[Sigia-l] A matter of architecture

[Ziya Oz]

In a recent article Bruce Schneier talks about the permanent impact of
architectural decisions:

"Form follows function. From medieval castles to modern airports, security
concerns have always influenced architecture..."

"These changes were expensive. The problem is that architecture tends toward
permanence, while security threats change much faster. Something that seemed
a good idea when a building was designed might make little sense a century
-- or even a decade -- later. But by then it's hard to undo those
architectural decisions."

<http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71968-0.html>

Why is this relevant to us?

I see best practices as the equivalent of this in design. Today's best
practice (because someone else, or everybody else for that matter, is doing
it so it must be the best way to do it syndrome) becomes tomorrow's
legacy/eyesore/dysfunctional crap some of us are hired to undo.

In a similar vein, I'm also watching videos of Douglas Crockford, Yahoo¹s
JavaScript guy, talking about how architectural decisions made by Netscape,
Microsoft and W3C affected web designers/developers for years to come:

<http://yuiblog.com/blog/2006/10/20/video-crockford-domtheory/>

Getting architectural decisions right is obviously supremely important in
design. It's very easy to miss:

Newsweek: "Other companies had already tried to make a hard disk drive music
player. Why did Apple get it right?

Steve Jobs: We had the hardware expertise, the industrial design expertise
and the software expertise, including iTunes. One of the biggest insights we
have was that we decided not to try to manage your music library on the
iPod, but to manage it in iTunes. Other companies tried to do everything on
the device itself and made it so complicated that it was useless."

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15262121/site/newsweek/>

Perhaps the most amazing discovery of the obvious is Microsoft's two-decades
late realization that hardware/software/service integration (as opposed to
commodity component amalgamation) is the better architecture in the CE
space: Zune.

One of the principal objectives of designers should be wrestling the mantle
of architecture from others...and being equipped to do so. Lest we are
relegated to implementers of the insignificant.

----
Ziya

Usability >  Simplify the Solution
Design >  Simplify the Problem