Design Thinking Thoughts

The Weet-weet game...

2012-02-21T02:30:00.000-08:00

This post is one in a series, presenting learning activities to develop creativity.

Ok, you have to bear with this one and see it through to the end…The Weet-Weet game started off as a means to resolve large scale conflict[1] and has, I believe, the potential to make a significant contribution to world diplomatic processes.

The activity

The idea of the game is that we use characters to represent each player and then these characters battle one another. They do this, however, by using language to describe each action to the other player - it’s effectively a language based role playing game. Both players have to accept or reject the validity of the proposed action and then respond in turn. For example, my character might attempt to tie the other up with un-cuttable rope, but the other character might then turn out to be wearing a frictionless jacket.

A good starting point is to get players to create their own superhero character (by using the Superhero activity, for example). Bot players continue to take turns to propose actions and reactions until they run out of energy or get bored.It’s actually a lot easier to play than it is to write the rules down.

Example

Here’s an example of a confrontation between Caffeine boy and Chocolate man, two characters generated by students.
Caffeine boy is unable to remain still and can vibrate at ridiculously high frequencies. Chocolate man has the power of … well, being made of chocolate.

“Caffeine boy runs around chocolate man and vibrates at the Wispa frequency, turning his chocolaty body to whipped chocolate fondant.”

“But chocolate man doesn’t care what kind of state he’s in. In fact some of his chocolatey goodness evaporates and is inhaled by Caffeine Boy and, as everyone knows, chocolate relaxes him and stops him jiggering about.”

“But there is nothing that can dampen the stimulating effect of the rich roasted Java that powers Caffeine boy. He runs around the world really quickly (like superman in the first film) and causes the earth to stop spinning. Chocolate Man is melted by the sun ‘cos he was left on the sun-facing side.”

“Chocolate man cares not for your pseudo science and is quite happy to melt, covering the entire earth in delicious chocolately goodness - with a hint of coffee flavouring, of course.”

… and so on…

(This particular game ended with the quote “But chocolate IS the universe.” Any game, activity or learning event that can result in this is surely ok.)

Learning objects

At first sight, it may seem a ridiculous and pointless activity but it genuinely works and can quickly be turned into specific learning outcomes in a variety of different ways. To do this, it’s important to understand what might be happening as we engage in this activity.

The rules of the game are a paradox. On the one hand we have a completely open set of rules where anything is possible. But the reality is that this is not the case at all. Because both players have to agree that a move is acceptable, boundaries of what is possible and impossible are very quickly established. And then broken…

As players respond to one another they generally tend to expand the possibilities of what is possible in physical reality. This is usually initiated by one player diverging slightly which then invites the other player to expand on this. Players then often build on each other’s expansion of the rules and most games end in some form of infinite problem (similar to the old immovable object/irrisistable force).

Linear, logical thinking.
You may not think it, but this game actually needs a lot of logic to work. Most of the challenge responses follow a chain of logical thought. If one player has bullet proof armour, the next player might have bullet proof armour penetrating bullets. This linear, logical progression of thought is an excellent way of developing critical thinking at a simple level - we are simply following the argument along a series of reasonable (if a bit fantastical) arguments. Quite often, players stick quite rigidly to some set of physical or social rules and apply these in this ‘If This Then That’ kind of way.

Communicating.
What is also important about this game is the element of storytelling that is required. When we play the game we are, in effect, creating and telling a story and this requires that we make use of creative processes and then communicate these ideas. Moreover, we are presenting these ideas ‘live’ and many of them will be challenged by our opponent which forces us to justify our thinking, respond in kind and ensure that our idea is upheld. Wining this game is about two things - a creative idea and the communication of that idea in a convincing way (that sound familiar).

Quick thinking creativity.
Deep creativity comes from divergent cognitive processes and long incubation times but dynamic and spontaneous creativity can also be used to generate good ideas. Quite often, our first reaction to something is what stays with us - no matter how we justify later stages of a creative process. In fact there are some suggestions that any creative idea is the culmination of any already-made decision. Encouraging students to express their first reactive idea and then to deal with the consequences of that can develop quick creative and critical thinking.

Attitude of playfulness.
This is a game, after all, and Homo Sapiens do like to play games. When we play games we are perhaps in a ‘life sandbox’ where we can try hints without significant consequence, allowing us to push the boundaries of risk and ‘normal’ behaviour. Would you blow all your cash on buying an entire street in London in real life? You would in Monopoly. This magnification of real life risk taking and engaging in behaviours that you might not otherwise consider, gives the game environment an incredible power in the design thinking process - not only can we bend the rules ‘normally’, we can achieve significant alternative points of view (if you know that this is happening and realise that this is happening).

There are potentially a few more learning aspects besides these

Extending the exercise

As I mentioned above, this activity can easily incorporate a wide range of specific learning outcomes. It is particularly good as a precursor to ‘proper’ role playing and I use it to give students a warmup for a teacher-student role-playing activity.

The direct translation of the gameplay rules works very well indeed and I find that the range and depth of ideas (and solutions) that students bring to this second part is far richer than without it. Similarly, in a product design setting, understanding the needs, demands and requirements of users can be explored by role-play very effectively.

Expanding the boundaries of this play can encourage genuinely alternative viewpoints and considerations (with suitable controls in place, of course).For more advanced students the quick creativity aspect of the game can be extended to design thinking activities.

For example, a quick ‘build on ideas’ activity, where students start with an idea and develop it very quickly with one or two goals in mind. An interesting variation of this is if students are given two competing goals (a common occurrence in design thinking) and effectively have to ‘compete’ to realise theirs. Developing an idea with competing pathways can be a good introduction to the dilemmas design thinkers face - something that is not always effectively externalised.

So give the Weet-weet game a go - even if it’s with your son/daughter/niece/nephew/etc. Kids get this game, therefore they must know the secret of it…

[1] When I say large scale conflict, I basically mean intractable disputes between my sons and I. Anyone who has played any game with any child will understand the need to ‘explore’ the boundaries of the rules. Rules are there to pretend to provide order to a system - but we live in a universe that is, if not infinite, pretty huge. Possibility is an ever-present thing in the universe and this means that it is simply not possible to generate an ITTT rule for every single event without contradicting a previous rule (see Goedel for more on this). Anyway, what this means in practice is that, when playing with lego, there will inevitably arise a situation where two players do not agree on an outcome - ‘my lego canon blew up your boat before your pirate ninjas got off…’ and other such situations. This was the origin of the Weet-Weet game and it is as old as storytelling itself.

RICS BIM Conference 2012 #RICSBIMconf

2012-02-11T06:52:00.000-08:00

Just a few top of the head observations on the RICS BIM Conference (#RICSBIMconf) (this still isn’t a BIM blog…)

State of play

We have a long way to go.

The results from the National BIM survey are encouraging but if you look at the sector participation numbers, they are very low indeed (to the point of being insignificant data points for some sectors). These data were backed up by the straw poll of the audience - a tiny fraction of attendees were actively engaged in BIM processes. Moreover, the projected uptake was around a third to a quarter - even after all the presentations stressing the drivers and motivators for change.

One of the big issues is that the model for SMEs to successfully take up BIM as a process has not been sufficiently established. One-off examples are not enough to convince an entire (significant) section of the market. The change that is required to enable BIM is not simply that of software and consultants’ working practices - the economic, legal and social elements that support and surround our industry are just as important. It’s great that government wish to be a responsible BIM client but there are many other client types out there - how many of them will be prepared to pay for a front-loaded design prior to construction without an additional offer of value, properly presented and delivered?

Large projects can effectively write their own procurement and legal agendas - SMEs rely on models provided to them. If those models don’t work it gets hard to do business (although there are other ways to look at this too…).

Who owns the £$%@*& model?

Lots of people, apparently. (Usually, it tends to be the person speaking)

It was good to see a presentation from the legal point of view and I know from experience that there is considerable interest in BIM from construction industry solicitors.

Sadly, the insurance position does not appear to have moved on considerably (perhaps waiting for case law or someone to make use of existing, rarely used models…) but there does seem to be some shoots of understanding starting to appear on the legal side. It’s perhaps a bit idealistic of me but I would really have liked to have seen as much creativity from the legal and insurance part of the industry as we are seeing from some consultants. I’m pretty sure that there are individual creative solicitors out there thinking very hard about what might be happening next and they might not be thinking about the holistic or collaborative benefits of BIM to society…

The message from this conference was clear - successful ‘we’re all in it together’ agreements that have worked well to date cannot continue forever. Once the honeymoon is over, we will have to get down to normal business and this will require stable but adaptable legal frameworks.

Again, the pace of change is the killer here - reactive legals might have been ok in the past but with fast changing definitions of everything perhaps proactive might be better.

#Fluffy_Kittens

Sadly, many #fluffy_kittens lost their lives during the conference.

