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CHAPTER 8

DEMOSOPHIA FACILITY

T he working facility for carrying out 1M activity is distinctive, and is carefully designed.

8.1 THE MEANING OF THE NAME.

The word "DEMOSOPHIA" is formed from two Greek words. The first refers to thepeople, and is recognizable as part of the word "democracy". The second refers to wisdom,and is recognizable as associated with the latter part of the word "philosophy". Put themtogether and you have a concept like "the wisdom of the people". Naming a facility in thisway implies that it is tailored to help organize the collective wisdom of a group of people.

Ordinary, everyday experience leads people to believe that it is normal to carry out designand related activities such as planning in almost any environment. If the design encompassesphysical artifacts, the working environment may be minimally altered to provide the mostobviously essential accessories. In the computer age, ever-present publicity spurs the additionof computers to the working environment. The idea that the environment should be subjectedto detailed design, taking into account the Laws of Generic Design, recognizing the potentialbenefits of creating a Working Environment that offers enhancements and minimizesdetractions will only gradually be adopted. (This is the second aspect of DEMOSOPHIA.)

Nevertheless it is essential to design, construct, and maintain an environment that maximizesthe likelihood of success in design activity. As the number of large system failures continuesto grow, more and more evidence will accumulate to support the ideas given here.

8.2 THE NATURE OF THE WORKING ENVIRONMENT.

The working environment focuses on eliminating detractions and providing enhance-ments for people working there. The need exists for a variety of communication and cogni-tive assistance aids. The environment is designed in recognition of the need for personalcomfort for human beings engaged in long, difficult tasks; for well-conceived, large displays;of the value in making protracted logic visible; and of the need to relieve actors of activitiesthat distract from thinking, li~tening, and communicating. It recognizes the need for assis-tance in organizing knowledge, and for dialog to develop the capacity for teamwork.

The 1980 design incorporated key dimensions, ranging from "house- keeping" features (suchas a coat rack to keep clothing out of the way of problem-solving activity) to communicationfacilities involving software that carries out inference with information.

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The design was not carried out without relevant prior experience in environments thatinvolved groups who were engaged in trying to solve complex problems or to design systems.Instead, a period of time extending from 1974 to 1979 had involved working in a variety ofad hoc settings, mostly consisting of rooms that were set aside as "meeting rooms","conference rooms", or classrooms. Invariably these rooms had extremely bad attributes for

" problem-solving. It was after struggling to achieve results in group work under such! unsatisfactory conditions that the insight needed to design an appropriate situation room was

gained.

In short, two critical things went into the design of the room: (a) an understanding of theresearch results from social science revealing significant shortcomings that needed to becorrected in group work and (b) six years of experience working with groups in unsatisfactoryenvironments.

In addition to the foregoing general benefits, the design was further informed by a number ofspecifics related primarily to processes for group problem-solving that were gathered,developed, and tested during the period from 1970 to 1979. While designing to incorporatethe research results and the experience, specific aspects of the design related directly to theprocesses being used. Thus the design of the room involved considerations not likely to befound in most other problem-solving facilities. .In addition to the main facility, the design involved an anteroom specifically conceived to bea strong supporting facility for what goes on in the main room. Operations in the primaryroom are supported on a real-time basis by operations in the anteroom. The processes developthe necessary information. The actors who fill the various roles use the facilities of bothrooms to provide the documentation in a real-time activity.

The first room to be developed was not completely faithful to the initial design. This was thedecision-support facility at the University of Northern Iowa. There it was necessary to use anexisting room that lacked some of the envisaged requirements. However many of the salientfeatures were incorporated. Since its development in 1980, additional features have beenadded to make it more useful as a problem-solving environment. Also its use has not been Ilimited to complex issues, but rather it has been applied to a variety of problems.

The second facility to be developed was almost totally done according to the original designI insofar as the principal facility, the Demosophia, was concerned. The anteroom was

considerably below desirable standards. Nevertheless this facility, developed at the Universityof Virginia, and placed in service in April of 1982, proved to be almost all that was hoped forin advancing the environmental needs for generic system design purposes.

As a result of experience gained with this design, its design was replicated by two client

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organizations in the period 1983-1985. These were the U. S. Forest Service Regional Officein Atlanta, Georgia, and the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California(mentioned earlier). The former facility is no longer being used, because of a destructive firein the building in which it was located. The latter facility continues to be used regularly bythe Southwest Fisheries Science Center.

A room with most of the original design features and some new ones was created in theperiod 1984-1986 at the City University of London. This facility incorporated someimprovements in the equipment and in graphical capabilities.

