I really like my residence. Innis is one of the newer buildings, very well maintained and with lots of resources. The people here are all really helpful and I get along with them very well. I especially appreciate being able to eat whatever I want (or am capable of cooking), whenever I want. The suite style is also a nice balance between having a private space in the form of my own room and being in close quarters with a small group of people sharing a common sub-space—there’s a real sense of “home” rather than just some room where I sleep and study during the semester. Architecturally though, I can’t really figure out what whoever designed the building was thinking.
I’ll start with the outside in. The building is symmetrically structured in a U-shape cradling a quad with green space. There are four floors where everything in the building is connected (like most buildings), then three additional floors on the two wings (legs of the “U”) that are mutually inaccessible—“towers” of sorts. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the building isn’t 100% symmetrical (of course, that’s a little too much to ask to begin with), so there are resources located in one side that is not present in the other: on the sixth floor of the south wing is situated the music room and on the sixth floor of the north wing is the exercise room. For instance, if I were to be at the tip of the north wing on the sixth floor and wanting to use the piano, I would need to walk downstairs to the fourth floor, walk across to the other side and walk back upstairs to the sixth floor. In addition, the middle section (the bottom of the “U”) houses the lobby area on the first floor, so that suites in one wing of the first floor have to go out the main doors, cross the lobby and key themselves in the main doors again to get to the other side. Obviously, this seems terribly inefficient. The only thing to which I could possibly attribute this design decision is aesthetics, and even that’s a bit of a stretch as it doesn’t “look better” enough to offset the inconvenience. (In fact, can the desire for aesthetics really ever trump the need for practicality except in maybe the fashion industry?) It could be an interesting design because it is uncommon, but there seems little if anything gained in return: maybe it’s because I’m short, but I can’t really see the top that well anyway—I doubt anyone really cares enough to look—and there’s no great need for a pretty building as it’s a university residence anyway.
Similarly, the arch in the entranceway was a real source of annoyance, although for that I doubt it extended further than our suite. There’s a big concrete arch about two stories high around the main entrance leading from St. George Street into the lobby. From what my fellow engineer suitemates and I could see, it’s not serving any real structural function, and we were confused as to why it is there as it isn’t very pretty since it’s literally just a big hunk of concrete and metal. I guess we wouldn’t really have noticed its existence either way (again, I doubt anyone really does), except that our suite was the one situated directly above the entrance on the second floor. Because the archway is situated behind a slight overhang—reasonable design decision considering the intercom system and the weather conditions in Toronto—it quite noticeably reduced the area of our living room area and I’m pretty sure ours was in fact the smallest in the residence. One of my suitemates was in Engineering Science Year 2, and there wasn’t enough room for her to work on her AER201 project (she was the electromech member, to top it all off), let alone for the rest of us to have a place to sit half the time.
Speaking of the common room, a quick aside: the “coffee tables” in the common room are of a height that make them hard to use in any context. It’s not high enough to use while sitting on the couches or any chair for that matter, but not low enough to use as a lap table or to work on while sitting on the floor—kneeling seems to be the only position close enough (and probably only for people of a certain height range and/or body part ratios) but it’s not terribly comfortable and murderous for your knees. The only real surface we have to eat on is the somewhat narrow kitchen counter and this table, and while the former is at a height closer to the optimal (given the other furniture provided to us in the suite) it’s usually pretty crowded due to its being used for cooking. Needless to say, holding a steaming bowl of noodles on your lap while bending over to try and eat is not very fun.
Adjacent to the common area, or an extension of it, is the kitchen. I don’t believe this is the case for all suites, but I would venture to say the large majority of them share the following problem: the fridge is situated in such a way that it pretty much cuts off access to a) some cupboards up high (not terribly important, they’re small and there’s a decent amount of other ones) and more importantly b) about half the counter space around the sink. The kitchen isn’t that big to begin with, and four or five people could crowd even a normal-sized kitchen. (Especially for me—being short—reaching around things is really awkward.) There are also more cupboards above the stove hood (how do you reach around that?) and elsewhere, which I don’t think anyone except the tallest few could reach.
Similar inconsistencies exist in bedroom/bathroom shapes and the distribution/layout thereof. We just moved into our new summer suite, and my suitemate physically cannot place her bookshelf flush with the wall because the one available corner juts in (maybe it’s plumbing?) and there’s not enough room on the other walls.
In summary, all I can say is: WHY?
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Design Critique Part I: Things around the House
One way I know engineering and praxis have taken over my life is that more and more frequently, I take note of things I encounter in everyday life that are either nifty or inane. I then find myself evaluating the design of and trying to reverse engineer how the product was finalized. What was the intended objective? How was the idea thought of, i.e. what was the gap identified? What kind of technology is involved? What could have been some restrictions or issues that came up during the process? What were key design decisions and upon what criteria was emphasis put? Does that say anything about who the designer might be, e.g. engineer, architect, artist?
