RR Week 5 – Constraints!

RR Week 5 – Constraints! Due by midnight Friday of this week. 

Read the excerpts below and click on the comments section at the bottom of the blog to comment on EACH reading, mention what jumped out at you from the readings and why: what do you think makes sense; what seems illogical to you; what is something that you might not have considered previously? Tell us what your experiences with constraints have been. 

EXCERPT #1: This first excerpt is about why features sometimes get overdone or left out completely when software (or an electronic game) is being created...

"What has been described as 'creeping elegance' is probably better described as 'feature blight,' for like a fungus on a plant it gradually elaborates and blurs the true outline of the product while it drains its sap. The antidote to feature blight is, of course, the 'constricting deadline.' This results in features being discarded in proportion to the time it would take to implement them. It is often the case that the most useful features take the longest to implement. Thus the combination of the blight and the deadline yields software as we know and love it, comprised of bountiful quantities of useless features." —Jef Raskin, author (from "Why Software Is the Way It Is") From “Getting Real” Read more here.

EXCERPT #2: Beatrice C. Benne, Ph.D. talks about how we view constraints...

"For many of us, the word 'constraints' often carries a negative connotation as it seems to imply that there are ‘things’ in our environment that limit or restrict our freedom to act and to achieve our goals. Yet, people with design training know that constraints can be useful in that they provide the canvas within which ideas are framed, concepts developed, and decisions made. In fact, without constraints, creativity and innovation would be merely impossible. As Jeff Klein once reflected, 'constraints are akin to the tiny irritant that causes an oyster to
make a pearl.' 

For a designer, constraints provide the context that informs the design process; without them, the designer would have to choose from an infinite number of design possibilities – a daunting task. In architectural design, building program requirements, specific site conditions, environmental conditions, technical requirements, budget, material availability, and regulations are only but a few of the numerous constraints that an architect has to juggle with on a daily basis. While those constraints force the architect to make some trade-offs, they also drive the necessary decisions that move the design process forward. Indeed, we must acknowledge that complete freedom in the ‘real’ world is an illusion as any decision we make and action we take drive our next actions and the ones of our peers. In fact, as soon as a designer draws a line representing a wall on a piece of paper, she is in fact setting a significant design constraint. In business like in our personal life, constraints can be self-imposed or externally-driven.

And, while we may be required to deal with most of them, some constraints may be unnecessarily limiting. Figuring out how to use constraints as a source of creativity is one of the most rewarding challenges in today’s complex environment."

This is from: Hirshberg J. 1998, The
Creative Priority: Driving Innovative Business in the Real World. Harper
Collins Publishers, New York.

EXCERPT #3:  This is from a post from Beatrice C. Benne’s blog:

“Let’s say I am a coffee shop owner.  I want you to tell me what is better for the environment: using paper cups, hence increasing deforestation or, using ceramic cups, which I now have to wash using energy and lots of water?  (Of course, much energy and water were used to make the paper cups as well.)

Perhaps you know the answer to this question but more likely you are like me and you don’t.  Perhaps there are some experts out there who have done a comparative life cycle analysis of both solutions and who know the answer.  Perhaps the answer depends on where the coffee shop is located—I would suspect the answer would be different in India or Africa than it is in the U.S.  Perhaps ceramic cups are a better choice today while paper cups might be better in 5 or 10 years when we experience a major water shortage.  Perhaps in 20 years neither solution will be a good one because we won’t have enough water to make our coffee, anyway.  There may not be any coffee growing, by the way. 

I may be over-dramatizing but you get the point.  We all mean well and we are all trying to do the right thing and we truly care.  Yet, driven by our mental models (yes, I know, I have been focusing quite a bit on them lately but they seem to me so critical if one wants to move to the next stage), we love to find easy technical answers to our complex problems and we love jumping to conclusions quickly.” Read more here.

PLEASE put your name on your post.

Due by midnight Friday this week – 2/8/13.