in Schns thinking. Through this, I

found Schns early work on the displacement of concepts (1963/2011), which lays out his

theories of metaphor and analogy. Daan Andriessen finally pointed me to Steens most

recent work (2014), which can be framed as the most recent linguists response to conceptual

metaphor theory.

Having shared these signposts emerging on the metaphor map I am trying to make here, it

is now time for a deeper exploration of these partial perspectives on metaphor. I will first

describe the perspectives as they were originally presented in their time, and then proceed to

discuss them in the light of the most recent studies. In the next chapter, I will create a model

that integrates the four perspectives coherently as a mirror to reflect relevant data from our

own process of working with and reflecting on metaphors in the design of a new process and

system.

Schns Displacement of Concepts

Schn (1963/2011) describes the process through which an individual or a culture

becomes aware of a new concept. Through the interactions between our bodies and the

world, concepts arise as coherent embodiments of our expectations in the experience of

framing one thing in terms of another. Once these expectations are no longer met, we need a

new concept to make sense of a situation. In the process of the emergence of a new concept,
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there are two perspectives that seem to be at odds with each other. On the one hand, there is

the radical perspective on the emergence of the new concept. This view seems to embody a

degree of mystery in how a new concept arises. It seems like there is an unconscious agent

inspiring the rise of the new concept in the person from the outside-in. On the other hand,

there is a conservative perspective that tries to retain as much of the old concept as possible.

In this view, the displacement of the concept is guided by a reductionist, law-like

recombination of existing concepts in which the whole that emerges is the sum of its parts.

Schn shows how gestalt psychology is an embodiment of the mystery perspective, bringing

psychological insights into our perception to suggest a subtle way of mystifying the process

of the emergence of new concepts. He contrasts this with scientific method, which he

describes as a way to subtly reduce the complex process back to its parts.

Schn argues that the scientific perspective cannot hold, but he is also critical of the

gestalt perspective. He proceeds to explore this perspective in more detail. He expands the

view of metaphor and analogy as they work in the process and shows that in the displacement

of concepts, the linguistic notion of metaphor as naming one thing in terms of another is a

starting point for understanding the relationship between a concept and an instance but in

itself is not enough to make sense of what happens in the displacement. Comparison by

analogy also fails to account for the process as this only shows the similarities and highlights

the differences between the old and the new. A focus on the errors, the ways in which the

comparison through metaphor or analogy fails, also contributes to the emergence but is not

enough to explain the mystery. The normal attributes of comparison, error, and the

application of a concept to an instance are prerequisites but not sufficient to explain the

displacement.
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What is it that truly expands our view so that the new concept arises as a whole?

According to Schn (1963/2011), it is important to understand that there are no things

without concepts. There is a distinction between the two but not a separation. Because of

this relationship of interdependence between concept and instance, both are changed in the

displacement of concepts. Schn describes his own experience of understanding a new

concept of polishing after someone showed him that polishing is actually a process of

scratching. The scratches induced by polishing are so small that we cannot see them as

scratches with the naked eye. The polished object thereby appears smoother than before the

polishing. The new concept of understanding polishing as a kind of scratching changed both

Schns concept of polishing and his concept of scratching. By being applied to the instance,

the concept changes the instance, and by this same application the concept itself is also

changed. Once we have the new concept of this, it is difficult to remember the experience

of both concept and instance changing as we tend to re-order the process retrospectively,

thereby obscuring the displacement that occurred. This same retrospective sensemaking also

requires that we stick to a new concept quickly after it has been formed as we have adapted

to it and through it (Schn, 2011, p. 8). He summarizes the four patterns that distinguish the

process of the displacement of concepts:

1. There is an intimation that B is A-like.

2. A is taken as a condensed program for the exploration of B.

3. In carrying out this program, expectations from A are transposed to B as

projective models.

4. For each of these projective models, aspects of B are seen to be related in A-like

ways where we had not been attentive to those relations in A before. (p. 58)
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Metaphor and analogy are the means used by this process of displacement that leave

traces in our experience and language. These analogies and metaphors are everywhere in our

language, and attempts to get at the bottom of this, for example through etymology, will

always keep surfacing new questions. Schn implies that the reflexive juxtaposing of one

metaphor with another is a key to understanding the evolution of ideas. From a cultural

perspective, metaphors can therefore be seen as gifts or ties. According to Schn, our

intimations of the symbolic relationships between concepts are probably preconscious,

emotive, and feeling-related. Making the effort to see one concept as another is the key to

using metaphor as gifts instead of being tied to them.

After seeing Schns (1963/2011) displacement of concepts, it is easier to understand how

this work served as a foundation for both his ideas of generative metaphor and the theory of

reflection-in-action. The first is a further specification of the theoretical perspective of the

displacement of concepts towards the practice of creating new products, while the other is a

further specification of the same process applied to how we think in the action of creating

those products (or services) and how we are ourselves changed through the process of doing

so. Schn (1963/2011) also prefigures the role of the nonconscious and unconscious

dimensions of emotions, feelings, and interrelationships between concepts, and our embodied

experience to which Mark Johnson provides a research-based perspective below. It is

striking that both Johnson and Schn go back to Dewey (Schn wrote his dissertation on

Dewey) as one foundation for their thinking about conceptual thought. Finally, Schn

prefigures what Turbayne talked about at the same time (in the early 1960s) regarding the

rhetorical power that metaphors can have over us nonconsciously, which will be the subject

of the next section.

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Turbaynes Metaphor to Myth Transformation

For Turbayne (1971), metaphor is not something that exists per se but rather something

that is at work in the interaction between metaphor producer and receiver. Assuming a

metaphor producer is aware of his or her use of metaphor as metaphor, the producer pretends

that something is the case when it is not through the crossing of different sorts (Turbayne,

1971, p. 3). The nature of metaphor is that either the producer can be taken in by his or her

own device or the receiver is unaware of the use of metaphor. In this case, metaphor is no

longer used, but we are used by metaphor.

The pretense that something is the case when it is not requires awareness. The dropping

of the pretense can happen consciously or nonconsciously. When it happens consciously on

behalf of the producer, the metaphor is hidden, either through disguising or masking. For the

receiver, the mask blends with the face, or he or she is being used by the hidden metaphor.

This also happens without awareness. It is better to say that the metaphor producer that hides

a metaphor can see the receiver being taken in by the metaphor. For the receiver, there is no

metaphor: He or she faces literal truth. In this case, there is metaphor confusion, which,

rather than a crossing of different sorts, is a sort-trespassing (Turbayne, 1971, p. 22).

Metaphor confusion is aided by four factors:

1. The two ideas that are crossed share the same name, which plays into our belief in

identity.

2. We are not always told that the two ideas are different (hiding or masking).

3. Even when we are told, we cross sorts from one to another.

4. The line between belief and make-believe is thin.

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As the similarities of a metaphors two sorts are stressed, the differences become

suppressed. When the story of a metaphor is told many times, it comes to be taken more

seriously. Where a new metaphor can at first be unconventional, or even inappropriate, we

give in to its use at some point and it then moves on to become commonplace. After it is

commonplace for a long time, it dies, or rather, becomes hidden. We now take the metaphor

literally to the extent that we take it metaphysically instead of metaphorically. Once, through

our confusion, we become aware that we are being used by metaphor, we have no choice but

to undress the metaphor and to re-allocate it to show the confusion.

Barrett and Sarbin (Barrett & Sarbin, 2007; Sarbin, 2003) show the process of metaphor to

myth at work in the war on terror. Even if the politicians that first voiced the term were

aware that there can be no such thing as a war on terror, their political commitment to the

metaphor makes it unlikely that they will nuance it once the entailments become clear in

reality. As they use the metaphor as a guide for action, budgets are allocated, troops are

deployed, and the metaphor becomes a reality. Barrett and Sarbin (2007) show that

unmarked and non-transparent metaphors are more likely to be taken literally and proceed to

undress and re-allocate the confusions behind the war on terror metaphor by showing how a

reframe of terror as a criminal activity, rewarding serious police investigation, might lead to a

very different world.

Turbaynes view is valuable as it highlights the rhetorical aspects of the use of metaphor

and provides a critical perspective to start dealing with metaphors before they start dealing

with us. As we have seen in the literature review, those studies that started surfacing

conceptual metaphors in use in a number of contexts, even if they do not refer to Turbaynes

work, are providing us with critical perspectives and methods for undressing and re-
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allocating metaphors. Charteris Black (2013), for instance, built on notions of metaphor to

create critical metaphor analysis. Peterson (2009) critically analyzed the allocation of

funding to technologists metaphors for human being, showing how BRAINS R US and

MAN IS A MACHINE attract more funding than more organic and process-based metaphors.

Rohrer and Vignone (2012) critically analyzed bank CEOs use of metaphor in the

congressional hearings on the financial crisis, showing that by pretending the financial crisis

is a natural disaster, the men and women making the decisions in the financial system cannot

be blamed for its causes and consequences.

Johnsons Meaning of the Body in the Emergence of Metaphorical Thought

Johnsons contribution to the field of metaphor is best known through his long time

collaboration with George Lakoff (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999). Johnsons latest work,

however, is possibly the most significant for our understanding of the process through which

metaphor evolves (2007, 2014). Before I summarize Johnsons unique contribution in some

detail, I will first summarize the evolution of Lakoff and Johnsons key ideas about

conceptual metaphor.

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argued that the meaning of metaphor goes beyond the

linguistic and is conceptual. Metaphorical concepts include both a thinking process and a

linguistic expression. Metaphors highlight and hide. Argument is war, for example,

highlights the aggressive and confrontational nature of argument, while there is also a

cooperative, mutual understanding aspect to argumentation. This cooperative and mutual

understanding remains hidden in the use of the concept of argument as war. From the use of

a metaphor, entailments follow logically; in this case, attacking, defending, taking down

defenses one by one, and so on.

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The development of metaphors in our language began with an ontological projection of

ourselves onto the world. Our experience of our bodies as closed objects gave rise to

container schemas and made us assign person-like characteristics to abstract phenomena we

wanted to name. Therefore, our earliest metaphors can be found in expressions like being

in danger, moving out of an area, the front of the house, and so on. Building on these

most primitive projections, we expanded the metaphorical vocabulary with orientation

metaphors like good is up, knowing in grasping, and seeing is believing.

Combinations of orientation metaphors led to structural metaphors where a systematic

scheme of metaphorical entailments helps us make sense of complex, abstract phenomena.

Love is a journey where we can be in planes, trains, and automobiles, for example, provides

one of many coherent domains for reasoning about love. Argument is war can be expanded

to the attack of the buildings that make up our arguments. So, in addition to taking down

someones defenses, we can also demolish the foundations of their arguments. What makes

the workings of conceptual metaphor especially intriguing is that they are also used to make

sense of the concepts of language and communication themselves. The dominant structural

metaphor for communication, communication is a conduit (Reddy, 1993), highlights the

objective meaning of communication as contained in the messages that go from sender to

receiver. While it is easy to provide examples that highlight our understanding that meaning

is context dependent and differs for sender and receiver, the highlighting of the objective

meaning of our main conceptual metaphor hides this important perspective time and again.

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) see three stages in the development of metaphors, from novel

to conventional to dead. This process of development is complex. Metaphors do not always

simply become replaced but are often extended with the addition of new expressions like the
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novel metaphor, love in the fast lane, which extends the conventional metaphor LOVE IS

A JOURNEY, while some remain simple and do not develop much further, like the foot of

the mountain. For Lakoff (1987), a metaphor is dead once its etymological meaning is no

longer conventionally shared in the culture. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) show how a new

metaphor can be designed but point out that creating a new metaphor and having it adopted

in culture is hard work. Probing beyond metaphors for language and communication, they

argue that our concepts of objectivism and subjectivism are also metaphorical and therefore

incomplete. From their argument, it follows that if concepts are metaphorical, then truth is

relative to human understanding. They present the metaphor of scientific experientialism as

an epistemology rooted in this new understanding of metaphor.

Later, Lakoff and Johnson (1999) present evidence that the embodied nature of mind and

the cognitive unconscious give rise to conceptual metaphor. They show that cognitive

science gave rise to a new generation of research based on the theory of the embodied mind

(Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991) and how the converging evidence from this second-

generation cognitive science demonstrates that, through a mostly nonconscious process in

which there are systematic correlations between our physical and emotional experience,

conceptual metaphors arise in the mind and in language. In the embodiment of mind, neural

embodiment, phenomenal experience, and the cognitive unconscious are interrelated levels of

embodiment that together give rise to new concepts and sustain existing concepts. They

change experientialism into embodied realism and introduce the notions of primary and

complex conceptual metaphors to replace orientation and structural metaphor.