For instance, I was at the Korean supermarket the other day and saw training chopsticks—they had little handles on them like scissors and grooves to teach you the right way to hold them. I thought that was pretty cool and definitely useful, since it’s hard to teach a small child how to hold chopsticks and there are a lot of people who do some fudging and learn it the wrong way. I can’t make a really detailed critique because I didn’t get to use them—they were in packaging and I wasn’t about to buy a pair just to try them out (they weren’t that cheap!)—but I tried to make the general shape my hand would form and it seemed to be correct. They also looked pretty durable and kid-friendly—the plastic was of a decent thickness and there was a variety of different colour patterns so that kids could pick their favourite colour. All in all, a nice balance of everything, definitely well engineered.
And who doesn’t love bag clips? I didn’t know they existed until this past summer when I was shopping for university (we don’t use them at home). I dare say it’s one of the most useful little pieces of plastic ever invented. Someone realized along the line that it would be far simpler to preserve food by closing the existing packaging back up: it’s hassle-free and completely reusable, as opposed to Ziploc bags which can’t be used over and over again or a container you’d have to wash every time you wanted to put something new in. And it’s cheap—you can get a whole bagful for a dollar or something similarly ridiculous. Not the most difficult thing ever to make, but major kudos to whoever managed to think of the obvious—keeping it simple is often harder to do (ask any EngSci).
As another example, take the new Tropicana juice carton cap. They recently switched from the standard disk-like shape to a hemisphere resembling the outside of an orange. At first glance, it’s a nice little touch—little half-orange, orange juice, get it? But then you try to set it down on the table face-up (so as not to contaminate the lid if the surface you’re putting it on isn’t exactly clean—yay for residence life—so it rolls around and the rim ends up touching the surface anyway. You can’t really get a good grip on it either when you’re trying to screw it on or off, because they made the surface smooth for aesthetic purposes. I also think it probably ended up being more costly to manufacture—they would have had to come up with new custom moulds as opposed to the run-of-the-mill ones you can find virtually everywhere, and changing parts of an established assembly line can’t have been easy. Clearly, looking pretty took precedence over practicality and in this case (I’m inclined to extend this conclusion to most cases but that may just be my bias talking) it was not the way to go.
Sometimes, I don’t have the technical background to be able to fully analyze a given product. I’d love to find out exactly how Swiffer products work—it can’t all be about static cling, and what kind of materials are they anyway (and to what degree are they really disposable, i.e. biodegradable in a few years or dumpster fodder for the next century)? There’s also this neat acoustic amplifier for the iPhone that I bought my friend a couple months ago as a birthday present: it uses a “coiled waveguide ‘horn’”—yay resonance! ... I think?—to amplify the sound by about 10 decibels, and it’s quite pretty to boot. It’s fairly small and light, so no more worries about needing an outlet or carrying around bulky speakers.
Speaking of acoustics, how exactly do they get that great sound at Roy Thomson Hall (the seating layout is quite attractive too), and what are the physics behind what makes venues sound different? And speaking of buildings, what’s with the really bad lecture halls in SF, namely 1101 and 1105? I can’t see in the former unless I’m in the very front row because the incline is so shallow, and there’s always a very... interesting smell in there because there’s virtually no ventilation; the latter only has those foldable tables every two seats (did they think only half of us needed writing surfaces?) and that room is notorious for making everyone really, really sleepy—is it the colour? lighting? temperature? an interesting coincidence of similar profs/lecturers? And the textbooks we use—what makes a great one so useful? The one we used in BME105 was really wordy and you couldn’t really find the information you wanted—there is some doubt as to whether it was there in the first place—whereas it is almost universally acknowledged that Stewart is one of the best calculus textbooks ever, but that can’t be all—both had diagrams, both had tables of contents and indexes, etc. Oh, and don’t get me started about EngSci schedules—
I should stop, there’s a lot more to write and only so much time. One of these days, I’ll have the time to go look all of this stuff up, learn all these extra things and finally appease my curiosity.
(...)
(Maybe.)
(...)
(One can hope...?)
For instance, I was at the Korean supermarket the other day and saw training chopsticks—they had little handles on them like scissors and grooves to teach you the right way to hold them. I thought that was pretty cool and definitely useful, since it’s hard to teach a small child how to hold chopsticks and there are a lot of people who do some fudging and learn it the wrong way. I can’t make a really detailed critique because I didn’t get to use them—they were in packaging and I wasn’t about to buy a pair just to try them out (they weren’t that cheap!)—but I tried to make the general shape my hand would form and it seemed to be correct. They also looked pretty durable and kid-friendly—the plastic was of a decent thickness and there was a variety of different colour patterns so that kids could pick their favourite colour. All in all, a nice balance of everything, definitely well engineered.
