Design Across Scales

Looking back at the topics we have taken this semester, the most significant issues are either reductionism and holism or possibly emergence. The main reason I found reductionism and holism interesting is that it is not purely a term used in designing. It is also a way of seeing the world. Reductionism is the process of analyzing and defining complex phenomenons using their elemental components. An example of reductionism is the idea that simple or more fundamental phenomena can characterize other phenomena in terms of their associations. Holism, on the other hand, is the idea that all parts of a whole cannot exist independently from the whole and instead depends on it to be considered, meaning the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, contrary to the concept of reductionism. What interested me the most was the idea that so many people see the world differently, and neither is wrong. One big thing I had to overcome in this university is the idea that nothing is right or wrong or black and white.

The subject of reductionism and holism helped me see the grey areas rather than believing that one option is correct and the other is wrong. Emergence was another topic I found interesting because of the way it describes daily things we do and brings it to our attention. An example I have used before and find extremely descriptive is the concept of a cocktail party. Once people arrive and have no target behavior, it’s considered chaotic. People don’t know how to act. Once a larger scale is identified, such as the cocktail party being a surprise birthday party, the agents on the lower scale, being the people, begin hiding, bringing out the cake, and knowing when to start singing happy birthday. The idea that it takes a larger scale to give people a purpose baffled me. I started realizing that it is seen quite literally all around us in design. If we look at it in a shallow way, we see that whatever we are designing is usually controlled by what we've seen before us or a more extensive scale dictating how we see things and how we're meant to see something. So, in conclusion, these two topics were my favorite. 

In my opinion, if I were to choose one topic to be my least favorite, it would be the topic of group work. I understand why it would make sense to learn about group work, but I needed help to connect to design. It is essential to discuss group work, but instead of making it a week's lesson, it could be a brief 20-minute explanation minus the activity. Seamless design was another lecture I only partially liked partly because I didn't fully understand how it connected back to technological innovation. I also didn't completely understand the concept and found it difficult to form an idea of it in my head. I mostly liked all the other courses. I just sometimes had a hard time remembering the difference between all of them and found myself falling behind in my understanding of all the topics and their connection to design. 

In addition to the things I've learned and understood from emergence, reductionism, and holism, I've developed a new manner of seeing the world and explicitly seeing design. Through the topic of thinking in systems and Powers of ten, I noticed that everyone is part of a system. Everything that happens around us is part of a system, and just like the concept of emergence, we are all part of a more extensive system that gives us a purpose and a function. Everyone in this universe processes according on a larger scale. And with the use of reductionism and holism, I can see precisely what this larger scale requires and how to create my thinking systems. I have chosen to go down the fashion design path. Still, even in any other discipline, every lecture in this course can and has shaped any potential designer, no matter the field. Our topic in biomimicry also influenced how I see design and things around me. I've started to see something I hadn't seen before, using the concept of life mimicking nature and the negative impact biomimicry can have on the environment. In addition to our usual lectures, we had the honor of hosting the founder of hack master, a company specializing in influencing the future rather than predicting it. The lecture was definitely interesting, to say the least, but I didn’t agree entirely with some of what was said. I understand how we can't predict the future but can influence it, but I still think the influence that is being made is looking too far into the future. The one concept that stuck with me, and not in a positive way, is the car crash dummy, where, rather than making a car safe for the person inside, make a person that is incapable of being injured. To be completely frank, I was absolutely creeped out by the thought of it. I know it's very, extremely far into the future and is barely even a prototype of what could be, but nonetheless, I didn't like the idea of changing that many things in the future. Obviously, significant worldwide issues need solving, but I don't think making a human named Graham that is incapable of injury should be at the top of the list. 

“No one can predict the future, but you can decide what you prefer the future to be.”

- HACKMASTERS. (n.d.). HACKMASTERS.

“We specialize in scenario making, identifying a range of frameworks for building new eco-systems to deliver systematic transformation. We rapidly build the first proofs to prototype a positive future that can be tangible today.” 

November 8th - 13th 2022 

During design week, we had two separate lectures in the atrium. The first one being about Life-Oriented Design, the second one being about Hell or the dark secret behind universal brands. 

Life-Oriented Design Lecture

Hell: The Dark Secrets behind Brands 

Pictures from Design Week

Activity

The Topics covered in this weeks reading were convergence, modularity, hierarchy, consistency and self-similarity. 

These terms covered the characteristics of a system. I found the reading to be quite interesting as i have never particularly heard or learned about the different characteristics of a system specifically the self-similarity characteristic. 

I found to have learned the most from self-similarity, not because it seems like the simplest but because it helped form a deeper understanding of systems in general. 

My least favorite topic was convergence because the examples were quite complex and it took too much to explain simple terms. In reference to this, i disagree with the idea to complexity to describe a topic when it could easily be explained in a clear and concise way. 

Source

Butler, J., Lidwell, W. and Holden, K., 2003. Universal principles of design (p. 216). Gloucester, MA, USA, 2010, 112–113.: Rockport publishers.

“A product is interdependent when the way one part is made and delivered depends on the way other parts are made and delivered. Interdependency between parts requires the same organization to develop both components if it hopes to develop either component.“

- Christensen Institute. (n.d.). Modularity Theory. [online] 

Examples of Interdependence: 

1. The dependence of people on nature to survive, such as hunting and gathering. 

2. Business depend on suppliers to provide them with the material needed. 

3. Countries depending on each other for trading and financial supplies. 

The simple definition of biomimetic design is making things that mimic nature.  Technology and biology are often seen as the inspiration for innovative design making biomimicry a synthesis of science and art. 

