Last
class, the students in Social Systems Theory class learned scenario planning, which is media for communicating in communities
or organizations based on future plans.
On
the other hand, Prof. Iba introduced pattern
language as media for verbalizing the tacit knowledge and sharing it among
people in an organization in order to take over double contingent situations.
He
explained what pattern language is, and how we write pattern language with
recent examples in our laboratory.
The
example was English pattern writing pattern which he discovered recently on the
generative beauty project. We firstly wrote the pattern in Japanese, yet we
needed to write the patterns in English in order to submit the paper for the
international conference.
On
that process, we tend to have difficulties with writing patterns in English,
the process does not go smoothly. Then, Prof. Iba realized that we need to
learn vocabularies related to topics of the patterns, in this case beauty, so
he bought variety of books about cosmetic, fashion and beauty written in English.
His intention of it was to write patterns while learning vocabularies and
phrases at the same time.
Even
though he shared this knowledge with the current members on the project, he
will need to explain that consecutively when he encounters the same situations
on the different occasions or people. Therefore, it is effective to organize
and write this knowledge in order to make easier to tell it to other people.
Then,
he decided to write the pattern on that. Basically, pattern language consists
of three main parts: context, problem, and solution.
Pattern Name: Writing with Learning
Context: You write in English, which is not your
mother tongue.
Problem: Because you have no idea how you should
write ideas in proper and comprehensive English, you cannot write patterns
smoothly.
Solution:
Write patterns with learning and referencing vocabularies and phrased related
to the topic of the pattern that you are writing.
The
reason why we give names to each pattern is to make us remember the contents of
the pattern easily, and help our communication on the topic as a vocabulary.
In
other words, Christopher Alexander, an architect who established the concept of
pattern language, explains in The
Production of Houses that pattern language is a language for writing design
knowledge including problem finding and problem solving.
After
the lecture, students have Q&A session about pattern language for deeper
understanding on that. Although they acquired better understanding on it, they
have never talked with patterns.
So,
we are having the workshop on patterns in Fearless
Change, and having dialogues based on their experiences with vocabularies
in the book.
◆ C. Alexander, The Production of Houses, Oxford
University Press, 1985
◆ M. Manns & L. Rising, Fearless Change, Addison-Wesley, 2005
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