Sunday 8 November 2009

HCD and regulation

Following the failure of financial regulation in the UK and US, it is clear that regulation (and de-regulation) are going to be hot topics for some time to come. How would a systems-thinking HCD person design a regulatory system? it ought not to be too difficult, given the historic links between socio-technical systems and cybernetics.
Off the top of my head it might look like the following:
  • identify the stakeholders
  • define relevant systems with CATWOE
  • do a context of use analysis of the key stakeholders
  • expand stakeholders into a set of personas
  • 'brainstorm' issues and likely emergent properties
  • assign actions using the Cynefin framework.
The HSE 'be part of the solution' strategy document contains a great deal of material that would be useful and which could start a task analysis and a user analysis.

The recent Conservative document on 'Regulation in the Post Bureaucratic Age' offers some clear material on how the relevant systems might be re-defined, together with other ideas.

I could not find anything helpful at all in the recent BIS document on better regulation. This blog intends to stay clear of politics, so it is best to say nothing about the report.

Regulators may not like being in the spotlight, and this may be a taste of things to come for some of them.