Design Instability
$12.00
Minimum price
$18.00
Suggested price

Design Instability

Understanding Design Actions in an Unpredictable World

About the Book

Designers deal with an overwhelmingly rich reality, undetermined requirements, highly intricate social situations, lack of information, as well as lack of resource and time restrictions. Every designer is faced and challenged by this complexity.

A central thesis explored in this book is that complexity characteristic for design activities emerges from an inherent *instability of design activities*. We will argue that this instability is a consequence of messy, dynamic, highly interdependent and unpredictable dynamics between design situations, design outcomes, and design resources. Design situations, design outcomes and design resources are complex structures that are not independent of each other. They are also continuously changing, in great part due to forces that are beyond designers' control.

In this book, we describe 11 patterns of design dynamics. The patterns of dynamics illustrate how designers deal with ambiguity, uncertainty, and complexity when they attempt to change the world. As such, these patterns are universal to all design disciplines. Design disciplines may differ in which situations they address, which outcomes they create and which resources they use. But the way how people deal with ambiguity, uncertainty, and complexity is cross-disciplinary. Consequently, we present examples of patterns of dynamics from a very diverse set of design disciplines.

About the Authors

Željko Obrenović
Željko Obrenović

Željko Obrenović (http://obren.io) is a Chief Architect at AVIV Group. Before joining AVIV Group, he worked as a Principal Architect at eBay Classifieds, a CTO of Incision, a principal consultant at the Software Improvement Group (SIG) in Amsterdam, a consultant at Backbase, an assistant professor at the Technical University in Eindhoven, and a researcher at CWI.

Erik Stolterman
Erik Stolterman

Erik Stolterman is Professor in Informatics and Department Chair of Informatics at the School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University, Bloomington. He is also professor at the Institute of Design at Umeå University, Sweden. Stolterman is co-Editor for the Design Thinking/Design Theory book series by MIT Press, and on several editorial boards for international journals (The HCI journal, International Journal of Design, Design Studies, Design, Economics and Innovation, International Journal of Designs for Learning, Studies in Material Thinking, Human Computation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Artifact). Stolterman’s main work is within the areas of interfaces, interactivity, interaction design, design practice, philosophy and theory of design. Stolterman has published a large number of articles and five books, including “Thoughtful Interaction Design” (MIT Press) and “The Design Way” (MIT Press) and “Things That Keep Us Busy--The Elements of Interaction” (MIT Press, 2017).

Table of Contents

  • Part I: Introduction
    • A. Analyzing Design Dynamics: A Simple Model
    • B. Why This Book?
    • C. Who Should Read This Book?
    • D. The Structure of the Book
    • E. Acknowledgments
    • F. About the Cover
  • Part II: Patterns of Dynamics
    • A. Patterns of Dynamics Between Design Situations and Design Outcomes
      • Co-Evolution of Problem-Solution
      • Puzzle Solving
      • A Solution Looking for a Problem
      • Pandora’s Box
      • The Force Awakens
    • B. Patterns of Dynamics Between Design Outcomes and Resources
      • Your Design Is Your Reflection
      • You Are Reflection of Your Design
      • Design-by-Buzzword
    • C. Patterns of Dynamics Between Design Situations and Design Resources
      • Conformity
      • Commitment
      • Cherry Picking
    • D. Emergence of Complex Patterns of Dynamics
  • Part III: Sources of Dynamics
    • A. The Moving Target Problem
    • B. Increasing Interconnectivity
    • C. Learning and Creativity
    • D. Tacit Knowledge and Skills
    • E. Social Dynamics
    • F. Lack of Strong Principles, Theories, and Laws
  • Discussion and Conclusions
  • Bibliography
  • Appendixes
    • A. Patterns of Dynamics: Summaries
    • B. Patterns of Dynamics: Mottos
    • C. Sources of Dynamics: Summaries
    • D. Questions to Consider
  • About the Authors
  • Notes

The Leanpub 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee

Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.

Now, this is technically risky for us, since you'll have the book or course files either way. But we're so confident in our products and services, and in our authors and readers, that we're happy to offer a full money back guarantee for everything we sell.

You can only find out how good something is by trying it, and because of our 100% money back guarantee there's literally no risk to do so!

So, there's no reason not to click the Add to Cart button, is there?

See full terms...

80% Royalties. Earn $16 on a $20 book.

We pay 80% royalties. That's not a typo: you earn $16 on a $20 sale. If we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book or course for $20, you'll earn $80,000.

(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)

In fact, authors have earnedover $13 millionwriting, publishing and selling on Leanpub.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub

Free Updates. DRM Free.

If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).

Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.

Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.

Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them

Write and Publish on Leanpub

You can use Leanpub to easily write, publish and sell in-progress and completed ebooks and online courses!

Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks.

Leanpub is a magical typewriter for authors: just write in plain text, and to publish your ebook, just click a button. (Or, if you are producing your ebook your own way, you can even upload your own PDF and/or EPUB files and then publish with one click!) It really is that easy.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub