Georgia Investment Network


Recent Blogs


Pitching Help Desk


Testimonials

"I have been an investor for 2 years. Through this site I have managed to finance 4 projects. I am very pleased with my membership. "
Dave M.

 BLOG >> July 2018

Types of Design [Design
Posted on July 26, 2018 @ 07:45:00 AM by Paul Meagher

When we think about design, we perhaps think of it as one type of mental process or activity. A recent article called Positive, Negative, and Neutral Design argues that we can engage in landscape design by adding, subtracting, or doing nothing to the elements in the landscape. Often we think about design as coming up with a plan and then implementing that plan by adding the elements in our plan to the landscape. Another way to approach landscape design is to remove unwanted elements from the landscape. This is called negative design. It is often less labor and resourse intensive than positive design. An example would be to create a pasture for animals by selectively cutting away trees in a forest. This is the way agriculture would have spread in the beginning. Neutral design involves "doing nothing" by letting the landscape evolve on its own. The basic idea is to approach landscape design with a combination of positive, negative, and neutral mindsets to come up with a landscape design that works.

The author advocates an approach to landscape design that involves letting many flowers bloom and then culling what you don't want. In other words, plant many seeds/seedlings without alot of regard for whether they will survive or not, see what grows and what doesn't grow, and then cull out what you don't want. He calls this a weakly positive approach combined with a negative approach. It is often how new farmers begin their farming careers by trying out different things, seeing what works and what doesn't work, and then focusing resources on what does work and less or no resources on what does not work so well.

My wife is trying to get my son to get rid of clothes he no longer wears from his room. We are essentially asking him to engage in negative design - remove the unwanted elements from his wardrobe. I suggested that perhaps my wife would have to do the negative design for him and leave him with the positive design aspect of picking out the elements he does want from what was culled out. The point here is that a negative design problem isn't necessarily more easy than a positive design problem and that we can approach the same objective (remove unwanted clothes) from different mindsets [negative (son) OR positive (son) + negative (mom)]. My sons mindset is probably a neutral one - leave things as they are, its my room and I don't have a problem with how things are right now. That mindset will not survive my wife's desire to remove clutter so she can take more control of the room when he leaves again for university. So the neutral mindset will have to go.

The article discussed in this blog was posted on the website, Making Permaculture Stronger, where an inquiry into the merits of different approaches to landscape design has been going on for awhile now. The four approaches under consideration are winging it, fabricating, hybrid, and generating. In the 22nd post in his inquiry, Dan Palmer arrives at the conclusion expressed in this diagram:

Essentially, Dan is arguing that the traditional fabricating approach that involves designing all the elements up front and then implementing that design does not work very well in practice. One better approach, the hybrid approach, is to do the high level design so you are guided at the macro level, but to do the detailed design in stages as you implement parts of the high level design. This allows you to incorporate feedback as you proceed to the next part of the design, while maintaining the overall structure that you want to impose. I would argue the diagram is incorrect in that imposing and unfolding boundaries should meet in the center above the hybrid approach. The generating approach is a bit more radical in that even the high level design has the potential to be altered in light of feedback from the low level design.

The purpose of this blog was to consider whether design is one type of mental activity or process or whether it actually refers to a multitude of mindsets and approaches. My conclusion is the latter. There are multiple mindsets that you can use when engaging in a design - positive, negative, and neutral - and there are multiple approaches you might adopt which include winging it, fabricating, hybrid and generating. In contexts with alot of uncertainty winging it might be appropriate and it seems to me that engineers are often asked to use a fabricating approach. That same engineer might use a hybrid or generating approach when it comes to their home landscape design because they have the luxury of doing it that way. Sometimes you are given more creative leeway to work with the landscape.

