Cognitive Anti-Patterns 1

Something went wrong with the previous post in Blogger so a slightly revised version published here.
Anti-patterns are discussed here and here. Jim Coplien states: "an anti-pattern is something that looks like a good idea, but which backfires badly when applied".  SEI has published a document (pdf) with system archetypes - using archetypes to beat the odds. These archetypes (which have origins in ITIL) are very similar to anti-patterns. They are also nicely set out here.

The early recognition and countering of anti-patterns is an extremely valuable skill that is rarely taught, and is probably not very hard to acquire. I suspect that it is not taught often is because it sees what might pretentiously be called knowledge work as a craft or skill. On the contrary, this sort of diagnostic skill is at the heart of expertise. It all appears very negative, unfortunately, but this is the case with all risk management. Are there opportunities to complement these risks? Possibly. Not the subject of this post though. The list looks like it has a real down on automation. This in no way puts it near Marcuse' 'One Dimensional Man' or the Unabomber Manifesto. It is just a reflection of the prevalence of technology-push in our current society.

This post does not (yet) have well formulated anti-patterns, just some starting points and first drafts.

Starting points

Gary Klein offered three great 'unintelligent system anti-patterns' in this document (pdf).

• The Man behind the Curtain (from the Wizard of Oz). Information technology usually doesn’t let people see how it reasons; it’s not understandable. The alternative is to design a 'human window' (Donald Michie).
• Hide-and-Seek. On the belief that decision-aids must transform data into information and information into knowledge, data are actually hidden from the decision maker. The negative consequence of this antipattern is that decision makers can’t use their expertise.
• The Mind Is a Muscle. In the attempt to acknowledge human factors in the procurement process, some guidelines end up actually working against human-centering considerations: “Design efforts shall minimize or eliminate system characteristics that require excessive cognitive, physical, or sensory skills.”

Sue E. Berryman's Cognitive Apprenticeship Model  proposed Five Assumptions About Learning - All Wrong:
1. That people predictably transfer learning from one situation to another.
2. That learners are passive receivers of wisdom - vessels into which knowledge is poured.
3. That learning is the strengthening of bonds between stimuli and correct responses.
4. That learners are blank slates on which knowledge is inscribed.
5. That skills and knowledge, to be transferable to new situations, should be acquired independent of their contexts of use.

First drafts

People are just a source of error that needs to be minimised. The alternative is to recognize that people (also) 'make safety'.
Accidents are usually the result of human error. The alternative is to see human error as an outcome (rather than a 'cause'), a sign that something is wrong with the system (Sidney Dekker).
Safe systems are usually safe. The alternative is that safe systems usually run broken.
Cycle of error (Cook and Woods). After an incident, 'things need tightening up, lessons must be learned'. Organizational reactions to failure focus on human error. The reactions to failure are: blame & train, sanctions, new regulations, rules, and technology. These interventions increase complexity and introduce new forms of failure.
Providing feedback on operational performance can be bad for morale and is best not done.

Rationality/logic/MEU is the benchmark for human decision making. The alternative is "reasoning is not about truth but about convincing others when trust alone is not enough. Doing so may seem irrational, but it is in fact social intelligence at its best." Gerd Gigerenzer, or "Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal".  Robert A Heinlein.
People are information processors, like computers. The alternative is to recognise the role of narrative, metaphore etc.
Cognitive biases are useful aids to people making decisions.
Human cognition is a higher mental function, and the lizard brain and emotions should not be involved.
People without emotional influence make better decisions.
Bull (Norman Dixon). Being clean and tidy is vital, whether it is polished brass, dress codes or tidy desks.

The important aspect of human decision making is the 'moment of choice' . Design and operational aspects should be focused on this. The alternatives include a narrative approach (Rao).

Automate what you can and leave the operator to do the rest (job design by left-overs). Supervisory control is a good model for job design. The human-centred automation alternative is to design a human-machine team to avoid cogminutia fragmentosa.
Automation reduces workload.
Automation improves performance.
Automation reduces staffing requirements.
Strong, silent automation is good (Dave Woods).
There are no UNK-UNK failure modes (Tom Sheridan), so we do not need to design or plan for them.

Regulations, rules and procedures will work as intended without reactive or cumulative effects. Technology improves safety. The alternative is to consider the reactive effects of their introduction, including risk compensation, and to remember that the people at the sharp end make continuing judgments balancing risk, profitability, workload (ETTO).

People will obey the rules in potentially high hazard systems just because they are there.

Procedures can be expected to cover all circumstances. Risk management can be comprehensive. Things will go according to the plan, so it is worth having a really detailed plan, and not investing in preparedness. The alternative is "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable" D D Eisenhower.