An example that comes to mind is velcro. George de Mestral game up with the idea after he noticed burs stuck to him and his dog. Velcro mimicked the surface of the burs which were covered in tiny hooks, paired with a surface covered in tiny loops. Other quick examples are 

1. Submarines and whales 🤿🐋

2. Active camouflage and chameleons 🪖🦎

3.The bullet train and the kingfisher bird 🚅 🦜

4. Tuxedos and penguins 🤵🏻‍♂️🐧

6. Night vision goggles and owls 🥽🦉

8. Helicopter and dragonfly 🚁🪰

Micha Commeren, designer

Plagiarism is taking someone else's work to pass it off as your own. 

In our first lectures on Design Across Scales, we learned plagiarism's wrongs, consequences, and tips to avoid plagiarism. There are many types of plagiarism. Direct plagiarism includes copying someone's work word for word, while accidental plagiarism is when someone neglects to cite excerpts from excerpts. Our first activity showed how “Ouriginal” works and the way it detects the percentage of plagiarism in a passage. 

Original Plagiarized Paragraph: The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 in the city of Weimar by German architect Walter Gropius (1883–1969). Its core objective was a radical concept: to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts. Gropius explained this vision for a union of art and design in the Proclamation of the Bauhaus (1919), which described a utopian craft guild combining architecture, sculpture, and painting into a single creative expression. Gropius developed a craft-based curriculum that would turn out artisans and designers capable of creating useful and beautiful objects appropriate to this new system of living. 

100% Plagiarism

Paraphrased Paragraph: 

German architect Walter Gropius established the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1919. Its main goal was to reinvent the tangible world to express the unification of all the arts. In the Proclamation of the Bauhaus, Gropius outlined the idea for a merger of art and design. Gropius created a craft-based curriculum to produce designers and craftspeople capable of producing suitable products.  

4% Plagiarism 

(Bowdoin, 2007)

https://www.bowdoin.edu/dean-of-students/conduct-review-board/academic-honesty-and-plagiarism/common-types-of-plagiarism.html 

(MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2016)

https://cmsw.mit.edu/writing-and-communication-center/avoiding-plagiarism/

The basic definition of a system: A system is a collection of components that act as a unit to form a mechanism or a network; a complicated whole.

Every aspect of our lives is governed by systems. The human body is a walking system. We function and live thanks to the various components of our bodies. It is the details within systems that make up even more systems. The number of systems appears to be infinite from one perspective, but from another, it appears to be one huge system. Nevertheless, the more thoroughly systems are examined, the more complex they become. 

“I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.”  Poul Anderson

Meadows, D.H., 2008. Thinking in systems: A primer. chelsea green publishing.

When properly organized, group projects can strengthen abilities that apply to group and individual work, such as deconstructing challenging tasks into manageable parts and steps, setting aside time for planning, and Improving comprehension by talking about and explaining. In addition to reading about the fundamentals of group work, the website provided helpful tips on how to deal with the struggles that come with working in groups. 

Key Group Work Tips: 

Take turns: provide the chance for others to take leadership, so everyone has the opportunity to learn. 

Avoid personal criticism: Don't criticize other people's work, as some people have different ways of managing time. Find a way to compromise and finish the job while staying true to your way of working. 

Divide work evenly: Divide the work evenly, so one team member doesn't end up doing most of the work while others do the bare minimum. 

Time management: Stay on task and commit to the times you've decided with your team. Finish the work you were provided on time so that the rest of your team isn't behind. 

Koh, M.H. and Hill, J.R., 2009. Student perceptions of groupwork in an online course: Benefits and challenges. International Journal of E-Learning & Distance Education/Revue internationale du e-learning et la formation à distance, 23(2), pp.69-92

https://learningcommons.yorku.ca/groupwork/

In basic terms, emergence is the procedure in which an object concealed is made visible. When described in a more high-level jargon, it is the concept of order arising from chaos. In the book “Emergence,” scientific author Steven Johnson explains that agents on a set scale begin to act based on the behavior on the scale above them. Author Peggy Holman used the example of a cocktail party. Once people arrive and have no target behavior, it's considered chaotic. People don't know how to act. Once a larger scale is identified, such as the cocktail party is a surprise birthday party, the agents on the lower scale, being the people, begin hiding, bringing out the cake, and knowing when to start singing happy birthday. The larger scale gave them a purpose, and as a result, order arose from chaos.

Johnson, S., 2002. Emergence: The connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software. Simon and Schuster.

Holman, P., 2010. Engaging emergence: Turning upheaval into opportunity. Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Reductionism and Holism are two different methods of perceiving how the world works.

Reductionism is the process of analyzing and defining complex phenomenons using their elemental components. An example of reductionism is the idea that simple or more fundamental phenomena can characterize other phenomena in terms of their associations. In addition, a complex system can be interpreted as the sum of its parts from an intellectual and philosophical point of view. The two most common examples of reductionism are biological and environmental. In biological reductionism, psychologists aim to reduce the reason for a person's behavior to their neurons, hormones, brain structure, etc. Environmental reductionism is where behaviorists assume that a behavior can be defined by the person's stimulus-response, which is a change in the environment, a stimulus, and the reaction of a person being the response. 

Holism is the idea that all parts of a whole cannot exist independently from the whole and instead depends on it to be considered, meaning the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, contrary to the concept of reductionism. Holism is a way of trying to understand something on the outside as a whole concept rather than breaking it down and seeing how all its parts work, going deeper in.

Raman, V.V., 2005. Reductionism and holism: two sides of the perception of reality. The Global Spiral, an e-publication of Metanexus Institute, published on July, 15.