As reported in the literature review above, Lakoff and Johnsons work started a

continually expanding area of research in the uncovering of conceptual metaphors and of

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psychological experimentation to test the workings of conceptual metaphors on our

experience and decision making. Strikingly, only a few have taken Lakoff and Johnsons

work to the design of new metaphors or made the connection with the other metaphor

theorists discussed here.

More importantly for this discussion, Johnson went on to probe deeper into the

nonconscious aspects of the emergence of metaphor in thinking and language. In his book,

The Meaning of the Body (Johnson, 2007), he takes some key, recent outcomes of second-

generation cognitive science, phenomenology, and the pragmatic philosophy of William

James and John Dewey to explore the working of the cognitive unconscious, specifically the

nonconscious dimensions of the development of metaphors in thinking and language.

According to Johnson, through our body-environment coupling, which he sees, after Dewey

(1934/1985), as a continuous process of interaction between self, other, and environment, we

apply a cross-modal sensory perception to the flow of experience. This means that our

senses work together to make sense of our experience. Johnson reports research where

babies were blindfolded and given either a smooth or a textured smoother. When the

blindfold was removed and the babies were presented with the two different smoothers, their

gaze would settle on the one they were actually given. Studies like these confirm that our

senses work together in making sense of our experience. Our senses work closely with our

emotions and feelings to make further sense of what happens in experience. Johnson

mentions vitality affect contours, a term that captures the complex collaboration between

cross-modal sensual perception and the emotions and feelings arising from the flow of our

experiences. When a mother caresses her baby, she may stroke the baby's back in a rhythmic

manner while at the same time giving a verbal, music-like accompaniment of aaah, the
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strength of which varies in synch with the strength of the stroking: starting softly, taking on

strength as the stroke and the aaah progress, and ending lightly when the aaah ends and

the hand leaves the back of the child. The neural circuitry, the phenomenal experience, and

the cognitive unconscious work together to embody what Johnson calls vitality affect

contours. In this process, there is no clear distinction between perception and conception.

As the physical experience meshes with the emotional, and we experience feelings of being

loved through a mostly nonconscious process, the concepts of rhythm, tension, release, and

warmth are all co-arising in our body-mind. From this, it is a small step to the image

schemas that support the collective sensory experience of our body projections to the world

as a foundation for primary and complex metaphorical thinking processes. Johnson does a

great job at laying out the philosophical and research bases of the nonconscious embodied

process that precedes the formation of metaphors (if we take a circular metaphor to

conceptualize the continuity of experience, which may not do justice to its complex, non-

linear simultaneity, but given the limitations of writing on paper, it will have to do for

pragmatic purposes).

The Linguistic Perspectives Contributions and Critiques

A juxtaposing of theories and research on metaphor is not complete without the linguistic

perspective. There is a community of researchers who have slowly and skeptically accepted

the notion of metaphor as conceptual, and from this community, some valuable critiques

were proposed to complement the conceptual view of metaphor. Steen (2010, 2014) and his

group of researchers, for example, who we can see as representatives of the linguistic

perspective, say that the arguments for the unconscious or nonconscious aspects of metaphor

have kept metaphor theory captured in psychological experimentation, which has only served
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to prove the theory itself correct through circular reasoning. They suggest that we shift

perspective from the conscious versus nonconscious distinction to the distinction between

deliberate or non-deliberate use of metaphor or to the tension between intention and

attention. According to Steen (2014), only 1% of all metaphor use is deliberate, and this is

where the action is. Steen says that deliberate metaphor use affords conscious metaphorical

thought but that this conscious metaphorical thought does not always happen. In that sense,

Steen mirrors Turbaynes view that one can either be using metaphor or can be used by

metaphor (from the perspective of the metaphor producer) or take the metaphor literally

(from the perspective of the unaware receiver). Rohrer and Vignone (2012) support Steens

argument for focus on the deliberate use of metaphor but criticize his method, which, as

rooted in a linguistic perspective, focuses on the lexical units in analyzing metaphors, while

finding conceptual metaphors seems to rely more on a paragraph-by-paragraph grasp of the

emerging conceptual metaphors.

Kennings of This Stepping

The concept of reflection-in-action is one way in which Schn has integrated his views on

the process of designing. A close read of the concept in concert with reading his older work

on the displacement of concepts and his later work on generative metaphor shows a

continuity of the same questions over a longer period of time: How can we analyze the

messiness of real processes and the emergence of new form in those processes in a way that

does justice to the reality of the process while, at the same time, trying to distill the patterns

that give coherent form to those processes and forms? Even though Schn uses

improvisation as an illustration of the process of reflection-in-action, he never further

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develops that metaphor as a metaphor in his work, but the analogy between his work and the

concepts in organizational improvisation are clear and present.

The review of the generative, rhetoric, and embodied views on metaphor provides a

comprehensive and coherent theory of metaphor both in the process of the emergence of

metaphors in thinking and language and in their deliberate application in rhetoric and design,

but there is no scholarly relationship between the metaphor design thinkers and metaphor

process thinkers. Other than having appeared in handbooks together from time to time, they

dont refer to each other in their key works (see, for example, Gibbs, Jr., 2008; Ortony, 1993).

Therefore, there could be value in unifying their views in a coherent meta-metaphor frame.

Schn and Turbayne were mostly concerned with deliberate applications of metaphor; the

conscious perspective on metaphorical design from a conceptual metaphor perspective has

not been further developed other than in one chapter in Lakoff and Johnson's, Metaphors We

Live By (1980), where they expand the metaphor love as a collaborative work of art. Barrett

and Cooperrider (1990), who discuss the effects of a generative metaphor intervention, and

Andriessen (2008), who let two groups design interventions for a knowledge management

problem based on different metaphors for knowledge, specifically love and water, can be

considered as three of the few who have experimented with generative metaphor in practice.

Schn (1993) mentioned metaphor in the chapter for the handbook edited by Ortony but

didnt develop the notion further as metaphor (because we can argue, as I will next, that in

his process of reflection-in-action, he does further develop the concept, but implicitly). Other

literatures that look at the application of metaphor in design either do not mention one of the

four major theoretical perspectives reviewed here or take metaphor as given to the
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application in design and do not develop a concept of metaphor itself beyond Aristotles

definition.

The newly emerging insights from critical metaphor analysis, still mostly focused on the

existing use of metaphor but implicitly asking the question of how to employ metaphor with

rhetorical responsibility for the design of generative systems (Charteris-Black, 2013), do not

refer to the work done previously by Turbayne and Sarbin.

The linguists contributions to conceptual metaphor theory are mostly skeptical towards

that strand of the conversation and add some value in highlighting deliberate metaphor use.

At the same time, the linguists consistently display only a surface reading of conceptual

metaphor theory and research. They also fail to notice scholars like Turbayne who argued

the same case more than 40 years ago.

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CHAPTER SEVEN: DESIGNING A MODEL THAT INTEGRATES

REFLECTION-IN-ACTION WITH METAPHOR THEORY

I return to action inquiry as the method with which to approach the creative act now due.

I do not mean this in an instrumental way; I mean to use action inquiry as a context for

coherently naming phenomena at the interpenetrating personal, interactional, and

organizational layers of this dissertation that play in the act of creating a solution from the

deeper engagement with the literature that helps me make more sense of the research

question. My intention for this section is to take the emerging insights from the literature and

engage in a reflexive process of reflection-in-action with these insights. In using action

inquiry to remain reflexive, while submitting to reflection-in-action as the scholar I am

becoming while doing this, I may remain aware of, and share, my intent, thinking, feeling,

senses, behavior, and the effects I perceive as the person making this inquiry. In using action

inquiry, I may also remain aware of the dialogical nature of this process in which I frame,

advocate, illustrate, and inquire together with those behind the literature and with those

behind the data gathered and used in this process. Finally, action inquiry may help me

abstract to the organizational level where we can assess this performance from a more

objective stance and see how the strategies applied for this inquiry develop into a new vision.

Deeper engagement with the literature followed from my analysis of the reflections of our

design team on the outcomes of the systems design process of Embodied Making: a design

process and system that supports designers who want to create systems that are fit to deal

with complex design tasks. To discuss our own findings, I chose to focus on reflection-in-

action and to provide further synthesis of the different ways in which we have conceived of

metaphor.
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In approaching the task of making something out of the different, yet overlapping

perspectives on metaphor, I feel I need to remain as congruent as possible within the

limitations of written form and the meaning they express. Using the process of reflection-in-

action, I approach this task with a focus on what is unique in the problem setting of this

specific situation, and while bringing all my experience to bear intuitively into that situation,

I feel that the process of displacing concepts is most comprehensive in addressing the

inherent complexity of the process. I realize that my approach here seems to impose layer

upon layer of reflexivity on the situation. One risk of doing that is that this may become

confusing as meta-metaphors, reflecting-reflections, and reflexive-reflexivity build on each

other. I feel the desire to bring some comfort to the situation by giving it a coherent form in

advance that helps make better sense of what is emerging. I am reflexively aware that if I do

that, I impose a metaphor onto the situation that will highlight certain aspects while hiding

others. I am also aware that when I do not, I give in to letting your own experience shape the

situation inductively and possibly nonconsciously. This would be unfair, as it is my task here

to add something new to the discourse. It is also a connotation of what I have found so far

that there is no end to trying to find a foundation for doing one or the other as there is no

foundation to this process other than a metaphorical one. I am also aware that as a result of

my findings, I must at least go as far as possible in laying out all these forces shaping the

context of what I am trying to make here.

Displacement of Concepts is Embodied Realism

Feeling that I have shared enough of a frame for reflexivity, I take the displacement of

concepts perspective first because of the strength it provides in giving us as a result of its

inherent complexity. There is no strict linearity to Schn's process other than the way he
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starts with his desire to understand a situation in the moment and by bringing to that situation

a displaced concept that somehow preexists. From there, it is a process of interaction

between two equal concepts in which the displaced concept assists with a new sensemaking

of the other, and by which the meaning of the displaced concept itself is changed through that

mutual engagement as well as the concept that was used to start the interaction. With this

added complexity, Schn's (1963/2011) displacement of concepts addresses a number of

issues that critics of Embodied Realism have found in the work of Lakoff and Johnson; most

prominently, it addresses the linear, one directional nature of metaphor mapping implicit in

Lakoff and Johnson's (1980, 1999) use of source and target domains, which do a good job of

showing how one domain is the ground for reasoning about the other but do a poor job of

highlighting the mutual interactive displacement back from target to source that takes place

in that process. Rather than going into what that makes of Lakoff and Johnson in an

argument as war, I would like to shift focus to argumentation as a collaborative search for

agreement. Therefore, let us reverse direction back to what adding Schn's perspective

contributes to their theory, how a displacement of Schn's theory affects the meaning of

embodied realism, and how that process of displacement, in turn, shapes our understanding

of the concept of the displacement of concepts itself.

The key similarity between the displacement of concepts and embodied realism is in their

joint use of metaphor as a matter of thought and seeing the world. The key difference

between the two is the meaning that Schn gives to metaphor relative to the meaning that

Lakoff and Johnson assign to metaphor. Both acknowledge the comparison by analogy that

pays in the juxtapositioning of two sides of a metaphor, often illustrated in the literature with

a Venn diagram such as displayed below:

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Figure 30. Conventional way of displaying source and target domains in embodied realism.

The left circle of this Venn diagram shows what embodied realism calls the source

domain, and the right circle shows the target domain. The union of the two circles shows the

analogy between the two domains. One of the analogies between the displacement of

concepts and embodied realism is that they share a similarity in how both conceive of

metaphor as a matter of thought. In embodied realism, the entailments of the conceptual

metaphor DISPLACEMENT OF CONCEPTS IS EMBODIED REALISM would be noted as

follows:

displaced concept source domain

situational concept target domain

analogical similarity entailment

intimation that displacement of conceptual blending of target and

concepts is embodied-realism-like source domains
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displacement of concepts is taken entailments of the conceptual

as a condensed program for the metaphor are mapped to expand and
exploration of embodied realism test the coherence between source
and target domains

transposition of expectations from logical structuring and laying out of

the displacement of concepts to the conceptual metaphor's mappings
embodied realism through
projective modelling

aspects of embodied realism are ?

seen to be related to the
displacement of concepts in
displacement of concepts-type
ways, where we had not been
attentive to those relations in the
displacement of concepts before.

In the reflexive application of the displacement of concepts to embodied realism, the last

connotation has no analogical entailment in embodied realism. In the Venn diagram above,

there would be an aspect of the displacement of concepts that falls outside of the union of

both domains that has no entailment in embodied realism. When applying an Embodied

Making-framed conceptual metaphor analysis, one would stop here because this disanalogy

would be ignored. I might even argue that because of a disanalogy, our nonconscious would

not even notice and focus on the analogies. But since I started by reflecting in action on

applying the displacement of concepts as the displaced concept, there are two additional tasks

in this analysis.

