{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"deadweight_loss_reduction__human_computer_interaction","trajectory_id":"R","attempt_index":0,"archetype_slug":"deadweight_loss_reduction","domain_slug":"human_computer_interaction","decision":"CANDIDATE","problem_id":"coarse_interface_roles_block_legitimate_low_risk_actions","causal_lever_id":"risk_tiered_contextual_action_authorization","proposal":{"problem":"In collaborative enterprise interfaces, coarse role-based permissions can categorically block legitimate, low-risk actions that users need to complete their work, even when the same users have sufficient context and responsibility. The controls protect security, privacy, and accountability, but their coarse allocation can cause abandoned tasks, administrative queues, credential sharing, exports to less-governed tools, and underuse of available system capabilities. Whether this occurs materially in a given system is a HYPOTHESIS.","actors_substrate":["Users seeking task-specific actions","Administrators and help-desk reviewers","Product and interaction designers","Security, privacy, and data owners","People represented in or affected by controlled data","Enterprise software and its authorization, logging, and workflow layers"],"observable_state":"Repeated low-risk permission denials followed by access tickets, task abandonment, administrator-mediated execution, credential sharing, or migration to external tools; meanwhile authorized capability remains unused.","consequence":"Potentially beneficial user-system activity is foregone or displaced into slower and less-governed paths without a demonstrated proportional security benefit.","affected_objective":"Increase successful, timely task completion and governed feature use while preserving security, privacy, accountability, accessibility, and equitable access.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Value-blocking wedge","domain_realization":"A coarse role or eligibility rule denies an action based on broad identity categories rather than the action's contextual risk.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"Blocked mutually beneficial activity","domain_realization":"A user cannot perform a legitimate task that would benefit the user and organization using already-available system capability.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"Visible shortage, queue, or idle capacity","domain_realization":"Access tickets and administrator queues coexist with unused feature capacity and abandoned tasks.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"Protected purpose","domain_realization":"Authorization limits protect sensitive data, system integrity, separation of duties, privacy, and auditability.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"Specific redesign lever","domain_realization":"Replace categorical denial for selected low-risk actions with contextual, time-bounded, least-privilege grants plus logging and revocation.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"Incidence and behavioral response","domain_realization":"Users, administrators, data subjects, and security teams experience different gains, burdens, and risks; users may also request, hoard, or game grants.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"Bounded reversibility","domain_realization":"Test only preclassified low-risk actions, retain high-risk controls, expire grants automatically, and restore the prior rule on trigger breach.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"}],"component_map":[{"component":"Distortion Map","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Trace each denial rule to denied actions, downstream tickets, workarounds, abandonment, and its stated protective purpose."},{"component":"Protected Constraint Safeguard","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Retain least privilege, separation of duties, sensitive-data restrictions, audit logs, revocation, and human review for high-risk actions."},{"component":"Surplus Estimate","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Estimate recovered task completions, time, governed-system use, and administrator capacity, with uncertainty and no claim that all saved time is welfare."},{"component":"Affected-Party Incidence Map","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Record effects on blocked users, administrators, security teams, data owners, data subjects, and users who may receive unequal access."},{"component":"Redesign Lever","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Introduce contextual, action-level, time-limited authorization for a bounded low-risk class."},{"component":"Distributional Review","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Test whether request burden, approval rates, accessibility, or exposure differs across roles, shifts, locations, or protected groups."},{"component":"Behavioral Response Model","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Anticipate request inflation, grant hoarding, collusion, off-platform substitution, administrator rubber-stamping, and demand growth."},{"component":"Implementation Boundary","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Limit the pilot to one workflow, named participants, non-sensitive records, reversible actions, and a fixed duration."},{"component":"Monitoring and Rebound Check","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Monitor completion, denial, request, abandonment, workaround, incident, revocation, and administrator-load rates."},{"component":"Rollback or Adjustment Rule","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Disable contextual grants and revert to prior permissions if predefined security, privacy, equity, or reliability thresholds are crossed."},{"component":"Cost–Benefit Assessment Frame","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Compare recovered task value and reduced administration with build, review, security, privacy, training, and transition costs."},{"component":"Price-Wedge Diagnostic","status":"incompatible","domain_realization":"No monetary or administered price is posited; access eligibility, not price, is the proposed wedge."},{"component":"Friction Source Breakdown","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Separate categorical ineligibility from legitimate review time, confusing signifiers, missing information, and ordinary ticket-processing cost."},{"component":"Compensating Adjustment Plan","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Provide administrator escalation, user guidance, accessible request paths, and added review for parties bearing new workload or exposure."},{"component":"Legitimacy and Authority Review","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Confirm who may alter permissions and which legal, contractual, privacy, and security obligations remain non-negotiable."},{"component":"Sensitivity Analysis","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Vary task-value, incident-cost, substitution, approval, and administrative-time assumptions."},{"component":"Pilot or Sunset Path","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Run an expiring pilot whose grants and policy changes lapse unless evidence supports renewal."}],"mechanism_dispositions":[{"slug":"congestion_or_capacity_pricing_adjustment","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"The problem is coarse eligibility, not peak contention rationed by a flat price.","counterfactual_removal":"Removal does not change the proposed causal chain."