Sensemaking and Organizing (Spring 2025)

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Sensemaking & Organizing

CogSci 150, 3 units, Spring 2025

Wheeler 20, Tu-Th 9:30-11:00 AM

TEACHING TEAM

Professor Robert J. Glushko
https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~glushko/
glushko@berkeley.edu

Cynthia Chen
https://www.cynchen.me/ Links to an external site.

cynthia_chen@berkeley.edu

When something "makes sense” or "is organized” we are discovering or imposing order in the arrangement of concepts, events, or resources of some kind.    Sensemaking and organizing are fundamental human activities that raise many multi- or trans-disciplinary questions about perception, language, knowledge, decision making, and interaction with things and with other people.

Organizing is an intentional activity, while sensemaking is often automatic or pre-attentive, especially in our perceptual systems.  But this contrast isn't sharp; we often organize things using pre-attentive properties like color and shape to facilitate our interactions with them. "Scientific sensemaking" requires iterative observation, analysis, and introspection that can take years or centuries.

We can analyze sensemaking and organizing from four interrelated perspectives. The most fundamental one is provided by language and culture, which shapes the perspectives one takes as an individual, in institutional contexts governed by business or legal processes, or in data-intensive or scientific contexts.

COURSE FORMAT and GRADING

The course is lecture-based, but includes as much discussion, breakout sessions, and peer learning as is possible given the size of the class.

The expected workload should average 10 hours a week; 4 for the course meetings and 6 for preparation and deliverables.   The load will be lighter at the beginning of the semester and heavier toward the end when students are researching and writing their case study, the most important work product for the course.

  • 17 assignments, most of which can be completed in an hour (25%)
  • 2 timed exams, administered by bCourses (35%; 15% for #1, 20% for #2)
  • Case study (25%)
    • Purpose: To reinforce the generality of the organizing system framework.  After reading ten or more short case studies in the first few weeks of the course, students write one of their own as their course capstone. The best student cases end up in future syllabi
  • Class preparation and participation (15%)

SCHEDULE AND READINGS

The primary text is The Discipline of Organizing, currently being revised to create a 5th edition. This text has been extensively revised since it was first published in 2013. 

Readings from this text are indicated with “TDO” and a chapter or section number, a * after a number (like 4.1*) means the identified section and all of its subsections

Many readings are short case studies, some from the textbook and some written by students taking this or similar courses. Their diversity demonstrates the breadth of the organizing system concept.

Part 1: Introduction to Sensemaking and Organizing

[1 - Jan 21 Download 1 - Jan 21] Course introduction; the concept of the "Organizing System”

An Organizing System is an intentionally arranged collection of resources and the interactions they support. This definition doesn't specifically mention books, people, datasets, shoes, animals, or any other type of resource. This definition also doesn't mention any specific ways in which resources are used.  Finally, this definition allows for any arrangement or structure that is needed to enable the interaction.

Because the Organizing System perspective can be applied to any kind of resource, it enables a more nuanced discussion of how the economic, social, and cognitive costs and benefits of organizing are allocated among different stakeholders and over time.

Case Studies:

ASSIGNMENT 1 :   Grandpa's Record Collection (due on 1/23)

 

[2 - Jan 23 Download 2 - Jan 23] Design Dimensions for Organizing Systems

This lecture introduces several broad design questions or dimensions whose intertwined answers define an Organizing System, including: What, why, how,  for whom, when, by whom or what, and where. This framework for describing and comparing Organizing Systems overcomes the biases and conservatism built into familiar categories like libraries and museums while enabling us to describe them as design patterns. We can then use these patterns to support inter-disciplinary work that cuts across categories and applies knowledge about familiar domains to unfamiliar ones.

Case Studies:


[3 - Jan 28 Download 3 - Jan 28] A Taxonomy of Structure; Sensemaking {and, or, vs.} Organizing

Sensemaking and Organizing are about discovering or imposing structure. This lecture starts by contrasting six categories of structure. The most important contrast is between structure that is created and structure that is discovered, and a second contrast is between structure that is created by intentional action and that which is self-organized by collective action or physical forces.

We'll then see how different academic fields – management, operations research, informatics, etc. – provide models or representations for describing structures and organizing systems. These different depictions, many from case studies you've read, distinguish and highlight different aspects of structure and organization.

Case Studies:

ASSIGNMENT 2 :   Analyzing Resource Types and Organizing Principles (due on 1/30)

 

[4 - Jan 30 Download 4 - Jan 30] The Life Cycle of Organizing Activities

A perspective that brings together how we organize as individuals or as members of groups with how libraries, museums, governments, research institutions, and businesses create Organizing Systems requires that we generalize the organizing concepts and methods from these different domains.