A well-equipped facility that was developed using the initial design was built at GeorgeMason University in 1984-1985. This room had a much better anteroom than the one at theUniversity of Virginia, providing for more efficient support services. It also had slightlymore space, and its layout permitted better writing boards on the walls.

The Defense Systems Management College, Fort Belvoir, Virginia, modified one of itsclassrooms in the period 1989-90 to provide characteristics similar to those mentioned above.In 1991, the College continued to explore the creation of a new facility capable of providingsupport for 1M (and, possibly, for other group activities).

The Ford Motor Company constructed such a room in 1993, after experien.cing excessiveproblems in preparing for and conducting Interactive Management sessions in temporaryspace. As one example of a problem that was experienced while conducting a session at afour-star hotel, very early in the session the expensive rug on the ballroom floor caused staticelectricity to be produced, which migrated from the hand of one of the staff to one of thecomputers, disabling the computer and requiring extensive repairs.

The name "Demosophia" was chosen to distinguish it from other types of rooms that are alsocalled "situation rooms" and to reflect the philosophy under which it was designed. Thosewho study situation rooms recognize that there are several types, characterized by differentassumptions and underlying purposes.

The name "Demosophia" reflects the philosophy that the people who have difficult problemsto deal with usually can do so with wisdom, provided they are supported by an appropriateenvironment, methodology based in sound theory, and staff people who are there to assistrather than to play out their own egos as superior problem solvers to those who "own" andwho suffer from the problems.

While the design of Demosophia has been based on the background given in the precedingdiscussions, the original idea for such a room belongs to the late Harold Lasswell. This

~ former Yale professor and political scientist was a well-known and well-respected scholar,

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teacher, and author.!

III, In his early days as a faculty member, Lasswell was very interested in group problem-solvingactivity. One of the experiences that he had together with two colleagues, took place in aPeruvian mountain village. For three months the small delegation of faculty tried tocommunicate with and assist the inhabitants of this poor village to try to help restore theviability of the community. This took place with Indians who did not speak English.

After several weeks, the discovery was made that communication could take place with agraphics language that was developed on the spot, using chalk drawings on the wall of acave. Once this discovery was made, communication improved and significant progress was

made toward restoring this village to health.

Years later, Lasswell articulated his concepts of a "decision seminar" and an "urbanplanetarium". The former was conceived as a specially designed room that emphasized majofdisplays of information relating to policy development. In effect it was the modern version ofthe Peruvian cave. The urban planetarium was a larger concept. It would consist of a largebuilding whose rooms and walls were so laid out and so covered with symbols, that a personcould experience vicariously an entire urban center by simply walking through this buildingand experiencing its contents. In this way, it was thought that a citizen of a city could gain afeeling for the city as a whole and understand both its history and its current state, gaining aappreciation of the interdependence of its parts. By keeping an up-to-date status report, ingraphical form, of numerous aspects of the city, citizens could know their city in a uniqueway. :Even newcomers could gain rapidly an appreciation for the spirit and substance of thecity. Possibly many of the self-serving actions that tend to destroy a city might be defeated icitizens perceived it more like an organism than only in terms of the individual's immediatesituation. And possibly the individual might learn to appreciate the interdependence in the

city and the possibilities for participation in its activities.

ThP, vision of Lasswell was a significant motivation for the development of Demosophia, and

the need for full information display was recognized as one of its main features.

Factors in the Design. By sorting out the room's attributes into principal design factors, it'possible to explain its concept and suggest how it is used. These are the main factors in its

design:

.Physical Comfort. It should be possible for a person to sit in this room as a workingparticipant for eight hours a day, and not be distracted from the task by any physicaldiscomfort, the latter typically being found in "conference rooms" and most other setting

where people are expected to work together. For achieving a minimum degree of physicalcomfort it is important to consider such aspects as lighting (artificial and natural),

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acoustics, chair design, etc.

.Ample Table-Top Working Space. In many rooms developed for group activity, nothought is given to maintaining ample table-top working space. In many rooms, there is noplace for winter garments to be stored, so the working space is preempted by coats andhats. By providing proper space utilization, one helps assure productivity.

