Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from January, 2013

The importance of initial conditions in design

A very interesting article appeared in the press a few weeks ago concerning the emergence of a ‘new’ approach  or strategy for making computers and the web less vulnerable to threats of disruption. The ‘new ‘strategy is a design strategy, which consists of returning to the initial design assumptions and first intentions from which the whole complex, almost incomprehensible system of web connected computers emerged. The design strategy is to start over—to ‘redesign’—rather than ‘fix’ the existing mess. Returning to the initial conditions of designed systems or assemblies is essential for any intentional change intervention to be efficiently effective. Too often clients, decision makers or stakeholders are not willing to spend the time and effort to begin at the beginning where it counts. As David Kelley of Stanford’s D School and IDEO fame has stated in an interview : It took Kelley a while to appreciate the power of stepping back before forging ahead. In the ...