Developing a new language is never easy and the continually shifting meaning of BIM does seem to be throwing up a divergence between those that get it and those that don’t (for a given value of ‘it’).

It was obvious that there is a massive gap in the conceptual understanding of BIM and the impact it may potentially have on our industry. This is a difficult message to get across because it cannot be explained by single facts or examples and the wider implications are difficult to present. The difference between what some in the industry can imagine and where others think we are heading is massive and there is no doubt that there is often more science fiction than case study. I personally think that this is necessary as we find ourselves in a rapidly changing environment - constantly dealing with change (rather than change management) might even become the norm in the next decade.

But there is a danger that pioneers leave main adopters behind and this will not lead to a stable model either. If we genuinely accept that our industries have a wider influence and value in our environment (physical, social and economic) then we cannot have bits of it doing stuff that no one else gets. Similarly, many of the critical issues we face rely on a pervasive change to the majority of our built objects - not just the big iconic projects.

(PS On the #fluffy_kittens thing I have to say that I don’t mind that much. Truth is, BIM is a crap TLA.)

Design Thinking

It was great to see most of the speakers realise that design is not simply about the way things look. There was a genuine theme in presentations that collaborative and considered design brings a genuine additional benefit to a project and, more importantly, that this design was not the domain of a single consultant. The value of all parties in the design process (from client right through to operator) seems to be emerging and it is this ‘crowd sourcing’ that might make a big difference to what we do (subject to points made above).

Extending this to the construction ‘product’ was also in evidence in at least two of the speaker’s presentations, too. Again, it’s great to hear this realised but it really needs the extended construction society to understand (and buy into) this before any meaningful progress is made. It’s all very well thinking as an architect or contractor about the longevity and lifecycle during the design process but if the client does not see the value in this then it simply will not be supported. Everybody gets the Cost of Change curve - but who is really prepared to pay for a front-loaded design?

My experience is that this is not possible by using traditional procurement routes. Until we can offer this front-loading as a tangible product backed by the economic and legal structures necessary, we will not make much progress (and this will not be achieved by silos of consultants operating on their own).

The Client view

A highlight of the conference for me was the final speaker, Brian Arscott, who gave a superb real world example of what can be achieved with a Client who is able to make use of the added value of a BIM. What I really liked about this was the fact that it is an entirely economically driven motivation: retail operator clients have to react very fast, they have to respond to internal and external economic pressures, their assets are capital assets over time, etc.

Using BIM to realise value during as many stages of the process as possible simply fits their economic requirements - great fit. This might be a hint that single specialist service offerings that are isolated in the process will simply become too expensive to afford if more efficient offerings are available.
If I were a betting ape I would keep an eye on this developing (I know I had several business model ideas…).

Is the QS now redundant?

Yes… and again, no. Maybe.

At the risk of sounding like a preacher or cheesy Autodesk salesperson, I would have to say that this is possibly the wrong question to ask. We face a unique opportunity for change - external and internal pressures are at work (ask a writer about the value of this). We should not be like the banking sector who wasted their crisis and missed the opportunity to consider anything other than business as usual (sadly, we will feel the effects of this in the next recession if we ever get out of this one…).

It is an opportunity to consider the intellectual value of what we do - this is the real benefit that we can offer as design professionals. This value is, by its very nature, dependant on context. Think of value as a modifier - it takes what is already available and re-relates, mixes, connects. This is the trick to understanding the proposition of any consultant and from my experience this extended offering is what the Chinese economy demanded from us in recent years (something that is already showing signs of tailing off).

So, the role of the QS only changes if it is redefined.

Similarly, it is possible to use BIM technologies for things other than collaborative BIM: lonely BIM, selfish BIM and BIMwash are all possible outputs. Essentially, if we only take the superficial benefits from the new technology then we will not see the deep benefits. It is entirely possible that business as usual will continue with BIM bolted on in this way but this considers only the costs - not the potential value…

This is an industry-wide issue and we can only wait and see how pervasive the extended use of these processes might become. Many consultants are sitting waiting to see what happens (it’s kind of like the ‘BIM is just a fad’ thing, except bigger) and this is a passive response. If I wanted to get into trouble, I would suggest that in many respects the recently traditional role of the quantity surveyor has been one of passive effect - eyebrows might be raised by the word passive here, but it is essentially true. A QS may report that an element is abnormally expensive but they will not be the decision maker responsible for that element - selecting a more cost effective alternative or making material change will be the responsibility of others. Such a tertiary service is not sustainable, which is why most QSs I have worked with have brought far greater value to the team by working with design teams and contractors.

So, the role of the QS only changes if the context changes (passive) or is made to change (active).

Maybe the real question should be this: Given that there is opportunity for change, what do want to change?

Ten tips for creativity (or not)

2012-01-15T12:11:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd cross post this answer I gave on Quora on tips for encouraging creativity.
I haven't actually set out a top ten list before and I must admit I don't particularly like them (not sure why). Especially in creativity, the list of tips can be a distraction - perhaps suggesting that a set of rules or even some kind of hierarchy of value.
This is simply not true (unless you know how to get that value out such things).
So take this with a pinch of salt - if some of these work, great. If they don't, there's a form at the bottom to get your money back.

Dont waste a second of your brain. Doodle and sketch in those boring lectures/meetings. Work your way up to drawing completely new planets and civilisations. Failing that, draw the person opposite you. Remember, you don't have to be an artist to draw - you are scribbling your thoughts...
Use the 3 B's - Bed, Bath, Bus. Relax, stare out the window of the bus/train and de-focus your eyes. See what comes into your head. Even better if you have 'programmed' yourself with something to think about beforehand.
Get into the habit of recording - take a notebook or use your phone to scribble down EVERY single idea. 99% might be crap, but that's ok (once you get good at this, you will realise that you can make those 99% ideas good ones too).
Ask 'what if...' about everything you see for a whole day. If you run out of ideas, use '...this was 10 times bigger', '...zombies attack and this is the only thing you have to defend yourself' and '
Look for problems. Not.hing is perfect and there are thousands of things that we take for granted because someone hasn't spotted a better way of doing it
Never, ever, ever stare at a blank piece of paper (unless you are designing a new line of handmade paper). Write, doodle, or spit on it - just don't stare at it. It won't tell you anything and it doesn't care about you... (ps staring beyondthe paper is ok - see no 2)
Creativity isn't just about 'creative' thought. Do something new - especially mentally challenging things. The more you think about different things, the more new networks are created in your head and this is always useful for new thoughts. So have a look again at time dilation as a consequence of relativity...
Switch your point of view. When you remember, pick the next person you meet and really try to think what the world looks like from their point of view. Try to do this with someone that isn't in your normal circle of contacts. Extend this as far as you possibly can and try to *really* see an argument from another point of view. The more you challenge those ideas that have been going round your head for years the better.
Since the internet is made of cats and curiosity killed the cat, it follows that curiosity must have been an accessory to murder of the internet. Follow this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion and ask some more stupid questions.
Priming and attitude are really important in creativity. This is more advanced stuff but start off by realising that stressful things make your brain operate in a particular way that will not encourage 'deep creativity'. You can still be creative in a stressful environment but you have to know how to manage your head to do this. Basically, when you are stressed you think 'quick', 'short' thoughts. When you relax (see 2) you think long, deep thoughts and these can lead to 'new' thinking.
Feel free to break any of these 'rules' at all. You will know when it's working for you so it's important to recognise that and make use of it.

To claim your money back, post a comment to confirm how much money you need and your favourite currency.

Data, Information and Meaning

2011-12-20T03:00:00.000-08:00

This started out as a response to Guttman’s paper on information theory and BIM (Guttman, 2011) but it somehow turned into a piece on general information theory. As always, this is an off the top of the head post - so apologies to Star Wars fans in advance.

Guttman uses energy as an analogy for information, albeit rather briefly and it caught my attention. Information as energy analogy is really interesting but I wonder whether, in light of some recent reading, whether this is as accurate an analogy as it could be.

I have a feeling that it is energy distribution that is the better analogy - let’s see where that goes…

If we use DIKW (data, information, Knowledge, Wisdom) hierarchy referred to then we can at least consider some elements of that relate to other information theory fields which generally relate data and meaning to create information.

However…

If we start with data as the ‘raw’ unit and then extend this to information as ‘data that has meaning’ then it is the generation of this meaning that it is the important bit. But this inevitably requires a relative value to define meaning, which, by its own definition, requires intent. This borders dangerously on philosophy and (since I’m not allowed to do that anymore) it might be good to try to see how this can be looked at in other ways.

To do this we need to have an operator applied to data (like Wittgenstein’s consequence or effect?) and it is this operation that I might suggest be termed information.

If we continue with the energy analogy then this means that information is like Work. As we lift a mass, we make use of energy, ultimately giving the mass potential energy. At the very least, by acting on the mass we have caused a change to occur and this change itself might be an analogue to information.