The first task is to apply a generative seeing-as. If we see embodied realism as the

displacement of concepts, we would also try to answer the question of what it means to see

aspects of embodied realism relate to the displacement of concepts in displacement of

concept-type ways where we had not been attentive to those aspects in the displacement of
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concepts before. I argue that the most salient aspect of embodied realism reflecting back on

the displacement of concepts is the exploration of the workings of the cognitive unconscious

in our body-environment coupling. Johnson's (2007) summary of the neural embodiment,

phenomenal experience, and the details of the working of the cognitive unconscious in our

body-environment coupling reflects back on Schn's (1963/2011) intimation that A is B-like.

Schn thought that these intimations were preconscious, emotive, and feeling related.

Johnson provides a compelling argument supported by convergent evidence from many

different sources that this intimation indeed works on the continuum of feelings, emotions

and the cognitive unconscious. The source domain of displacement of concept leaves the

interaction with embodied realism enriched with a vocabulary that addresses its intimation

and adds structure to our understanding of the mysterious side of its theory by reflecting the

latest insights from science and philosophy. The displacement of concepts adds to embodied

realism its notion of interactive, relational co-shaping of concepts that takes place in a

displacement of concepts, thereby mitigating the implicit hiding of this interactivity entailed

by the more linear, left-to-right source-target mapping of embodied realism. In addition,

displacement of concepts adds to embodied realism a method to increase the generative

potential for pursuing the possible meanings of initially apparent disanalogies. Embodied

realism and its emerging methods, in turn, add to the displacement of concepts detailed

techniques for identifying and analyzing the metaphorical traces that remain in our language

as a result of their interactions.

In visualizing the complex interaction between the two concepts based on these emerging

insights, the Venn diagram would not work well because it does not show these complex

interactions other than in the union of the two circles. We would somehow need to break out
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of the closed Venn circles displayed above to see how the context outside of the union, and

possibly even beyond the two circles, is at play in the process of displacing and reflecting

back between the concepts. One way of accomplishing that would be to think of the

interaction between the two concepts as an interpenetrating and simultaneously evolving

process. In Venn's original work, he took into account such contextual embracing of the one

concept by the other, as displayed in the Wikipedia image reproduced below:

Figure 31. Venn diagram that includes the context of target domain. Adapted from
File:Venn0110.svg - Wikimedia Commons. (n.d.). Retrieved November 29, 2016, from
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Venn0110.svg. Adapted with permission.

However, the closed nature of the circles and the mathematical connotations of the set

theory used to explain this picture only go so far as to show us how the one concept can

transcend its own meaning to form a context for the other. It still does not show the complex

displacement, reflecting back, and interpenetration that takes place in the fourth step of

Schn's (1963/2011) process, nor does it account for the ambiguous nature of intimation and

mystery that are part of the process of displacement.

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A potentially better way to visualize what happens in the interpenetration of the two

concepts from the perspective of the displacement of concepts may be an image of two

equally unfolding patterns of phi in opposite directions as displayed below:

Figure 32. Two interpenetrating spirals. Retrieved from Decorative, Ornamental, Vortex
(n.d.). Retrieved December 12, 2016, from https://pixabay.com/en/decorative-ornamental-
vortex-1359974. Reprinted with permission.

This image does justice to the equality, openness, and divergent unfolding of interaction

between two concepts as they co-evolve with each other. While this visual does much to

support reasoning about the complexity of interaction between two concepts, it still hides

much of their differences and does not represent the interpenetration of the one in the other,

except maybe in their origin (if you take the two concepts as flowing out of a source
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together) or conclusion (if you take the two concepts growing towards each other to some

point where their meaning is the same).

Johnson (2007) argues that the most important conclusion of his work is that aesthetic

experience is the foundation for philosophy and reason. If our cross-modal sensory

perception is the basis for emotions and feelings, and if these, in turn, give rise to the image

schemas that give rise to metaphorical thought, which then becomes more precise and literal,

then we may be served best by invoking the arts to help us find a more apt visual for the

process I am trying to describe. When imagining a more complex way to visualize an

interactive interpenetration of two concepts that shape each other, Taiji comes to mind. Taiji

is the Daoist way of illustrating the dynamic interaction of a dualism in duality. The figure

below is an illustration of Taiji as it is most often displayed. Taiji is better at showing the

interactive joint growth of two concepts as they embrace each other in their displacement. It

is also more effective at showing how one interpenetrates the other, thereby changing its

meaning. In addition, the circle that embraces yin and yang in their dance bounds the idea of

the eternal or ineffable (Wuji in Daoism) where the phi spirals are unbounded. But while the

meaning of Taiji is to express the continuous dynamic movement between Yin and Yang who

form the two sides of its dualism, the image is often interpreted as the contrast that Yin and

Yang express. Its integrative and dynamic nature is often lost as the focus is drawn to the

contrast that is such a dominant, if nonconscious, phenomenon in our being.

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Figure 33. Taiji symbol. Reprinted from ChaowanGov. (2015). Retrieved November 26, 2016,
from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Yin_and_Yang.png. Reprinted with
permission.

Therefore, consider the more artful representation of Taiji below. Here, the dynamic

nature of the meaning of Taiji is better captured by the two fish swimming with each other.
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Figure 34. Taiji as two koi representing Yin and Yang in a more dynamic way. Reprinted from
FreeImages.com/mineiove. Retrieved November 12, 2015, from
http://www.freeimages.com/photo/taichi-fish-1154020. Reprinted with permission.

This image provides additional generative capacity to Taiji by showing the displacement

of concepts as an embodied, enactive process where one concept experiences itself while

seeing the other. It changes our perspective from us, as readers of this text, looking at an

image representing two concepts, to us as readers looking at two living agents expressing two

concepts while they interact. The fish, as fish, represent two different concepts, while at the

same time, the fish, as living beings, actively express and experience themselves in

interaction. We can imagine the one fish swimming to be in the place of the other and vice-

versa. With this living metaphor, it becomes easier to understand the dynamic process of

concept displacement, continuity of experience, and playful, deliberate, interaction. By

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swimming with each other, the concepts literally displace one another, experience their

interaction, and evolve while doing so, while each retaining a pattern of identity over time as

a distinct koi. Thompson, Steier, and Ostrenko (2014) use Bateson's (1972) idea of deutero

learning (learning about learning) to extend Schn's reflection-in-action to reflection-in-inter-

action25. The Taiji visual of the fish affords reasoning about this while retaining the inherent

complexity of the concepts being reasoned about.

The fish as active agents also provide a more dynamic tension because they make it easier

to imagine their dance reversing direction, going different places, or stopping altogether in

search for different dances or concepts as changing intentions drive them or as changing

circumstances require them. The water also helps us realize that there are limits to their

horizon. They can only see so much of the context in which their concept-dance takes place.

This idea keeps us open to the almost limitless breadth and depth of the oceans.

Metaphor to Myth in Relation to Displacing Concepts and Embodied Realism

The third element in the visual metaphor of the two fish representing the interpenetrating

process of Taiji is water. This element of the image serves well to help us make sense of the

third coherent concept in metaphor theory; that of the complex and subtle distinctions

between intention and attention, between deliberate and non-deliberate use of metaphor,

between conscious and nonconscious metaphorical thought, and between the metaphysical or

metaphorical experience of a situation. As Turbayne (1971) points out, you either have a

metaphor or the metaphor has you. Even if you have the metaphor, your repeated use of it

will let it have you over time. Barrett and Sarbin (2007), building on his notions, mention

that if the metaphor is used to create guides for action, we have started on the path from

25
To emphasize the inter-aspect of interaction. The authors play on Schns use of dashes in the
original reflection-in-action.
 162

metaphorical to literal truth: The war on terror metaphor becomes an actual war on terror,

failing in many ways as there cannot be such a thing; the financial crisis is a natural disaster

that becomes supported with measures that fit natural disasters, like the TARP (Temporally

Asset Relief Program) whose acronym also refers to a type of shelter. All of this works

together to take attention away from the men and women that actually made the financial

system what it is. As Steen (2014) helps us see, the one percent of the deliberate use of

metaphor is where the action is. The deliberate use of metaphor affords conscious

metaphorical cognition but often achieves the opposite as our cognitive unconscious

processes the metaphors as literal truth. Kim Pearce (2012) uses the same metaphor when

she says that,

From birth to death, we are swimming in patterns of communication. And for us,
these patterns are ubiquitous and mostly out of awareness because we are never not
engaged in them. We feel the consequences of our communicating, just as [fish]
experience the consequences of polluted or healthy ocean waters, but we don't "see"
the patterns themselves. (K. Pearce, 2012, p. 32)

Even if we assume that fish know what water is, we can still assume that they are not

conscious of water as water most of the time. The water in which the fish in Figure 34 swim

helps us to make sense of the complex interactive spectrum of communication that affords

the use or being used by metaphor as laid out by Turbayne, Barrett, and Sarbin. Critical

metaphor analyzers like Charteris Black, and especially those who start from the perspective

of embodied realism like Peterson, Vignone, and Rohrer, help us to probe the temperature,

depth, force, and flow of the water in which our concepts swim, and they assist us in

wondering about the occurrence of deliberation and intention in the experiencing or the

making of conceptual currents and waves: Are they the ocean's or the fish's? The dynamic

nature of the visual also makes it easy to imagine one fish to be in the place of the other the
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next moment. There, subject to the forces that the other made in the water, the fish embodies

the entailments of the metaphorical traces left there, affording it to make one small move

from the metaphorical to the metaphysical.

We can also imagine both fish being equally aware of the water, using it to deliberately

generate waves that help both of them understand, in a playful dance in which the one

displaces the other, what the forces generated in the water mean towards their mutual

understanding of a new situation. The addition of water as a third element expands our view

of the fish as metaphors, to the fish as metaphors enmeshed in metaphors. It expands the

meaning of displacement from a focus on the concepts to a view that includes both the

concepts and the concept makers/takers. In human reality, the two are always intertwined.

Or, as Pearce, Sostrin, and Pearce (2011) summarized the practical entailments of CMM

theory,

We get what we make;

We make it in communication;

If we can get the pattern of communication right, the best possible things will

happen. (W.B. Pearce, Sostrin, & K. Pearce, 2011, p. 14)

MMIIRR

Figure 35 brings the key concepts discussed above together with the Taiji painting of the

two fish. In order to help us remember what the picture represents, I chose the acronym

MMIIRR to refer to meta-metaphors, in-interaction, and reflexive reflection. The acronym

has the logical order of the sentence: "reflexive reflection in-inter-action with meta-

metaphors" reversed for two reasons. Firstly, the acronym MMIIRR both reveals and hides a

mirror helping us to remain reflexively aware that this model, as all others, is a reflection of
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itself. Secondly, the imperfection between the sentence as a truth and the twist in the

acronym serves to reflect the imperfect nature of the design process, its artifacts, and its

outcomes.

The concepts and their relationships in the MMIIRR mean the following:
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Figure 35. MMIIRR model represented on Taiji art. Adapted from

FreeImages.com/mineiove. Retrieved November 12, 2015, from
http://www.freeimages.com/photo/taichi-fish-1154020. Adapted with permission.

In order to frame the picture, I use Pearce's (2007) application of Gadamer's horizon of

understanding to social worlds. Pearce says that, Horizons are the natural limits of sight;
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they mark the end of what can be seen, but with no sense of confinement or impediment.

Within horizons, our social worlds appear rich and complete with no visible limits (W. B.

Pearce, 2007, p. 42).

Pearce puts the concept of horizon in the context of encountering the other who might

want to challenge our horizon from his or her own social world, aware, or unaware, of his or

her own horizon of understanding. The application of this concept to MMIIRR both bounds

and opens it, and it reflexively prefigures the more specific notions in the image. The

concept seems coherent with Wuji bounding the image of Taiji in Daoist philosophy. Wuji

might be interpreted as our joint horizon of understanding. Anything beyond it is beyond us.

In Daoism, human understanding begins with Taiji, the dynamic duality of the dualism yin

and yang (Schron, personal communication).

Within the horizons of understanding, we evolve concepts through displacement in a

process of reflecting-in-inter-action. Our intimation that concept A is B-like balances

methodical rigor with mysterious emergence in a process that we now know is enabled by

our neural embodiment, phenomenal experience, and the cognitive unconscious. Guided by

these structures of being, we are drawn to perceive our experience of this process and its

outcomes as literal truth. If, however one of the two fish, or even both fish, retain an

awareness of metaphor as metaphor, both as generative and embodied, the potential for

reflexive displacement emerges where both concepts evolve their meaning as a result of their

joint interaction. If only one of the two attains the meta-metaphor awareness, the potential

can go in either of two directions: revelation of the metaphor for joint generative potential or

a continued (intentional) hiding of the metaphor for directed persuasion. In this case, fish A,

blinded by the light, fails to see what lies below, while fish B, seeing the light inside its
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horizon of understanding, is reminded of water as water and is able to remain reflexively

aware of both B and A as metaphorical.

