Design Anything – A Course on Design Philosophy

The introductory page introduced the door hinge. We can view this as a system because the inventor did not make the object used to block the hole in the wall. It was pre-existing. The inventor did not make the balance stone.  He selected it for certain properties – a smooth round pebble was ideal because it could swivel. He did not make the bit of rope, what the  inventor did was to INTEGRATE other precursor items that already worked.

When we come to examine design we quickly realise that we are examining smaller sub-systems and how those were brought together by the designer.  The designer had to understand the properties of each sub-system, realise that they could be combined with other sub-systems and know the limitations. For example, a property of rope is that it is strong in tension, but cannot hold anything in compression. It is flexible.