CS294-8 Design Realization 2

John Canny

Fall 2003

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.

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.

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

Course Coverage

1. 3D design2. Animation3. 3D physical prototyping4. Basic electronics5. Real-time programming6. Mechanics7. Optics

8. Other suggestions?

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Discussion

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?

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.

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,…

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

Break

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.

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:

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.

Meta-process

1. List the important qualities of the medium

2. Explore the design dimensions of the medium (improvisation) Focus on one quality at a time Test the limits of the medium

3. Learn good solutions via case studies and design patterns

Meta-process

4. Acquire resources for design in the medium: Reference books CAD tools and models Network of fabricators

5. Create and maintain a design repository with the above information, plus your own cases and patterns

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,…

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?

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).

Improvisations in motion

John Maeda’s Java applets: www.maedostudio.com

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.