To stretch the metaphor to breaking point, consider a book sitting on a table. At rest, the book exerts a force on the table and the table exerts an equal and opposite force on the book. But, because these two forces are equal in magnitude but opposite in direction, neither the book nor the table do any Work. In other words, they are stationary and provide no other information.

To get some information out of them we need to engage in some Work - either the table or the book has to change. If we lift the book, the information state of both book and table changes.

Note that we are also obeying the basic law of entropy here as well. The 'direction' of information is that of entropy - we are all tending towards infinite information and what better way to help that along by engaging in a bit of information creation by changing the state of a book (even better to read it, but that’s another story).

Note that this is regardless of any observation of the elements.

The fact that we see a change is another interaction itself (that of photons, Brownian motion, physiology, etc, etc). Consider Maxwell’s Demon where ‘normal’ information (gases moving from a higher to lower energy state) is interrupted by a conscious process (to reverse the ‘normal’ flow). To realise this fully we have to note that there are two information processes going on here - one occurs 'anyway' and one is the result of interpretation of the other. So this idea suggests that information is independent of observation (mildly controversial?) - the gas will still mix whether or not we are observing (probably, and ignoring Wittgenstein entirely).

This last point it actually quite important since it implies that information has no value in and of itself, except, of course, the value that it represents the (possible) flow of entropy in the universe generally (a useful thing for anyone with a bad hangover).

As a quick aside, it might well be that the distinction between data and information is irrelevant as a consequence. Certainly, any semantics we apply to it will have to be just that - meaning that we apply retrospectively. The difference between data and information may come down to another basic 'property' of the universe - whether it is discrete or continuous. If the universe is discrete it ay be possible to imagine data as discrete elements that interact to produce information. If it's continuous, we might apply an embodied theory to data and information, requiring that one cannot exist without the other and that only by continuous interaction can any data exist.

In order to get value from information it is then required that some kind of metric (or at least definition) of value is applied and this is (by definition?) a relative thing - it requires a consensus of agreed definition or a some other mechanism for applying further information to an existing piece of information.

This, I am going to suggest, is meaning.

So, we now have a new ‘hierarchy’ : Data, Information, Meaning - which leads to a much more relevant acronym.

The remaining two (Knowledge and Wisdom) are extensions of meaning and pass into the realm of conscious application. I am in no way dismissing them but there are better thoughts on the differences between these elements out there and I was really wanting to focus on the first part.

Guttman, M. (2011). THE INFORMATION CONTENT OF BIM: An Information Theory Analysis of Building Information Model (BIM) Content. Perkins and Will Research Journal, 03(02), 28-41.

Two things BIM changes about designing buildings

2011-12-02T02:56:00.001-08:00

(This is still not a BIM blog - I promise...)

Thinking about the uptake (or lack of it) of BIM in the construction industry took me back to a draft paper I started months ago about the barriers that face practice when faced with new technology.

Many of these are well documented - new technology itself does affect the attitudes of those who have to use it (Robey and Azevedo, 1994), changes to working methods leads to challenges for 'specialists' (Pollard, 2005 and Kadefors, 2004), and building design and the construction industry has its own internal challenges that have been repeatedly reported (Latham, 1994 and Egan 1998).

But looking just at the technology that is emerging and how it is affecting those who use it on a daily basis is always worthwhile and it never ceases to amaze me how difficult it can be to adapt to a new technology - particularly if you view yourself as a 'specialist'.

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is hard to define (see Wikipedia for a rough description and the NBS BIM Report for a bit more) - 1) because it is a constantly evolving set of technologies and 2) because we haven't quite decided what to do with those technologies (I know what I'd like to do ...).

But as a working definition let's go with BIM is the process of designing construction projects in a single data environment, allowing all stakeholders to access and make use of this information model. The technology is simply the enabler of this integration, allowing architects, engineers, interior designers, contractors, clients, users, etc. to visualise and interact with the model in a variety of ways - from physical to analytical elements right through to time based 'what-if' design options and future analysis of the building life-cycle.

If we strip this right down, it comes down to two things:

working in a completely shared/integrated information environment and
providing additional tools to understand and visualise information that traditionally would not be possible.

Shared Information Environment

In a shared environment, every stakeholder can see what you are up to.

This might not sound like much of a paradigm shift but it is incredibly significant. As soon as you are truly working in a shared environment, each decision and change you make is immediately apparent to all. There is no longer any 'Parliamentary Privilege' and this has a huge effect on what you do (whether you realise it or not).

Gone is the process of carefully preparing a selected view of what you wish to present to others (something that all stakeholders in the construction industry are incredibly adept at - think about it...). In a shared information environment it is all there, warts and all, and this can have a negative effect on some contributors. In design, exposing our ideas is very often the same as exposing our thoughts and thereby ourselves - no one likes to receive criticism because the criticism is all too often perceived to be criticism of the individual rather than the design itself.

Being brave enough to separate your 'self' from the object we design is incredibly hard but (as I try to get across to my students) the thing you are creating does not belong to you - you are only shaping it for a short time.

This sudden shift from isolated individuals to truly collaborative design teams is something that the design construction industry has been trying to deal with for a very long time indeed. There are so many pressures to remain in our silos (from financial interest through to legal requirements) that we are suddenly not only facing a technical paradigm shift, we are also having to deal with the effects this has on every other aspect of the process and delivery.

'Who owns the model?', 'Who takes responsibility for shared elements?', 'When does the model change from design to construction?' are all valid questions that arise from a traditional view of the process of design and constructing the built environment. This view arises from thousands of years of practice and takes influence from a wide range of social and political elements - it's not an easy thing to change.

But change is something we have to do - and there is a big difference between voluntary change and being told it is necessary.

And that's all before we even consider the technology itself and how current designers integrate and adopt it. Reactions can range from outright violence and rejection through to morbid curiosity and excessive tinkering with the new toys - both well documented reactions to new technology.

Visualising Information

The other big change is how we interact with complex information.

A large part of architectural training is given to the process of divergent and convergent design thinking (hopefully). We need to take in a lot on information and try to make sense of it very quickly indeed.

For a long time, this has been a process of intuition, experience, training, habit, and simple hard work. Working through design options with multiple variables is arguably one of the real benefits of engaging 'proper' design thinking.

But with so much additional information available can we realistically say that this makes us better at what we do? Theoretically it should - but in reality it is often still just a massive set of complex data.

To give you an idea, think about this. We have a small building with a simple requirement for space. We consider how this will relate to its physical environment - aesthetically, culturally, technically and then consider greater detail as we work up what we actually might consider providing physically. From here, we are considering mass, form, shape, texture but also cost, thermal performance, buildability, maintenance (or we should be...) and for each variable it is possible imagine a dimension of data.

This is where it gets a bit mathematical.

For each criteria we choose to consider, we also have to think about the effect our decisions have on the other criteria. Theoretically, if we have 4 options for a material and 2 for the thermal performance of it, we have a total of 8 option combinations. If we then can choose from a variety of 6 products we then have 48 possible combinations.

Now, in reality we very rarely see this level of complexity because we simply do not have such an excessive range of choice available to us as designers and we tend to use cost/availability/habit/products as the definitions of our choices. Product A will meet conditions 1 and 2 but Product B will meet conditions 2 and 3. After a brief consideration of which conditions are the most important we will effectively have made a decision.

But with BIM we have the opportunity to design by performance right from the start, meaning that a whole range of other factors can suddenly be simulated at the same time and these factors can be multi-dimensional. How will the building be maintained for 10, 15 or 25 years? If we increase glazing area will this lose more heat in winter than we will gain in summer? Is the embodied energy cost of high-performance insulation better than using local, traditional materials?

Suddenly we have an information model that can potentially simulate all of these questions, allowing option after option to be generated. A good designer retains many of these options in their head, allowing a solution to 'collapse' or converge into a reasonable solution, balancing competing issues. But I am convinced that the sheer volume of information potentially available is simply too complex (and parallel, and fractal) to allow us to generate a solution set without a limited list of priorities.

That is, unless we re-train ourselves to visualise.

If we use the anaolgy of being able to envisage 4-D built objects from 2-D plans then can we also visualise additional dimensions if we are looking at 4-D objects (i.e. moving around a 3-D model)?

Even considering this can be difficult so imagine how much harder this might be to someone who has no understanding of the new technologies that help us do this. Again, we are faced with a human limitation - the technology offers the potential but the 'meat' has to catch up.

So, we are potentially faced with a paradigm shift - one which requires simple yet fundamental change to attitudes, approaches and relationships within the industry.

In all honesty, the technology is the easy part - it is the social and cultural effect that this new technology has that is going to be the hard bit to deal with.

