A sensitively tailored combination of modes Efficiency is produced not by the sort of movement monoculture of cars-only American cities but by a sensitively tailored combination of modes sited to exploit the particular efficiencies of each and providing useful duplication and alternative. Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan efficiencytransportation
Conversations, not commandments Good software comes from a vision, combined with conversations not commandments. In a craft-focused environment, care for efficiency, simplicity, and details really do matter. I didn’t leave my last job just because I wanted to make something new. I left because I wanted to make it in a way I could be proud of. Pirijan Ketheswaran, Why Software is Slow and Shitty pketh.org detailscraftsimplicityefficiency
Dwelling densities and diversity The reason dwelling densities can begin repressing diversity if they get too high is this: At some point, to accommodate so many dwellings on the land, standardization of the buildings must set in. This is fatal, because great diversity in age and types of buildings has a direct, explicit connection with diversity of population, diversity of enterprises and diversity of scenes. Among all the various kinds of buildings (old or new) in a city, some kinds are always less efficient than others in adding dwellings to the land. A three-story building will get fewer dwellings onto a given number of square feet of land than a five-story building; a five-story building, fewer than a ten-story building. If you want to go up far enough, the number of dwellings that can go onto a given plot of land is stupendous—as Le Corbusier demonstrated with his schemes for a city of repetitive skyscrapers in a park. But in this process of packing dwellings on given acreages of land, it does not do to get too efficient, and it never did. There must be leeway for variety among buildings. All those variations that are of less than maximum efficiency get crowded out. Maximum efficiency, or anything approaching it, means standardization. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities efficiency
The mirror-image economy When we enter the world of refuse and waste, we cross over into a mirror-image economy. In the "normal" world, we pay to acquire things; on the other side of the looking glass, we pay to get rid of them. Junk isn't merely worthless; it has negative value. A chemical engineer once told me about a recent improvement in a manufacturing process; by fine-tuning a chemical synthesis he had increased the yield of a certain commodity from 98 percent to 99 percent. I congratulated him, but I couldn't help remarking that this seemed like a rather paltry improvement. "Ah, you miss the important point," he said. "The amount of waste goes from 2 percent down to 1 percent. It's cut in half. We save tremendously on disposal costs." Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape wasterecyclingtrashefficiencyeconomics
Taylorism “In the past the man has been first. In the future the system must be first.” — Fred W. Taylor Taylorism was a way of thinking that came at the expense of the workers’ own knowledge of their system. Taylor summed up his philosophy thus: “It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standard and enforcing this cooperation rests with the management alone.” The unscripted practices of the old offices would remain, but as a kind of subterfuge: in the future, a leisurely pace wouldn’t be the norm; time would not be given, but stolen. Nikil Saval, Cubed systemsefficiency
Efficiency is the Enemy An Article fs.blog Many of us have come to expect work to involve no slack time because of the negative way we perceive it. In a world of manic efficiency, slack often comes across as laziness or a lack of initiative. Without slack time, however, we know we won’t be able to get through new tasks straight away, and if someone insists we should, we have to drop whatever we were previously doing. One way or another, something gets delayed. The increase in busyness may well be futile. It’s Time to Embrace Slow Productivity efficiencyproductivitywork
Muda, Muri, Mura An Article mag.toyota.co.uk Eliminating waste is the key to efficiency – in the Toyota Production System, this is termed as: Muda (waste), Muri (overburden), and Mura (irregularity). productionwastemanagementefficiency
The vanishing designer An Article by Chuánqí Sun uxdesign.cc Visionary designers have lost their conceptual integrity to an industrial complex optimized for consensus, predictability, and short-term business gain. The rise of customer-obsession mantra and data-driven culture cultivated a generation of designers who only take risk-free and success-guaranteed steps towards the inevitable local maxima of design monotony. The same, the same, the sameDesign as an engineering problemThe heat death of designDesign with courage uxmonotonycraft
The same, the same, the same Look around us. Every business is an app and every app feels the same, because every designer has the same resume, follows the same process, graduates from the same program, uses the same tool, scrolls the same Dribbble feed, reads the same Medium articles, expects the same career outcome, lives in the same ideology bubble.
Design as an engineering problem The Silicon Valley giants, testifying with their runaway success, claimed to have “solved” design as an engineering problem. The solution substituted the human essence of design — intuition, ingenuity, and taste— with the tangibles, measurables, and deliverables. Companies say they are “design-driven”, but designers are actually driven by dashboards filled with metrics like CSAT, NPS, CES, DAU, MAU. We rigorously run tests, studies, experiments as if innovative ideas are hidden in spreadsheets, waiting to be extracted by data scientists. intuitiontastemetrics
The heat death of design Losing the design diversity means falling into a singular narrative of how design must be done, which grants unfair and self-reinforcing advantage to the mainstream while discouraging, stifling, or even punishing the idiosyncratic designers who bring unorthodox but remarkably innovative processes to the table. The true opportunity cost is the diverse future that humanity can no longer access. A future without diversity is fundamentally stagnant: imagine designs so standardized that you can’t tell them apart. While every design is guaranteed to be good, none will be great. New designs are marginally better than previous ones with the rate of improvement eventually approaching zero. We have reached the heat death of design. diversity
Design with courage Make a bold decision (that is controversial). Make a mistake (as a result of a bold decision). Challenge “conventional wisdom”. Challenge authority (that preaches conventional wisdom). Challenge hierarchy (that perpetuates conventional wisdom). Ignore the committee (and the need to converge). Decide who your clients are (and aren’t). Ignore clients that aren’t (especially those who pay the most). Cultivate clients if none exists (instead of compromising your design). Be a generalist (and ignore your job title). Be a specialist (who specializes in being a generalist). Design things from scratch (and build them yourself from scratch). Design things that no one wants (yet). Design freely (and think freely). The boldest decisions design