This lecture surveys a wide variety of Organizing Systems and describes five activities or functions shared by all of them: domain scoping and resource selection, identifying requirements for interaction and organizing, organizing resources, designing resource-based interactions, and maintaining the interactions and resources over time.

ASSIGNMENT 3 :   Analyzing Activities (due on 2/4)

 

[5 - Feb 4 Download 5 - Feb 4] Resources

The design of an Organizing System is strongly shaped by what is being organized, the first of the design decisions introduced in the second lecture. To enable a broad perspective on this fundamental issue we use resource to refer to anything being organized, an abstraction that we can apply to physical things, people, digital things, information about either of them, or web-based services or objects.

Two separate aspects cut across the "thingness" distinctions:
 - Granularity – do we think of the resource as unitary, or as consisting of parts?
 - Abstraction – “thing” or “type of thing” – are we thinking of the resource as a single instance or as a member of a bigger category?

Case Studies:

ASSIGNMENT 4 :   Analyzing Your City (due on 2/7)

[6 - Feb 6 Download 6 - Feb 6] Names and Identifiers

A NAME is a label for some thing or some category that is used to distinguish one from another. If a name is used to refer to some specific thing and is unique in some context it is an IDENTIFIER. Choosing good names and identifiers is essential, difficult, and often contentious.

Case Study:

ASSIGNMENT 5 :   Dwinelle Hall Names and Identifiers Download ASSIGNMENT 5 :   Dwinelle Hall Names and Identifiers  (due on 2/11)

GROUP DISCUSSION 1:  Analyze Assignments 4 and 5 (2/11-2/17)

 

[7 - Feb 11 Download 7 - Feb 11] Resource Description

The principles by which resources are organized and the interactions that can be supported for them largely depend on the nature and explicitness of the resource descriptions.

We will spend most of the lecture on section 6.2, “The Process of Describing Resources,” after we do an exercise to try to describe a category of objects that you’ll see one at a time.

 

[8 - Feb 13 Download 8 - Feb 13] Resource Properties Framework; Systems of Measurement; Describing Non-text Resources

Two important dimensions for understanding and contrasting resource properties used in descriptions and organizing principles are: property essence—whether the properties are intrinsically or extrinsically associated with the resource, and; property persistence—whether the properties are static or dynamic. Taken together these two dimensions yield four categories of properties.

Measurements are very commonly used descriptions.  Systems of measurement are have evolved from ad hoc techniques for comparison, many of which were based on body parts or common work artifacts. 

Non-text resources raise interesting questions about resource description and there are novel approaches to answering them.

Case Studies

 

 

[9 - Feb 18 Download 9 - Feb 18] Describing Relationships and Structures, Part 1; Social Network Analysis Using Graph Theory

An organizing system can use existing relationships among resources, or it can create relationships by applying organizing principles to arrange the resources. We need a vocabulary for talking about these relationships precisely and consistently so that we can analyze, design, reason about them, and implement them in organizing systems. In fact, we need 4 different vocabularies because there are 4 different perspectives on relationships

This lecture introduces the structural perspective, which analyzes the patterns of association, arrangement, proximity, or connection between resources (and often ignores the reasons for them).

We can apply graph theory to understanding relationships from a structural perspective.

ASSIGNMENT 6 :   Social Graph Calculations (due on 2/20)

 

 [10 - Feb 20 Download 10 - Feb 20] Describing Relationships and Structures, Part 2

This lecture introduces the specialized vocabulary used to describe semantic relationships between resources and between the concepts and words used in resource descriptions.

ASSIGNMENT 7 :   Designing and Defining a Taxonomy (due on 2/25)
GROUP DISCUSSION 2:  Analyze Assignment 7 (2/25-3/4)

 

Part 2: Sensemaking and Organizing in Language and Culture

[11 - Feb 25 Download 11 - Feb 25] Introduction to Categorization; Category Structure

Categories are sets or groups of resources or abstract entities that are treated the same.  Categories are cognitive and linguistic models for applying prior knowledge; creating and using categories are essential human activities. Categories are involved whenever we perceive, communicate, analyze, predict, classify – or otherwise attempt to make sense of our experiences.

Category structure refers to the principles by which a category is defined. Categories can be defined by enumerating their members, on the basis of one or more shared properties, or by less rigid principles like similarity. 