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CHAPTER EIGHT: TESTING THE MODEL WITH DATA

In this chapter, I will use the model that emerged from the discussion to reflect back on

the data to see how one can help us make sense of the other.

Figure 36. MMIIRR. Adapted from FreeImages.com/mineiove. Retrieved November 12,

2015, from http://www.freeimages.com/photo/taichi-fish-1154020. Adapted with
permission.
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Figure 36 shows the MMIIRR model that emerged from Chapter 10. It shows the two fish

symbolizing both sides of a conceptual displacement. In summary, the model shows us that

two concepts engage in a dynamic process of displacement in which there is an intimation

that A is B-like, which leads to an exploration of B in A-type ways. In this dyadic process,

aspects of B are seen as related in A-type ways. Through this displacement, the meaning of

B is generated in A-type ways, and A is changed in a B-type way as a result of its

displacement. The two fish making these displacements in the visual metaphor chosen here

will never do this in exactly the same way twice. Also, through the process of reflecting in

action, they go beyond the analogy, beyond what they have in common. They use their

displacement to understand what is unique about the other, and through the other to

understand what is unique about themselves. Through this whole process, they also come to

understand what is unique about this instance of the situation that they find themselves in.

This process is helped to a great extent by the neural embodiment, the phenomenal

experience, and the cognitive unconscious. These three are in a continuous concert across

the spectrum of self, other, and environment; across fish A, fish B, and water C, helped by

cross-modal sensual perception, feelings, emotions, image schemas, giving rise to

metaphorical thinking that emerges in primary metaphors and complex metaphors. This

process moves in the opposite direction of the reflection-in-action, helping it to become

possible in one way and helping it to become nonconscious in another. Where displacements

through reflection-in-action are generative and conscious, novel metaphors arise. When

novel metaphors become conventional, generative force remains, but it becomes embodied
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and hidden from consciousness. The traces of displacement are still visible in language, but

the process of meaning making is offline and cognitively unconscious. Awareness of these

two mutually reinforcing and mutually dissolving ways of metaphor might lead to one fish

being or becoming aware of metaphor as metaphor, or in our metaphor of water as water,

while the other is not (anymore) aware of water as water, or metaphor as metaphor. This can

occur without manipulation or persuasion of the one by the other, when one just sees a

metaphor and the other just sees literal truth. Like people from two cultures, they could still

make do without having to overcome this difference in experience. But it might also occur

that the fish that is aware of metaphor as metaphor uses the hidden generative power of that

metaphor to influence the other fish, making metaphorical waves in the water that the other is

not aware of as water, and will swim into, not knowing that these waves were made by

another fish. These waves might be intended for any purpose, educational, persuasive, or

otherwise. But not knowing what waves are, the other fish will take them literally.

What can we see when we analyze data from this study through this visual meta-

metaphor? I selected three episodes from the data that were labelled as options for

discussion and that were labelled as reflection-in-action, generative metaphor, and metaphor

ontology. Reflection-in-action was used as a label for sections that clearly displayed parts of

that process at work as a conscious search for solutions while applying knowledge about

metaphors. Generative metaphor was used as a label for parts of the design conversations

where the research team was clearly using a seeing-as to generate possibilities for further

designing the artifacts and/or the system, and metaphor ontology was used to label sections

where we reflected about metaphors and how they work as such; in other words, where we

focused on our tools rather than on applying them. Below, I will discuss three episodes that I
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titled circle, square, hexagon, river; from a river of forces to business as a landscape; and

bringing a river to life.

Circle, Square, Hexagon, River

As the research team, we were reviewing the outcomes of our design process with a

method for designing complex systems called Embodied Making and a system supporting

that process called Business Elements. The question was, what metaphors did we see in the

system and how conscious were we in wanting to make those metaphors part of the system?

We also wondered what breakthrough moments we remembered in the process of designing

and making the system. A first few turns that were of interest are below:

1) Sergej (S): What metaphors did we put in consciously? What metaphors do we

see that we put in unconsciously? What sessions do we remember where we had
breakthroughs?
2) Indranil (I): Circle and square.
3) I: Hexagon is sort of a hybrid between circle and square.
4) S: Did we make a conscious choice for this metaphor?
5) Andr (A): No more practical.
6) I: Andre pointed out that the mathematical nature of the hexagon was practical.
7) S: What was the first moment we came up with the circle and the square?
8) I: I remember the call with the [client name] guys. It was the first time we
presented it. We came up with it the week before I think.
9) A: I recall that you [Sergej] came up with it. In a Friday session where we all
three, you came up with it. We were discussing how we are going to make visible
what we mean by embodied making. I recall that you drew the circle and the
square with the overlap right?

The circle, the square, and the hexagon are three geometrical forms that were central to

the design of the process and the system of Embodied Making. The circle is used to

symbolize immediate experience, the square to symbolize representations of immediate

experience. One of the first principles that we formulated in the process of designing

Embodied Making was that the value of any representation is directly proportional to its
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proximity to immediate experience. Figure 37 shows the first design artifact that we

systemically created in the process.

Figure 37. First Embodied Making visual representation. It shows the two metaphors,
EXPERIENCE IS CIRCULAR and REPRESENTATION IS SQUARE. In this diagram, the
key forms to understanding the case study are the circles and the squares; the text of the
diagram is not important to read here.

The circle, the square, and the hexagon are also the first forms that come to the teams

mind as a response to the reflective question what metaphors we have embodied in the

system. The hexagon (see Figure 13 above for one of the first hexagon design artifacts) was

devised much later in the process when we were moving from the design of Embodied
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Making as a process to the design of the Business Elements system supporting Embodied

Making.

Figure 38. Andr's hexagon design for Embodied Making system.

Andr and Indranil both remember different moments for the circle and square to emerge:

10) A: This was not in the [client name] meeting. This was one of our Friday sessions
where we are discussing experience. The more you experience, the more you
know what you don't know because your experience becomes bigger. I think you
[points to Sergej] did it. You drew a circle. We were talking as well about how
can we combine this with what we know. If you make the overlap big enough
with experience, the solution space becomes bigger.

Figure 38 shows the handwritten notes that Andr is referring to. They were made in a

meeting where the three of us were preparing for a meeting with a client in which we were to

present the design process of embodied making for the first time. The visual is a recursive

evolution of Figure 37, where the research team meant to express how in modern Western
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methods, thinking takes precedence over experience, or rather, frameworks and tools are used

as guides to experience. We mentioned Plato, Aristotle, Newton, Galileo, Descartes as

influencers of this way of thinking, captured in Descartes I think, therefore I am. We said

that in Embodied Making, we are not arguing against this but we rather want to integrate

experience with this approach on an equal footing, and to highlight this, we talked about

starting with experience: I am, therefore I think.

Figure 39. My handwritten notes of Embodied Making design session on April 13, 2012.

Later, I ask for more circles and squares that we remember:

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11) A: The web-logo, remember?

12) I: Sometimes you have these bursts of productivity. I didn't do anything but the
content for the website. In two weeks it all came out. The head, the mind, the
circle, the square, the body, somehow it all came together. I was in a flow and it
just came out. I was working on my own, I a flow.
13) A: If you talk about embodiment, and as a person, then your head has the
reasoning, but it is not where you feel the emotions. It is interesting where the
circle represents the experience, feeling is in the belly right. It is interesting that
the symbols for the head (which is more round) and the body, which is more
square. Whereas the thinking and reasoning of the brain is more square and the
emotions of the body are more circular.

Figure 39 shows the image that Indranil created as a first logo for embodied making. We

see the circle and the square evolving from the handwritten diagram in Figure 38. The

overlap between circle and square is maintained, the arms representing the recursive flow

between the one and the other, and, as Andr points out, the subtle contrast between the

placement of the circle representing a head and the body as the square.

Figure 40. Web logo for Embodied Making site by Indranil.

We continue the conversation.

14) S: What struck me is that in the particle language there are also circles and
squares. Was this a conscious choice?
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Figure 40 shows the visualizations of the particle language, a design artifact we came up

with later in the process. Here the circles and the squares were applied to John Sowa's

(2000) ontology as a foundation for creating business elements, the system supporting

embodied making.

Figure 41. Particle language based on Sowa's (2000) ontology for Business Elements
system.

Then a reflection follows.

15) I: I don't want to over-think this too much, because they are such basic traits. A
circle is math perfection, and so is a square. From a young age we tend to
understand that these are two shapes that are very powerful. It really depends
how you put the one in the other how they make you feel. Circle in square feels
good, the other way around feels like the square is puncturing the circle. Pretty
basic, you learn an appreciation for both shapes pretty quickly right? Easiest
shapes to draw. Are they metaphorical? You see traffic signs in these shapes too.
They're there for a reason right?
16) S: Yes, they also seem to fit with key philosophies that they represent.
Nietzschian eternal recurrence. Cartesian grid.
17) I: The first time I started enjoying math was with geometry, Euclid.
18) A: First thing I learned is that in a triangle the squares add up to 180 degrees. So
learning how to draw a perfect triangle.
19) S: Good question, to what extent are the two actually metaphorical.

In the sections below, this episode from the data is analyzed using the elements of
MMIIRR.
 177

Process of Reflecting-in-Interaction

The reflective session from which the data in the episode above comes was deliberately

designed as a reflection-on-action to identify metaphors that were present in our design

process and that are now present in our system and to reflect on the meaning we made of

them in joint interaction during the reflection. The reflective session was guided by questions

prepared by the lead researcher to consciously address metaphors.

Awareness of Metaphor as Metaphor

The awareness of metaphor as metaphor differs between the three researchers and also

shifts over the course of the conversation. In the first few turns, all of us identify the circle

and the square as metaphors. We also see how the hexagon, which became an important

metaphor in the system at a later stage, is a hybrid of circle and square.

In turn 10, which refers to the drawing we made in Figure 39, Andr recalls how we

started to bring the circle and the square together and shows that we think about stories as

being in the confluence of both circle and square. Generatively, Andr reminds us that we

mean to expand the circle to expand our experience. The more the circle overlaps with our

knowledge (he uses this term to point to the square), the more stories we have of

experiencing this knowledge. The more we do this, the more we know what we do not know,

and the better we can use our experience to create new knowledge. Andr refers to the

overlap of the circle and the square as the solution space. He drew small circles in the

overlap representing the stories that we have from experience that are reflected in the

knowledge (square). A conceptual metaphor analysis of this episode, including its related

design artifacts, leads to

Overlapping circle and square Embodied making

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Circle Immediate experience, head,

embodied, basic trait,
mathematical perfection,
Nietzsche's eternal recurrence

Square Representations of experience,

knowledge, body, making, basic
trait, mathematical perfection,
Cartesian grid

Growing circle Growing experience

Junction of circle and square Stories of experience, arm

Junction of circle and square Solution space, arm

In turn 13, Andr displays awareness of metaphorical incoherence between the

entailments of circle and square in embodied making and in the logical shaping of a person.

In turn 15, Indranil shares his intimation that circle and square may not be metaphorical but

rather math perfections that are with us from early on as they are easy to draw and can be

seen in many representations, such as traffic signs. I both confirm the ubiquity of the forms

by referring to two philosophers that we used to make sense of the two forms ourselves, but

mean it to recover the embodied metaphorical meaning, while I dilute that meaning at the

same time by wondering aloud in turn 19.

Perception of Experience as Literal Truth

When Indranil says that we do not want to overthink this, he points to the mathematical

nature of circle and square as an implicit cause for them being nonmetaphorical. In

retrospect, as I write this, I am no longer in a mode where I can access Indranils meaning

making of this turn, so I am left to speculate based on my own analysis. The term

embodied, for us, resonated with the theories and research in embodied realism. But as we

will see in a later episode below, Indranil and I make different meaning of embodied realism.
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Where I tend to see everything as metaphorical, Indranil distinguishes differently. In this

sentence, he implicitly says that math perfection is not metaphorical. The literature in

embodied realism, notably Lakoff and Nunez (2000), argues that mathematics is embodied in

experience and is extended from blending an innate capability for subsidizing and estimating

that are based on four grounding metaphors for arithmetic: ARITHMETIC IS OBJECT

COLLECTION (objects of the same size are numbers, the size of the collection is the size of

the number), ARITHMETIC IS CONSTRUCTION (the smallest whole object is the unit, the

size of the object is the size of the number), ARITHMETIC IS A MEASURING STICK

(physical segments are numbers, the length of the physical segment is the size of the

number), and ARITHMETIC IS MOTION ALONG A PATH (origin of the path is zero, point

locations on the path are numbers).