GRILO, A. and JARDIM-GONCALVES, R., 2010. Value proposition oninteroperability of BIM and collaborative working environments. Automationin Construction, 19(5), 522-530.
KADEFORS, A., 2004. Trust in project relationships—inside the black box. InternationalJournal of Project Management, 22(3), 175-182.
LATHAM, M., 1994. Constructing the Team. First edn. London: HMSO.
LINDEROTH, H.C.J., 2010. Understanding adoption and use of BIM as thecreation of actor networks. Automation in Construction, 19(1),66-72.
NISBET, N. and DINESEN, B., 2010. Constructing the Business Case -Building Information Modelling. First edn. British Standards Institution.
POLLARD, D., 25/03/2005; 5:08:56 PM, 2005-last update, Will That BeCoordination, Cooperation, Or Collaboration?. Available: http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/categories/businessInnovation/2005/03/25.html#a1090[10/04, 2010].
ROBEY, D. and AZEVEDO, A., 1994. Cultural analysis of the organizationalconsequences of information technology. Accounting, Management andInformation Technologies, 4(1), 23-37.
TECHNICAL COMMITTEE B/555, 2007. Collaborative production ofarchitectural, engineering and construction information - Code of Practice. Thirdedn. British Standards Institution.

Why BIM will bring on the singularity

2011-11-07T14:51:00.000-08:00

There have been a few recent technologies doing the internet rounds lately that seem to fit really nicely together (at least in my head).

First - wireless data transmission via visible spectrum electromagnetic waves (information from lightbulbs):

Second - the recent announcement that IBM have donated C and Java clients for MQTT to project Paho. Briefly MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport) is a protocol (like http - what the web thing uses). But it is a really lightweight protocol allowing things to 'talk' to one another - in other words, The Internet of Things.

Third - don't forget the semantic web. Tim Berners-Lee is still trying to get the internt working and I (being an organisation freak) really like the idea of ultimate definitions. Have a look at the GML format from The Ordnance Survey - they define some interesting things, like inside and outside (trust me - that stuff matters).

So, we have :

The means to cheaply transmit vast quantities of data using technology that is just about to become very ubiquitous (LED lighting);
A lightweight, open source information protocol crying out to be used;
A language schema that could define (or at least provide the structure for meaning) anything.

What happens when we put all that together?

Imagine a room that is made from objects that offer a bit of information - just a bit. Now imagine that information transmitted (using visible light and a lightweight protocol) and semantically organised under a common schema. The resulting data cloud would be 'understandable', manipulable and potentially emergent (if we could make the lightbulb thing work in 2 directions).

To put it another way, imagine bricks that 'know' what they are: "I am a brick. My compressive strength is...". Now imagine these bricks and other objects coming together to form a wall and then a room (defined by the ML following the recognition of the interrelation of these objects in space). Because it's a 'room', it can amalgamate it's data to a coherent cluster, letting it have other information characteristics - " I am a room. My average air temperature is ..."

But because all of this information is a pure cloud of linked data, emergent information objects can appear - temperature is just a number (scalar): if we can get a few vectors in there it would be good. If we use these same objects to store the data and throw in a few ITTT's in there then it all gets really interesting...

What could possibly go wrong?

#BIMScotland - Irresistible Force; Immovable Object

2011-10-28T03:55:00.000-07:00

Any new readers please note: This is not a BIM or Revit blog. I've tried, but I couldn't do it - you can't parameterise attitude...

After this week's #BIMScotland presentation I must admit to being really interested by the rate of uptake of BIM in Scotland (and in particular the rate connected uptake - much lower than the 'I use Revit' uptake).

One of the hardest questions to answer is the reason behind this. Rogers' diffusion curve uptake curve is quite important here (Rogers, 2003) (if you haven't come across it before it might be worth having a quick look - more on this later).

But I am also reminded of the old 'immovable object meets irresistible force' dilemma. On the one hand, we have an industry that is notoriously traditional and relies on very fixed ways of doing things. On the other hand, we have a world changing around this beast faster than anyone can predict.

They both can't keep dancing around one another.

Construction can be a slow process and it costs a lot of money. These two things combine to make it difficult to be anything other than a naturally conservative industry. For long term working we need predictability, stability - not just for the money to work but also to let the industry tick along behind the money. One of the reasons construction is always first in and last out in any recession is this momentum of conservatism required to maintain the illusion of financial confidence. No confidence - no long term plannings.

Spinning around this beast, like a hyperactive 5 year old on Irn-Bru, is the wide reaching and fast paced change of technology and the effect it has on so many things. Change is now occurring at such a pace that we are no longer able to imagine or conceptualise it. Moore's law keeps on going and with emerging technology we might need a new law to explain the other dimensions of change that happen - a Meta-Moore's law…

Fortunately for the construction beast, society and societal attitudes, are also naturally conservative and don't tend to respond particularly quickly fast paced change. Yes, we can now connect with millions of individuals regardless of location or culture - but we take this fantastic opportunity to tweet about getting rained on and upload videos of cats making faces. Now, don't think for one second that there is no value to this - social connection and interaction lead to some amazing things and it does start with cat videos (in an abstract way).

But this behaviour is the behaviour of the third wave of users - they are not the original early adopters, they are those who waited to see what the technology could do; waited to see who else would use it; waited until they realised they had no option.

The early adopters and explorers are at the other end of this user spectrum - they are quick to try and even quicker to move on to the next new shiny thing; they may not even realise the embedded value of one of their discoveries.

But is there a real possibility that the early adopters and explorers are moving away from the the rest of the pack? That the rate of change of change is such that those at the leading edge will be so far removed from the mainstream adopters that they will might not be able to communicate their discoveries? Might they even be too far ahead to relate in any way to the momentum of the mainstream?

I know that at a couple of points during the Q&A I did feel that I had to come back from imagining the future - to stop thinking of the next good thing we can do with these new toys we have - all just so that we can deal with the issues of 'now'.

Oops - that's dangerously close to singularity territory. Maybe we do face a singularity in construction - maybe we will end up with a construction society of those who can engage in the new mode and those who cannot.

What would that look like, then?

Rogers, E.M. (2003) Diffusion of Innovations (5th edn), London, Simon & Schuster.

ReLIVE Thinking Thoughts ... 2

2011-09-23T03:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryanr/142455033/

Following ReLIVE11, the other thing I am really keen to do is to share some ideas.

These are from my own ‘to do’ list and I know for a fact that I will not have the time or resources to do half of these – so why not share ideas like this a bit more? Many of those who attended recognised that collaborative, emergent content is of incredible value. The empty room problem identified by Andy Piper is very real. No content = no activity. (PS - Andy, you need to get that problem defined ASAP - that's how memes start ...).

So here we go, in no particular order and straight from the grey :

nD Web

(image to follow)

Right – I have to get this off my chest. Bugger the 3D web – make it nD. 3D is soooo flat.

We need (and already use) multiple layers and dimensions of information anyway. How many of you have multiple tabs open just now? How many of you are frustrated by not being able to overlay your social network over your information network? Why can't we make use of analogy to navigate information or natural (physical) language?

So I desperately need to get a sketch of what I can see in my head for the Google landing page – it’s not 3D.

(For this hack, I will need: sketchbook, pencil, sticky notes, picture of the Hoff, someone who knows all about the web and stuff, some coffee).

The Empty Room Problem = the IP Problem?

As I mentioned above, Andy Piper used this phrase in his summing up at #relive11 and it refers to the problem of engagement with any sandbox.

A lot of new web tech is sandbox, requiring user content, creation and interaction to populate it. Arguably, this is the essence of web2.0.1(beta) (and Bill Thomson agrees, cough).

But we also know that a huge number of users are lurkers - content is generated by a tiny proportion of users but used by more.

Charles Stross has blogged before about the idea of sharing meaning sharing - not just taking - and this is the critical difference between "information wants to be free" and "information wants to be plundered". (yes, I know that this is a misquote, read Charlie for a very interesting piece on this)

So there are two ideas here :

Some sandboxes have much larger creators than others (Facebook > blogs, Minecraft > SL). Why is this? Why do users feel they can 'create' in FB but are less likely to blog? Similarly, what is it about Minecraft that is more engaging than SL? Big lessons here for engagement and interactivity...
If we look at the creation, sharing and engagement with content as more than just the content itself, does this offer us an alternative mode of IP protection? If you are nothing more than a taker then should this be allowed? And I don't mean sharing the same stuff here - exchanging a cool SL script for a mention is equally valid. The currency is ... different, that's all.

Demo some real world virtual architecture

I should have perhaps done this in my presentation, but…

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is growing in use in the design and construction industries. Prior to construction the real building we build an information model that is also a 3D ‘virtual’ model. The information part is actually the important bit and the fact that you have 3D stuff is almost a by-product.

But this also means that we can model information dimensions. For example, we can have a several time dimensions, design option dimensions, cost dimensions and so on.

How do we engage with such complex information models (should we even bother)? If so, we need new ways of visualising and making use of this information. We need to ask ‘if in 15 years we do this, what happens to that…’.

