CS294-8 Design Realization 2
John Canny
Fall 2003
Course Information
 Instructor: John Canny, jfc@cs.berkeley.edu
529 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:
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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.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
3D design
Animation
3D physical prototyping
Basic electronics
Real-time programming
Mechanics
Optics
8. Other suggestions?
In detail
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Part 1: Images and Volumes
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Geometry and transformations
Designing shapes (Maya)
Historical Influences
Improvisation in shape
Part 2: Animation
 Trajectory interpolation
 Physics of movement
 Improvisation in movement
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Part 3: Making shapes
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Materials and processes
2D & 3D Prototyping
CNC machining
Assembly
Part 4. Electronics
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Digital Components and design principles
Analogue/digital boundary
PC board design and fab
Sensor types
Displays
In detail
 Part 5: Real-time programming
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Processes and threads
Shared data
Communication and networking
improvisation in an interactive device
 Part 6: Mechanics
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Material properties
Components
Building systems
improvisation in physical agents
 Part 7: Optics
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Physics of light
components
materials
opto-electronic boundary
Course goals
 Fluency in these media:
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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 stronger
connectivity
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:
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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 nanoparticle 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 metaknowledge 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)
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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:
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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 8.18.6
 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.