Eiffel Over

Tag: evolution

  • When optimisation is a good idea

    There are times when optimisation is a good idea. For example:

    When the technology involved is mature. With a rapidly changing technology, process optimisation may not keep pace with technological evolution.

    When the environment is stable. It is easier to optimise a structure for a prevailing wind than for blustery conditions. 

    When customer behaviour is constant. If customer demand is broadly unchanging, then we can optimise around how we carry on giving them the same thing.

    When you have good feedback. This is critical. Without good feedback from the system you are operating in, you don’t know if what you are putting into that system is meeting your aims. And you can’t see if the system conditions are changing.

    When there are no disruptors. These disruptors could be technological. Or they could be a group of engineers (or other humans) with an approach that is changing things up. It is too late for optimisation when no one needs what you are offering.

    In short, optimisation is good when the conditions are steady. 

    But if our operating environment is changing, then we need to dedicate at least some of our resources to asking, do we need a different approach?

  • Design decisions – who decides?

    Design is full of decisions. Which client? Which supplier? Which materials? What location? Whether to build or not to build? Which idea best suits the brief? Shall I challenge the brief (yes!)?

    The journey through design is a process of decision making. The ability to make well-informed, ethical and insightful decisions is the mark of the professional. And so it is worth spending a bit of time thinking about how we arrive at decisions.

    So let’s start here — with the question of who decides. Here are four answers.

    • I decide – through some process to be unpicked, I am doing the decision-making
    • Someone else decides – we are merely informed of their decision.
    • A decision emerges – through a series of interactions between people, possibly without anyone necessarily knowing how, a preferred decision reveals itself.
    • A decision evolves – this is the living world’s mechanism for decision-making. 

    You can see all of these at play in a design team. 

    • I might make a decision about what material to specify 
    • The client decides they want to reduce the budget –  I am not consulted, merely informed.
    • In a design team meeting, we review various options together, and through the interaction of people and ideas, a particular option wins out as the most popular.
    • And I might not be aware of it, but our decision is informed by and part of a long-term evolution of design which, for example, has seen greater emphasis placed on end-of-life design.

    Understanding who decides is a first step to figuring out the decision-making mechanism, where we have agency and how we can help make better decisions.

  • Regenerative Design: a process not a thing

    Regenerative Design: a process not a thing

    As I continue my exploration of regenerative design in engineering, correspondents have said it would be helpful to gather examples of regenerative design. Templates that we can look at, imitate and integrate.

    From my reading of Wahl (see my recent post), I’m increasingly understanding regenerative design to be a process rather than a thing.

    Regenerative practice of any sort (in design, in education, in living…) is practice that leaves the ecosystem richer and better able to heal itself. It is practice that sees humans as a keystone species that play a unique role in helping their ecosystems thrive.

    (more…)