Providing unnecessary data 'just in case', whether it is a fourteen page checklist, a handful of alarm channels, or an overfilled tactical display. Planned information overload has adverse consequences (see operator error).
Chartjunk is a good basis for display design.  The flows through a system (the 'big picture') can be presented as disjointed bullet points (Tufte).

Work can be divided by procurement or organizational boundaries, leading to stovepipe sub-systems, and the crew doing the 'integration work'.

Training can fix design problems.

Standards and hard resilience

 Vinay Gupta has made the distinction between hard resilience (e.g. food, water, power, communications) and social resilience e.g. here.
The emphasis in writing about resilience is on flexibility and adaptability, whether it is about communities or resilience engineering, and standardisation does not seem to have much prominence.  Standardisation has always supported flexibility. Jim Ware has identified the importance of standardised touchdown zones for nomadic workers within an enterprise as an element in corporate agility. This type of work standardisation goes back to medieval monasteries, as documented by Jean Gimpel.

However, resilience goes beyond agility/flexibility. Having the right connectors for portable diesel generators may be a requirement that goes beyond day to day flexibility but which proves invaluable in an emergency.  Dealing with insurance claims after a fire on a big container ship might benefit from standards aimed at resilience. An inspiring story on these lines comes from post-earthquake Japan, entitled 'Beat the bureaucracy and overcome the disaster'. A large pdf on their experience can be downloaded from the site  (or here)

The company went to great lengths over four years to understand their real business, simplify processes, and remove silos. The benefits following the Great East Japan Earthquake included the ability to send 1,600 employees to Tohoku area as temporary staff, to deploy 800 new terminals in a week, and finally 1,800 terminals by May 13. They completed 87% of 160,000 claims by the end of May and completed 97.3% of 173,000 claims by the middle of September. They had an earthquake damage contact centre with 110 terminals set up by the day after the quake. These accomplishments could not have been made without a standard plug and play virtual desktop, no paperwork and cashless payment systems.

The contrast between resilience and control is made in one of their moonshots: Create a democracy of information
“People at the front lines should be at least as well informed as those in the executive suite.”

"Most organizations control information in order to control people. Yet, increasingly, value is created where first-level employees meet customers — and the most value is created when those people have the information and the permission to do the right thing for customers at the right moment. Information transparency doesn’t just produce happy employees and happy customers, it’s a key ingredient in building resilience. Adaptability suffers when employees lack the freedom to act quickly and the data to act intelligently. The costs of information hoarding are quickly becoming untenable. Companies must build holographic information systems that give every employee a 3-D view of critical performance metrics and key priorities."

Providing assurance of safe and effective operation of unmanned platforms

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI)  has published an industry code of conduct for unmanned aircraft system operations. It is based on safety, professionalism, and respect. This is a significant document, given the wave of safety-related so-called unmanned systems coming our way. It is short (a good thing) with a reasonable set of principles.

A good many domains start with a set of principles as the basis for assurance or regulation. The hard bit comes with working out the detail. I am sure that the AUVSI does not propose to re-invent the safety management wheel, but a number of schemes that have been expensive to implement, do not seem to be getting too much of a good press these days, so it would pay them to consider the detailed working before committing too heavily to a form of implementation.

Links with other groups such as say the robotics community and its events might make sense.

From my own point of view, it would be a delight to see the unmanned platform community adopt process standards as a form of leadership (process ownership drives process improvement) and assurance. Relevant standards include ISO/IEC 15288, ISO TS 18152, ISO 15504 Part 10.

Internet of Things - Glass Half-Full

Temporal linkages between Internet of Things developments sparked some thoughts.

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) said (pdf) that, while smart meters were potentially useful for controlling energy use, they will also "enable massive collection of personal data which can track what members of a household do within the privacy of their own homes". Good to see, but  is it too little too late to prevent a) abuse or b) a backlash? Will the utilities become as popular as bankers? There isn't much of a gap now, I suspect.

A Pew report (pdf) on the future of smart homes includes this gem of realism:
"Most of the comments shared by survey participants were assertions that the Home of the Future will continue to be mostly a marketing mirage. The written responses were mostly negative and did not mirror the evenly split verdict when respondents made their scenario selection. Because the written elaborations are the meat of this research report and the vast majority of them poked holes in the ideal of smart systems being well-implemented by individuals in most connected homes by 2020, this report reflects the naysayers’ sense that there are difficult obstacles that are not likely to be overcome over the next few years."

You may have missed this website devoted to internet fridges. (Shame virtual fridge never took off - Alan Dix would have been much better than Mark Zuckerberg as the social media czar).

Samsung has launched a smartphone health app. Huge market for this sort of thing is developing. Next steps presumably include connecting to things (perhaps using the work at Glasgow University) and possibly some data-mining of healthcare providers (whathaveyougotonme.com or somesuch). Such a path would provide  market based 'empowered patient' model, with a user centred approach a business survival requirement. A user-led mashup tool such as sen.se is likely to figure large.