},{"slug":"cost_benefit_assessment_protocol","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Translate welfare terms into task value, administrative load, security exposure, and distributional effects.","counterfactual_removal":"The pilot remains causal, but continuation could be justified by time savings while concealing shifted risk or burden."},{"slug":"distortion_reduction_review","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Diagnose whether coarse denial, rather than a necessary risk control, blocks legitimate low-risk actions.","counterfactual_removal":"Without this separation, the intervention cannot establish a repairable wedge and risks weakening necessary controls."},{"slug":"impact_assessment_table","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Use rows for users, administrators, data subjects, security teams, and indirect parties, with harms and triggers.","counterfactual_removal":"Aggregate completion gains could conceal concentrated exposure, unequal approval, or transferred workload."},{"slug":"matching_improvement_program","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Users and capabilities are already known; pairing failure is not the posited cause.","counterfactual_removal":"Removal leaves the eligibility-rule diagnosis unchanged."},{"slug":"permit_or_approval_streamlining","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Faster tickets are the nearest process rival, but they retain the categorical permission architecture rather than repair the allocation rule.","counterfactual_removal":"Removal preserves the distinctive action-level authorization lever."},{"slug":"price_control_redesign","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"There is no administered monetary price or compensating price protection.","counterfactual_removal":"Removal has no causal effect."},{"slug":"quota_or_allocation_rule_review","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Treat roles as an allocation rule; preserve the security cap while reallocating selected action rights contextually.","counterfactual_removal":"Without splitting legitimate limits from coarse assignment, the redesign collapses into broad permission expansion."},{"slug":"regulatory_simplification_pilot","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"TEST_DESIGN","adaptation_or_rejection":"Adapt the walled-off, monitored, expiring pilot to an enterprise authorization policy.","counterfactual_removal":"Testing would expose the whole system or provide only speculative evidence, hard-gating safe evaluation."},{"slug":"sunset_clause_review","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Its expiry function is already supplied by the bounded pilot; sunsetting the standing security regime would be unsafe.","counterfactual_removal":"The pilot's automatic expiry remains intact."},{"slug":"tariff_fee_or_toll_redesign","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"No authority-imposed charge is implicated.","counterfactual_removal":"Removal has no causal effect."}],"causal_chain":["A coarse role rule treats low- and high-risk actions alike.","Legitimate low-risk actions are denied despite available system capability.","Users abandon tasks, wait for administrators, share credentials, or move work outside the governed interface.","Contextual action-level grants reduce avoidable denials while retaining risk-specific constraints.","Time limits, least privilege, logging, revocation, and high-risk exclusions constrain added exposure.","If the diagnosis is correct, governed task completion rises and workaround or queue rates fall without unacceptable security, privacy, or equity degradation."],"baseline":"Ordinary baseline: retain static roles; users submit access tickets, ask administrators to act for them, abandon the task, or use available workarounds.","nearest_rival":"Permit-or-approval streamlining: improve ticket forms, routing, and response times while leaving role eligibility unchanged. It is preferable if delay, not categorical allocation, is binding.","authority_safety":{"affected_parties":["Blocked and already-authorized users","Administrators and help-desk staff","Security, privacy, and compliance teams","Data owners and data subjects","Managers accountable for workflow outcomes"],"decision_authority":"The organization’s designated product owner and authorization-policy owner, with security, privacy, data-owner, and worker-representative review where applicable.","authorized_first_step":"Analyze de-identified denial and ticket traces, then run an expiring pilot for one reversible, non-sensitive workflow with informed participants and predeclared metrics.","excluded_actions":["No automatic grants for privileged administration, irreversible actions, regulated decisions, or sensitive personal data","No removal of audit logging, separation of duties, revocation, or incident response","No covert monitoring beyond approved telemetry","No organization-wide rollout or permanent policy change from pilot evidence alone"],"halt_rollback":"Immediately suspend new grants and revoke pilot grants upon a severe incident, unauthorized sensitive-data access, material equity disparity, loss of auditability, or metric breach; preserve evidence, notify accountable reviewers, and revert to static roles."}},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"Denied actions may be precisely those associated with consequential misuse, and apparent workarounds or administrator queues may reflect necessary review rather than avoidable loss. Existing incident or audit evidence linking broader permissions to harm would weigh strongly against the proposal.","analogy_break":"Unlike a separable economic wedge, authorization may be inseparable from the safety outcome: contextualizing access can create inference, aggregation, insider-threat, or accountability risks that action-level labels fail to capture.","failure_condition":"No bounded class of legitimate low-risk actions can be identified for which contextual grants preserve every non-negotiable protection.","problem_falsifier":"Audit data show that legitimate low-risk denials are rare, produce no meaningful abandonment, workaround, delay, or idle capability, or are mostly caused by confusing interfaces and missing information rather than allocation rules.","intervention_falsifier":"Compared with the static-role baseline, the pilot fails to improve governed task completion or reduce queues and workarounds, or it crosses a predeclared security, privacy, equity, reliability, or administrative-cost threshold.","risks":["Privilege escalation or cumulative access from multiple small grants","Sensitive-data leakage and insider misuse","Approval gaming, grant hoarding, or rubber-stamping","Unequal ability to request or obtain contextual access","More prompts and permission complexity degrading usability","Telemetry creating surveillance or privacy harms","Local task gains shifting workload or risk to administrators and data subjects"]},"null_rationale":null,"classification":{"candidate_kind":"MECHANISM_ADAPTATION","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","evidence_maturity":"HYPOTHESIS"},"revision_change_log":{"revision_kind":"ORIGINAL","prior_problem_id":null,"prior_causal_lever_id":null,"problem_changed":false,"causal_lever_changed":false,"conceptual_changes":[],"operational_changes":[],"repairs_addressed":[]},"confidence":0.82,"generator_notes":"Closed-book structural inference. The candidate depends on the empirical hypothesis that coarse authorization, rather than necessary review, interface confusion, or raw administrative scarcity, is the binding cause."}