The PSI Network Model for Studying Diverse Complex Design Scenarios

Abstract

Design pervades our world in variety and complexity that is difficult to grasp. Different disciplines and researchers take one or few perspectives to study, model, and try to understand design, why it fails and when it succeeds. However, without a comprehensive model, the value of such approaches is limited. We created a framework – the PSI (Problem, Social and Institutional Spaces) framework – that includes several models, ranging from simple to complex, networked, and hierarchical or recursive that can be used to model all design scenarios. In what follows, we demonstrate the network version of this framework, how it is used, and what insight it can present. The diversity of situations we present, mergers and acquisitions of companies, collaborations between industry and university, large multi- organizational projects, and a very complex project, as well as other cases we do not present here, confers the validity of utility and potential of the PSI framework.

Documenting design research by structured multilevel analysis: supporting the diversity of the design research community of practice

“…PSI is a multilevel framework and design theory that has successfully modelled complex design situations (Reich & Subrahmanian 2019. It was developed bottom-up with colleagues in response to explaining diverse design or practical contexts, often conducted in large organisations.…”

“…Existing literature includes structured approaches such as organisational learning, change, development, sociotechnical systems, action research and the innovative journey model. Instead, this paper will use the PSI framework (Reich & Subrahmanian 2019 to provide a novel structure to characterise specific design research case studies and inter-relate them. PSI will provide us with a way to unravel the structural inter-relationship between organisational design and product design or design research.…”

Opportunities and Challenges of Sociotechnical Systems Engineering

“…In The PSI Network Model for Studying Complex Design Scenarios (Reich and Subrahmanian, 2019) offers a recursive pattern to suggest a framework for studying complex (Sociotechnical) challenges. The basic pattern element is a PSI matrix (Figure 3) which posits the Problem, Social and Institutional challenges (PSI) in layers that reflect the Vision, Alignment and Operational focus of the individuals who must cooperate to realize the solution.…”

Mapping and Enhancing Design Studies With Psi Meta-Theoretic Design Framework

“…In this paper, the goal is to show that specific studies can be analyzed using a metalevel model to explain their outcomes and, in the process, create patterns of failures and successes. The model we used in the study is the PSI (Problem space, Social space, Institutional space) theoretical framework (Reich & Subrahmanian, 2019. Our experience thus far with PSI has been with analysis of diverse cases in which we participated as well as studies reported in the literature or news media.…”

“…Our experience thus far with PSI has been with analysis of diverse cases in which we participated as well as studies reported in the literature or news media. This experience has led to extending the basic PSI spaces model into a matrix (Reich & Subrahmanian, 2020) and a network model (Reich & Subrahmanian, 2019). PSI provided the theoretical structure to represent complex cases, understand them, as well as suggest improvements.…”