And this is difficult - very difficult. It can take years for an architect to properly conceptualise 3D space and how to abstract that backwards and forwards to 2D representations (drawings). So how do we go beyond even that into nD modelling?

We need to start with better networking speeds and bandwidth - and I mean human bandwidth here. We need to look at doing more than just look at models or images with our eyes and really get involved in interactivity with information using as much of ou neuronic bandwidth as we possibly can...

(insert rant about conception, meanings of reality, The Matrix, etc.)

Rebuild St. Andrews Cathedral.

Speaking to Alan Miller (and John) about their project to rebuild the cathedral in St Andrews made me wonder why we couldn’t do this using Building Information Modelling (BIM). Rather than a static set of geometry we could model the building in several dimensions and try several ‘what if’ scenarios.

Why not run an analysis model on it? How did it fail structurally? What was the heat loss from the building? What other lessons could be learned from actually modelling the information itself?

This is similar to the Walking with Dinosaurs team modelling the skeleton and musculature of virtual dinosaurs and realising that presumptions made about physiology may be incorrect.

Anyone want to pay for that?

Technology in/exclusion

Funnily enough, this didn’t come up much in my conversations at ReLIVE, but we do face a massive problem in terms of access to the brilliant ideas that are appearing.

I know for a fact that I could not give a Minecraft exercise to students in one of the institutions I teach in because they will not all have access to the tech needed to make use of it.

So all these great ideas for constructivist activity based learning will not be available to a significant number of students.

Yes, they may be able to make use of college tech but this is not conducive to the self-discovery and experiential learning that is required and imagined for this type of activity. We need students to engage with the activity in a particular way and they have to ‘own’ that engagement.

This is hard to do on a college Pentium beige box in the middle of a busy library. Interactive, conceptually engaged learning needs a level of comfort and security.

I have no ideas about how to start looking at this but I know that we cannot keep ignoring it.

More later...

ReLIVE Thinking Thoughts ... 1 of n

2011-09-23T02:43:00.000-07:00

I’ll probably do a few posts on the ReLIVE conference over the next few days and weeks but I just wanted to get down a few points as impressions of my first ever conference.

So this is a purely instinctual post with no science or research to it whatsoever.

It's also a bit weird, but it does have a picture of meat, though.

The main thing that stood out for me was how meat it all was. There was this mad biological rush to engage socially, to try and get our ideas across, take in other's words and still try to be as intellectually engaged as possible.

This might seem a bit weird for an observation of an international meeting of experts in a particular academic field, but it’s true. We have 2 days to meet, engage and interact with others – bandwidth is at a premium. And I mean meatspace bandwidth here (meatwidth?).

I swear, there were times when I found it hard to cope with the meatwidth - it was as if part of my brain had been switched off or some sense had been dulled. I was missing a second tab in my browser to open up other sources of information or to compare social networks of individuals. I didn't have constant access to my references and had to keep saying 'I'll send you a link to that'. And I didn't have enough battery to run the desktop apps I use when communicating online (sketching on a napkin is ok, but...).

So is this how badly I have attached myself to my information space and how it extends beyond me? Have I become so used to teaching / presenting at a distance that I've forgotten how to do it in meatspace? Or is meatspace now so limiting that I need to get one of those touchy pad things ?

Anyway, this is geting far too random. Normal service will resume shortly.

An Alternative (to) Reality - Presentation

2011-09-18T11:52:00.000-07:00

Getting ready for #ReLIVE11 - so here's the presentation (you kind of need to be there...) :

(see this post for the paper).

An Alternative (to) Reality

2011-09-13T14:36:00.000-07:00

ReLIVE 2011 is next week so thought it might be an idea to get the pre-publish paper up, so you can find it here.

(full link: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1U3UAGGgaBKQIaUovt61Fm0jsvY2vZAcJJltkYNwFfEc )

Enjoy

Social Networking = Social Immobility?

2011-07-17T12:19:00.000-07:00

Apparently there will be a new internet out soon - Web 3.0.

Whilst many commentators struggle to actually define what this actually is, the majority seem to sense that it is something to do with the connection of user centred content - that our online activity and networking can help inform our overall browsing 'personality' and inform us in terms of sense-making of all this information.

Basically, we don't want to read everything and then decide what matters to us, we would prefer this information to be provided to us in some way.

So here's the thing (and it probably has been for a while now), the more we use - either intentionally or without knowing - pattern based content to be presented to us, the more we might pigeon-hole ourselves into a particular network pattern.

In other words, the more we 'like' particular things, the less likely it is that we will be exposed to really new things (with a few notable exceptions, below).

This follows from the fact that the network being created by any individual will essentially be hierarchical - it will not be very much of a distributed system or scale free topology at all. The reason for this is that we tend to look for alignment in our social networks and this is reinforced by the services the network offers in the first place. When we seek alignment, we are looking for individuals with whom we share common themes - work, hobbies, interests, comedy videos about cats in underpants, etc.

The chances are pretty good that such alignment is sufficiently parallel to mean that connections we share are very close indeed. In other words, if I 'like' someone, there is a fair chance they would 'like' me (if they knew who I was and if I bothered to provide any content that might be of interest to them...).

This alignment of network connections is the key to this - basically, we like people that like what we like (read it again and it'll make sense).

Funnily enough, this is true in real life. We tend to travel in social circles that align with our own beliefs, socio-economic background, cultural biases, etc. This is one of the prime reasons for limited social mobility in education, highlighted in the Sutton Trust Report - if your social network is aligned it will not normally seek other network paths.

In fact, the more aligned it becomes, the harder it is to discover other nodes outwith the network - at least beyond a certain degree of separation.

One exception to this is the network node that might be called the Explorer. This is a connected node that deliberately seeks out new content in a particular way. Some people like to connect to Explorers and others don't. There may be an analogy to Gladwell's Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen here...

Now, I can't prove or point to any evidence of this whatsoever - I wish I did know how LinkedIn or Google's algorithms worked, but I don't. But I have noticed it when I look for connections in LinkedIn - it offers me very strongly aligned profiles indeed. Similarly, it is getting a bit frustrating to see repeated search results in Google or results that align in certain ways (maybe I need to go offline a bit more).

In LinkedIn's case you might ask 'surely you want aligned profiles - that's the whole point', but it would also be good to have the odd random element to allow the browsing effect to happen.

So here' the big question - does social networking simply mimic real-world social alignment or does it reinforce it by actively finding 'likes'? If it reinforces, then social networking could be close to social engineering than we think.

PS - Just came across this: We sit near people who look like us. Just sayin'.

ReLIVE 2011 Paper Abstract

2011-07-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

Thought it was time to do a bit of Alternative Reality stuff (it's been a while) so here's the paper abstract submitted for ReLIVE 2011.

Virtual Reality has become a recognisable stock phrase, often referring to environments generated and hosted electronically. But the word virtual leads to natural conclusions about the nature of these 'places'. Virtual suggests simulated, copied, mimicked - that there is an a priori reality that is the thing of value and that the virtual version of it must therefore be nothing more than a simulacrum.

This paper proposes that virtual (or Alternative) Realities may offer something genuinely different – something that it requires a complete shift in perspective to imagine. It is argued that incremental development in virtual realities (usually simulations of reality) will only provide a gradual facsimile of reality – it will not produce any radical Alternative Realities.

To generate an Alternative Reality we need to start with a new brief – one that starts from a different point of view. It requires a completely different starting point and approach – it may even require a new paradigm of perception. To do this we need to employ design thinking, not design.

Firstly, the concept of space is defined in terms of phenomenological perception. Drawing on exhibition work undertaken previously by the author around the subject of the phenomenology of space, analogies between alternative architecture and Alternative Realities are proposed. Secondly, the reverse position is considered – virtual environments are examined with a view to discover alternative architectures in phenomenological reality.

Finally, possible parallels are drawn between the artifacts identified above to demonstrate the transferability of certain memes and ‘spaces’ and in an effort to create phenomenological information space – a different way of considering the interface with Alternative Realities. Several interesting potential avenues of investigation are identified and there is a quick look at the possible (imagined) future information space of education.

What Creativity is Not #1

2011-06-14T15:06:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me recently that I have been regularly making a few assumptions when I present on creativity.

One of those ass umpt ions is this :

Creativity is not a single cognitive process and there is no 'creativity' bit of the brain.

For those of you who read that and went 'and?', feel free to skip to the end - there's a joke.

But for those of you that think that creativity might still be a special form of thought or single cognitive process then all I can say is "there is no creative bit of the brain". And there certainly is no single cognitive function that could be called creative thought.

Have a look at [Sawyer, K.], who, after looking at several CN studies into creativity concludes

"...these studies suggest that what peoople think of as creativity involves a wide variety of cognitive processes..."

From my first attempts at cataloging cognitive functions one might associate with creativity, I realised that there's not much point - the list is basically every cognitive function you can think of. And this makes sense - I use quite a lot of bits of my brain each and every day as I engage in the creative activity of architecture (small cough).