The ideas of one and zero, two entailments of these four grounding metaphors, are deeply

grounded in some of our most immediate experiences of individuality, wholeness, unity,

integrity, and a beginning. The importance of this understanding is that the extension of this

innate capability and the grounding metaphors are extended to all mathematics by conceptual

blending of these grounding metaphors through experiences that give rise to linking

metaphors. Lakoff and Nunez (2000) would argue that even though a circle and a square

may be mathematical perfection, they are still embodied, conceptual, and metaphorical. As

we had never discussed this literature in our reflections, I can assume that Indranil's concept

of mathematics correlates with the conventional wisdom that mathematics is a reflection of

the perfection of nature.

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Neural Embodiment, Phenomenal Experience, and Cognitive Unconscious

The neural embodiment, phenomenal experience, and cognitive unconscious parts of

MMIIRR serve to remind us of the process that gives rise to conceptual metaphor. It invites

us to look deep into the mirror at something that is hard to perceive in phenomenal

experience without extending our senses with the leading edge of theory and research.

Neural embodiment, phenomenal experience, and the cognitive unconscious express the most

recent understanding of how the process of embodying experience as conceptual

metaphorical structures work, and at the same time, they explain how repetition of any

knowledge, including this very knowledge that explains the process, makes us fuse ourselves

with the knowledge and make it unconscious. It is the best explanation we currently have for

why we intimate that A is B-like and for why our metaphorical masks eventually fuse with

our true faces. If a team does not share this understanding and keeps it conscious, it will

always be prone to forgetting metaphors that might be part of making a design work. In the

episode above, there is only one researcher that I can be sure understood this process well

enough to use it in a generative way in the reflection, and even he wondered about the circle

and the square in the moment.

Intimation That A is B-Like and Exploration of B in A-Type Ways

Embodied realism, and specifically conceptual metaphor analysis, helps show how

repeated exploration and experimentation in experience eventually shows up in our language

metaphorically. But a limitation of conceptual metaphor analysis is that it fails to reveal the

complexity of metaphors emerging from experience in a practical way. Schn's (1963/2011)

displacement of concepts, specifically the notion that an intimation that is A is B-like and an

exploration of B in A-type ways, complements conceptual metaphor analysis by providing a

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more complex view on the process of metaphorical becoming. Also, by taking a pragmatic

view and looking for the generativity of metaphor in that process, Schn affords a practical

way of working with metaphor.

In the case of the episode above, the intimations that experience is circular and that

representations are square were confirmed by extensive experimentation with the two

concepts in our design process over time. The entailments in the conceptual metaphor

analysis that we remember in this short reflection are only a few of the experimental

outcomes that confirm the aptness of the forms for representing the two ideas of experience

and representation. In the case of the logo where the two switched places, we see a case that

is at odds with the usual way of seeing-as, and therefore, it created some confusion. Such

confusion may be a cue that something metaphorical is going on nonconsciously, and thereby

offers a possibility to surface nonconscious metaphors to consciousness for improvisation.

Aspects of B Seen as Related in A-Type Ways

In Schns (1963/2011) displacement of concepts, the inference that A is B-like co-occurs

with an experience where aspects of B are seen as related to A in A-type ways. In the episode

above, this would entail that the research team does not only see experience as circular, and

representation as square, but also that certain aspects of a circle are now seen as related to

experience in experience-type ways, and that aspects of a square are seen as related to

representation in representation-type ways. This part of the theory of displacement of

concepts may well be its most confusing, but at the same time, it may be its most profound. I

will briefly repeat Schns (1963/2011) example to aid the sense making here. Schn, when

discovering that polishing is actually a form of scratching, changed not only his concept of

polishing, but also his concept of scratching. In order to assess if a similar change in
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conception occurred in the research team, we would look for instances in the data where we

see, for example, that our concept of circle is applied in a different way to experience in

experience-type ways. From the transcript, it is not directly apparent how the research teams

perception of circles as experience is from now on seen as related in experience-type ways.

But from the later design artifacts and systems components, it emerges that the notion of

experience as circular and of representation as rectangular has changed the meanings of

circles and squares in a consistent way. In the particle language, for example, the two forms

are used in varying forms and functions to represent an ontology of ideas where the primarily

circular forms correlate with the occurrent concepts process, script, participation, history,

situation, and purpose, and the primarily square forms correlate most with the continuant

concepts of object, schema, juncture, description, structure, and reason.

From the River of Forces to Business as a Landscape

In the second episode, Indranil and I reflect on the system, design artifacts, and

breakthrough moments.

I: And of course, the final step to come up with the solutions. So if we look at
applying embodied making, then the role of metaphor is very strong. And then we
faced a lot of challenges, as find the shortcoming of a metaphor, of an analogy in
a solution space. I'm struggling a bit now with the hexagon canvas on business
elements, with the next bunch of things that we have to do. The complexity there
is quite high, and...you find, you know just because we're not product...Yeah, so a
product is an informational entity.

Indranil opens this episode by stating that the role of metaphor in creating solutions with

embodied making is strong. The artifact in Figure 41 below shows how we applied the

metaphor A SYSTEM SUPPORTING A NETWORK OF CONTACTS IS A HOTEL LOBBY

DURING A CONFERENCE metaphor in embodied making to the design of a contact

management application.
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Figure 42. Hotel lobby canvas for Embodied Making session.

Figure 42 shows an instance of that same metaphor used in solving the forces we had

identified in an Embodied Making analysis of contact management.

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Figure 43. Several forces instantiated on a hotel lobby metaphor canvas.

Indranil also shares a struggle with a metaphor he is having as we are reflecting on action,

and he wants to apply our present knowledge to a metaphor challenge he has with

BUSINESS IS AN INFINITE CANVAS, which is a metaphor we used to generate a

hexagonal canvas for Business Elements that is infinite. We begin designing the product

element, and Indranil finds it hard to generate product in a landscape. A few turns further, he

says,

12. I: Cells could be prioritized in different ways. Tasks. But there is a danger in
taking the metaphor too far you know?
13. S: If you now say metaphor right? What is the metaphor that you mean, is it the
metaphor of canvas, the infinite canvas, or, the hexagon, or...
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14. I: Oh yeah, its the infinite canvas. The hexagons I don't see as a metaphor right.
It's a mathematical shape that was optimized for. But the infinite canvas is the
business as a landscape. That's the metaphor.
15. S: Exactly, business as landscape.
16. I: And the earth is infinite right, because the earth is round. So you could argue
that you could keep going and never stop right? And when you come back to
another spot, so, no two journeys have to be the same, and when you come back
to a certain spot after circumnavigating the globe you never come back to the
same spot right, because the spot has changed.

Figure 43 shows a screenshot of the Business Elements system, which supports the

Embodied Making design process and which we were extending to support working with

product information. A key feature of the system is the infinite canvas made up of hexagons.

The software system knows no boundary for how far one can extend the canvas in any

direction.

Figure 44. Business Elements version 1.0 with Embodied Making analysis of farmers
workshop. Copyright Product Foundry B.V. Reprinted with permission.
 186

In his reflection, Indranil repeats what he said earlier about mathematical forms not being

metaphorical. He then shares that he thinks we are taking the infinity metaphor too far.

Indranil places the infinite canvas on a globe to limit the physical space of the canvas but

then transfers the meaning of infinite to time instead of space. When you come back to the

same spot after a trip around the world, the spot has changed over time. This way, Indranil

solves an important challenge for extending the metaphor to product information on the spot.

Product information can have a space, and it can change over time if you make a journey.

Next, I ask him how he sees the relationship between a central embodied making

metaphor, the river of forces, and the metaphor business is a landscape:

17. S: When we say business as a landscape. Do you see any relation with the river
metaphors we used earlier?
18. I: I think business as a landscape also sort of emerged right? The infinite canvas.
It just sort of happened, like hey let's make it an infinite canvas.
19. S: That's true, that was also in my mind like a suggestion. Like let's try this.
20. I: And then, when [designer] wanted to put in anchors, the fact that the anchors
were, the anchors were actually landmarks, with the church analogy?
21. S: Yeah, but for me, when he said anchors, indeed for me, you have this river of
forces that you're navigating, and you want to sort of settle down certain things
right, so the thing doesn't just flow on, so I keep this here.
22. I: Ok, so he used the term more from a traditional, a traditional, I think he got it
from traditional applications, like Photoshop and stuff.
23. S: Ah, they use anchors as well right, to secure paths?
24. I: Yes, it's his main tool right? But, I think I changed the term to landmarks. I
think we should actually change the term to landmarks.
25. S: Yeah, a landscape is a broader concept than a river only. And the way we apply
it in explaining embodied making it is tied with forces right. Not the other
concepts that we use, yeah. Like the stories
26. I: The landmarks are important because of that story with the church right?
27. S: Yeah, also the time perspective. Yeah, that's a pretty new story by the way.
Yeah.

Here we are trying to make sense of how the metaphor of a river of forces, concepts we

used in applying it to the system, and the shift to the metaphor of business as a landscape
 187

cohere. Indranil and I see this differently, and we search for joint meaning. We do not seem

to find it explicitly in these turns. I see anchors as an entailment of navigating the river of

forces, while Indranil sees it as a literal application of a term experienced in the design

tooling of our designer applied to the infinite canvas that Indranil changed to a term coherent

with the landscape metaphor. It leads to some confusion and my follow-up question, which

has us reflecting on metaphors as metaphors again:

28. S: Yeah, I only heard it once. And the difference right? The difference. Indranil,
what to you is the difference between analogy and metaphor. And how is it
important in our work for you to make that distinction?
29. I: I think a metaphor has deeper, more, deeper embedding. So when you say, for
example...I wish you weren't so stubborn. I have to push you up the hill all the
time. I wish you weren't so stubborn. We have to always go up the hill...I have to
push you up the hill each time we have a new deal. So a statement like that, there.
I think you're initially making an analogy where someone is as stubborn as a
mule, you know. And then, the metaphor gets embedded and the metaphor
becomes part of the language construction. And so, you know you're bang on
target, etc. I have to push the whole team up the hill, every time we make a
technological change for example. Is that metaphor, is that analogy being
embedded and applied yeah? So, the way I personally see the distinction is when
an analogy becomes embedded in language it becomes metaphor. As long as we're
conscious that something is like something else, and not in the same. So for
example when I am describing the infinite canvas, and how we need to change
anchors into the term landmarks, then I have to explain the analogy you know?
With the church example.
30. S: Ah, I get it. Let me pause, as I understand you, yeah? So you say, the landmark
is a metaphor. I want it to be a metaphor, but in order for it to become a metaphor,
indeed an analogy, the story of the church to explain why landmark is an
important extension of the landmark metaphor to deal with time, for example.
31. I: Exactly.
32. S: Yeah, is this a good way of explaining it?
33. I: Exactly, because then if people understand the landmark metaphor, the
landmark analogy, it becomes metaphor, because then they apply the analogy, and
then it becomes living metaphor. Then they say
34. S: Let's put a landmark here so we don't lose sight of this set of products.
35. I: Exactly. Or let's put a landmark here as a, then basically people start implicitly
understanding that this is a configuration of space. It took me a while to come to
the landmark term right. Because initially, I was using the term standard bearer
remember? A Roman standard bearer. And initially, I was just saying here be
dragons yeah? Because, when you the mythical...You know the term here be
dragons?
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36. S: No?

Figure 45. Design artifact for Mark Business Element.

In this section, Indranil shares his conception of analogy, metaphor, and story and how

they apply to the change from a river of forces to business as a landscape through the story of

a church as a landmark. And he moves onto the next story. A design artifact from the notion

of marks is displayed in Figure 45.

Process of Reflecting-in-Interaction

The process of reflecting on action was predesigned, so the questions that lead us to the

conversational turns selected for this episode create coherence between this reflection with

Indranil and the reflection with Andr. Indranil's style of reflecting on action blends with a

reflection-in-action to set a current problem and come up with solutions for it at the same
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time. The ability to hold this complexity, complemented with a strong intent to take the

design of our product forward, seems behind this.

Awareness of Metaphor as Metaphor

In the first few turns, Indranil actively names two ways in which he is aware of metaphor:

the role of metaphor in coming up with solutions in the embodied making method and the

specific metaphor of business as a landscape that we used to change the nature of the infinite

canvas to support business elements. Indranil also repeats that he does not see the hexagons

that make up the canvas as a metaphor.