And who doesn’t love bag clips? I didn’t know they existed until this past summer when I was shopping for university (we don’t use them at home). I dare say it’s one of the most useful little pieces of plastic ever invented. Someone realized along the line that it would be far simpler to preserve food by closing the existing packaging back up: it’s hassle-free and completely reusable, as opposed to Ziploc bags which can’t be used over and over again or a container you’d have to wash every time you wanted to put something new in. And it’s cheap—you can get a whole bagful for a dollar or something similarly ridiculous. Not the most difficult thing ever to make, but major kudos to whoever managed to think of the obvious—keeping it simple is often harder to do (ask any EngSci).
As another example, take the new Tropicana juice carton cap. They recently switched from the standard disk-like shape to a hemisphere resembling the outside of an orange. At first glance, it’s a nice little touch—little half-orange, orange juice, get it? But then you try to set it down on the table face-up (so as not to contaminate the lid if the surface you’re putting it on isn’t exactly clean—yay for residence life—so it rolls around and the rim ends up touching the surface anyway. You can’t really get a good grip on it either when you’re trying to screw it on or off, because they made the surface smooth for aesthetic purposes. I also think it probably ended up being more costly to manufacture—they would have had to come up with new custom moulds as opposed to the run-of-the-mill ones you can find virtually everywhere, and changing parts of an established assembly line can’t have been easy. Clearly, looking pretty took precedence over practicality and in this case (I’m inclined to extend this conclusion to most cases but that may just be my bias talking) it was not the way to go.
Sometimes, I don’t have the technical background to be able to fully analyze a given product. I’d love to find out exactly how Swiffer products work—it can’t all be about static cling, and what kind of materials are they anyway (and to what degree are they really disposable, i.e. biodegradable in a few years or dumpster fodder for the next century)? There’s also this neat acoustic amplifier for the iPhone that I bought my friend a couple months ago as a birthday present: it uses a “coiled waveguide ‘horn’”—yay resonance! ... I think?—to amplify the sound by about 10 decibels, and it’s quite pretty to boot. It’s fairly small and light, so no more worries about needing an outlet or carrying around bulky speakers.
Speaking of acoustics, how exactly do they get that great sound at Roy Thomson Hall (the seating layout is quite attractive too), and what are the physics behind what makes venues sound different? And speaking of buildings, what’s with the really bad lecture halls in SF, namely 1101 and 1105? I can’t see in the former unless I’m in the very front row because the incline is so shallow, and there’s always a very... interesting smell in there because there’s virtually no ventilation; the latter only has those foldable tables every two seats (did they think only half of us needed writing surfaces?) and that room is notorious for making everyone really, really sleepy—is it the colour? lighting? temperature? an interesting coincidence of similar profs/lecturers? And the textbooks we use—what makes a great one so useful? The one we used in BME105 was really wordy and you couldn’t really find the information you wanted—there is some doubt as to whether it was there in the first place—whereas it is almost universally acknowledged that Stewart is one of the best calculus textbooks ever, but that can’t be all—both had diagrams, both had tables of contents and indexes, etc. Oh, and don’t get me started about EngSci schedules—
I should stop, there’s a lot more to write and only so much time. One of these days, I’ll have the time to go look all of this stuff up, learn all these extra things and finally appease my curiosity.
(...)
(Maybe.)
(...)
(One can hope...?)
Engineering Design According to xkcd
Because I couldn’t resist, here are five selections pertaining to some aspect of engineering design. (As an aside, my friends and I have been wondering why the heck everything sounds so much like our lives—we think they’re getting access to our lives/headspaces somehow, say via hidden cameras around the engineering buildings...)
1) #85: Paths (“It’s true, I think about this all the time.”)
My friends and I discuss efficiency of things we see all the time. This was especially pertinent, at least to myself, so when I saw this I literally laughed out loud. My mind becomes a trip planner when I’m going anywhere; it’s especially bad when walking because there’s so much time and so little to pay attention to that sometimes all I’m doing is iterating my pseudo-algorithm. (Just a personal rant: I hate when there’s something that slows me down like barriers or buildings I can’t cut through. Going to class via King’s College Circle is really annoying because the field is covered in snow during the year—I trudge through it anyway if I’m running late and end up with soaked feet—and then when the snow finally melts, it gets closed off.)
2) #242: The Difference (“How could you choose avoiding a little pain over understanding a magic lightning machine?”)
This should be fairly obvious: learning through personal experience/observation and confirming/refining through iteration. Rigour! Although I wouldn’t label the second branch as only “scientist”—engineers get overlooked once again. It’s yet another example of what has been repeatedly discussed on this blog.
3) #277: Long Light (“You can look at practically any part of anything manmade around you and think, ‘some engineer was frustrated while designing this.’ It’s a little human connection.”)
This will be pertinent to my design critique post later—sometimes, even though something may seem very poorly engineered, there might have been extenuating circumstances and issues that were physically irresolvable. The stubborn, perfectionist part of my mind, however, will always question if anything is really impossible—perhaps a qualifier is necessary, e.g. “given these circumstances”. But is it really possible to rule out all given possibilities even with certain restrictions? Wouldn’t something be figured out eventually? Perhaps that’s what engineering is all about (and one of the main factors distinguishing it from science): approximating a solution as efficiently as possible (resource-wise, e.g. time, cost, labour) instead of trying to come up with an absolute and perfect one that may be impractical to both design and use.