The People Centred Design Group has distilled its work into a set of recommendations for the Internet of Things SIG. Still quite thing-centred e.g. "As the thing passes through its lifecycle, define the end users’ experience... ", and still no mention of HCD standards.

The IoT showcase presentations illustrate the glass half-full situation. I guess that is where we are just now.

Some Resilient Community links

  I had a great discussion about resilience on Thursday night at the GSA Degree Show preview. Rather than send links by email, I'm posting them here with a brief commentary. The links are not intended to be comprehensive or even representative. My major concern is that good intentions about Resilient Communities (RC) will do what good intentions always do. With severe consequences. The 1970's movements of alternative technology and appropriate technology had good intentions but (so far as I can see) little impact in practice; forty years on, people are still designing fuel-efficient stoves for Africa.

Scottish activity of interest

As regards 'mainstream' resilience activity, there is Transition Scotland. Permaculture Scotland is of course relevant, but not the whole answer. The aquaponics team at Stirling has the potential to be useful.

The Unreasonable Leaners Network is of considerable personal interest, and I'm hoping to give it the time it deserves.

IFF  seems to be up to the right sort of things. Their book has some clear thinking and practical approaches (plus some politically correct nonsense about climate).

UK activity

There is work on the difficult question of setting up appropriate organizational structures. This is vital for any sort of scaleability, and is a very long lead item. This post  at Res Publica  addresses the vital topic of  legislation for co-ops, mutuals etc. The B4RN lot seem to have done the tedious homework of setting up an organization for community broadband. John Popham seems tied in to this area somehow.

Wider activity of interest

Rob Paterson has a lot to offer. In the first place, he has a compelling personal narrative that is driving him to change. He is contributing to local RC development, and is curating a great health resource. In the background is a great deal of hard systems thinking.

The Resilience Thinking book provides a level of hard analytical thought that we need much more of. The resilience alliance is here. Useful video intro here at Mark Robinson's site. Mark Robinson has a publication (pdf) combining the arts and resilience.

John Robb seems to have moved from plotting the coming war to helping create the peace. Nonetheless, his book is axiomatic to thinking about the future (along with Globalistan), and Global Guerillas has lost none of its relevance, alas. He is building two great resources; the RC site, and Miiu. He seems to have links with Open Source Ecology. His two backgrounds come together for resources such as darknet.

The info activists of tactical tech have resources that could be put to widespread use.

Club Orlov is based on a clear model of societal collapse but tries to be absolutely positive. In terms of legal infrastructure, it is linked with Seasteading. It recognizes the need for some sort of spiritual dimension.
Michel Bauwens and the P2P foundation has the potential to be a very powerful resource.
Falkvinge and the pirates are relevant in a number of ways, including their thoughts on swarming.
Paradigms for Progress seems to be on the right lines as well.

Wendy Brown is apocalyptic in title, but less so in tone. The survivalist movement seems active in the USA but either non-existent or completely stealth in the UK.

John Thackara is fundamental, of course. Wider economic material of relevance  includes Gregor MacDonald,  Umair Haque, Eric Beinhocker(pdf), Steve Keen etc..

My own posting on the topic includes posts on the  long lead item of encouraging, supporting, spreading competence development. The IFF book has a nice slogan; "Ready for Anything without planning for everything" (whilst also discussing synchronous failure). My take on various approaches to readiness is here. I am unconvinced of the difference between localism = good and protectionism = bad. I did risk making a forecast, as much to test my own reasoning, as to broadcast it.

Update

The Simplicity Institute is worth a good look.

Normal service is being restored

If you had expected to hear from me, or had expected me to be doing something for you, this note is for you. It is a lessons learned note on some recent developments.
A year ago my parents were a resilient system contributing to the family and community. Now they are gone. My sister devoted the last year to their care - a year well-spent. I helped as best I could, with regular trips to Prescot. Work matters took a back seat. In addition, a good deal of work has been done on the house, with all the chaos that tradesmen bring with them.
There was a bit of a low point on my birthday, the last Sunday in April. My main task was to drive to Prescot for my mother's burial. As I started to pack up, my computer died. I decided to put off analyzing that till I came  back, and went to set off. The car wouldn't start. After my return late Monday night, I contacted someone to help with the computer; Tuesday and Wednesday were high-stress diagnostic days. In the middle of Wednesday night, we called an ambulance to take Wilma to A&E (trapped sciatic nerve), where we seemed to have arrived in the Social Engineering Dept. rather than anywhere with clinical capability. Somewhere beyond fatigue at that point.
 A good deal of the time since then has been devoted to getting my computer fixed, and data and applications in good order. No data loss, and things weren't too untidy given the events of the past year, but still time consuming. Wilma has responded to Bowen Therapy but is still on a slow and painful road to recovery (me, I'm just continuing with the sleep deprivation - not helped by the long Scottish summer days).
This note starts with simple technical lessons learned, and only briefly touches on more personal matters (more anon).

Co-creation with tradesmen

There are some tradesmen who can see the customer/home-owner situation, and some that can't. The difference is striking. The lack of awareness of someone who come in to ply his trade with no regard to interfacing with other trades, the impact of his activity on his customers and their neighbours is remarkable. Maybe they need to take their wives with them.

Resilience of home office computer networks

I minimize my use of the cloud; 'the user as the product' is not a model I subscribe to more than I have to (though Blogger does a good job for me here). Bits of the cloud that helped provide resilience were google calendar and Opera Link (for bookmarks). Plusnet webmail worked; I normally leave mail on the server because 3 mobile and Plusnet don't talk to each other so far as email is concerned. Wuala, skydrive, and greater use of Amazon 'cloud' storage all need investigating sometime.
Applications I use that help with resilience are Chaos Intellect (email) that allows sync'ing, including a fully functioning email on a USB memory stick, and Powerdesk, where sync'ing, multi-pane file viewers and a size management utility help with recovery.
It is wrong to waste a good incident; improvements made include changing the laptop set up from a basic awayday arrangement to a more fully functioning set of applications and resources.
As regards my main desktop PC, the main lesson is that spending money on a high-quality well-specc'ed machine was a mistake. RAID 1 on a PC makes dealing with other failures much harder; RAID is for NAS. So, policy now is to buy basic "cheap as chips" machines (Zoostorm from eBuyer or somesuch), and have all the fancy bits external to the box. As regards the laptop, the Crucial SSD upgrade looks appealing. The TeraStation is still graunching away but the newer La Cie RAID boxes are tempting. A DLink print server enables me to print with a dead computer.

Dependable road transport

I bought the Subaru because they are supposed to be bomb-proof. Reviewers consider their interior to be a bit old-fashioned, which appealed to me on the grounds that there would be less non-engine electronics to go wrong. These assumptions proved wrong, and were compounded by 'smart' charging (which means driving with your lights on to save energy, or somesuch). Two call-outs and two dockings later, I think my car will start. For the five years I had my Toyota, I knew my car would start. A big difference. The Subaru had real rust after three years (I mean Vauxhall Viva type rust, not a stone chip). Fixed now, but astonishingly, no analysis of the manufacturing defect. At a loss on the way ahead just now. Still too cross.

The Dutch saying "trust arrives on foot and departs on a horse" applies to all sources of technology.

NHS

Over the past year, we have had more to do with the NHS than is healthy. Individual staff range from the excellent (raging against the system) to the truly atrocious. There was a high point where the GP said "yes, we are a pretty good team" - a doctor admitting to being part of a team - wonderful!
The system dynamics (I use the term in its technical sense) are awful.
The financial uncertainty of care for the elderly in England is horrendous. The cash flow implications for care homes and nursing homes are massive, and doubtless add a big chunk to the bill.
The key issue seems to be managerialism, which has taken the NHS to the 'bureaucracy' stage of the Adizes life cycle. Hopefully this will be expanded into something less cryptic soon.

Family matters

With death, parents change from being someone you are connected to, and part of a mesh of relationships. You start to see them in a more isolated fashion, as they were themselves, gain new insights into them, your own similarities and differences, and a whole review of your own 'deep story' grinds away . Views of yourself that have been dormant for decades surface. The social obligations of the offspring to the deceased are considerable - particularly when the deceased was a significant figure in work or the local community.
I may try to plot their loss of resilience as a system.
Buddy networks, are, or course, what work. Robin, a friend from Sussex University days trod this road some years back and offered useful words of immense comfort (not for the first time). Ron Donaldson has had a similar time to myself, which helped with the 'no man is an island' perspective. His post on his own Cynefin was helpful. I came to realize that the Scouser/Wollyback border is where I have my sense of belonging, but have much less reason to visit now. Coylton is extremely friendly, but I have still to grow deep roots here. Maybe Everton would like to move North. The world of my childhood in North Wales is now a lost world alas.
In their demise, my parents helped to restore wider family links. It would be a tragedy if we let these lapse again. There is some cycle of creative destruction going on here that I don't understand yet.

Watching Dixie Dean

When my father was twelve, he was taken to watch Everton. This would be 1933, a year they won the FA Cup. Dixie Dean was playing, and was getting some abuse from someone in the crowd. Dixie Dean went up to the man and punched him. A policeman came along and said "Well done, sir" to Dixie.