March 2024 Archives

Luddites, progress, and mansions

In the introduction to Blood in the Machine, Brian Merchant points out that the workers who started smashing machines at the turn of the 19th century had never been taught to see technology as inherently progressive.

We have. And not just that. Also that technological change – or ‘development’ – is both unavoidable and desirable.

For some reason this remark reminds me of the architecture students I’m working with at the moment who’ve been given a brief to design ‘a sustainable home’. Many of them are designing massive mansions. Constructed of rammed earth, or floating on water to be climate-resilient, but hardly ‘sustainable’. All of them, I think, are designing free-standing single household houses. And most wouldn’t even house a family, they’re one bedroom affairs, perhaps with a study.

Isn’t a sustainable home by definition a collective home? Something terraced, small, or built for collective or multi-generational living?

It really strikes me how little even those in a creative and in some ways highly socially conscious and critical field such as architecture seem to be thinking of redesigning the way we live. The form of our technology.

Perhaps that why that remark by Merchant brings up this experience: the ingrained assumption that the technology and design of society are one some fixed, natural, unavoidable path. We’re just along for the ride. With little more agency that to build a fantasy mansion or two.

Design decisions are a set, not a series.

Design decisions are taken in the context of the design as a wole. That whole is subject to change throughout the design process. Therefore, logically speaking, all design decisions remain up for debate and themselves subject to change throughout the design process.

This is highly impractical, of course. In practice, therefore, important decisions are ‘frozen’ at some point during a design project. In practice, the reason for some decisions then becomes something like ‘because that follows from what we decided earlier’ or ‘it would cost too much to change’.

Aspiration and the View from the Inside

The philosopher Agnes Callard argues in her book Aspiration that it is possible to want to become something you cannot yet understand. That it is possible to rationally pursue a way or view of life of which it is currently impossible for you to judge the value. For example, to aspire to become a music lover, a parent, the kind of person who enjoys long walks – or a designer.

There is a paradox here because it is impossible to (fully) judge the value of achieving such goals before achieving them. So how can you pursue them rationally, Callard asks. Their value is only properly visible from the inside, to those who have already become music lovers, parents, walkers, or designers – those who have already passed through the looking glass.

This may be a good metaphor to use when explaining this predicament to design students and teachers. That experienced designers have stepped into a world or bubble that can be described accurately, but only to those who are also inside. As if they’ve put on a AR headset and now see things the other simply doesn’t. Also similar to the difficulty of explaining or characterizing a new taste to someone who has never eaten a particular snack or food. There is a truth to how it tastes. Most people who’ve eaten the thing will agree to its character. But it cannot fully be explained in words to those who have never tasted it.

The role or lack of a client distinguishes academic from professional design work

Reviewing a number of (engineering) design textbooks, it strikes me that none of them discuss what a good set of concepts looks like, other than that they are the most promising options.

Together with the fact that these textbooks give little to no guidance on how to construct and present the complete case arguing the final design, this lack of discussion on the collection of concepts as a collection – and what defines it as such – seems to be a result of these books’ framing of design and the design process in a professional context.

One big difference between that professional context and an academic context (including many educational settings) is the role and presence – or lack thereof – of a client. Concept selection seems like a particularly good example of this. In a professional setting, you would present your concepts and your evaluation of them, together with a recommendation on which to proceed with, to your client(s). You would give them the final say or ‘OK’ on that decision, or at least come to a consensus. And because that decision is taken together, at a specific moment in time, in a specific project context, it matters less whether that set of concepts has a particular logic to it.

In an academic context, however, if you present concepts and a comparison at all, you present them only at the end of the project, together with the – further developed – final design. You write it all up in a single (peer-reviewed) paper. In that context, where you’ve selected a concept yourself and already further developed a design based on one, the concept comparison and ‘selection’ is no longer a forward-looking strategic proposal but a component in the justification/support for your final design. Rhetorically and epistemologically, it’s doing (can do) something quite different.

What makes for a good set of concepts?

First of all, what is the aim?