4) #309: Shopping Teams (“I am never going out to buy an air conditioner with my sysadmin again.”)
This is pretty much what we did in Praxis II for most of the semester: definitions (the gap!) and decision-making heuristics. I don’t know if this is necessarily a good thing—xkcd obviously thinks it isn’t—but sometimes our desire for rigour ended up in heated debates over the smallest things and we had to step back and look at the big picture again. (Tangent: I’m currently trying to decide if I should take offense at the term “nerd”...)
5) #552: Correlation (“Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there’.”)
Again, more about the search for rigour—(to make a semi-transparent effort at tying everything together) perhaps it is at the cost of efficiency. I took a course in high school called Theory of Knowledge (required for all IB Diploma candidates) where we were supposed to examine the methods with which we acquire and analyze information, and pretty much all we ended up doing the entire semester was argue that we couldn’t ever really know anything for sure because there was physically no way to get rid of bias. You can’t deny that it’s true, but it’s not very useful. As an aside, I could turn this into an argument in favour of engineering over science, but you could just flip it over in turn and say engineering is pseudo-science, lacks rigour, etc. Is perfection ever attainable?
1) #85: Paths (“It’s true, I think about this all the time.”)
My friends and I discuss efficiency of things we see all the time. This was especially pertinent, at least to myself, so when I saw this I literally laughed out loud. My mind becomes a trip planner when I’m going anywhere; it’s especially bad when walking because there’s so much time and so little to pay attention to that sometimes all I’m doing is iterating my pseudo-algorithm. (Just a personal rant: I hate when there’s something that slows me down like barriers or buildings I can’t cut through. Going to class via King’s College Circle is really annoying because the field is covered in snow during the year—I trudge through it anyway if I’m running late and end up with soaked feet—and then when the snow finally melts, it gets closed off.)
2) #242: The Difference (“How could you choose avoiding a little pain over understanding a magic lightning machine?”)
This should be fairly obvious: learning through personal experience/observation and confirming/refining through iteration. Rigour! Although I wouldn’t label the second branch as only “scientist”—engineers get overlooked once again. It’s yet another example of what has been repeatedly discussed on this blog.
3) #277: Long Light (“You can look at practically any part of anything manmade around you and think, ‘some engineer was frustrated while designing this.’ It’s a little human connection.”)
This will be pertinent to my design critique post later—sometimes, even though something may seem very poorly engineered, there might have been extenuating circumstances and issues that were physically irresolvable. The stubborn, perfectionist part of my mind, however, will always question if anything is really impossible—perhaps a qualifier is necessary, e.g. “given these circumstances”. But is it really possible to rule out all given possibilities even with certain restrictions? Wouldn’t something be figured out eventually? Perhaps that’s what engineering is all about (and one of the main factors distinguishing it from science): approximating a solution as efficiently as possible (resource-wise, e.g. time, cost, labour) instead of trying to come up with an absolute and perfect one that may be impractical to both design and use.
4) #309: Shopping Teams (“I am never going out to buy an air conditioner with my sysadmin again.”)
This is pretty much what we did in Praxis II for most of the semester: definitions (the gap!) and decision-making heuristics. I don’t know if this is necessarily a good thing—xkcd obviously thinks it isn’t—but sometimes our desire for rigour ended up in heated debates over the smallest things and we had to step back and look at the big picture again. (Tangent: I’m currently trying to decide if I should take offense at the term “nerd”...)
5) #552: Correlation (“Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there’.”)
Again, more about the search for rigour—(to make a semi-transparent effort at tying everything together) perhaps it is at the cost of efficiency. I took a course in high school called Theory of Knowledge (required for all IB Diploma candidates) where we were supposed to examine the methods with which we acquire and analyze information, and pretty much all we ended up doing the entire semester was argue that we couldn’t ever really know anything for sure because there was physically no way to get rid of bias. You can’t deny that it’s true, but it’s not very useful. As an aside, I could turn this into an argument in favour of engineering over science, but you could just flip it over in turn and say engineering is pseudo-science, lacks rigour, etc. Is perfection ever attainable?
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Engineering in the Media (III) – Full Metal Alchemist
Well, I’ve covered material depicting a North American perspective, so I suppose it’s time I go over to the other side of the world and see how engineers are depicted there. I figure that a European/Australian media would be somewhat similar to what is seen over here, so I’ll take a look at Asian media, more specifically, Manga and Anime (Japanese comics and cartoons respectively).
These mediums have their own fair share of crazy characters and themes, ranging from fights with fantasy monsters to Intergalactic spaceships to high school themed dramas. One of the few series I can recall that actually had an engineer in it is titled “Full Metal Alchemist”.