People who use their brains (whether for mathematics or gymnastics) are thinking creatively. The firing of neurons, connecting of bits, etc etc. - the simple act of using your brain is creativity. You may use it for a particularly stupid thing, but this is a relative, moral and subjective measure. You don't have to.

So, creativity is not a single cognitive process and it does not originate from a single part (or multiple parts) of the brain.

That means that you can learn creativity. It means it can be developed. It means that it can be redefined using the natural plasticity of the grey squishy.

So that's another assumption sorted.

I lied about the joke - none of this is funny.

----

Sawyer, Keith(2011) 'The Cognitive Neuroscience of Creativity: A Critical Review', Creativity Research Journal, 23: 2, 137 — 154 Link here

If you have 1 hour to Teach someone, what would you teach?

2011-04-30T14:41:00.000-07:00

That's the challenge: if you only have a very limited time resource (say an hour) to teach a learner, and this is the only teaching they will ever receive, what would you teach them?

Would it be particularly important information that you would wish to convey? Or would it be a particular concept that you would try to explain? Or an especially important skill that you would teach?

This may seem like a trivial question, but think of it as a thought experiment that asks 'what is really important to teach'.

What I am sure of is that it would not be a single purpose thing that you would do - you would most definitely wish to get as much out of it as you possibly could.

Let's start with information. Is there a single fact that, above all others, it is useful to know? Richard Feynman famously claimed that he might wish to remind future generations that "All things are made of atoms...". This simple statement captures quite an amount of information but it does it in a particular way.

For this sentence to be of value in our though experiment we need to see it, not as a piece of information, but as a treasure map to other things. The analogy here is quite deliberate - the treasure map fires our childhood imagination and asks us to consider a future that may be available to us if we make use of it. Feynman's statement does a similar thing - it relies on our imagination, creativity and sense of wonder before it matters at all.

Think about it - 'All things are made of atoms' tells us nothing that is of any use to our daily lives on a directly practical level. We may make considerable use of this fact in designing, creating, and maintaining the 'stuff' that we surround ourselves with, but for all practical purposes it is of very little use to the majority of people.

But, of course, there is that other wonderful aspect of human nature that seeks more than simple physical and emotional stability. We are a naturally curious species - like several others, we regularly seek out the interesting and novel for apparently little major motivations. True, it could be argued that curiosity allows us to consider our environments and potentially take advantage of something that we might not have thought of before. It could also be argued that curiosity is a natural function of a higher order consciousness - perhaps it is a necessary piece of baggage that comes with intelligence.

Regardless of the origins of imaginative curiosity, it is a fact that this is significant dimension in all of us and it is this that is tweaked by Feynman's statement. So, what we are really doing in using the statement has very little to actually do with the fact that matter is composed of smaller, more fundamental particles.

In fact, if we were to use this as an example of what we would teach in an hour, I would suggest that the fact of the statement is the very least important aspect of its potential.

It's potential lies in the effect it could have on an inquisitive mind. It's effect is one of cognitive development - not memory.

The educational content here has nothing to do with the transfer of information but has everything to do with the development of a creative, cognitive process. The best Learning Objective here would be development of learner curiosity and self motivation. A similar argument could be made for skills, behaviours, and attitude development.

Might this example help us to decide a suitable lesson plan for only an hour of education? It should.

Everything we teach has elements other than those we explicitly recognise. Sometimes, the simplest of things can have a huge effect on a learner if delivered at the right (or wrong) time. The sheer variety of variables, conditions and possibilities is quite staggering. Teaching information is a very limited educational goal indeed. When the goal is expanded to consider the potential impact the information can have on a learner then we get a bit more value out of it.

So I am suggesting here that, if your information is intended to (or does) encourage students to develop other cognitive skills, behaviours, attitudes, or skills then that is great. If it doesn't, it had better be pretty good information that it would be difficult to imagine living with.

Why bother learning the dates of Kings and Queens? What possible value can this have?

On it's own, not very much. But that is not the only outcome (intended or not) of learning like this. As a memory retention exercise it develops (if done correctly) three critical aspects of memory. As a framework, once we have the entire pattern of date in our head, we can use this as a 'map' to relate other historical information. This can lead to the conceptualisation of 'shapes' of history - trends, patterns, shifts in culture, etc.

(PS - I am guessing here, I know nothing of the education of history whatsoever, but it sounds quite plausible?)

Basically, if you only had one hour, you should surely seek those things that you are confident will give the greatest 'bandwidth' of pedagogy. You would surely seek activities that would plant a seed of learning, not just information. You would surely wish to point a student in an interesting direction rather than say 'go here'.

So, you have an hour to teach someone - the only teaching they will ever receive. What would you teach them?

* The full quote is "All things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another." Six Easy Pieces (1995), 4.

Data Visualisation

2011-04-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

Right, you've got to start somewhere, so :

And a bit of a satirical one:

Definitely need to take it all a bit more seriously though.

Idea - Animated Maths

2011-03-03T14:32:00.001-08:00

That's it really - maths that is ... animated.

And I don't mean like this, I mean where the symbols come to life and do Wile E. Coyote stuff.

Like a path integral, fed up with being told what it must equal, decides to make a bonfire :

Well, I didn't say every idea was going to be good, did I?

Meta-Distributed Social Idea Creation

2011-03-03T14:04:00.000-08:00

Right, we all know that cognitive arousal affects the 'distance' between thoughts in the brain (don't we?) - i.e. when we are relaxed we are more likely to generate 'deeper' links between things in our mind. Conversely, when we are excited/stressed, our links are much shorter and creativity tends to take a dive.

Secondly, the map of brain neurons is a distributed node network (i.e. it's quite complex and doesn't have a fixed hierarchy). Funnily enough, the old www is the same - no fixed hierarchy, structures come and go.

So, can we extend these analogies to creative social networks? Can we look for 'relaxed', 'deep' creative links in social or information networks and get more interesting data?

Don't think that the relaxed state is without structure. There tend to be latent links (let's call them low voltage) that emerge when we enter a relaxed state (hence the 3 B's of creativity - Bed, Bath, Bus). These links are generated (no one is entirely sure precisely how) during normal hours of operation and exist for moments only to be recalled during a relaxed state.

So can we try this model? What deep links can be generated? And how the fork would you do it? What neural 'low voltage' analogies can we apply to data mining?

(File under: To do sometime)

2011-02-11T13:43:00.000-08:00

Playing with Chaoscope recently led to the above image whilst trying to get a nice 2-brane Lorenz attractor surface (I know...).

This is actually a 3D double skinned surface and the question is how would we be turn a roof into an internal wall as the geometry fold from outside to inside?

This week (6) I have mostly been designing ...

2010-12-28T10:30:00.000-08:00

...Quick Video, Using Alternative Techniques.

Here's the rules :

Create a quick video in about 30-60 minutes, using screen capture;
Use stuff that you wouldn't normally use - any applications you might have on your computer, but not those that you would normally use for video;

So here's the first one using Picasa :

and using MS Word (!) and GadWin ScreenCap :

and using Prezi with ScreenCap :

and finally, Powerpoint (!) with ScreenCap (give your old presentation a bit of a new lease of life...) :

Doing it live is quite interesting and good fun - and more importantly it keeps it looking a bit rough and ready. We are aiming to get the content of an idea here, not the presentation of it.

So, give it a try...

Creativity in Education (Introduction)

2010-11-30T13:51:00.000-08:00

Having finally made my mind up about some kind of framework for organising elements of creativity, I finally presented at the recent OU Staff Development day using the wonderful Prezi:

Creativity in Education (Introduction) on Prezi

So, thanks to everyone who made it a great day and remember, new thinking - new ideas.
Anyway, the plan is to divide the 'bits' of creativity up into :

Cognitive Processes - stuff that happens in the brain;
Attitudes - stuff that affects stuff that happens in the brain;
Behaviours - stuff we do that can affect and is affected by the top two;
Skills - stuff we do that can affect the top two.

So, for example, thinking outside the box is actually a generic, ill defined term that encompasses a few of the above - starting (and mainly arising from) the Cognitive Process of Divergent Thinking (the ability to 're-path' the way your brain thinks about things and considering ideas from different points of view).

The nice thing about doing this is that at least two of the categories are actually measurable (!). No, really.

(and I can hear the shouting now ...)

This Week (5) I have mostly been designing ...

2010-11-05T13:02:00.000-07:00

... What art is(n't).

Ok, not the catchiest of titles but this started from yet another 'what is art?' type conversation.

In fact, you can construct a 'What is [insert subjective noun here]?'

about pretty much any subject that contains any element of subjectivity:

art, architecture, design, beauty, the point, etc. etc., all can be discussed, considered and an attempted definition made. (I will use the word 'art' throughout to mean any of these interchangeable subjects).

However, what I am not aware of is a definitive answer to any of these questions - that is, in well over 6000 years of human discourse, we have yet to define certain subjective activities/objects ... um, objectively.

