Maps, Mirrors, and Participants: Design Lenses for Sociomateriality in Engineering Organizations

TL;DR

This paper explores the sociomateriality of organizations, proposing three design metaphors—maps, mirrors, and participants—to understand how human and nonhuman agencies meld during engineering design processes.

Contribution

It introduces a conceptual framework using metaphors to analyze the role of design models as maps, mirrors, and participants in shaping organizational sociomateriality.

Findings

Design models as maps influence legitimacy attribution.

Design models as mirrors seek validation of perspectives.

Design models as participants recognize their agency in design processes.

Abstract

When you use a computer it also uses you, and in that relationship forms a new entity of melded agencies, a "centaur" inseparably human and nonhuman. Networks of interaction in an organization similarly form "organizational centaurs", melding humans, technologies, and organizations into an inseparable sociomateriality. By developing a convex optimization toolkit for conceptual engineering we sought to shape these centaurs. How do organizations go from a high-level concept ("let's make an airplane") to a "design", and in that process what blurred lines between humans and computers bring opportunities for research? We present three metaphors that have been useful lenses across our field sites: considering design models as maps shows how centaurs apportioned legitimacy; looking at design models as mirrors illuminates how they sought validation in their perspectives; and treating design models as participants recognizes their opinions and agency as equivalent to other entities in these centaurs.