Organizational Designing at the Total Design agency

Abstract

In this report a collection of experiences at Total Design is
presented while looking through a lens of Organizational
Designing. The concept of looking through a view-master
is used as metaphor for the purpose of this report.
To highlight this Organizational Designing, two main
questions had to be answered;
How can we look at Organizational Designing?
Where do we see Organizational Designing at TD
and in this project?
To recognize Organizational Designing within the ways
of working, some existing literature is used to set up its
first attributes. By the use of design perspectives like the
action-centered perspective (Schön, 1983), a Human
Centered Design perspective (Junginger, 2005) and the
four orders of design (Buchanan, 2019) we start to make
an effort on what Organizational Designing is. Then a
view on the complexity of organizations (Norman &
Stappers, 2015) and their ‘wicked’ problems (Buchanan,
1992) is given to see on what entity this design process
works. This literature overview is closed with some things
Organizational Designers encounter and work with, such
as the need for ‘satisficing’ (Simon, 1969), the incremental
strategy of ‘muddling through’ (Lindblom, 1979),
improvisation (Weick, 2017) and designing ‘interventions’
(Stacey et al., 2000). To capture the ways of working at TD
various ethnographic methods were used (Hammersley
& Atkinson, 2007), such as observation, participation and
the use of field notes and ‘thick descriptions’ (Geertz,
1973).
Throughout the report examples of these thick
descriptions are presented to illustrate the point of
view of me as a user of the organization TD. Together
with these examples, different frames on how TD as an
organization can be viewed are showed to emphasize
how complex the definition of what an organization is,
can be.
The captured experiences are categorized into three
areas where Organizational Designing can be seen. The
first area is at the interface between TD and its clients,
where the design inquiry in projects the collaboration
with the use of online tools and the integration of
different design disciplines led to organizational impact
at the clients side.
The second area highlights the organizational designing
within TD itself, where observations triggered the process
of incremental changes in interaction of the standup, and
the evolution of the agency call. As well as how the hourly
billing creates tension between the freedom of creativity
and the need for having a financially healthy agency.
The third and last area the design interventions of this
project are discussed. Here, methods of reflection and
the use of archetypes challenge the way TD could think
about themselves. And reflection-in-action lead to
shifting the purpose of a given workshop while doing.
In the end we conclude with an overview of how
organizational designing at TD can be seen. As well as
a discussion on the fact that organizational designing
can be seen in other design disciplines, since the
design of an organization deals with problems that
require integration of problems of communication,
construction and interaction. This is why we can see
organizational designing on different moments at TD,
since they integrate various design disciplines to create
organizational impact at their clients.