The world that the characters live in, Amestris, is a parallel one from our own, where alchemy, as a science, triumphed over science as we know it today (though their version of alchemy is just slightly short of magic in our terms). At a glance, it appears that they’re able to make things out of this air, or shoot fireballs and stones at will. However, what they’re actually doing is reconstructing matter at the molecular level, with the assistance of “Transmutation circles” (see picture below), which is the basis behind the fundamental law in alchemy, the law of equivalent exchange – “to obtain, something of equal value must be lost”.
A Transmutation Circle
Essentially, what they have is a much more advanced (and cooler) form of chemistry than we do.
Although alchemy plays a huge role in this world, engineers have not been completely made obsolete. One character by the name of Winry works as an automail engineer. Basically put, automail is an advanced prosthetic limb (the limb is hooked up to the user’s nervous system so they can use it like an actual limb) made of a steel like material. Winry is capable of both making and repairing automail, in addition to having a knack for machinery in general. In short, she’s a mechanical engineer.
Winry Rockbell from Full Metal Alchemist
Yet again “science” is glorified to be much more interesting, and advanced as engineering is (not to say engineering is many times more difficult than science, but each have their own respective pros and cons).
The only element of engineering covered in the series is automail, and it seems like it’s downplayed to being similar to repairing a car. I’m not sure about the people in this other world, but having to reconnect all the nerves in someone’s arm is no easy feat. I suppose it wouldn’t make good entertainment to watch the protagonist scream in pain for several hours during the operation, but given the difficulty in the line of work, a little more credit would be nice. Not to say that rearranging all the molecules of an object is easy either, but from what is shown, it gives the impression that by doing some research, clapping your hands together, and placing them on a intricately drawn circle (see video below for examples) is much more difficult than working with automail (of course being able to draw out this circle takes a bit of knowledge and skill on it’s own, it still doesn’t seem like that complex of an art).
Also, because of the utility of alchemy (one can repair a broken radio say so long as all the parts are present), engineering is further seen as useless as alchemy can probably do it much better. This element can especially be seen when the protagonist is brought into our world (more specifically to Germany in the years leading up to the Second World War), as the impression that is given is that he has been sent back to a more primitive time.
This isn’t to say that Full Metal Alchemist isn’t a good series – I would have to say it’s one of my favourites. However, it would be nice if the engineering material in the series was given a little more credit than it has gotten. As I have only seen the anime, I don’t quite know what the situation is like in the magna – this would be a good excuse as any to start reading it. =D
These mediums have their own fair share of crazy characters and themes, ranging from fights with fantasy monsters to Intergalactic spaceships to high school themed dramas. One of the few series I can recall that actually had an engineer in it is titled “Full Metal Alchemist”.
The world that the characters live in, Amestris, is a parallel one from our own, where alchemy, as a science, triumphed over science as we know it today (though their version of alchemy is just slightly short of magic in our terms). At a glance, it appears that they’re able to make things out of this air, or shoot fireballs and stones at will. However, what they’re actually doing is reconstructing matter at the molecular level, with the assistance of “Transmutation circles” (see picture below), which is the basis behind the fundamental law in alchemy, the law of equivalent exchange – “to obtain, something of equal value must be lost”.
A Transmutation CircleEssentially, what they have is a much more advanced (and cooler) form of chemistry than we do.
Although alchemy plays a huge role in this world, engineers have not been completely made obsolete. One character by the name of Winry works as an automail engineer. Basically put, automail is an advanced prosthetic limb (the limb is hooked up to the user’s nervous system so they can use it like an actual limb) made of a steel like material. Winry is capable of both making and repairing automail, in addition to having a knack for machinery in general. In short, she’s a mechanical engineer.
Winry Rockbell from Full Metal AlchemistYet again “science” is glorified to be much more interesting, and advanced as engineering is (not to say engineering is many times more difficult than science, but each have their own respective pros and cons).
The only element of engineering covered in the series is automail, and it seems like it’s downplayed to being similar to repairing a car. I’m not sure about the people in this other world, but having to reconnect all the nerves in someone’s arm is no easy feat. I suppose it wouldn’t make good entertainment to watch the protagonist scream in pain for several hours during the operation, but given the difficulty in the line of work, a little more credit would be nice. Not to say that rearranging all the molecules of an object is easy either, but from what is shown, it gives the impression that by doing some research, clapping your hands together, and placing them on a intricately drawn circle (see video below for examples) is much more difficult than working with automail (of course being able to draw out this circle takes a bit of knowledge and skill on it’s own, it still doesn’t seem like that complex of an art).
Also, because of the utility of alchemy (one can repair a broken radio say so long as all the parts are present), engineering is further seen as useless as alchemy can probably do it much better. This element can especially be seen when the protagonist is brought into our world (more specifically to Germany in the years leading up to the Second World War), as the impression that is given is that he has been sent back to a more primitive time.
