I started thinking about context a few years ago during graduate studies when I kept reading and hearing things like “context matters” and “it depends on the context.” Of course it does. My own professional experience gave me a keen appreciation of context when working on technology design and adoption problems.

So ok. But exactly what do we mean by “context?” When you ask people to describe the context of some situation, they are clearly including some things while ignoring others. But how do we decide what to include or not include in “The Context” when you are looking at some situation? Whose definition of context are we using here?

So I did some reading and research on how people who think about context actually define it (which actually had a big influence on how I thought about my final graduate thesis work, and what I do and teach today). The result: We should appreciate “context” as a set of specific cues selected by a practitioner or researcher to analyze or understand a situation. Cues tend to fall in a few big buckets — social factors, physical factors (think architecture), time, desired outcomes, etc. But “selected” is the key here. It’s a hypothesis. A way of seeing. A way of creating a coherent story to explain some behavior or outcome. Change one or more of the selected cues and the context suddenly becomes different. (Think about time as one element in setting the context. We look at some organizational practice over a period of weeks. We look at that same practice over a 3-year period and now the context is changed).

I went down this context rabbit hole after listening to David Snowden’s talk this week at #change11 Change: Education, Learning and Technology MOOC. I also shared some thoughts in commentary to Jenny Mackness’s thoughtful blog posts about some of the more interesting bits Snowden shared during the talk, which emerge from his Cynefin framework and work in adapting complexity theory to improve decision making.

Anyone who has heard Snowden knows that he is as entertaining as he is innovative and thought provoking. And during the session he challenged us to question our belief that facilitation techniques can elicit a truly broad and diverse set of ideas. If you really want diversity of ideas you need a process — specifically a process that ritualizes dissent — rather than facilitation, which dampens dissent in favor of convergence.

I know I am oversimplifying the ideas discussed, but Snowden’s point put me in mind of a dialogue I heard at a panel discussion featuring expert practitioners from the design field. Someone in the audience asked the panel how they learned to ‘check their biases at the door’ when observing an environment in the early stages of some design project (trying to understand the context before coming up with potential solution design options). One panelist said they really didn’t/couldn’t check their biases – the solution was to make sure you had different-minded people on your team, doing the observation with you.

Now – that might be more of an interesting practice than a real process, but the idea (I think) is the same. Accept cognitive bias a part of the human condition and build some process work-around to deal with it in situations where you want diversity of ideas.

That lead to the comments/discussion on Mackness’ blog about context. Does the goal of ensuring ample dissent vary by context? For example: Are we talking about decision making, idea generation or some other outcome? (Different outcome goals create different contexts) Open networks or some other structure (my small-team of designers, for example)? And within the structure, what might be important underlying principles of the way we gather together (learner autonomy in MOOC’s, common professional practice in the case of designers)? Each of these questions – my view – is an example of trying to be more explicit about defining cues we look for to define context. Snowden’s Cynefin Framework could be viewed as another aspect of this context-defining: Are we talking about a complex or complicated environment? Chaotic or simple?

In the end, I’m confused. I am continually amazed by the subtleties that thoughtful practitioners pick up as cues that are very likely important to the situation being observed or analyzed — and in many cases, clearly important to the participants involved (my bias is to give higher weight to these). This capability is a really critical skill.

Perhaps what I’m landing on this. We need to agree on the attributes that help us define the context; and there we begin to have a shared framework for understanding. That practice should not change our efforts to continually consider new cues. But let’s define how we define context first.

At one point in his talk, Bates is discussing examples of technology use in academic settings.

“We see some instructors flipping the lectures. So they will record the lecture…and then ask the students to come in afterward. But that hasn’t really changed the model. What I would like to see is a rethinking of the curriculum so you work out very clearly why you need to be in front of the student and what students need to do on the campus that you count as really critical for their learning, and then design around that and do the rest online. That means thinking completely differently about it.”

This is exactly the idea behind the concept of gathering with purpose that I explored in an earlier post. And I am beginning to see the concept as key to driving change in the way we think about technology and learning. Why? One reason: It doesn’t drive an artificial wedge between “online” and face-to-face interactions. It simply forces us to think more deeply about what role each plays.

At the end of the week I had two blinding glimpses of the obvious.

If design is generating a lot of interest as a next next-thing, it is because design is about finding opportunities. It’s positive. Forward-moving. It’s the polar opposite of intractable group gridlock characterized by position-taking and turf-holding.

Spend any time at IDEO’s offices and with IDEO people and you feel the difference. Spend any time with DFA students and their advisors and it’s the same. They believe in their ability to see and find opportunity where others just see problems and gaps. And the thing is: They all understand that designing effective solutions is difficult, challenging work. But they also seem to understand that finding a forward-moving way out begins by hearing and seeing. IDEO’s Human Centered Design process begins with “hear” – a focus on really listening and observing the situation/context in which a challenge exists. Olson coined the phrase outsight during her CIW talk to describe the ability to find a new possibility – a path – in part by getting out in the world. Both IDEO’s “hear” and Olson’s “outsight” are to me rooted in making an authentic attempt to suspend judgment and bias and work very hard, first, to understand. What a concept.

My second blinding glimpse of the obvious relates to the title of this post. In touring IDEO’s offices, one of the things you are struck by is the very physical presence of ideas and insights. This is not just knowledge stored digitally. It’s physical. You work surrounded by ideas posted on walls – informally and formally.

One of IDEOs most interesting ways of expressing insights is via patterns. Here’s how IDEO describes patterns:

“When you’ve got many talented people working on many complex challenges at once, it’s often difficult for the vast amounts of knowledge generated to be shared in any meaningful or useful way.

PATTERNS is one of IDEO’s means to solve for that.

PATTERNS are how we capture and share some of the common insights we see bubbling up across projects, as well as out and about in the world. They are a foundation for intuition. A way to elevate insights to the level of cultural impact. And a way to tap into IDEO’s collective intelligence to do better work for our clients—even faster.” 

At the Chicago office, IDEO has a wall dedicated to one-page versions of patterns submitted by employees. Anyone who has tried to condense complex thinking into tightly designed one-pagers knows how difficult it can be – but also how it helps you think clearly about the challenge. Imagine a wall of these. Then add to that several walls of photographs depicting the exploratory stages of various projects. Large digital displays rotating photographs from IDEO offices worldwide, each intended to share some moment or insight that could create a serendipitous event.

I saw something very similar to this at another creative agency — Upshot — where you literally work among physical and digital displays of ideas and insights.

Now add to this the design process. You seek to understand (hear, outsight). You generate a lot of insights and ideas and use structured methods to capture, categorize and whittle them down into concepts that are feasible. You are connecting and collaborating with a broad group of stakeholders in this whole process. And you are doing it in a physical space where you are surrounded by knowledge and insight represented in physical and digital form. You create a prototype of your concept and learn from it. You share more insights and generate new knowledge. At the end of this whole process you’ve created something that did not exist previously.

That, to me, sounds like a vision for next-generation knowledge management.