[Sigia-l] Edge design

Thu Mar 15 12:33:11 EDT 2007

To pursue the analogy, allowing environmental changes means that you
allow for self-destruction. Patterns of use can eventually kill
usability. For instance, delicious had the potential to become a
near-universally useful tool, but the preponderance of CSS/AJAX
designers on delicious means that when I show it to business folks,
their answer is "this is a site for web designers. I'm not a web
designer."

In this case, the web2.0 crowd has burrowed deep into this ecological
niche, and saturated it. The reef is overgrown with rounded-corner
algae, which are slowly choking other life forms. The reef might be
killing itself. 

Ecological models sound attractive, because of their organic growth and
self-organizing characteristics, which makes them adaptable and close to
effort-free... but let's remember that evolution is essentially a dumb
process, favoring chance, timing, and immediacy over value. Survival of
the fittest doesn't mean survival of the best. There are many good
articles and blog posts out there that don't follow the "12 ways to do
XYZ" pattern, and therefore don't win the delicious/dig popularity
contests. 

So it feels to me that power will come from an ability to nurture and
influence natural organic systems to maintain balance. Biodiversity is a
very delicate balance, and while building online communities or
taxonomies that grow organically has proved relatively easy to do,
building balanced, diverse, rich ecosystems of thought will likely
require much more sophistication. 

Antoine Valot  |  Senior Information Architect / Business Analyst  |  BT
INS  |  Cell: 303.995.5618  |  Email: antoine.valot at bt.com 

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-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On
Behalf Of Todd Roberts
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 7:26 AM
To: SIGIA-L
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Edge design

One way to think of any interface is as an edge between two things -
between two people, between a person and a data repository, between
two data repositories, etc. The idea of the interface as a reef is
interesting and perhaps provides some ecological support for
user-created/altered interfaces. (I'm sure someone is doing research
from this approach and I'm just behind the times ;)

What would be more viable - a reef coated in epoxy to freeze it at a
certain point in time, or a living reef that can adapt to changing
conditions? The prior may have been the optimal reef when it was
frozen, but over time it would fall victim environmental changes. The
living reef can continuously alter its structure to fit the needs of
the environment (within some set of parameters, just as no interface
can be infinitely altered).

Accordingly, interfaces that are not frozen in place by the creators
should be more viable than static interfaces. Within the boundaries of
flexibility, the interface could change as the environment changes.
E.g. del.icio.us is not bound by a controlled vocabulary, so it
remains useful even as lingo/terminology changes over time.

Are there examples of interfaces that would suffer from such
malleability? Even in the healthcare-related system I work on, which
on its face would seem to require pretty rigid input, there are
inefficincies created by said rigidity. Concepts change, workflows
change, and these changes are a big pain to deal with in the fixed
system we have.

On 3/14/07, Andrew Boyd <facibus at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> an idea for discussion.
>
> One of the principles of Permaculture is that biological systems are
> richer along edges - where the nutrient rich current hits the reef, or
> the land meets the sea.
>
> Is there any application of this to design? Can we create "artificial
> reefs" for information to grow upon? Is the flood of tagging into a
> rigidly hierarchical taxonomy a real example?
>
> Cheers, Andrew
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