This isn’t to say that Full Metal Alchemist isn’t a good series – I would have to say it’s one of my favourites. However, it would be nice if the engineering material in the series was given a little more credit than it has gotten. As I have only seen the anime, I don’t quite know what the situation is like in the magna – this would be a good excuse as any to start reading it. =D
Monday, March 30, 2009
Google vs. Apple, Data vs. Vision?
A week ago, Professor Foster had a lecture where he talked about Google’s visual designer Douglas Bowman leaving the company in order to join Twitter because Google’s engineers focus on things like tests for 41 shades of blue [1].
The argument is related to that of form and function. Should engineers adhere to data and rules, or are gut decisions the seeds of good design? This argument is hotly debated among designers. It appears in architecture, automobiles, and even in evolution where every feature in an organism exists due to function instead of form.
The Wainwright building, built so that the shape of the building is based on function instead of form. A large amount of space is saved in the design. It is also arguably an eyesore.
Professor Foster then mentioned on how Google’s engineers are acting like applied scientists, and that us engsci’s should steer clear of the data oriented design style. I have to disagree; I feel that Google is definitely on the right track and that gut feeling should be overruled by data. Why? I have 2 points to justify my claim:
1. Google attracts users through functionality, while Apple is riding on popularity, not design
Google currently ranks as the world’s top search engine. It has evolved from the little search engine that could to what it is now while similar search engines like MSN Search and Yahoo were left in the dust. Clearly, Google is doing something right. Upon closer examination, Google’s products are clearly not the most beautiful, yet they rank high in functionality. From the simplicity to the intuitive layout, users can navigate the software with ease.
Apple, however, uses a different strategy. Their products are clearly the forefront of design, moulded by the hands of someone considered to be a God among large numbers of people. However, apple has clearly filled a peculiar niche. If you look at other companies who tried similar strategies, such as Sony’s Vaio or Dell’s Adamo in the laptop department, they are clearly not doing as well as apple while their products can still be considered well designed. Why? The difference here is reputation. Apple can get away with lacking features or functionality in their products (ie: no radio) because they have a “cool” factor on their side. Yet ask a person about a company like Dell and their mind immediately jumps to poor reliability. In other words, function is valued before form when popularity points are not counted.
Whether a design will be popular cannot be quantified by Engineers. Instead, engineers should focus on what is concrete and guaranteed to satisfy users, and that is functional design decisions that are well justified.
2. Human decisions are flawed and cannot supersede data
Professor Foster said that gut feelings should be a valid design decision, while data should be used merely as a guideline to decisions. Professor Foster brought up an excellent refute to this claim in another recent lecture. He mentioned antennas that were used in space were designed by old people with an incredible knack in finding the correct antenna shape. However, even the best gut designs were completely outmatched by antenna’s designed by genetic algorithms, which are able to produce very close to mathematically optimal solutions to extremely hard problems. In this example, human intuition is easily crushed by a machine.
It is arguable that data can be skewed or can be made invalid through the measurement itself, yet is also arguable that humans can be biased, experts can be overconfident, and that gut feeling is unjustifiable in court.
Evolution is based on function. A giraffe has a long neck not because it makes it pretty and unique, but because it allows it to eat leaves from tall trees.
Going back to the 41 shades of blue, it can be seen that humans cannot comprehend the complexity of some problems, and gut decisions will ultimately fail to data:
“A designer, Jamie Divine, had picked out a blue that everyone on his team liked. But a product manager tested a different color with users and found they were more likely to click on the toolbar if it was painted a greener shade. As trivial as color choices might seem, clicks are a key part of Google’s revenue stream, and anything that enhances clicks means more money.” [2]
Now I may just be a first year engineer student, yet looking at user responses to blog posts relating to Douglas Bowman’s leave shows some consumer opinions:
It is obvious that asking an Apple fanboy would produce different answers, but then again, fanboy’s are attracted to Apple’s popularity. I am not saying that Professor Foster might have been biased in his lecture, but he does own quite a few Apple products.
PS: I would have to say Blogger is a Google product that is horrible in functionality. My editing screen is horribly small, the HTML does not do what I want it to do, loading images one at a time is a chore, and text gets constantly messed up. I could also do with some spell check feature so that I do not have to type everything up in Word first. Perhaps all these features are hidden around here somewhere, but a user shouldn't be digging for solutions. Google docs has simular problems with text layout and organization. A good idea would be to have the ability to move all blog posts and comments and everything from one blog provider to another, because if there was another blogging site that has better UI and moving there doesn't mean starting over or messing up people's RSS feeds, then I would be so in on the idea.
[1] http://i.gizmodo.com/5181402/googles-design-problem-all-data-no-vision
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/business/01marissa.html?_r=1Can an Engineer Believe in God?
Recently, in Bahen, I have noticed (and instantly thereafter became enraged at) some signs posing the question "Can an Engineer Believe in God?"