.Flexible Table-Top Working Space. Some large conference rooms. have access toancillary small rooms, where large groups can be broken up into small groups, one smallgroup per room. However in a university and in many business environments such spacecannot be made available. Also many organizations lack eating facilities near the workingareas. By having several smaller tables that can be fit together to form one large one, it ispossible to have a group working around the large one; and later by separating the tablesand moving them to corners of the room, several small groups can be accommodated towork in parallel. It is also possible to use one of the small tables to hold a catered lunch.This economizes on the use of the group's time. i

I

.Design for Multiple Roles. There is ample evidence that for effective group work, (a) thegroup should be small--perhaps 8 is the ideal size for effective verbal exchange--but thegroup can vary from 6 to 12 without introducing undue difficulty, (b) since there is often aneed to accommodate more people than the "small group", space can be provided forobservers who do not require as much space as the participants, (c) processes may providefor breaks during which "caucusing" among participants and observers can be carried out,(d) the group must have a facilitator, someone who is highly-skilled in working withgroups using the methodologies that the room is designed to implement, (e) for certainkinds of group work the cognitive burden may be alleviated by using the computer, so thatprovision is made for a terminal and an operator, and (f) there is a need to record andduplicate in order to document what goes on for quick dissemination and amendment.Accordingly, the room should be designed to accommodate the various roles, whichmeans it must have space for each that is appropriate to do what must be done in the roleand to provide any necessary equipment support. In the Demosophia design, facilities areprovided for about 10 participants, one or two facilitators, a computer operator, a

computer terminal, up to twenty-five observers, and one or two scribes.

.Design for Display. Most of the walls are devoted to displaying information. Thefollowing modes are used: (a) manual display achieved by writing on butcher paper andtaping it to the wall with masking tape, (b) manual display achieved by printing on cards,and either inserting the cards in magnetized holders, or using small rubberized magnets toplace them manually on the magnetic wall-board which holds them, (c) augmenting thecard display by drawing lines that connect the magnetic card holders to show relationshipsamong the elements that are displayed on the cards, (d) projection displays on a bare wall,

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which can be produced from an overhead projector or more commonly from a computerdriving a projection system (by this means, the computer can communicate with the group)which removes some of the cognitive overload that otherwise would weaken the capacity ofthe facilitator to perform in certain aspects of group work), and (e) direct writing, with amarker pen.

.Design for Information Retention. While the ordinary conference room seldom carriesprovision for retaining any information, and thus serves the purposes of the executive whodoesn't intend to spend more than an hour in the room, complex issues demand prolongedperiods of work, which may extend over several days, and typically may involve several;.periods separated by intervening days to catch up on normal work. For this reason, it is Iimportant to design for retaining information in the form it exists when the group hasto interrupt its activity. Information is retained on the walls so that when a group returns itis visually cued immediately in detail about its prior work status. Members of the groupmay be able to walk through the displays in order to review graphically the work that hasbeen done, and can resume work with little lost time. Information is also retained, whenappropriate, in the computer, where it can be called on demand for refresher purposes, orto amend it by addition, deletion or other editing.

,

.Production of Intermediate Results. Group work is demanding. On complex issues, it is I

very important to reproduce intermediate results as soon as they have been achieved. Thisis done off line in the anteroom, using the drafting and copying facilities. Hard copy canthen be provided to participants, giving a deserved feeling of accomplishment, and a recordto study as needed as the work evolves.

.Videotaping. For certain purposes, such as summarizing results of a long project, forshowing trainees how they perform in group work, and for archival reasons, it is desirableto be able to make and display videotapes, in which case audio design involving qualityand placement of microphones is important.

.Storing Possessions. One comer of the room, near the door, is set aside for hanging coatsand leaving bags so they do not use the work space and are available when leaving.

.Telephones. Persons using the room need to use telephones during breaks. Provision ofthem near but outside the working area is sometimes desirable.

.Report Preparation. Facilities are needed for preparing final reports on the work.

.Access to On-Line Software. Software for the ISM and TAM processes is needed todrive the processes, displaying questions and results. It has been demonstrated repeatedlythat through activity in such a Laboratory Environment, following the steering provided by

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a Science of Generic Design, the best features of the separate Virtual Worlds of theparticipants can be brought forth and integrated, and that the interaction among theparticipants provides a learning experience that dissolves the potential negative impact ofthe initially-divergent views about issues.

NOTES:

1. Among his better known books is A Pre-View of the Policy Sciences and Politics: Who GetsWhat. When. How?

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STUDY QUESTIONSCHAPTER 8 DEMOSOPHIA FACILITY

1. What is the origin of the word "pemosophia"?

2. What does "Demosophia" mean?

3. What kind of working environment supports high-quality work. on complex issues?

4. What factors support the design of a high-quality working environment?

5. What principle is supported by the Lasswell experience in Peru?

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