forming versus coding
Having been trained as an Industrial Designer I have always seen design as a form giving process. Communications designers might see it differently, but I think of manipulating and organizing materials, physical or virtual, when I design anything. I have been wondering recently whether this is an outmoded paradigm.
As designers get asked to tackle systems problems such as behavior change we discover that the final form of the system is unknowable. It is too complex to be able to define every element or predict every outcome. So should we use form making as the central process to design systems which have unpredictable forms?
Just last week I sat through a fabulous talk by author, futurist and investor Juan Enriquez. He described the impact life sciences might have on business and society. In particular the topic of synthetic biology got me thinking about how design might be changing. The scientists can now create synthetic cells. Indeed one of Juan’s more famous collaborators Craig Venter made an important announcement about this just a few days later. They will soon be designing new synthetic organisms that can perform all kinds of unique tasks and as scary as this might be it has big implications for design. Instead of forming the material of the organism, in the way that a horticulturalist might create a new hybrid plant, the scientists use code. They literally recode the DNA to create new cells with new behaviors.
Assuming no major ecological disasters, it will not be long before the technology is developed enough to get out of the hands of scientists and into the hands of designers. We will be coding behavior, not forming it.
Is this how we should think of all design in the future? Using the code of 1’s and 0’s or A’s, T’s, C’s and G’s to design complex behaviors that evolve and are emergent rather than fixed and determined. Or perhaps this is a false distinction. Perhaps design has always broken complex systems down into small parts and formed individual components (products, services, buildings, applications) that come together to create system level behaviors. Perhaps it is the interplay between forming and coding that will be key to design.
How will designers learn the skills of coding so as to participate in the design of future systems?
28/05/2010 at 8:14 pm Permalink
Very interesting reflection.
In fact, it seems as if we are seeing the realization of one of the possibilities of Technocultures based on information and computational techniques. From the work of several cultural analysts in the 90s and earlier the emergence of the technocultural modes of knowledge creation were identified as mainly having to do with “design cultures”, specifically the type of knowledge creation and practices associated with the softwarization (not just “digitalization”) of everything.
That’s something that Manuel Castells remarked in the first volume of his “Network Society” series:
“In addition, and unlike some analysts, I also include in the
realm of information technologies genetic engineering and its
expanding set of developments and applications. This is, first,
because genetic engineering is focused on the decoding,
manipulation, and eventual reprogramming of infomation codes
of the living matter. But also because, in the 1990s, biology,
electronics, and informatics seem to be converging and
interacting in their applications, in their materials and, more
fundamentally, in their conceptual approach”
This goes beyond just a coincidence of representation, the important thing is designing on and from information representations and specially of processes on information.
There are several interesting things going on at the same time:
The digital view of the world.
The softwarization of stuff
The design of matter at a very basic level
The creation and operationalization of knowledge based on the “design culture” of the information society (in Spanish) . This is the work of anthropologist Artur Serra, who is very active at European level and advising the EU in the creation of new types of innovation including the ones that result from the convergence of what traditionally has been called “design” and what traditionally has been understood as a separate context of activity, i.e., “coding” (when, in fact, coding is a type of designing)/ .
Now, as you remark, it is very important to open up the reflection on this new possibilities and on a large scale at societal level.
With Artur, we thought it crucial that citizens appropriated these new ways of knowledge creation, innovation, production and work in order to understand the future and to build it. That’s the reason we created Citilab in Barcelona (a Citizen’s Lab http://citilab.eu).
Interesting time ahead!
Congratulations again for the post.
28/05/2010 at 8:17 pm Permalink
Correct link for the “Softwarization of Stuff”: http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/…/the-softwarization-of-stuff/
28/05/2010 at 8:29 pm Permalink
I believe the interplay between forming and coding will be the key. Maybe, Industrial Designers and Craig Venter can create products that based on synthetic cells. These products will be making of synthetic cells that are pre-programmed to self healed after being broken. They must use a renewable energy to complete this action, so it is not harmful to the environment. Or in an emergency situation, the users of these products are able to enter a password on the applications that access the program of these synthetic cells to quickly repair the broken cells. Maybe these applications are accessible on any smart phones.
If these cells become cancerous (similar to iron rusting) , there should be a way for the user to destroy these cells thoroughly without infecting other products that are made of synthetic cells, so they are destroying themselve, too.
29/05/2010 at 5:42 am Permalink
Tim…you lost me.
“it will not be long before the technology is developed enough to get out of the hands of scientists and into the hands of designers.”..if thats the case then it will be in the hands of non designers too. As with a lot of technology it will by-pass middle men like designer and go straight to the hands of those requiring the end product. The designers role will be as always, to envision the unique possibilities, dream the unique scenarios on behalf of those who do not have the capacity to do it for themselves. Building is increasingly the easy piece…having the idea that will stretch the technology is where the designers value lies.
30/05/2010 at 5:20 am Permalink
>> Is this how we should think of all design in the future? Using the code of 1’s and 0’s or A’s, T’s, C’s and G’s to design complex behaviors that evolve and are emergent rather than fixed and determined.
The subsequent generations will continue to evolve and strive to adapt to their environment no matter what our intention was when we ‘configure’ the first generation. So technically we design the first generation and natural selection takes care of subsequent ones. It would be interesting for instance to witness if a bio-fuel bacteria we design evolve in a direction that they lose their fuel property and adopt themselves better to their environment in the form of a useless fungi of which we would have hard time to control their spread. In this sense we are not in charge. Should we still be entitled to call this process ‘design’.
02/06/2010 at 9:25 pm Permalink
I love the ideas that you raise in this post, “We will be coding behavior, not forming it. Is this how we should think of all design in the future? Using the code of 1’s and 0’s or A’s, T’s, C’s and G’s to design complex behaviors that evolve and are emergent rather than fixed and determined.”
Would that we were all so prescient in our thoughts.
Now we are on the precipice, stumbling into the future to solve problems that do not yet exist. Even with all of our do-good desire, we may end up producing problems with our mad will to create, possess, dominate. As designers we should be cognizant of individuals, idiosyncracies, outliers, meaning, and culture, and yet we often discard these informative, constructive mantels when they prove inexpedient.
Will we ignore the angels’ admonitions and tread blindly into “life design,” too? If so, forewarned is forearmed. If we choose to follow this path then we must befriend ethicists and activists, philosophers and fools, who may actually save us from our brilliant, headlong selves. And we should stop to recognize that the only things lighting our path are will, pluck, courage and ignorance.
02/06/2010 at 9:56 pm Permalink
Yes, and…
The optimal design is one that embraces the paradox — solutions that embrace all dimensions of the Design Thinking continuum: http://totalexperience.corante.com/archives/2010/02/28/design_thinking_in_stereo_martin_and_brown.php
29/06/2010 at 8:55 am Permalink
While there are truly amazing applications of a code or grammar to create great works, I think the truly protean act of design is to actually create a code, a grammar, a language, a generative architecture that myriad other “designers” will apply to create new, undreamt of works.
02/07/2010 at 8:20 am Permalink
Hi nick!
I really enjoyed your point. That is meta-design isn’t? It is the same pleasure for computer scientist who create new languages allowing some ways of working and thinking and not other ones.