Bahen is utterly plastered with pro-religion posters (for reasons unknown to me, no other building appears to have contracted this infection) but on the whole, the posters themselves are relatively harmless- and rarely thought provoking. But can an engineer believe in God? I thought that it would be relevant to the topics discussed in this blog to give my answer to the question. In this post, I hope to convince you that the religious engineer is no engineer at all.
Engineers are practical people. They look at facts and the rules, and they question them. Engineers don't just "hope" that structures will stand- they test, they inquire, they fully understand the inner workings of the problems before putting their trust in their solutions. These are the fundamental principles of engineering. In many cases, the difference between a working and failed design is the difference between life and death, so an engineer can't trust anything but verifiable, reproducible, scientific evidence.
The principles of religion are exactly perpendicular to those of an engineer. If the fundamental tenant of engineering is questioning and understanding, the fundamental tenant of religion is faith. Faith is belief in the absence of evidence. Faith is the statement that "no matter what, I'll believe it."
Religion cannot be in the mind of an engineer, first and foremost, because it is an open statement of closed-mindedness. "You can't challenge my beliefs," says the religious engineer. "I will always believe, no matter what." This philosophy of arrogance and immunity to logical discussion is exactly what puts lives in danger when important work is at hand, and is exactly the opposite of an engineering mindset.
It is irrelevant whether this philosophy of arrogance and immunity to logic is confined to the spiritual aspects of an engineer's life- the presence of the dichotomy is a dangerous thing to play with. Which philosophy is the "right" one if they contradict? It is silly and illogical to think that different aspects of life require different, fundamentally contradictory mindsets. Imagine the day that religious thinking manages to pervade into engineering, buildings will be held up by nothing more than "the hand of god-" rather than the careful and rigorously logical calculations of a real engineer.
Now, some religious people actually think that they have carefully weighed the evidence for their religion and their faith is based on that evidence. But as any engineer knows, anecdotal, wishy-washy, "feelings-based" evidence is never strong enough to support ANY claim. Would you build a bridge based upon a single measurement made on a single piece of wood? Of course not! A true engineer requires repeatable, indisputable, time-tested and independently verified evidence before he puts his trust in something.
The fact is- not a single part of our vast, indisputable, time tested, and independently verified knowledge of the universe requires a creator or a god (unless you're an evolution denier[1], aka someone who hasn't read much). Any scientific tests on religion, for example, on the efficacy of prayer, have come up empty-handed. To trust in a god is to turn your back on the whole methodology of engineering.
I don't know about you, but I sure as hell hope that the people I trust to make the world run on time checked their superstitions at the door a long time ago.
[1] There are more historians that deny the holocaust[2] than scientists that deny evolution.
[2] Nested footnotes!
Bahen is utterly plastered with pro-religion posters (for reasons unknown to me, no other building appears to have contracted this infection) but on the whole, the posters themselves are relatively harmless- and rarely thought provoking. But can an engineer believe in God? I thought that it would be relevant to the topics discussed in this blog to give my answer to the question. In this post, I hope to convince you that the religious engineer is no engineer at all.
Engineers are practical people. They look at facts and the rules, and they question them. Engineers don't just "hope" that structures will stand- they test, they inquire, they fully understand the inner workings of the problems before putting their trust in their solutions. These are the fundamental principles of engineering. In many cases, the difference between a working and failed design is the difference between life and death, so an engineer can't trust anything but verifiable, reproducible, scientific evidence.
The principles of religion are exactly perpendicular to those of an engineer. If the fundamental tenant of engineering is questioning and understanding, the fundamental tenant of religion is faith. Faith is belief in the absence of evidence. Faith is the statement that "no matter what, I'll believe it."
Religion cannot be in the mind of an engineer, first and foremost, because it is an open statement of closed-mindedness. "You can't challenge my beliefs," says the religious engineer. "I will always believe, no matter what." This philosophy of arrogance and immunity to logical discussion is exactly what puts lives in danger when important work is at hand, and is exactly the opposite of an engineering mindset.
It is irrelevant whether this philosophy of arrogance and immunity to logic is confined to the spiritual aspects of an engineer's life- the presence of the dichotomy is a dangerous thing to play with. Which philosophy is the "right" one if they contradict? It is silly and illogical to think that different aspects of life require different, fundamentally contradictory mindsets. Imagine the day that religious thinking manages to pervade into engineering, buildings will be held up by nothing more than "the hand of god-" rather than the careful and rigorously logical calculations of a real engineer.
Now, some religious people actually think that they have carefully weighed the evidence for their religion and their faith is based on that evidence. But as any engineer knows, anecdotal, wishy-washy, "feelings-based" evidence is never strong enough to support ANY claim. Would you build a bridge based upon a single measurement made on a single piece of wood? Of course not! A true engineer requires repeatable, indisputable, time-tested and independently verified evidence before he puts his trust in something.
The fact is- not a single part of our vast, indisputable, time tested, and independently verified knowledge of the universe requires a creator or a god (unless you're an evolution denier[1], aka someone who hasn't read much). Any scientific tests on religion, for example, on the efficacy of prayer, have come up empty-handed. To trust in a god is to turn your back on the whole methodology of engineering.