The metaphor BUSINESS IS A LANDSCAPE that shows the following structure in the

selected episode:

The infinite canvas Business as a landscape

Infinite canvas Infinite landscape

Infinity is circular Places on earth are changed

after you've travelled around
the earth

Infinity is recursion in which Growing experience

places change in time

Junction of circle and square Stories of experience, arm

Junction of circle and square Solution space, arm

Further on, Indranil and I discuss the river of forces metaphor in relation to the business as

a landscape metaphor. The following metaphorical structure emerges from the transcript:

Business as a landscape ?
simply emerged

Infinite canvas just ?

happened
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Putting in anchors Making landmarks

Anchor used to settle down Tool used to settle down

a ship on a river certain elements on the canvas

Landmark used to point out Tool used to point out certain

a place in the landscape elements on the canvas

Use of anchors to secure Use of Anchors as a term to

paths in Adobe Creative secure elements on the canvas
Suite Applications like
Photoshop

In the last section of the episode, I ask Indranil to share his conception of metaphor.

Indranil shares that he is aware of metaphor as something that can become embedded in

language through analogy, and analogy is illustrated by a story. By taking the analogy from a

story and extending the analogy in language, a metaphor comes to life. This conception of

metaphor is close to the generative theory of metaphor of Schn (1993, 2011), but it leaves

out the process of neural embodiment, phenomenal experience, and the cognitive

unconscious. Story is a concept that could be conceived of as holding this tacit dimension of

metaphor, but earlier in the design process, Indranil had marked stories as representations, so

I can assume he sees metaphors as representational even if they can come to life through their

embedding in language.

Perception of Experience as Literal Truth

Taking the analysis of metaphor awareness, Indranil's perceptions of experience as literal

truth show up in his assessment that a hexagon is not metaphorical, that business as a

landscape just emerged, that the infinite canvas just sort of happened, and that our designer

took anchors from his tools and applied them to the canvas as anchors without metaphorical

meaning.
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Neural Embodiment, Phenomenal Experience, and the Cognitive Unconscious

Using our knowledge of neural embodiment, phenomenal experience, and the cognitive

unconscious, we could find that our use of the circle as experience, and as a metaphor for

Nietzsche's (1997) eternal recurrence, prefigured the shift from the canvas as a grid to the

canvas as a globe. Also, our earlier breakthrough, with the river metaphor entailing both the

man and the river changing in interaction, prefigured the idea that both you and a place on a

map would have changed by the time you revisit the place after having circumnavigated the

globe. However, for such assertions to become valid, I might need to analyze all data to

surface its conceptual metaphors for metaphors using conceptual metaphor analysis and then

engage in a number of psychological experiments that would show that the metaphors

surfaced from the conversations in our team are actually grounded in nonconscious behavior

that is coherent with the concepts-in-use. As there is no pragmatic reason for doing so in the

context of an action research dissertation, I will not do this. Instead, it inspires me to

consider other ways to include this perspective in design practice. Two thoughts come to

mind.

The first is a reiteration of what I said above: to make the theory, research, and practice of

embodied realism, and Johnson's (2007) and others work on the embodiment, a much more

central and explicit tenet of what we are doing when we work with metaphors. The MMIIRR

model might help do just that. The second is to create practices that help us recognize how

metaphors work in that process, which contrasts with what Indranil said in that we go from a

metaphor as explicitly analogical to metaphor as conceptual, uncovering novel, conventional,

and dead metaphors we have for important abstractions in our design work, and then probing

deeper to image schemas, feelings, emotions, and senses we have about abstractions in our
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design process. If we surface these dimensions through meditative practices, we might be

able to increase our awareness for the embodied nature of metaphor across the whole

continuum of experience. Ironically, embodied making's forces analysis and force

interactions are helpful for just that, but they might not be typed strongly enough along the

lines of the spectrum, so a reflexive improvement of the method surfaces.

Intimation that A is B-Like and Exploration of B in A-Type Ways

There are some improvisations with the business as a landscape metaphor. In the later

turns, we achieve coherence with applying the landmark metaphor to indicate the location of

products on the canvas of Business Elements. However, the generative capacity of the turns

is not that strong overall, possibly because we each have quite different conceptions of

metaphor in this sample of the data.

Aspects of B Seen as Related in A-Type Ways

In our conversation, there is some back and forth between the two sides of the metaphor

BUSINESS IS A LANDSCAPE. The turns around the concept of anchors are an example of

this. I saw the concept of anchor as coherent with the A COMPLEX PROCESS IS A RIVER

OF FORCES metaphor, which could be coherent with the landscape metaphor, but according

to Indranil, for our designer the concept of anchors to lock down elements on the canvas

derived from his experience with the Adobe suite of software products, which uses the

concept of anchors to mark points where shapes in that software can be manipulated in the

design space. To Indranil, therefore, the change of the term anchor to the term landmark

made sense because for orienting towards a product in a business that is displaced as a

landscape, a landmark makes more sense than an anchor, especially if Indranils conception

of anchor associates with a software feature where the metaphor of anchor is used in a
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different context where the rest of that metaphor is not entailed specifically26. Analyzing this

aspect of MMIIRR is quite complex because it is hard to derive directly from the data in

which ways parts of LANDSCAPE are seen as related to BUSINESS in landscape type ways.

Keeping a River Alive

The final episode is taken from my reflection with Andr. We reflect specifically about

the metaphor A PROCESS IS A RIVER OF FORCES and we wonder how the entailments of

that metaphor have changed shape in the design artifacts and in the method and the system

over the course of the process from beginning to end. We were looking at the artifact in

Figure 46 when the turns below were made:

Figure 46. Andr's artifact for the design of an Embodied Making system.

26
In the Adobe suite of software products, anchors do generate some metaphorical coherence with
their source domain, but no other features complement that metaphor in a coherent way, so it is understandable
that Indranil did not see the analogy between how Adobe uses anchors and how we tried to use anchors.
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37. A: Right, so even if something happened unconsciously or consciously. But at one

point we said like OK, we keep talking about the river of forces. In which
solutions emerge right? By which solutions emerge. So then we made the analogy
with the real river, and we say OK, but what does emerge in a river you know.
Well, based on currents you can have different... so you can have a collection of
branches, or whatever.
38. S: Yes.
39. A: Or you get dirt or whatever, collecting because of the forces. And then with the
colors for example, we made a direct translation, initially, to say OK forces are
blue, and solutions are yellow, which is the color of sand or mud, or branches you
know? Dirt in the water. Could be green.

Figure 47. Screenshot of Embodied Making system prototype.

In this screenshot of the first bta of the embodied making system, Andr was the

designer, and he extended and persisted the river of forces metaphor's colors. Stories are

yellow, forces are blue, and solutions are brown.

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40. S: Mmmh.
41. A: So, we added, some of the metaphor really directly impacted the visual
elements.
42. S: As you created this one for example.
43. A: Yeah, that was the reason for the call actually. So that matches the metaphor
here. And you will only see it when you know it. But you see the forces look like
water.
44. S: Yeah, streaming around something, in this case a solution element, yeah.
45. A: But then that got lost because we didn't share the same metaphor with
[designer]. So he just sees colors and replaces it with something else.

Figure 48. Embodied Making bta version after redesign (Copyright Product Foundry).
Screenshot taken from embodied making on December 5, 2013. Reprinted with permission.

In the screenshot of the redesigned beta, the forces are now orange and the solutions are

blue. Our designer had switched colors. Andr assumes this is because we have not shared

the story of the river.

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46. S: Yeah, so to a sense it also gets lost in additional design conversations. If we

don't persist the metaphor consciously to the next designers.
47. A: Yeah, so if we invited [designer] and say like OK, we see this as a river of
forces. And because of this river of forces we see solutions emerging based on
these forces, then maybe we could, would have a different look and feel. By
bending the metaphor, you see it goes quickly, you know?

Later, we reflect back on why the directionality of forces as seen in our river of forces

design meetings was not adopted in the system:

Figure 49. Sergej's river of forces exercise.

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My river of forces design outcome above, created on December 2, 2011 in Figure 48, and

Andr's river of forces design outcome below were created on the same night in parallel. We

compared these two rivers the next day, and these formed a strong breakthrough on the path

to the system together. As is visible in the system, the directionality of forces relative to each

other is not a feature in the system.

Figure 50. Andr's river of forces exercise.

48. S: That was a very conscious decision I remember this. He, you pushed for this
pretty hard actually to keep it as generic as possible initially.
49. A: Yeah, and one of the problems is of course is that the directionality, still on the
canvas we didn't solve. We could say, stuff on the right means this and stuff on the
left means that. But we never played with it working out an example. To see how
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that really works you know. So again there is a risk because these originals
metaphor. If you lose them, then some of the ideas that you had with these
metaphors implicitly also get lost.
50. S: So, how, so with the arrows for example. Let's stick with that example for a
minute. Did you remember it because you saw this in this session now like oh
yeah, mmmh, we had these arrows? Or was this still in your mind.
51. A: No no, both the colors that I initially had, and the arrows is something I forgot
about. Because while we're making this product, we invite other people that didn't
share the same metaphor.

Again, I will use MMIIRR to reflect on this episode and see what emerges.

Process of Reflecting-in-Interaction

The process of reflecting-in-interaction with Andr was different from that with Indranil

in the sense that it kept focus on the system as it is today and metaphorical embodiments (and

disembodiments) of the metaphors from the past. In that sense, it was more of a reflection-

on-action with emergent implicit consequences for the future. It was not so driven by

urgency for a current problem as the dialogue with Indranil displayed. It seemed to surface

more lessons learned as well, and in that sense we could name this episode an example of

reflection-on-interaction.

Awareness of Metaphor as Metaphor

The metaphor explicitly aware as metaphor in this episode is A PROCESS IS A RIVER

OF FORCES. This is the central metaphor that gave rise to Embodied Making and is in the

heart of the method. The structure of the metaphor as it is conceptualized in the episode is

Solutions from a design Islands that emerge from the

process river

Differing solutions Islands in different branches of

the river

Reasons for solutions Forces in the river

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Stories at the time of Existing islands in the river at

problem setting the time of stepping into the
river.

We did not share this metaphor with our new designer. He changed the forces to orange

and the solutions to blue. In an analysis for the fellowship with the CMM institute (Van

Middendorp, 2014), I followed my intimation that this might have happened because I used

red for forces and blue for solutions nonconsciously in a workshop with farmers in which our

new designer participated. My own reflection of why I mixed the colors is that FORCES

ARE RED and SOLUTIONS ARE BLUE are more natural metaphors if the river is not

consciously used as a generative metaphor.

Figure 51. Embodied Making paper prototype for workshops.

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Perception of Experience as Literal Truth

In this episode, there seem to be no clear places where experience is taken literally. The

awareness of metaphor as metaphor runs throughout. Andr sees how difficult it is to keep a

metaphor alive across time and when changing team membership and implicitly concludes

that we should do more to keep the metaphor aware as metaphor in order to come to a more

coherent system.

Neural Embodiment, Phenomenal Experience, and Cognitive Unconscious

In this case, our knowledge of the cognitive unconscious could help us understand how

the color switch happened. If we let go of the generative potential of the river of forces

metaphor, we start mixing colors. Research into that color switch might show that FORCES

ARE RED and SOLUTIONS ARE BLUE are more natural than those generated by the river

metaphor, especially if the river metaphor is not consciously used at the time of processing.

Intimation that A is B-Like and Exploration of B in A-Type Ways

We can clearly see this going on. This episode is a good example of metaphor generation

as Andr re-reflects the metaphor in action with the artifacts present.

Aspects of B Seen as Related in A-Type Ways

The persistence of the generative metaphor reflected back on the stories in the initial

design. As stories reflect the problem setting, they include current ways of dealing with the

process we want to support or change. The forces then get to work and, in the river

solutions, emerge as islands in the streams. Stories, therefore, came to be presented in yellow

and solutions as brown. This indicated that solutions and stories are of a similar kind as they

both emerge from the river as structures of land. This in turn made us understand that
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solutions are stories too, which at the time of conception are set in the future, but if worked

out well will become new stories of how the process functions after they have been applied.

This circular relationship between stories and solutions over time became apparent to us as a

result of persisting the entailments of the river metaphor.

Reflections on this Application of MMIIRR to the Data

Three episodes from the case study were used to test the working of the MMIIRR model.

Together, these tests show how MMIIRR can be used to add structure to the reflections on

the research question. Using MMIIRR to increase a practical understanding of the

application of metaphor in the design process, and in the process of reflecting-in-action, has

potential to bring insights into the process that may otherwise not emerge. MMIIRR seems

helpful in increasing the awareness of designers regarding several aspects of metaphor in the

process of designing. As returning to the research team to validate this finding in this

specific study is not possible, I am left to speculate as to the further applicability of

MMIIRR, which takes us beyond the limits set for this dissertation.
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CHAPTER NINE: COMING FULL CIRCLE

Summary

This study wondered how the metaphors that designers use in design conversations

become embodied in the systems that they are creating. Our systems need to be redesigned

to better cope with the complex and dynamic nature of the problems and challenges of our

current world. The problem is that designers are often unaware of the metaphors embodied

in the system that they are trying to change, nor are designers always aware of the potential

role of metaphors in generating the new system. Therefore, the question guiding this study

was, How do our joint improvisations with metaphors become embodied in the systems that

we are creating?