ASSIGNMENT 8 :   Astronomical Awareness (due on 2/27)

 

[12 - Feb 27 Download 12 - Feb 27]  Astronomical Sensemaking and Other "Natural" Categories

The universality of temporal concepts for "day," "month," "year," and "season" reflects their basis in natural astronomical events that have been systematically observed and recorded for well over ten thousand years.  Likewise, all cultures impose patterns on stars, often associated with myths. Studying how these constellation-embodied myths evolve and disperse over time using techniques of evolutionary biologists creates "the tree of myths." 

ASSIGNMENT 9 :   Tree Walk (due on 3/4)

 

[13- March 4 Download 13- March 4] Universal Cognition? Folk Biology; Linguistic Relativity;  Bi-lingualism & Bi-culturalism

All human languages and cultures divide the physical and experiential “worlds” into categories; there are substantial similarities but interesting differences.   Analyzing these differences makes us realize that language is much more a cultural construction than a biological one.


ASSIGNMENT 10:   Practice Exam (due on 3/7)
GROUP DISCUSSION 3:  Study Group for Exam (3/7-10)

[14 -March 6 Download 14 -March 6] Social thinking and "Machine Culture"

How do the groups we explicitly or implicitly belong to influence how and what we think? When does social thinking create better decisions and outcomes? When does social thinking create worse decisions and outcomes?

"Machine culture" is the idea that intelligent machines simultaneously transform the cultural evolutionary processes of variation, transmission, and selection. Recommender algorithms are altering social learning dynamics. Chatbots are forming a new mode of cultural transmission, serving as cultural models.Intelligent machines are evolving as contributors in generating cultural traits–from game strategies and visual art to scientific results. How can we ensure a harmonious co-creation of culture where humans and machine augment, rather than eclipse, each other?

[15 - March 11] EXAM

 Part 3: Sensemaking and Organizing As Individuals

[16 - March 13 Download 16 - March 13] "Automatic organizing" using perceptual processes, Gestalt principles, statistical learning

Physical resources are often organized according to intrinsic physical properties like size, color, or shape because the human visual system quickly and automatically pays a lot of attention to them. Likewise, because people have limited attentional capacity, we ignore a lot of the ongoing complexity of visual (and auditory) stimulation, making us perceive our sensory world as simpler than it really is.  Infants have a remarkable ability to extract patterns in auditory and visual inputs so that they can learn their native language and cope with the complexity of their physical environments.

[17 - March 18 Download 17 - March 18] Categories made by Individuals; Personal Possession Management; Personal Information Management

Individual categories are created to satisfy ad hoc requirements that emerge from an individual’s unique experiences, preferences, and resource collections.  How people manage their personal possessions is a trendy topic and a lucrative consulting business, but some people have psychological disorders that prevent them from doing it well.  How people organize their personal information has been extensively studied by researchers and designers. The Memex, proposed by Vannevar Bush almost 80 years ago, embodied many novel ideas about personal information management and is often viewed as the inspiration for personal computers and the web.

ASSIGNMENT 11:   Analyzing the Hoarding "Disorganizing System" (due on 3/21)

[18 - March 20 Download 18 - March 20] Causality and Explanation

People have a cognitive bias to see order and purpose in the world. The vast majority of our decisions are influenced—at least in part—by our beliefs about the causal structure of the world.  It is essential for survival to understand and predict the properties and behaviors of physical objects and substances (Physics), plants and animals (Biology), and other people (Psychology).

But what makes some sequences of events causal, so we make inferences about similar events, and other sequences non-causal? Causes are not deducible, and are not always explicitly visible in sensory input

ASSIGNMENT 12:  Case Study Proposal (due on 3/29)

 Part 4: Sensemaking and Organizing in Defined/Institutional Contexts

[19 - April 1 Download 19 - April 1]  Institutional Categories, Classification, and Standards

Institutional categories are explicitly constructed semantic models of a domain to enable more control, robustness, and interoperability than is possible with just the cultural category system.  They are essential in abstract, information-intensive domains where semantic precision is essential for processes and transactions (especially automated ones). They are usually developed via rigorous and formal processes and require ongoing governance and maintenance.  Because classification and standardization are closely related, the lecture also analyzes standards and standards-making as they apply to Organizing Systems.

[20 - April 3] Case Study Proposals

Brief presentations by students of their proposed case study.

Five more case studies were assigned to further develop the analysis and design skills needed to write a case study.

GROUP DISCUSSION 4:  Discuss Case Study Proposals (4/4-7))

[21 - April 8] Controlled Vocabularies, Business Interoperability

Sensemaking and organizing in institutional or business contexts depend on systematic and robust descriptions of resources, events, processes, and people.  Controlled vocabularies and standard description schemas are essential in the operation of information-intensive and data-driven businesses.

