engineering
Live your ten years
I'm sorry, I love engineers
Strength from both mass and form
Warmed by the afternoon sun
Textbooks on water-system engineering state that supply mains are generally installed on the north side of the street in the Northern Hemisphere and on the south side in the Southern Hemisphere, so that the sun will warm them. In both hemispheres they are supposed to be on the east side of north-south streets, on the premise that the afternoon sun is warmer than the morning sun.
An emblem of friendship
Bridges make connections; they bring people together—a role that has made them a traditional emblem of friendship. Consider the town of Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina. When fighting between ethnic factions broke out there in the 1990s, nothing symbolized the social disintegration more clearly than the destruction of a sixteenth-century stone-arch bridge that had linked the two parts of the town on opposite banks of the Neretva River. And the emblem of efforts to heal the divisions is a rebuilt bridge, opened with fireworks and fanfare in July of 2004.
Routine design
When we think of bridges, it is the dramatic and monumental long spans that come to mind first, especially the lithe suspension bridges such as the Golden Gate and the pure geometric arches such as Sydney Harbour. But the majority of bridges are not such spectacular structures. Most of them are ordinary overpasses, with spans of 30 or 40 feet, carrying roadways or rails across other thoroughfares or over small streams. You see such bridges by the dozen on any drive down the Interstate. They may be lacking in glamour, but they are more representative of a bridge builder's art.
The engineering and construction of girder bridges are pretty routine these days, but the bridges are not quite standard items you order from a catalogue. The girders, whether of steel or concrete, are custom-build for each bridge, then trucked to the site and hoisted into place with a crane. The designer still has scope for variation and creativity, and it shows out on the highways: some overpasses are prettier than others.
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn
A Book by Richard HammingThe Art of Doing Science and Engineering is the full expression of what "You and Your Research" outlined. It's a book about thinking; more specifically, a style of thinking by which great ideas are conceived.
Design Links & Learning
A Blog by Nick TrombleyCollections of articles, links, and other material from around the web, relevant to software design and engineering.
“Design” is now “Product”
An Article by Dorian TaylorDesign has very little to do with what tools or methodologies you use, or what your job title is, or what you have a degree in, or even anything like “creativity”; design is about your relationship to constraints. Rather: to what extent are you defining constraints rather than just obeying them? Design is about taking a universe of possibilities and converging onto exactly one outcome. Being handed a set of constraints which you treat like immutable laws of physics (because many of them are) and solving within that envelope is what engineering is. To wit: what most designers are doing most of the time is actually a form of engineering, and engineers are always doing at least some design.
This is because genuine design—the power to define constraints—is a privileged political position within an organization, and not everybody can occupy it. In other words, the “seat at the table” comes first. Design is Steve Jobs infamously dropping an iPod prototype into his fish tank, pointing at the bubbles coming out and yelling at his staff to make it thinner. It doesn’t matter what your title is; Jobs is the designer in that scenario.
Are We Really Engineers?
An Essay by Hillel WayneInnovation in Structural Art
A Book by Eladio DiesteDieste's unique and innovative method of design, a melding of architecture and engineering, elevated these often humble buildings to masterworks of art.
Pair Design: Better Together
Pair design is the counterintuitive practice of getting more and better UX design done by putting two designers together as thought partners to solve design problems. It’s counterintuitive because you might expect that you could split them up to work in parallel to get double the design done, but for many situations, you’d be wrong. This document will help explain what pair design is, how it works, and tour through the practicalities of implementing it in your practice.
It involves two brains
It involves two brains on a project at the same time. This doesn’t mean part time, checking in with each other on work that’s been accomplished separately.
Pair design really means being in the same room, working on the same problem, with both brains focused on the problem simultaneously for the duration of the project.
A distinct and complementary stance
Each person in the pair takes a distinct and complementary stance toward the design problem as they work together. One generates solutions. That is, one individual materializes solutions to the problem at hand for discussion and iteration. The other synthesizes the proposed solutions.
Gens and synths
Gens are generally comfortable drawing and drawing in front of their partner. Additionally, the generator needs to have “fearless generativity,” to be able to come up with a dozen pretty good solutions to a problem even with incomplete information.
Designers in the synthesizer role need to be skilled at describing designs and explaining rationale in writing. The role requires the designer to be detail oriented and have a strong memory, to keep the big picture of the system, stakeholders, and users in mind as a reference for designs on the table.
We come as a team
There is a legend at Cooper of one team who found pairing with each other so powerful and fruitful that when they left that company, they sought out opportunities and even interviewed at other organizations as a pair.
Starting off with pair design
It’s better to start small. Find the “genniest” designer you can and pair her with the “synthiest,” have them work through a few projects as a pair to see how it goes, evolve a process that works for your organization, smooth out the wrinkles, and become resident experts. Then, split them up, assign them with new pairs, and begin to spread.
What are the benefits of pair design?
It Makes for Better Design
- Pairing forces constant iteration: idea testing and course-correction.
- It brings to bear two brains and two stances.
It Makes for Better Designers and Better Design Organizations
- They are happier.
- Pair design makes it easier to focus on core aptitudes.
- They cross-pollinate: a mechanism for a learning organization.
Pair Design Makes for a More Effective Process
- Pairing avoids the problem of dueling whiteboards.
- It encourages designers to materialize ideas early.
- It encourages designers to vocalize their rationale.
- It encourages constant course-correction.