Several perspectives on metaphor were introduced as being important to answering the

research question. Firstly, there are several notions of metaphorspecifically, a social

constructionist view on metaphor, an embodied realism view on metaphor, a critical view on

metaphor use, and the role of metaphors in design conversations. Secondly, systems were

framed as both process and outcome and were specified to mean IT systems in the scope of

this study.

We need to change our systems because our current ways of creating and using them are

stuck in unsustainable dualities. Examples that were mentioned to illustrate this were the IT

systems in organizations that fail in contrast with the major internet platforms that attract

billions of users, the freedom for the individual generated by those internet platforms in

contrast with the increased power for central organizations based on the data these platforms

generate about their users, and the popular fear for artificial intelligence and robotics in

contrast with the human intelligence that creates such systems.

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In the literature review, systems design, metaphor theory, and the metaphor of

organizational improvisation were discussed to provide a context for the design of systems

that can address the complexity inherent in todays design challenges.

The methods section provided action research as an approach and action inquiry as a

method and introduced the case of Embodied Making and Business Elements as the research

context. It outlined 23 steppings that were taken in six cycles of research activity discussed

in detail in Chapters 4 to 8. The kennings of those cycles are summarized here:

Answers from the Research Team (Cycle A)

1. The data gathered and identified as relevant for the metaphors embodied in Embodied

Making and Business Elements were enough to analyze the process of how they

became embodied from design conversations via design artifacts in the system.

2. The two reflection sessions on the river of forces metaphor with Indranil and Andr

provided enough data for answering the research question from the research team's

perspective to a satisfying degree.

3. Action inquiry could keep guiding us through the complexity and the amount of the

data. It offered enough breadth and depth to cover the overall case study and to dive

deeper into the specific dynamics between personal, interactional, and organizational

levels.

4. If desired, specific findings could be analyzed in more detail later using more detailed

techniques from CMM and CMA.

5. According to the research team, our improvisations with metaphors resulted in several

forms (circle, square, hexagon) and a coherent generative metaphor (A PROCESS IS

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A RIVER OF FORCES) that became embodied in the system that we were creating

(Embodied Making and Business Elements).

6. Even though we improvised with many differing metaphors in the process of creating

Embodied Making and Business Elements, in retrospect, only a few of those are

clearly emergent throughout the whole process as being embodied in the method and

the system. These are the forms and the metaphors that we consistently returned to at

different moments in the design process.

7. Even though at least Indranil and I were well read in Embodied Realism when we

started the study, we still conceived of the meaning of metaphor in different ways.

These differences in our meaning making of metaphor did not prevent us from

embodying consciously chosen metaphors in the system.

8. The persistent improvisations with the river metaphor resulted in adaptations of the

theories, methods, and practices that were integrated into Embodied Making and

Business Elements.

9. The persistent improvisations with the river metaphor resulted in a method and a

system that are quite different from existing methods and systems. This supports the

idea that a generative metaphor has the potential to create IT systems that are quite

different from current systems.

10. Even though we consciously tried to generate Embodied Making and Business

Elements on the metaphorical entailments of a river, unforeseen changes occurred that

only became conscious in retrospect. In our own analysis, this occurred because we

were not consistently sharing the metaphor of the river with our new designer at the

time of this redesign. This supports the idea that the generative force of a metaphor
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may become nonconscious after a longer period of use by designers who take it for

granted (especially as they feel the task of embodying it in the system is done). Then,

when new people join the design team, other metaphors generate more force than the

embodied metaphor, changing the system in a new direction.

11. In this specific case, I changed the color of the system myself at one point as well.

This might have reinforced our designers decision to persist his metaphor in the

redesign, and it only occurred to the design team in retrospect while reflecting on the

research question.

12. Reflective practice, as exercised in the context of this dissertation, increases the

capacity to notice such changes in the embodiment of metaphors into the system,

provides possibilities to change practice to more consciously generate the desired

metaphors for the system, and to mitigate the effect of undesired metaphors on the

system.

Comprehensive Data Analysis (Cycle B)

13. Using NVivo to make a comprehensive analysis of the data worked well because it

created some level of control over the complexity and the amount of the data.

14. The dissertation committee also functioned as co-researchers as their feedback

significantly influenced the form of the dissertation emerging from the process.

15. In reflection on the comprehensive data analysis, the concepts of reflection-in-action

emerged as the central process around which the other concepts revolved. Metaphor

ontology was the most central concept that emerged from the analysis.

16. CMM could have been another way to achieve the same result, not as a topic for

discussion but as a method for further analysis.

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17. Another way in which CMM was suggested as a topic by the comprehensive data

analysis was as data itself as CMM was one of the sources inspiring Embodied

Making and Business Elements.

18. The need for an ontology of metaphor emerged from the kenning that even though we

succeeded in embodying a metaphor in the system we created and also in using a

coherent enough concept of metaphor to do so, the design team had many questions

about metaphor that might inform a more rigorous application in practice.

A Return to the Literature (Cycle C)

19. The concept of reflection-in-action is one way in which Schn has integrated his

views on the process of designing and the role of metaphor in that process.

20. Schns (1963/2011) displacement of concepts adds the complex and interactive

blending of both source and target domains to the literature, which in conceptual

metaphor theory remain linear and one-directional.

21. Turbaynes (1971) metaphor to myth transformation theory adds to the literature the

critical perspective where we can wonder if we have the metaphor or if the metaphor

has us. This view, and the work emerging from it, add a richer vocabulary to

generative metaphor theory and conceptual metaphor theory than that which recent

linguists, unaware of Turbayne's work, succeed in providing.

22. Johnson's (2007) meaning of the body provides a vocabulary rooted in the philosophy

and research of phenomenal experience, neural embodiment, and the cognitive

unconscious that is helpful in explaining Schns (1963/2011) intimations, Turbaynes

(1971) transformations, and Lakoff and Johnsons (1999) abstractions.

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23. These generative, critical, and embodied theories of metaphor together have the

potential to provide a comprehensive and coherent theory of metaphor, both in the

process of the emergence of metaphors in thinking and language, and in their

deliberate application in rhetoric and design. No comprehensive integration of these

theories had been made to this point, and no model exists that adequately represents

the subtleties of their contributions.

Designing a Model that Integrates Reflection-in-Action and Metaphor Theory (Cycle D)

24. A step-by-step reflexive application of the metaphor theories helps in finding forms

that better represent their entailments. The model emerging from that process is

reproduced in Figure 52 below.

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Figure 52. MMIIRR. Adapted from FreeImages.com/mineiove. Retrieved November 12,

2015, from http://www.freeimages.com/photo/taichi-fish-1154020. Adapted with
permission.

25. Within horizons of understanding, we evolve our sensemaking of concepts through

displacement in a process of reflecting-in-interaction.

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26. Our intimation that concept A is B-like balances methodical rigor with mysterious

emergence in a process that we now know is enabled by our neural embodiment,

phenomenal experience, and the cognitive unconscious.

27. Guided by these structures of being, we are drawn to perceive our experience of this

process and its outcomes as literal truth.

28. If one of the two concepts (and/or concept makers) retains an awareness of metaphor

as metaphor, and of metaphor as both generative and embodied, the potential for

reflexive displacement emerges where both concepts evolve their meaning as a result

of their joint interaction.

29. If only one of the two concept makers attains a conscious meta-metaphor awareness

in a situation of displacement, there are two options for action: revelation of the

metaphor for joint improvisation with its generative potential or a continued

(intentional) hiding of the metaphor.

Testing the Model with the Data (Cycle E)

Three episodes from the case study were used to test the working of the model. Together,

these tests show how MMIIRR can be used to add structure to the reflections on the research

question. Using MMIIRR to increase a practical understanding of metaphor and the process

of reflecting-in-action has potential to bring insights into the process that may be helpful in

increasing awareness about metaphor as metaphor in the process of designing. As there is no

return to the research team to validate this finding, I am left to speculate as to the further

applicability of MMIIRR, which takes us beyond the scope of the limits set for this specific

dissertation. I will make some suggestions for how to practically translate the entailments of

MMIIRR below.
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Quality and Validity

In retrospect, this study was an action research project up to and including stepping 10.

From stepping 11 onwards, the study changed in its approach to become more generally

interpretive and qualitative in nature. In order to discuss the quality and validity, I will use

the framework to assess the quality of action research offered by Bradbury and Reason

(2001) to discuss the quality of steppings 1-12 and Maxwell's (2005) validity criteria for

qualitative research to discuss the validity of steppings 13-29.

According to Bradbury and Reason, the following choice-points should be discussed to

assess the quality of action research: the quality of participative-relational practices; the

usefulness and/or helpfulness of the practical outcomes; how different ways of knowing have

been drawn on or have resulted from the study; is the outcome significant; and has the

outcome been taken into the future after the study?

Participative-Relational Practices

In this study, I was an integral part of the team that designed the method and the system.

As partners in business, we each felt that the whole effort of designing the method and the

system was integral to our joint work. The relationships in the team that conducted the

actionable part of this study were strong and coherent until the point where I left the team.

Despite this strong coherence, there was always a difference between our project and my

PhD. At each step of the process of making this study where the requirements of the PhD

required a shared decision by my business partners, they quickly agreed with my suggestions

as they did not see issues with how specific research concerns (like recording data or

obtaining IRB approval) would be in the way of our jointly desired outcomes. Indranil and

Andr trusted me to take care of these issues and not allow them to get in the way of our
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project. In the transition period between the action research turn and the interpretive turn of

this study, my PhD did become an issue for us in a different way. The time I needed to work

on the PhD was perceived by my business partners as possibly in the way of further

developing our joint business. This tension was one factor in the decision to part ways.

Interestingly, and fortunately, this tension did not concern the development of Embodied

Making and Business Elements themselves. A while after our decision to part ways as

business partners, we got together to reflect on what had happened. We all valued our

relationship as persons above what we had made of the business situation, and we continue to

have cordial relationships today. Only a month before I wrote this, I was part of a session to

share practices of applying Embodied Making in practice, which was organized by Indranil,

marking the start of a new phase in the continued development of the method.

Reflexive Practical Outcomes

A test for the reflexive practicality of the outcomes of the action research is feedback from

research participants that confirms its useful, practical nature. In our data, we often reflected

on the question, Is this useful? At many points, Indranil, Andr, and myself answer yes

to this question. Also, when reflecting on the research process itself, we often said that it was

useful to reflect on action, sometimes even concluding that we should do more of it as we

saw how missing turns of reflection and sharing made us miss important developments of the

method and system. Again, it is fair to say that the scholarly competence that I developed in

writing our project up as a dissertation is not directly useful to Indranil and Andr. But it is

also fair to say that, in the light of my own intentions, this outcome is also practical, as it now

affords me to continue producing knowledge in a scholarly way with more confidence and

competence.
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Quality as Plurality of Knowing

The conceptual-theoretical integrity of the study is strong to the extent that it reflexively

embodies a key challenge of conceptual-theoretical integrity: the potential of theory

generation to make research participants see the world in a new way, which enables them to

generate something useful, different from existing structures that inhibit the obtainment of

valuable goals. The depth of this one case is valuable as it allowed us to choose from the

huge amount of data precisely those moments in our design process that we retrospectively

thought were most relevant to the question, and the data we found there was useful in our

reflections on the research question. There are no strong reasons to assume that others who

want to follow the practice we have developed here would run into very different situations,

and we hope that the depth of the case that we were willing to develop and share is useful for

those who want to use its outcomes to design their own solutions. Of course, the limits of

generalizing from one case, however deep and broad its data, are clear. Follow-up work

using the kennings of this study should remain open to the uniqueness of the case at hand, as

any activity using improvisation as a core concept should.

Another way to assess the plurality of knowing embodied in the study is by inquiring how

the research has extended our ways of knowing. I believe it is fair to say that the case studied

in this project has extended our way of knowing by integrating kennings from the different

steppings into an evolving practice for design. For this one case and its outcomes, at least, an

integration of knowledge on metaphor was achieved that is not presently available in the

literature. Ironically, with the exception of Johnson's (2007) work, the deeper integration was

made by going back to older sources in the literature. Both Schn's early work and

Turbayne's work provide a new understanding that not only makes the design work based on
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metaphor more subtle, nuanced, and complex, but also helps us to address questions that

have been reposed to, and in, the more recent literature. For example, a critique of embodied

realism is that it is linear in its inference from source to target domain. Schn's (1963/2011)

displacement of concepts shows that metaphorical sensemaking is an interactive process in

which both source and target (in embodied realism terms) change as a result of their

interaction. It is only the directionality of intent and focus that makes us think the source was

applied to the target while nonconsciously our conception of the source remains changed as

well. The questions posed by the current linguists, like Steen, about online and deliberate

metaphor were addressed by Turbayne in a profound way in 1970. Some of the new ways of

knowing we could develop come from integration of older knowledge with newer

knowledge, much of which was found through referrals made by those involved in the

project and not through online databases.

