CS294-8 Design Realization 2

1. CS294-8 Design Realization 2 John Canny Fall 2003

2. Course Information • Instructor: John Canny, jfc@cs.berkeley.edu529 Soda Hall (and 354 HMMB)642-9955, (F) 643-1534 • Office hours this week: Thursday 2-4pm. • Lectures 12:30-2pm Tu-Th here.

3. Design Realization • Is about the creation of “smart” and often networked artifacts. • Is intended to form part of the Berkeley Institute of Design’s core curriculum. • The BID curriculum focuses on design of smart environments. This course covers realization of the elements of a smart environment.

4. Preparation • One of: • Design Realization 1 (Back and Harrison) • ME 110: Intro. to product development • CS160: User interface design, prototyping & eval. • Any 100-series architecture class

5. Course Coverage • 3D design • Animation • 3D physical prototyping • Basic electronics • Real-time programming • Mechanics • Optics • Other suggestions?

6. In detail • Part 1: Images and Volumes • Geometry and transformations • Designing shapes (Maya) • Historical Influences • Improvisation in shape • Part 2: Animation • Trajectory interpolation • Physics of movement • Improvisation in movement • Part 3: Making shapes • Materials and processes • 2D & 3D Prototyping • CNC machining • Assembly • Part 4. Electronics • Digital Components and design principles • Analogue/digital boundary • PC board design and fab • Sensor types • Displays

7. In detail • Part 5: Real-time programming • Processes and threads • Shared data • Communication and networking • improvisation in an interactive device • Part 6: Mechanics • Material properties • Components • Building systems • improvisation in physical agents • Part 7: Optics • Physics of light • components • materials • opto-electronic boundary

8. Course goals • Fluency in these media: • Knowledge of what is possible vs. practical • Knowledge of what is hard vs. easy • Ability to do easy things • Leveraging others’ work to do some hard things • Learning skills to improve mastery of a medium • Knowledge of what, where and who to go to to exceed your own limits

9. Secondary goals • Skills at working in interdisciplinary teams • Ability to fill-in gaps and work across disciplinary boundaries • How to learn from a collaborative team: • Peer critique and problem-solving • Construction of a shared knowledge repository • Development of cross-medium design sense

10. Class pragmatics • The work for the class will comprise: • Small exercises in each of the media • Contributions to the class repository: • Reviews of readings will be posted online • Numerical ratings of papers will be required • New books, papers, links or other resources are expected • A larger (semester-long) project in one medium • Participation in class and critiques • You will hear soon about the class swiki

11. Class pragmatics • Assignments and project work will generally be done on one of the public computers in the BID space. • Send email to jfc@cs.berkeley.edu if you don’t have an EECS account.

12. Why so much breadth? • All of these topics are central to design of information-rich environments. • Lack of fluency creates “blind spots” or phobia of tackling the real problem. • Disciplinary boundaries are in flux – the ones we have now may shift in a few years.

13. Silos vs. Networks • Researchers of knowledge work have remarked on the trend away from the “silo model” to network-like organizations. Each silo contains a specialty:design, production, QA,… Network: much strongerconnectivity

14. Closed vs. Open Corporations • The closed (vertically-integrated) corporation is virtually extinct. Today, everybody outsources. • Its much harder to be competitive without product differentiation, so there are relatively few basic component developers (Intel, Siemens, 3M,…) • Most companies today are integrators, and profits are moving from products to solutions.

15. Discussion

16. Components vs. Systems • The components available for design are much more complex than in the past: • Gates → ALUs → CPUs → Servers • Motors → Servos → Motion stages → Robots • Fabrication tools are similarly much advanced: • Hand tools → CNC machining → 3D printing • Point-to-point wiring → PC boards → ExpressPCB • Selective breeding → gene splicing → Custom DNA (@ 30¢ per base in 1999 !!) • Other examples?

17. Components vs. Systems • Components come with usage aids: behavior models and use patterns, that drastically simplify their use. • Even specialists rely on high-level components • Their use does not require top-to-bottom understanding, which levels the playing field • Knowledge is more localized, tacit and experienced • Analysis is often left to the simulator.

18. Designing from components • So designing systems is much easier than it used to be. • The hypothesis of this course is that there is a common set of design/learning skills across media for smart artifacts. • We will create a shared set of knowledge resources for design: • Components, Suppliers, CAD tools, Fabricators,…

19. Outsourcing • Things that can be outsourced today at moderate cost: • Mechanical designs • Composites and cellular materials • Arbitrary 3D shapes • Printed-circuit boards • Optics: large lenses and diffusers, holograms, EL displays, (soon) e-paper • “Made-to-order” materials: polymers and nano-particle blends

20. Break

21. Design studio model • Your design knowledge has to be constructed by you. • Cooperation and critique with other students is the best way to build this knowledge. • You need to understand what you can do, and what you can’t. • We will borrow other techniques from design: improvisation exercises, case studies and design patterns.

22. Why is this a Berkeley class?Or where is the rigor? • Rigor has different forms, and where possible we will include theoretical material. • Theory includes optional readings on: • The mathematics or physics or engineering details of a design medium • Historical and critical essays on the medium • And:

23. Why is this a Berkeley class?Or where is the rigor? • The core knowledge of the course is meta-knowledge about how to acquire design expertise in a new medium. • Hence the frequent references to “knowledge work” and studies of it. We will include some readings on interdisciplinary and design work.

24. Meta-process • List the important qualities of the medium • Explore the design dimensions of the medium (improvisation) • Focus on one quality at a time • Test the limits of the medium • Learn good solutions via case studies and design patterns

25. Meta-process • Acquire resources for design in the medium: • Reference books • CAD tools and models • Network of fabricators • Create and maintain a design repository with the above information, plus your own cases and patterns

26. Itten’s “Design and Form” • The first course in the pre-war Bauhaus school of design. • Students experienced design in several media (glass, clay, stone, wood etc.), and later specialized. • There were complementary courses in theory: color, materials, representation,…

27. Itten’s “Design and Form” • Note his attention to qualities of forms, most often expressed as contrasts: • Large-small, high-low, transparent-opaque etc. • These are the expressive dimensions of the medium – functional aspects will be important too. • Are there other dimensions?

28. McCullough’s “Abstracting Craft” • Variations on a theme (figure 6.9, New England Steeples). • Several other examples appear in figures 8.1-8.6 • Covers classical and new affordances of new media (e.g. generative aspects).

29. Improvisations in motion • John Maeda’s Java applets: www.maedostudio.com

30. For next time • Carefully read Itten and McCullough. • Write a short summary of each in electronic form – ready to Swiki it soon. • Email me if you don’t have an EECS account.