The clue, I would suggest, is in the question - these are subjective matters and are therefore going to have very different meanings and definitions to everyone. The nature of subjectivity in the theory of art is a large one indeed and it is not my plan to go over this in any detail. To cut a 2,400 year story short, current pholosphy tells us that there are no archetypal forms - 'art' cannot exist a priori: there cannot exist an ultimate definition of art that is independent of individual perception, culture, or time. (caveat for Platonists: if there is, we have no way of defining, accessing, or relating to it at present).

So what happens if we invert the question: What is art not?

This, it so happens, is a bit easier. "I don't know what art is, but I know what I like." Go on, admit it - if you haven't actually said this in your life, you have thought it. Everyone has thought this, whether it is simply as an immediate reaction to something without understanding the reasons for the opinion or as a conscious admission of a preference to 'feel' a response rather than understand it.

Even when we are able to define what it is that we see as art in a particular object, it is not necessarily the case that this is transferable to other objects. If a painting makes you feel happy does that mean that all things that make you happy are art?

So we create our definitions by a series of things that it might be (or that it has been before, so might be again).

The second big mechanism we use is to keep a 'list' of what art is not.

We look at thousands of objects each and every day and we do not claim these all to be art. In other words we also have a 'database' of what art is not and it is entirely possible that this is the more important part.

Think about it - if we are unable to create an explicit definition of what art is, then the only alternative is to have opinion of what it is at that moment. To do this, we definitely need a reference library of what it is not (otherwise we would be there quite a while).

So, the next time you need to answer the question 'what is art?', perhaps you could take a deep breath and then list everything it's not...

This Week (4) I have mostly been designing ...

2010-10-17T05:00:00.000-07:00

... Re branding for Creativity.

Yes - it's time to get creative with creativity, and here's the new logo :

Hmm, you probably better read on to find out why.

Here's the starting point :

At a recent presentation by our local school on the Curriculum for Excellence (the new Scottish education strategy / curriculum), we were presented with some very interesting information about where the world was heading, what education needed to be in a future we find hard to predict, skills that employers look for. All very predictable (and somewhat Dickensian) stuff. Yes, there were mentions of linking learning contents, styles and approaches, but it was all a bit ... well, boring.

So, I innocently asked where creativity came in to the picture, whereupon one off the trainee teachers proudly declaimed "Well, the children made these hats!!!"

(yes, the teacher really did 'say' 3 exclamation marks - something that is quite hard to do. I tried it when I got home, but my family made me stop.)

Now, some of you will be thinking, like me, 'but that's not the least part of what creativity is...' and others may be thinking ... other things, but my starting point for the re-branding is this - creativity is not the preserve of the artist, designer or 'ideas person'. We really need to recognise the wider applications, importance, and potential of creativity in both education and the wider world - making hats is only the tiniest part of creativity and if it is pigeon-holed in this way in education (i.e. seen as a discrete skillset demonstrated by the production of bits of coloured paper) then we are all doomed.

Maybe this is simply a case of re-educating (or just reminding) people of what creativity is and why it is so important to homo sapiens. You see, we are naturally creative as a species - we need to make connections between the different parts of our brain in order (originally) to survive successfully. Like any other hardwired evolutionary hangover, we retain this ability and find alternative uses for it to increase the level of 'success' in survival terms. So, lateral thinking, making connections, re-setting thinking are all necessary and latent cognitive abilities in each and every one of us.

In fact, it is the creative cognitive abilities in the human mind that have allowed us to make some of the greatest advancements in our collective history - and it is perhaps worth considering the 'non-artistic' creative contributions to humanity.

Albert Einstein was famous for being a creative thinker, not a physicist or mathematician. Thought experiments, 'imagining riding a beam of light', creating mathematical notation to solve a practical design problem / need - these are all creative modes of thought and could not have happened without the cognitive abilities to link his critical thinking with his other brain functions.

Alexander Flemming was famous for noticing something and not just shrugging it off. Tenuous to label creative? No. A key skill of creativity is to see things that others do not - to not dismiss the small details that are bypassed elsewhere. After making such an observation, the creative mind will record and then act - not be satisfied by simple observation only.

Richard Feynman, Watson & Crick, Turing, Goedel, (sorry, this is turning into a personal list of heroes), all exhibit creative cognitive abilities, skills, attitudes and behaviours.

(PS - this is not a claim that there is suddenly no need for the analytical or critical parts - you can't come up with QED without thinking about how to sum path integrals ... It is simply a reminder that this is not the only, or even the most important, part of the process.)

We need to re-advertise and be reminded that creativity offers a whole range of cognitive abilities, personal skills, behaviours, and attitudes that can be useful in a very wide area of experience.

So, how do we re-brand creativity? Do we approach this with a creative mindset and a bit of Design Thinking? Get the graphic designers in to pick a typeface? Employ Max Clifford to claim that creativity is having an affair with [insert curent Prime Minister here]?

Well ... no. Technically, if this 'theory' is correct, then the re-branding of creativity should come naturally from a source that is traditionally viewed as 'non-creative'. After all, if we re-brand creativity creatively, we are only advertising to those people who probably already 'get it'.

Furthermore, it should be taken to the extreme to get the best results.

So do we go the other way : do we get the pessimists, die-hard engineers, and accountants of society in instead? How about asking the Local Government Working Group for Paper Towel Friction in to do a report on it? Or the European Sub-Committee for Standardisation of Parsnip Geometry to 'scope out a shape'? Or why not gather opinion from inanimate objects?

So that's it, we need to set up

The Committee for the Oversight of the Reinterpretation of the Current Socially Accepted Definition of Creativity (Including Vegetable Geometry).

After all, if the House of Lords can have a Refreshments Committee, why not?

All volunteers are welcome and the only requirement is that you do not think your are creative. After the session(s), if you wish to remain convinced you are un-creative then this can be arranged.

This week (3) I have mostly been designing ...

2010-08-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

... A Design Manifesto.

This week, part of the U101 course is Design Manifestos, making use of the 100+ Years of Design Manifestos.

Once again, I start with a pathetic disclaimer : When I was a student I, too, created a manifesto, but in my defense it was a Post Modern one and the self irony itself was ironic so I take no responsibility for any pots being called black or any other self-righteous attitudes any other person may or may not feel.

According to the wikipedia :

"A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions".

Right now, my guts are telling me that manifestos are bad things so let's argue the position.

I have no need to declare either my principles and intentions before I design and furthermore, taking a typical argumentative stance, I might suggest that to do so is, in itself, a Very Bad Thing before starting to design.

Various studies have shown that the presentation of a problem or issue to a group affects how that group will tackle, engage and deal with it. In psychology this effect is called priming. For example, a group who is told "you need to solve this or the world will end!" will approach a task differently to a group who is told "Here's a thing - see what you come up with, if you like." The first group invariably do much worse than the latter and I won't go into detail on this right now - more on that some other time. Suffice it to say that before we approach a problem we can be affected by things.

When you are 'too' primed you are unlikely to see past the priming and will not generate radically new thought - in fact I might argue that excessive priming, such as industry accepted fashion / practice, already actively encourages this and bland, vanilla design would actually come to halt immediately without it. A 98.6 sqm 3 apartment house is expected to be a certain thing ...

So why reinforce this any further by pre-loading yourself with any kind of manifesto? Why set out a set of intentions before you even know what it is you need to design?

"But what about moral considerations - surely you are not suggesting that you abandon accessibility or aesthetics or sustainability or ... ?"

Well why not?

If we think 'I must make this design accessible' we are priming the design process. In doing so we are conditioning it before we have even started. Accessibility should not be a pre-condition of a design any more than 'making it red' should be. If a design needs to be accessible then this should be designed in to it during the design process - just as it should be red it the design process leads to redness.

The counter argument to this is that accessibility is surely a consideration that should be globally and intrinsically considered, regardless of what we are designing. That we depend on certain global, archetypal moral positions that must be incorporated.

But if this is the case, who sets the global moral agenda? Who makes the Big List of Things that are Good to Include in Design? How do we deal with shifting morality (25 years ago, who really considered global resource movement as a negative thing, other than those to whom it was a subject of interest)?

So Design Manifestos are essentially pre-arranged shopping lists of limitation on the designer and the design process.

So here's mine :

Don't have a manifesto.
Just design.
Ignore this list.

Feel free to flame :)

This week (2) I have mostly been designing ...

2010-02-05T15:12:00.000-08:00

... a pointless decision making device.

This came about following a student excercise where they had to create a decision line and fly a paper airplane to arrive at a 'random' resolution. One particular student carried out this excercise - but their cat 'interfered' with the decision making process...

So here's the pitch :

"Are you indecisive? Uncertain? unsure? Then you need a thing that will do stuff for you. In fact, you need a thing that will make decisions for you and then not tell you that it has done it so you can say "the decision has been made", but you still retain that warm glow of pre-decision confidence!"

