When I think of bottom up design I often think of ant colonies and beehives. When I think of top down design, I think of things like bridges, books, and buildings. In the first case, design seems to emerge or manifest from many small pieces of deliberate action. In the second case, I see design coming from planning and deliberation.

I have a hard time thinking of the common thread. Perhaps it is intelligence. Yes, that is what I am thinking. No matter how you produce it and no matter how you slice it, design seems to be about intelligence. The moderating factor seems to be the market for the design. Put another way, the primary factor is how the design is situated in the environment.

In my opinion, the success of a design is matter of how well the manifestation of intelligence survives in an environment.

That's spicy! What do you think? Fire away!

Posted by: John S. Rhodes on August 10, 2002 01:36 PM

 

I don't know if it's as simple as bottom up or top down. I find that I design in both directions at once, but I couldn't say which was more important at any given point.

I think the question of up/down design can get confused with up/down management structures. I think I could safely say that on paper most organisations have a top-down structure, but if you look under the procedures at what is actually hapenning then you would propably see a much more mixed picture where the flows are up/down, side to side, and off the planet.

Posted by: Mac on August 12, 2002 04:10 AM

 

I think that in its purest terms they are polar opposites...but hat is in the way in which design is managed.

I think in a complex world where there is a free range of ideas, thoughts and intellect you end up falling back on design being up or down being more a reflection of management structure - this is directly to Mac’s point as well as your John.

Ants etc are in a more simplified world - they are complex structures - but each ant is programmed to do a certain thing and they probably don't even know where they fit in the big picture.

Human's when involved in the design process are always affected by consumer wants and needs – or profit.

Posted by: JB on August 12, 2002 04:06 PM