The methodological appropriateness in action research is to a large extent determined by

how it is relating to the researcher, the research, and the participants, and in how it relates to

what is desired to be known. Where some qualitative researchers warn against mixing

methods, action research requires us to choose methods appropriate to the required

relationality as well as to their helpfulness in getting to answers to what the research team

wants to know or needs to learn. In using action inquiry as a guide in the early stages of the

project, and by laying out a research procedure for data gathering and analysis in cooperation

with the team and my committee, I think this was well addressed. By evaluating the method

and the techniques at each stepping of the process, and by adjusting, changing, or choosing

different ways to proceed in joint deliberation, we acted in the spirit of action research.
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Nevertheless, it is also fair to say that, in retrospect, this study is no consistent example of

the full application of any of the methods used in the process. Action inquiry was used to

make sense of the personal, relational, and organizational levels of the data, but after

evaluation of the pilot study, and given the changing circumstances of our business

relationship, we concluded that a more inductive approach would be the best way to

continue. This did not mean that action inquiry was discarded as a method in the further

professional development of the team. I still use action inquiry to make sense of the

complexity of my world every day. It only means that artificial continuation of its techniques

was abandoned in the further development and documentation of this study. CMM and CMA

were used to the extent that they helped make sense of the constructive nature of our

conversations and to identify conceptual metaphors as conceptual metaphors. But at

different points in the study, we decided not to do full CMM and CMA analyses as they are

often done when one or both is the central method for a study. Later, in developing and

testing the MMIIRR model, CMA was used more in-depth because it was relevant in seeing

how the data and the model work together.

This continuous adaptive reflexive method switching, both in the level of detail-

application and between methods, could be considered inconsequent from the point of view

of the methods. But if we go to the level of operational technical performance, I think this

was done in a way that strengthens the plurality of knowing more than that it weakens it

because there was strong coherence in the epistemologies from which the different methods

used derive combined with a strong ethos for sticking with the action research approach and

the reflexivity required by the content and context of this study.

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Engaging in Significant Work

Have we engaged in significant work? Yes, I believe we did. Even though the limitations

of having data from one case are obvious, the case itself was highly significant for us and

addresses issues that are relevant and significant beyond the case itself. On the surface,

design, design thinking, and the design of information systems are topics that are central to

today's life. We read about the consequences of the limits to current systems daily, and there

is good reason to believe that designing will remain a forefront topic for some time to come.

On a deeper level, the insights deriving from the epistemology of embodied realism shake

our worldview. Developing ways to apply these insights in practice to critically address

systems we no longer find valuable and developing new systems that embody its knowledge

is important to all of us. There will be many ways in which this knowledge will be, and

should be, developed. I hope that this case is significant as one broad and deep story of how

this could be done, and seeing other cases through what we have learned will be valuable for

others. I continue to find significance in what I am learning from this study and will continue

to develop and apply the research-practice that emerged from it.

Enduring Consequences

Embodied Making has evolved beyond the scope of this research study in several ways.

Indranil and Andr have further developed both Embodied Making and Business Elements in

Product Foundry and are applying it in all consulting and software projects they are engaged

in. They have continued training new business partners and employees to apply it in their

client contexts and product development practices. In my own consulting practice, I have

developed Embodied Making further by integrating it into a train the trainer program in the

Greenhouse Sector where we have trained a team of operations managers to use Embodied
 216

Making as a game for continuous improvement and self-steered problem solving for the

people doing the actual work in horticulture. I also have applied embodied making in two

long-term, systemic redesign projects in the Dutch Mental Health sector. As mentioned

above, we recently had a meeting of what we could consider a community of practice of

people applying Embodied Making in complex projects. So despite the breakup of our

partnership, Embodied Making lives on and is used in the design of significant systems in

The Netherlands. I believe that the quality of this research project has been a factor in

helping this to continue, and I will work to further develop what we learned in this project in

the further development of CMM where I am a member of the board of directors as I write

this, and where there is a growing acknowledgement that CMM would benefit from a more

embodied approach as well.

To assess the quality and validity of the second phase of the research study, which was

more interpretive and inductive in nature, I use Maxwell's framework for the validity of

qualitative research. According to Maxwell (2005), testing the validity of qualitative

research outcomes involves a pragmatic inquiry into the question, How could I be wrong?

Maxwell suggests that researcher bias and reactivity are the two generic validity threats to

qualitative research study conclusions. Researcher bias occurs because of the pre-existing

theories, experiences, and beliefs that a researcher brings to a study, and it manifests itself in

which data stand out to the researcher as relevant because of that. Reactivity occurs as a

result of the effect of the researcher's presence in the study situation and the way this

presence influences informants responses to research questions. Both bias and reactivity can

never be fully prevented, and in the case of action research, reactivity is a specific goal. For

both bias and reactivity, it is important to understand how I am biased and how my
 217

participants were reactive to my own participation and to account for how that may have

influenced the kennings I have drawn from this study.

Maxwell (2005) suggests several aspects of validity that qualitative researchers take into

account when testing the validity of their conclusions. These aspects are not intended as

magic charms to ward off the specter of being wrong but as guides for transparent reflection

on the processes and procedures of the research study. I will use Maxwells aspects to reflect

on the validity and limitations of the kennings beyond 12.

Intensive, Long-Term Involvement

According to Maxwell (2005), intensive, long-term involvement helps to get at more

detailed, complete data about specific situations. It can prevent premature and generic

conclusions as the researcher has the possibility to understand more detailed nuances and a

chance to see variation of the same phenomena in different contexts. I have been fortunate to

be intensely involved in this study long-term. This might also have contributed to Indranil

and Andr reacting naturally to me as both a participant and a researcher, it may not have in

itself helped to address what I could call my participation bias. I could argue that by being so

intensely involved as both a co-owner of the business, as well as taking on the role of

research-lead, that my bias was not so much theory and experience driven but practice and

enmeshment driven. I do think the validity has increased since I decided to part ways with

Indranil and Andr as co-researchers as I have been able to distance myself from the desired

goals for practice and have taken a more distant view on the data from cycle B onwards.

Rich Data

Rich, detailed data that are as directly representative of the situation studied as

possible can also help increase the validity of conclusions. In the case of this study, I was
 218

fortunate to be part of the practice process as a full partner. As a result, I had access to all

design conversations that we had recorded and to all design artifacts and outcomes. In

addition, I could use my own experience of having been present in these situations as data.

Interestingly, like above, being so enmeshed with the practice situation created the opposite:

too much rich data. The tactic of retrospective selection of data according to the

breakthroughs we identified in our own reflections helped to focus the amount of data to a

scope that was manageable. I feel we did not get lost in the data, and indeed often had the

possibility to increase the richness of the data by bringing in additional data around an event

we identified as relevant.

Respondent Validation

When we noted the color change as reported in Chapter 8 above, I was able to remember

my own experience of preparing the workshop with the farmers, and we could ask our new

designer about his own experience of deciding on the redesign decision. The answers to both

additional questions, combined with easy access to additional data, provided a different and

more valid kenning than when I had to work with the data available at the point of noticing

the change of metaphor. Also, when Indranil mentioned that our designer might have taken

the anchor metaphor consciously from the notion of anchors in his design tools, we were able

to follow-up with him and learn that he had meant to further develop the river metaphor.

Intervention

In this study, we created what could be named an intervention. The process of designing a

new method and a system that we also tried out and worked with in client assignments while

all the time reflecting and adjusting the outcomes for our own practice, as well as our
 219

involvement in several roles in the project at the same time, ensures continuous intervention.

It created an abundance of reflexivity in the research (see also Chapter 3 for a discussion of

this issue). I believe we found ways to work with this that improved our practice while

retaining research design integrity.

Searching for Discrepant Evidence and Negative Cases

Where we found strange outcomes, like in the color switch or the anchors, we pursued

them and, where possible, went back to the research participants, other colleagues, or the

literature. Several such boundary cases are discussed, and the coherence of the study, in as

far as present, may result from naming several of them while moving on with the flow of the

process thereafter.

Triangulation

In this study, data were gathered during a long period of time from diverse sources using

diverse methods. Both natural data (the design conversations), reflections (guided dialogue

to reflect on the process and to identify what data would become relevant), artifacts, design

outcomes, and contextual information were gathered from the context of the case study.

Different methods were used to guide data gathering and analysis.

Quasi-Statistics

At certain points in this study, choices were made based on or influenced by quasi-

statistics. When deciding what to focus the further literature review on, both the research

question and the inductive analysis of the reflections using NVivo software were of influence

in the decision. The two content topics most often coded were chosen to further discuss.

Maxwell (2005) suggests that this does not in itself lend quantitative validity to a qualitative
 220

study but argues that, where available, quantitative information can, and should, be taken into

account.

Comparison

Comparison is not a relevant criterion for discussing the validity of this specific study

because it draws data from a single case. There will be similarities that can be identified

between this study and other studies along specific dimensions of this study (i.e., studies that

report a systems design process, studies that use action research as an approach, studies that

use CMM as method), but these comparisons, I argue, are artificial and unnecessary to pursue

here.

Generalizability

Internal generalizability is concerned with how well the study represents its own case. In

other words, was there bias in the selection of research participants and/or data? I think that

the internal generalizability of the study is strong. All three designers were integral to the

data generation, the reflections, the discussion of study outcomes, and to the process. In the

later stages of the development of Embodied Making and Business Elements, more people

from our team were involved, and we verified outcomes with them when required. When we

could not answer a question we posed ourselves about what someone in the team had done,

we asked them about their decision making. The theory that was further developed in the

interpretive phase of the study is internally generalizable as well in the sense that it covers

the key concepts and questions remaining after the action research phase.

The external generalizability of the case is limited because we have only examined one in-

depth case. The our in the research question therefore is only answered to the extent of the

our in the research team. Also, I have not come across many colleagues in the field with
 221

such a willingness to deep-dive into a process of design and scholarship with such a deeply

reflective attitude. As far as I know, this was a unique possibility, and I am thankful for what

we made of it in practice and what it created for research.

Regarding the theoretical model developed from the return to the literature, I have no

reason to believe that this theory would not be of value to designers outside of our team, and

I am developing practices that integrate the model in Embodied Making that I will in-turn

test in practice, so I hope to find out first-hand how it interacts with the data emergent in

other cases.

Ideas for Further Exploration Generated by This Dissertation

There are three ways in which I can see the ideas developed in this dissertation to be

further applied to improve the theory, research and practice of designing systems:

1. Expanding and improving our capacity for social construction by including

metaphor in CMM and developing CMM heuristics that embody metaphor

theory and research. For example, we could use aspects of MMIIRR to increase

our awareness of metaphor use in episodes of interaction or by making

metaphor part of the contextual hierarchy and analyze the logical force of the

metaphors in conversation. Using CMM in such ways will add rigor to the

critical analysis of metaphor and will add more generative capacity to situations

where CMM would be used to design patterns for communication.

2. Developing and practicing methods that give us more structured ways to

distinguish between our phenomenal experience, neural embodiment, and

cognitive unconscious; for example, past reality integration (PRI) (Bosch, 2000,

2003, 2012), a psychotherapy, offers techniques that help us become aware of

 222

symbolic meaning perceived cross-modally, accompanying feelings, emotions,

and behavior, and ways to reverse psychological defenses and experience old-

pain as a bridge to understanding old realities. There seem to be strong

correlations between these concepts in the practice of PRI and the specific

qualities of phenomenal experience, neural embodiment, and the cognitive

unconscious of embodied realism. Using PRI to increase distinctive awareness

of these specific qualities of embodied realism could increase our generative

metaphor capacity in the face of nonconscious metaphors flowing through and

hiding in our bodies.

3. Practicing the metaphor of improvisation reflexively in research and practice to

improve our capacity to act into the process of reflection-in-action with

expanding awareness reflexively (Steier, 1991, 2005). As Schn (1983)

showed, the process of reflection-in-action is messy and improvisational. The

direct descriptions of the process of reflection-in-action are relatively abstract

and difficult to practice. The practice of improvising is analogous to the process

of reflecting-in-action, and as a metaphor, it provides a more accessible

language to practice this process. This can be done, for example, by developing

practices to use Barrett's seven principles of jazz improvisation, or the seven

patterns that I evolved from those in practice (Barrett, 1998, 2012; Van

Middendorp, 2015).

I believe that the process and the outcomes of these explorations will increase our

capacity to generate the types of conversations, and the types of systems, that will help us

make better social worlds.

 223

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