The Indecisive Decisionmaker 10T - buy it without thinking!

WARNING: All ID10t's contain small choking hazards."

And here's the sketch :

1. Take a cat / decision making line. Built in feline interference - brilliant.

2. Combine it with the 'Most Pointless Machine in the World'

3. Enjoy knowing you're being decisive without actually feeling decisive.

And here's how it works :

1. The cat sits inside the device, awaiting an instructiton to proceed with the decision making process.

2. The decision is input into the device via an auditory occulus and the cat listens attentively and carefuly to the intractable problem.

3. The machine is then 'closed' and the user is unaware of the cat's decision (or even whether the cat has made its decision.

4. The user can now proceed with their life knowing the decision has been made and not made at the same time. This can happen because the cat is a direct descedant of Schroedinger's cat and until the decision device is opened, the decision is both made and not-made. As an added bonus, the final result is also both decisions (in fact all decisions ever made, or to be made). Everyone's happy!

I feel that with appropriate product placement and market testing we could very soon establish a market within the design industry itself.

Here's why :

Making a decision in design is terrifying sometimes. Sometimes a decision takes you so far down a route that it's hard to go all the way back. Sometimes the decision is frightening because you really don't know how it will be received. Sometimes you just have too much information in your head and can see good reasons for 500 decisions.

So why are some decisions so hard?

We tend to view decisions as turning points in a linear process. Once a turning has been made, the line continues in that particular direction. Since this is a linear process, we also expect it to go somewhere - a line always ends (in Cartesian geometry...).

But what if the geometry of the Design Thinking process isn't as straight forward as this?

Of course it isn't. The initital phases of any period of Desing Thinking almost require that we consider everything, look at everything, gather as much 'stuff' as we can. Whether you call it divergent thinking, brainstorming, or a Deep Dive, it still has the same geometric pattern - it tends to infinity. By this I mean that if we don't stop or set limits to it, we could theoretically go on forever by considering every possible piece of irrelevant material we are able to find. So to prevent this we start making decisions - we decide that one avenue of research is more important than another or limit our time for this excercise.

As we move through divergent thinking, we reach a turning point, where our thinking starts to become more and more focused as we 'decide' out those elements we consider to be less relevant. This convergent thinking also has a gemetrical property - it tends to zero. As we narrow down options, we remove unimportant criteria, solve various issues, and so on, and are oftent left with a finite set of ideas (or even just one). It is usually this point that most people tend to think of as the decision point. But in reality, this convergent point is the culmination of thousands of decisions and is no more a decision than an imposed physical limit on the convergent process (and a necessary limit).

So the next time you are looking at a decision point and thinking 'where now?', have a look behind it and consider all the little decisions that have gone into this one. You might be surprised at how many subconscious decisions have slipped into your thinking.

Similarly, it is always worth asking why you are stuck with a decision. Is it really because you are worried about making the best choice?

In doing the decision line activity there are theoretically only two outcomes - one side of the line and the other side of the line. But there are actually a few more and I want to mention one in particular just to prove that a 'random' decision can sometimes be a valuable decision.

Imagine the scene - you want to buy a new pair of pants, but are unsure whether to go for blue or red. You make a decision line (one side red, one side blue) and you throw your decision making device at it (say a paper airplane). The plane lands on blue but instead of feeling satisifed that a decision has been made, you feel a bit dissapointed. Deep down you really wanted red pants!

And the reason for this is simple - until you actually make a decision, you do not know what you will feel about it. You cannot see the other side of a decision because you have to be there to see it!

Secretly, I use this technique quite a lot - not to generate random decisions but to force myself to try a decision and then see what it's like on the other side. Most of the time, I already know (sub-consciously) what I've already/just decided.

The next really important step is trying to understand why you've actually made that decision - but that's another story...

So, there really could be a market for a pointless decision making device. I was thinking £40 / unit and with a green strip down one side...

This week (1) I have mostly been designing ...

2010-02-05T14:54:00.000-08:00

...where to put information.

'How the insert socially acceptable expletive here do you do that?', you may ask. What has that got to do with design?

It's sometimes not the most interesting of design exercises and it certainly falls into the 'hard' category. In fact, it has been a pretty intractable problem so far.

But, it's necessary; and many people depend on this information to complete some of the largest hospitals being built in the uk today (ok - a bit melodramatic, but essentially true).

So where do you start when you need to store, access, and update a very large data set over a wide user group? The technology required, the capacity of the systems, the data controls?

Well, I started with the people.

Now, this might sound a bit 'previous', but it is here that the success or failure of this design will be uncovered and for one simple reason - if people don't 'like' it, they won't use it; and in information systems if it isn't used, the information is worse than pointless. (btw - when I say 'don't like' I mean any reaction that results in a negative use of the design; when I say 'use' I mean use it in a way it to make it work properly).

The interface between people and information is complex and utterly fascinating - ask 10 people how they access digital information and you will receive twelve different answers (the differences might be subtle, but they are there). It is effectively impossible to predict how some users will interface with an information system NO MATTER HOW SIMPLE YOU THINK IT IS! Over the years I have been surprised, delighted, terrified and almost killed (more melodrama, but close to the truth), by the difference between how information structures were designed to be used and how users actually used them.

One of the classic examples I give to systems designers is the 'coffee stain indexing method'. When asked how they would find a key document, one particular user exclaimed 'I would flick through the file and find the yellow piece of paper with the folded corner and coffee stain in the top left corner"

Now, there exists (as far as I am aware) no SQL query string for

   SELECT  FROM coffee_stain WHERE folded corner = 1

or any database designed by humans that has a field for 'paper colour', yet people use this type of information on a daily basis and USE IT WELL.

Human intelligence, perception, and cognition is, IMHO, a complex system itself. Some would even argue that human intelligence itself is nothing more that an emergent information system. Regardless of your philosophical position, humans use an interface that is definitely non-linear (i.e. it does not simply rely on a clearly defined sequence of events). We pick up visual, auditory, tactile, emotional, memory-linked cues every second of our lives and use this 'interpretation' of information for everything we do.

So the bottom line is, until we can generate a data interface system that can find the 'yellow piece of paper with the folded corner and coffee stain in the top left corner' using actual coloured paper, lifesize origami and real coffee stains, we will always be left with the issue of interpretation of the interpretation of information (i.e. what people think the information is for).

Or will we?

As a direct consequence of not having systems that can 'think' like us, we have started to think like our systems. Not like computers, but in the modes of process that they employ - i.e. we start to think like data sorters.

I have already started to write dates in yyyy_mm_dd format ALL the time, because it's easy to apply this method to varying systems that can be re-ordered by date. We are also starting to resign ourselves to all things needing a reference or an account number, password, PIN, username - all these additional bits of finite data that once would have been meta-linguistic (i.e. we would have recognised a friend by a set of cognitive memories, not by a profile name).

In short, we are training ourselves to accommodate our designs, not designing to accommodate ourselves. Information technology has not allowed us to achieve a social progression with it, so it has forced an accelerated one on a large part of our society.

Oops - didn't mean to go philosophical, but it's too late now...

So - is this a bad thing ?

One one side we have a rapid explosion of access to information on an unprecedented scale (the effect of the printing press is almost our only near comparison - and look at how that enabled a certain degree of social accessibility). Yes, we are affected by the technology and have to re-learn methods of fuzzy thinking in a digital environment, but we are taking this new mode and warping it to suit our previous lives. ASCII binary characters 0101001 and 0111010 are nothing but a look up of pre-defined information, but to the users of information interfaces, they are an emotional response :) . Moreover, it is an emotional response that is context sensitive - it could be a simple smile or it could be a malicious response to something bad. Netiquette didn't arise because we needed a file indexing system to catalogue emotions...

Search systems are now being developed that recognise that information, as used by people, is complex and that we do not seek linear responses to searches, we seek a nebulous piece of information that we do not recognise until we see it (try Wolfram Alpha - it's a bit linear, but it is trying something slightly different).

On the other hand, we are still in great danger of leaving a significant proportion of our society behind. Access to information interfaces is still largely determined by socio-economic factors; and those who are catching up will have to do so in an environment that has already been designed - they will not 'own' it.

But I ramble on to another, much larger topic so will stop there.

Basically : Information itself is dead simple - it is a fact or a number or a code. How information is interpreted, understood, related, and re-used is complex. We have gone from complex 'human' information exchange through a period of linear information exchange (in certain parts of society) and are now seeing the first uprising leading us back to complex again.

So how does this help my design problem?

It doesn't. I've just realised that it might actually be harder than I thought (I'm pretty sure that about 15% of my users will not be able to understand why this all matters, about half will not want to have to understand yet ANOTHER system, and the majority, if not all, will still find a way to 'break' it) - this is why 'putting information somewhere' needs design thinking, and that's why I love my job :D

Oh well back to the drawing board...