[22 - April 10] Document Engineering and Modeling

We will discuss techniques of Document Engineering for systematically identifying the content, structure, and presentation components in documents and datasets to enable the design of robust models for information-intensive domains. We will briefly contrast methods and formats for information models that differ in their semantic precision, maintainability, and ease of use. 

ASSIGNMENT 13:   Document Engineering (part 1 due on 4/14; part 2 due on 4/16)
GROUP DISCUSSION 5: Analyze Assignment 13 (4/17-21)

[23 - April 15] Organizing and Interaction Design

Classifications arrange resources into categories. So every classification increases the capability and efficiency of interactions with resources that are “co-located” or “within-category” and makes “between-category” interactions less efficient. Choices about descriptions and organizing principles involve tradeoffs that determine which interactions are efficient, possible, difficult, or impossible.

Distributed cognition and external representations help people understand and interact effectively when faced with challenging cognitive and physical tasks.

 Part 5: Sensemaking and Organizing with Data

[24- April 17] Organizing with Interaction Traces

Interactions with physical resources sometimes leave traces or other evidence. Many of these traces are unintentional, like fingerprints, a coffee cup stain on a newspaper, or the erosion on a shortcut path across a lawn. However, when Organizing Systems contain digital resources or physical resources that have sensing, recording, or communication capabilities, interaction traces can be made predictable, persistent, and consistent. Each record of a user choice in accessing, browsing, buying, highlighting, linking, and other interactions then becomes an “interaction resource” that can be analyzed to reorganize the resource collection or otherwise influence subsequent interactions with the primary resources

ASSIGNMENT 14: Document Types and Traces Diary (due 4/23)

[25 - April 22] Behavioral Economics

Choices about descriptions and organizing principles involve tradeoffs that determine which interactions are efficient, possible, difficult, or impossible.Organizing systems control the behavior of their users. The emerging field of applied behavioral economics explains how subtle differences in resource arrangement, the number and framing of choices, and default values can have substantial effects on the decisions people make.

[26 - April 24] Computational Description 

Categories are typically created computationally when a collection of resources or resource descriptions is too large for people to think about effectively.  The simplest computational categories are the implicit ones created by descriptive statistics that identify typical or frequent and atypical or infrequent items

[ 27 - April 29] Computational Classification; Computation {and,or, vs.} Cognition

Some classification tasks are hard because the categories are “close together” and the resource properties or features involved are not easy to understand and use.  Other classification tasks are conceptually simpler, but can't be done by people at the needed scale or speed.

In “data science,” a classifier is a system whose input is a vector of discrete or continuous feature (or attribute) values and whose output is the name of the class. This vector might be the description of a document, an image, a person, a molecule, just about anything

Computation {and,or, vs.} Cognition

[ 28 - May 1] Case Study Working Groups

You will meet in groups to present your analyses, artifacts, whatever -- and we'll scramble the groups twice so you get feedback from a lot of your classmates.

[ 29 – May 6] Case Study Presentations

May 9- case study reports due

Course Review

This will be a recorded lecture, no need to come to class. Watch the recording whenever it makes sense for you.

May 13 - final exam

 

Course Summary:

Date Details Due
Thu Jan 23, 2025 Assignment A1 - Grandpa's Album Collection due by 9:30am
Thu Jan 30, 2025 Assignment A2 - Analyzing Case Studies due by 9:30am
Tue Feb 4, 2025 Assignment A3- Analyzing Activities in Organizing Systems due by 9:30am
Fri Feb 7, 2025 Assignment Assignment 4 - Analyzing Your City due by 12pm
Wed Feb 12, 2025 Assignment A5 - Dealing with Dwinelle due by 11:59pm
Thu Feb 20, 2025 Assignment A6 - Social Graph Calculations due by 9:30am
Assignment Academic Integrity Assignment (Spring 2025)
(Academic Integrity Assignment (Spring 2025))
 due by 10:59pm
Assignment Academic Integrity Assignment (Spring 2025) due by 10:59pm
Tue Feb 25, 2025 Assignment A7 - Vehicle Taxonomy due by 9:30am
Thu Feb 27, 2025 Assignment A8 - Astronomical Awareness due by 9:30am
Tue Mar 4, 2025 Assignment A9 - Campus Tree Walk due by 9:30am
Thu Mar 6, 2025 Assignment A10 - Practice Exam due by 9:30am
Thu Mar 20, 2025 Assignment A11 Analyzing the Hoarding "Dis-Organizing System" due by 9:30am
Sat Mar 29, 2025 Assignment A12 - Case Study Proposal due by 12pm
Quiz Midterm Exam March 11  
Quiz Midterm Exam March 11 - DSP  
Quiz Practice Exam 1