Permalink 

 Archive 
 

Archive


 November 2023 [1]
 June 2023 [1]
 May 2023 [1]
 April 2023 [1]
 March 2023 [6]
 February 2023 [1]
 November 2022 [2]
 October 2022 [2]
 August 2022 [2]
 May 2022 [2]
 April 2022 [4]
 March 2022 [1]
 February 2022 [1]
 January 2022 [2]
 December 2021 [1]
 November 2021 [2]
 October 2021 [1]
 July 2021 [1]
 June 2021 [1]
 May 2021 [3]
 April 2021 [3]
 March 2021 [4]
 February 2021 [1]
 January 2021 [1]
 December 2020 [2]
 November 2020 [1]
 August 2020 [1]
 June 2020 [4]
 May 2020 [1]
 April 2020 [2]
 March 2020 [2]
 February 2020 [1]
 January 2020 [2]
 December 2019 [1]
 November 2019 [2]
 October 2019 [2]
 September 2019 [1]
 July 2019 [1]
 June 2019 [2]
 May 2019 [3]
 April 2019 [5]
 March 2019 [4]
 February 2019 [3]
 January 2019 [3]
 December 2018 [4]
 November 2018 [2]
 September 2018 [2]
 August 2018 [1]
 July 2018 [1]
 June 2018 [1]
 May 2018 [5]
 April 2018 [4]
 March 2018 [2]
 February 2018 [4]
 January 2018 [4]
 December 2017 [2]
 November 2017 [6]
 October 2017 [6]
 September 2017 [6]
 August 2017 [2]
 July 2017 [2]
 June 2017 [5]
 May 2017 [7]
 April 2017 [6]
 March 2017 [8]
 February 2017 [7]
 January 2017 [9]
 December 2016 [7]
 November 2016 [7]
 October 2016 [5]
 September 2016 [5]
 August 2016 [4]
 July 2016 [6]
 June 2016 [5]
 May 2016 [10]
 April 2016 [12]
 March 2016 [10]
 February 2016 [11]
 January 2016 [12]
 December 2015 [6]
 November 2015 [8]
 October 2015 [12]
 September 2015 [10]
 August 2015 [14]
 July 2015 [9]
 June 2015 [9]
 May 2015 [10]
 April 2015 [9]
 March 2015 [8]
 February 2015 [8]
 January 2015 [5]
 December 2014 [11]
 November 2014 [10]
 October 2014 [10]
 September 2014 [8]
 August 2014 [7]
 July 2014 [5]
 June 2014 [7]
 May 2014 [6]
 April 2014 [3]
 March 2014 [8]
 February 2014 [6]
 January 2014 [5]
 December 2013 [5]
 November 2013 [3]
 October 2013 [4]
 September 2013 [11]
 August 2013 [4]
 July 2013 [8]
 June 2013 [10]
 May 2013 [14]
 April 2013 [12]
 March 2013 [11]
 February 2013 [19]
 January 2013 [20]
 December 2012 [5]
 November 2012 [1]
 October 2012 [3]
 September 2012 [1]
 August 2012 [1]
 July 2012 [1]
 June 2012 [2]


Categories


 Agriculture [77]
 Bayesian Inference [14]
 Books [18]
 Business Models [24]
 Causal Inference [2]
 Creativity [7]
 Decision Making [17]
 Decision Trees [8]
 Definitions [1]
 Design [38]
 Eco-Green [4]
 Economics [14]
 Education [10]
 Energy [0]
 Entrepreneurship [74]
 Events [7]
 Farming [21]
 Finance [30]
 Future [15]
 Growth [19]
 Investing [25]
 Lean Startup [10]
 Leisure [5]
 Lens Model [9]
 Making [1]
 Management [12]
 Motivation [3]
 Nature [22]
 Patents & Trademarks [1]
 Permaculture [36]
 Psychology [2]
 Real Estate [5]
 Robots [1]
 Selling [12]
 Site News [17]
 Startups [12]
 Statistics [3]
 Systems Thinking [3]
 Trends [11]
 Useful Links [3]
 Valuation [1]
 Venture Capital [5]
 Video [2]
 Writing [2]