Towards Designing for Adaptation

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Towards Designing for Adaptation

• Dan Hill
• dan_at_cityofsound.com
• cityofsound.com/blog

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Adaptive Design
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Adaptive Design?
Adaptive Design

• Tom Moran
• Everyday Adaptive Design

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Architecture?
Adaptive Design

• Stewart Brand
• How Buildings Learn

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Pattern Languages?
Adaptive Design

• Christopher Alexander
• A Pattern Language

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How Cities Learn?
Adaptive Design

• Steven Johnson
• Emergence

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What is design anyway?
Adaptive Design
Norman Potter What Is A Designer
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Examples of Adaptation
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Email as to-do list
Examples of Adaptation
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Amazon shopping cart
Examples of Adaptation
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BBCi Homepage
Examples of Adaptation
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The Sims
Examples of Adaptation
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Grand Theft Auto
Examples of Adaptation
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MyYahoo
Examples of Adaptation
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LiveJournal
Examples of Adaptation
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MovableType
Examples of Adaptation
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Operating Systems
Examples of Adaptation
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Commonalities
Examples of Adaptation

• Undesigned, or rather not overdesigned
• Open-ended architecture
• Reactive behaviour
• Basic patterns of interaction (plus tools)
• Save state

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Themes of Adaptation
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Themes of Adaptation
Designers and users collaborate
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Themes of Adaptation
Layers of change
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Layers of change, adapted
Themes of Adaptation
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Those layers again
Themes of Adaptation
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Structure vs. Space Plan
Themes of Adaptation
Designers should strive to create relationships
and structure but leave composition to the user
create structure at a micro-level and let
organisation emerge out of chaos by itself at a
macro-level. Fabio Sergio
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Imperfection
Themes of Adaptation
On the Web, perfection is scary ... The
imperfection of the Web isn't a temporary lapse
it's a design decision ... the designers weighed
perfection against growth and creativity, and
perfection lost. The Web is broken on
purpose. David Weinberger
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Imperfection invites the user in
Themes of Adaptation
An important aspect of design is the degree to
which the object involves you in its own
completion. Some work invites you into itself by
not offering a finished, glossy, one-reading-only
surface. This is what makes old buildings
interesting to me. Brian Eno
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Suboptimal
Themes of Adaptation
Designers, as technologists have, must learn to
keep it suboptimal ... maintain the
freedom-to-tinker, to adapt, to change with need,
to innovate. Matt Jones
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Suboptimal enables evolution
Themes of Adaptation
Designed formats start out strong and improve
logarithmically. Evolvable formats start out weak
and improve exponentially. RSS 2.0 is not the
perfect syndication format, just the best one
thats also currently practical. Infrastructure
built on evolvable formats will always be
partially incomplete, partially wrong and
ultimately better designed than its
competition. Mark Pilgrim
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New Rationalism
Themes of Adaptation
You find that the design is actually looking, as
a physical object, very elegant, laid back,
recessive. But inside, the thing that makes you
say, 'Aha!' is more driven by the behaviour of
the thing. Bill Moggridge
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Seamful Systems
Themes of Adaptation
Make seamful systems (with beautiful
seams). Matthew Chalmers
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Design is a humble trade
Themes of Adaptation
Good design means not leaving traces of the
designer and not overworking the design.Design
dissolves in behaviour. Naoto Fukasawa
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Build fast layers for learning
Themes of Adaptation

• Enable layers of change
• Enable experiences to learn
• Enable fast layers to change rapidly
• html text for nav/sections
• build with rectangles
• non-anti-aliased graphics
• dont overdesign
• separate architecture(s) from presentation

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Themes of Adaptation
Build all layers for changes

• Design simple inter-relating systems can be
  removed and replaced like components - which
  dont have to co-exist to make useful product.
• Open standards allow many people to add their
  minor creative addition to the mix - inspiring in
  turn subsequent developments.
• Ability to generate something functional with the
  most limited set of instructions or components.

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Inspiration for Adaptation
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Multi-player online games
Inspiration for Adaptation
In Star Wars Galaxies, designers go from auteurs
to city councillors.The network finds the
right people. The system of design finds the
needle in the haystack.90 of Sims content is
built by the players its a 21st century
folk-art. JC Herz
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Emergent Engineering
Inspiration for Adaptation
Can attributes such as hierarchy, adaptation,
and evolution be designed with the same rigor we
now bring to understanding the role of bandwidth,
power, or noise? Neil Gershenfeld
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Biomimicry
Inspiration for Adaptation
A pattern language for survival There is the
design challenge. Life creates conditions
conducive to life in everything that it does,
besides just meeting its own needs. It sustains
not just itself, but us Janine Benyus
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Challenge of Adaptation
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Continuum of Adaptation
Challenge of Adaptation
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Continuum of Adaptation
Challenge of Adaptation
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Continuum of Adaptation
Challenge of Adaptation
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Continuum of Adaptation
Challenge of Adaptation
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An Adaptive Manifesto for Designers
Manifesto for Adaptation

1. Collaborate (users/programmers)
2. Build for change in fast layers (skin/emergent
   IA)
3. Build for stability in slow layers (deep IA)
4. Create seamful experiences, based around
   behaviour not aesthetics
5. Build tools based around basic interaction
   patterns
6. Create solutions which aid further solutions
7. Keep it suboptimal encourage evolution
8. Designers become programmers and vice versa
9. You dont control you humbly enable