I don't know about you, but I sure as hell hope that the people I trust to make the world run on time checked their superstitions at the door a long time ago.
[1] There are more historians that deny the holocaust[2] than scientists that deny evolution.
[2] Nested footnotes!
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Design Decisions (III) - The (history of the) Telephone
Earlier today, I was reading an article for my history class today, which was talking about the history of the telephone industry. To summarize the article, it starts off by talking about how the industry originally thought of the phone more as a tool for businessmen and marketed it as such. They emphasized how helpful it could be when it came to planning, as well as keeping in contact with the office while away on a vacation. They also saw social conversations as “’frivolous’ and ‘unnecessary’[1]”, and even changed their system to deter this kind of usage, such as changing payment from an annual flat rate to a metered system. After several decades of this, the companies decided to accept the social uses of their services, and started to change their marketing techniques to reflect this.
The obstacles faced by the phone companies reminded me of a question repeatedly asked in class - what is a good design? Sure, we can go on gut feeling, or even use a matrix to decide for us, but ultimately, what determines what a good design is? If one were to ask anyone in the western world about the phone, most would say it’s a pretty useful, well designed piece of technology. However, if phone companies continued their marketing strategy as they did by ignoring the social aspects of their services, they could have very well gone bankrupt. Shouldn't the best designs be at least remotely successful? If so, then why is it that some of the best designs never get off the ground, while other less impressive ones managed to succeed?
During the Engineering Science Education Conference, Hadi Dowlatabadi from UBC gave many examples of great ideas and designs that would help reduce energy usage, yet, many haven't been doing well in the market. Reasons? They included poor marketing, opposition being too strong and shutting down the idea, etc.
All in all, this just shows that regardless of how good a design is, it won’t get really far if it’s poorly managed, or not very marketable. This raises an interesting question – when designing a solution, should the engineer factor in these considerations when designing a solution? Of course a lot of research would be needed to be done to create the necessary metrics to evaluate the how marketable an object is. However, if everyone sticks to the safe side, and designs solutions that everyone has already seen and accepted before, what progress could be made?
I suppose this one's not as focused on comparing/contrasting design decisions, but reading this article brought to light something I didn't seriously consider before when making a design decision. Of course, I would like to think my solutions would be good enough to convince people that my way's the way to go, but it appears that sometimes that's not the way it goes sometimes - it doesn't matter how good you think your design is if no one else agrees with you (espcially the one's you're trying to sell your idea to).
[1] C. S. Fischer, Touch Someone: The Telephone Industy Discovers Sociability. The Johns Hopkins UNiversity Press, 1988, p. 32-61.
The obstacles faced by the phone companies reminded me of a question repeatedly asked in class - what is a good design? Sure, we can go on gut feeling, or even use a matrix to decide for us, but ultimately, what determines what a good design is? If one were to ask anyone in the western world about the phone, most would say it’s a pretty useful, well designed piece of technology. However, if phone companies continued their marketing strategy as they did by ignoring the social aspects of their services, they could have very well gone bankrupt. Shouldn't the best designs be at least remotely successful? If so, then why is it that some of the best designs never get off the ground, while other less impressive ones managed to succeed?
During the Engineering Science Education Conference, Hadi Dowlatabadi from UBC gave many examples of great ideas and designs that would help reduce energy usage, yet, many haven't been doing well in the market. Reasons? They included poor marketing, opposition being too strong and shutting down the idea, etc.
All in all, this just shows that regardless of how good a design is, it won’t get really far if it’s poorly managed, or not very marketable. This raises an interesting question – when designing a solution, should the engineer factor in these considerations when designing a solution? Of course a lot of research would be needed to be done to create the necessary metrics to evaluate the how marketable an object is. However, if everyone sticks to the safe side, and designs solutions that everyone has already seen and accepted before, what progress could be made?
I suppose this one's not as focused on comparing/contrasting design decisions, but reading this article brought to light something I didn't seriously consider before when making a design decision. Of course, I would like to think my solutions would be good enough to convince people that my way's the way to go, but it appears that sometimes that's not the way it goes sometimes - it doesn't matter how good you think your design is if no one else agrees with you (espcially the one's you're trying to sell your idea to).
"The story of how and why the telephone industry discovered sociability provides a few lessons for understanding the nature of technological diffusion. It suggest that promoters of a technology do not necessarily know or determine its final uses; that they seek problem or "needs" for which their technology is the answer; but that consumers may ultimately determine those uses for the promoters...In promoting technology, vendors are constrained not only by its technical and economic attributes but also by an interpretation of its uses shaped by its and their own histories, a cultural constraint that can be enduring and powerful.[1]"
[1] C. S. Fischer, Touch Someone: The Telephone Industy Discovers Sociability. The Johns Hopkins UNiversity Press, 1988, p. 32-61.
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