Here, I consider concepts as a means of exploration and – as a set – as the basis for arguing why the final design embodies/is based on the concept that is does/is.

What if we take the game SET as an analogy for how your concepts should differ.

When ONE aspect varies, you have something that looks like a controlled experiment. You’re changing one variable and seeing how that impacts the design’s properties and performance. Of course, when ‘one’ aspect is different, many more aspects will also be different. The world (and thus, physical artefacts) are infinitely complex.

When MORE THAN ONE aspect is varied, you either have to do the full combinatorics or find some way in which different choices in those aspects hang together (in effect, going back to the situation where only ONE overarching aspect is varied). Or, if there are no significant interaction effects between the aspects (sub-functions, domains, components) then it’s better to decouple them and decide per aspect which is preferable.

What of the case of the get-up-chair combined with two knee orthoses? What when you have A/X, A/Y, and B/Z? Could that make sense? Yes, I think so. In this case, there is a ‘wildcard’ concept. This could be a sound strategy in cases where there seems to be an obvious best option for one or a set of aspects (in this case: a powered knee orthosis). The function of the wildcard concept, then, is to check/justify that assumption. Trying to find the wildcard by asking ‘What do my two ideas have in common?’ can be a way to discover hidden or unconscious assumptions (and thus also, to find ‘more creative’ options). The emergency Covid ventilators also fall in this category, with only one departing from ‘modern, digital control system’.

(Examples from my slide deck of concept set examples)

Weeknotes 2024 week 10

Made / Published

I recorded a short explainer video for the course WB3135 Integrated Mechanical Systems this week. This was my second video recording with a script and prompter. It went much better already. I feel I’m relatively natural and well-paced in most of it. And making a video like this can be fast! Recording was over in – I think – half an hour, and editing is also less work when the flow of the text was considered and edited beforehand (no shit). Less than half a day spent on this.

Teaching

Yesterday was the second round of progress presentations for the same course (WB3135). We ask students to analyse a technological breakthrough or invention by comparing the alternative technologies, the various mechanisms or systems that were the ‘candidates’ for that disruption (e.g. VHS vs. Betamax vs. Video 2000). For these 3rd year BSc students, it’s incredibly challenging to set up a comparison like that. Every technological development is different, so they really have to frame and shape their analysis themselves. And we have far too little time to really coach them on it, with only roughly 15 minutes per group presentation. It’s a super fun course, and some groups come up with really interesting results. But it’s frustrating to see them struggle and nog being able to provide the right kind and amount of support…

Exploratory Thinking and Agency

I came across a definition of human agency as “the ability to generate choices and select from among them” (here).

If that is what makes for agency – and it seems a reasonable definition – then the skills and habits of designers – exploratory thinking in particular – suddenly become something everyone should learn and practice in general education. In fact, design ability – including discovering your aims, values, and possibilities by asking ‘What if?’ – is *the same thing* as human agency defined as such.

Exploratory thinking as a personal and civic skill

At some point, I’d like to write an essay or something about design thinking – for lack of a better term at the moment – as a general skill. The value of developing the skill and habit of exploratory, divergent, parallel thinking in all kinds of areas of life. Not just for ‘problem solving’ or ‘creativity’, but as a way to approach questions and dilemma’s more broadly in all kinds of areas of life – both private and public.

Usually, it seems to me, when the value of learning some design skills is argued, it is in the context of ‘innovation’ or ‘problem solving’ – to achieve known aims. But the big value of exploration and developing alternatives is also – and crucially – in the fact that it is a means to find out what you want in the first place. You go looking for the goal by considering different options. Or at least you further your understanding of your goal, what you find important and what less so, by exploring different ideas and approaches to then critically respond to.

‘What if’-thinking seems to be unnatural or counterintuïtive to most people. Is that innate or learned? Regardless, the skill goes undeveloped in primary and secondary school. In tertiary education too, expcept in design education. This is at the core of what you learn there, and I don’t see how or why that way of thinking about and engaging with the world should be confined to those programmes training professional designers.