Archives For science

Design renews its relationship with science

February 26, 2011 — 3 Comments

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I have noticed a growing conversation recently concerning the relationship between design and science.

Adam Bly, founder and editor of Seed magazine, did much to get this conversation started, aided and abetted by Paola Antonelli, Curator of Design and the New York Museum of Modern Art. Some of her columns on the topic of design as it relates to science are excellent, as was the Design and the Elastic Mind show she hosted at MOMA a couple of years ago. Unfortunately the magazine ceased its print version in 2009 but there is still great material on the website.

My own view is that the latter half of the twentieth century saw a steady decline in designs interest toward science and technology as engineering inserted itself between the two. This is not a criticism of engineers who, in places like silicon valley, performed wonders with the new technologies of micro-processors, storage, networking and software to create the products and services we rely on today. The same is true in other fields such as aeronautics and bio-medicine. No, my criticism is of the designers and scientists who have relied on engineers to provide the translation between their two fields. My concern is that in this translation much is lost that could benefit scientists, designers and the end user.

I wonder how much might be gained if designers had a deeper understanding of the science behind synthetic biology and genomics? Or nanotechnology? Or robotics? Could designers help scientists better see the implications and opportunities of the technologies they are creating? Might better educated and aware designers be in a position to challenge the assumptions of the science or reinterpret them in innovative ways? Might they do a better job of fitting the new science into our lives so that we can gain more benefit?

If scientists were more comfortable with intuitive nature of design might they ask more interesting questions? The best scientists often show great leaps of intuition as they develop new hypotheses and yet so much modern science seems to be a dreary methodical process that answers ever more incremental questions. If scientists had some of the skills of designers might they be better able to communicate their new discoveries to the public?

The twenty-first century will be the scene of significant scientific developments that may fundamentally change our human experience. I am intrigued by how different that change might be if scientists and designers could figure out how to work better together.

I am off to TED next week for my annual dose of new ideas about science, and many other topics. I will be on the look out for scientists who might be interested in hanging out with some designers.

In science and design , , , ,
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forming versus coding

May 28, 2010 — 6 Comments

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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?

In design thinking , , , , , , ,
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