Archive for the 'design' Category

"So if you want to be a novelist, don’t be a copy editor."

I'm enthralled by the ongoing story of an architect starting her own business. Alane Ebner is a NYC architect who is opening her own business. She's getting outside help. Her goal is to be fully operational in 10 weeks. She and the Transformist team are blogging every step of the way. She's in day 20 of her 82 day plan. Check in…

Design for design sake? Not according to BW Best Product Designs of 2005 nor bplusd. Jess McMullin writes,

"Value-centered design recognizes that the point of our work is to generate value. And not just bottom line cost savings, or top line sales through new products. True value comes at the intersection of business goals and human needs."

McMullin's weblog explores how design addresses human needs while satisfying business objectives. He has a refreshing perspective. Also, check out the design websites in his blogroll.

Mary Poppendieck has published two new articles: Breaking the Quality–Speed Compromise and Managing the Pipeline. Mary is the co-author of the book Lean Software Development with her husband Tom Poppendieck. Mary has a great outlook on software development that comes from many years in the profession.

In Breaking the Quality-Speed Compromise, Mary explores the everyday understanding to increase the quality of design activity one must increase the time available for design. There are firms who break the time-quality trade-off and by doing so position themselves to take business away from others. Mary develops the case that high-quality software product development doesn't have to take time. She proposes:

"The most important thing we can do to break the compromises we impose on customers is to move testing forward and put it in-line with (or prior to) coding. In other words, find and fix the defects before they even count as defects."

This approach can apply to all design activity. The general principle is this: Establish the criteria for acceptance prior to doing the design work.

In Managing the Pipeline Mary proposes 6 Rules for reducing cycle time — guiding your projects based on queuing theory:

1. Limit work to capacity
2. Even out the arrival of work
3. Minimize the number of things-in-process
4. Minimize the size of things-in-process
5. Establish a regular cadence
6. Use pull scheduling

While Mary attributes these rules to queuing theory (from the field of Operations Research), we can find these rules in operation in the Toyota Production System. I don't argue with attribution. Rather, I suggest that all we need do is look to the world's most successful approach to product development and production for validation of Mary's proposals.

As usual, Mary writes well and persuasively. Have a look.

The August 8, 2004, Sunday Edition of the New York Times ran a story Building a Bad Reputation: Sloppy American Construction, Julie V. Iovine. The story appeared in the Arts and Design section. [You'll need to move fast to read the article. The NYT only makes their stories available for about 1 week. If you haven't registered with the site, then you'll have to do that before viewing.]

This story will make its way around the AEC and real estate industries. Ms. Iovine is saying publicly what many architects have been saying about contractors and the subcontractor workforce for years.

"Got a gaping one-inch space between frame and window? Just fill it in with silicone and call it a day. Not perfectly flush or plumb? Who cares!"

But she doesn't stop there. She's also saying what contractors have been saying about architects.

"(T)he architect's reputation for meticulous standards was so daunting that some 50 contractors had refused to bid on the job."

Is our industry broken? Do we have a bad reputation among foreign designers? While it may be an exception, some people in the industry are up for the challenge.

"At first there was this big fear that the kind of quality possible in Japan was impossible here. Some of us took that as a challenge to achieve the equivalent level of craftsmanship."

There is something foreign designers value about the American way.

"The team spirit in the U.S. is exceptional. Once they are in front of a challenge, they rise to it. It was a pure American effort."

I suspect poor quality persists due to the way we manage.

Here's what I make of the situation. In the U.S.A. we do not have a value for and practice of learning and innovating on the jobsite. Too often we buy out the job by awarding pieces to subcontractors on a lowest price basis. Those subcontractors hire other specialist subcontractors each offering their lowest price. We do this in an attempt to optimize the cost of the job. Instead, we get sub-optimization of systems and the project as a whole. Further, we bring strangers together and make no effort to build relationships. Why bother? Labor is labor? We can replace one person with another without negative consequences to the job. And that's where we are wrong.

We can make concrete that has "the airless density of a flourless chocolate cake." We can form that concrete so the finish can be polished. And we even can design, fabricate, and install curtain wall systems to tight tolerances. But we can't do any of that reliably without fundamentally changing what we value from our construction activities. And that goes for the architects too. They must bring construction folk into the earliest stages of design if they want a design that is constructable to their intentions.

I see the lean approach transforming the AEC industry.

I suspect poor quality persists due to the way we manage. The story of Toyota's entry to the U.S.A. is instructive. Toyota took GM's worst plant in Freemont, CA, where there were reported to be more worker grievances than in the rest of GM combined. That plant is also where they had low quality and high recalls. Giving up, GM closed the plant. Toyota came in and hired back a large group of the workforce but not the management. Instead, Toyota infused the workforce with the Toyota DNA. Then together management and workers designed the plant operations. The Corollas that come off that line are equally good as those from Japan.

Ms. Iovine interviewed Dana Buntrock, author of "Japanese Architecture as a Collaborative Process". Ms. Buntrock, just up the road from Toyota, said quality is tied to wealth. But she's changing her mind.

"Now I am beginning to wonder if well-built architecture occurs only at a very fragile economic moment. You need not only affluence, but a group of people who are well paid enough to remain in the crafts and building trades even though they are intelligent, and you need the overall size of an architectural project to remain relatively small."

I'm more optimistic than Ms. Buntrock. Just as the lean approach has made Toyota a powerhouse and competitors their imitators, I see the lean approach transforming the AEC industry. And it is well on its way in northern California, just a few miles from Toyota's Freemont facility. Read the August 7, 2004 story appearing in the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal Sutter Health Tells It's Builders, "Make It Lean".

My first Zweig Letter article, Strangers, Friends, and Partners, is now available on this site. I've added a page to this website for listing articles with summaries. Look for the Articles link in the navigation bar above. I've posted other articles along with a place-holder for the article published today in the Zweig Letter, Head-Banging in the A/E Industry. You can read the summary until I publish the full article here on November 1.

So what is the Zweig Letter? It's the weekly newsletter from Zweig White, "…the largest, most diverse organization devoted exclusively to serving the needs of design and construction firms." View a sample issue.

Dad knows best…not! While finishing the outdoor room we got to the point of laying the pavers. My son worked concentric circles using a variety of squares and keystone shapes. The rest of the family kept feeding him those blocks as he called for them. He finished the 18 foot circle with a row of darker pavers to give it a crisp visual edge. Up next…laying two walkways to the circle.

The pavers for the walkways were 6″x9″ and 6″x6″ in the ratio of 4 to 3, respectively. This is equivalent to an 18″x18″ space. I wanted to work out a pattern that would be repeated throughout the two walkways. One walkway was 42″ wide. The other was 84″ wide narrowing to 42″ as it approached the circle. To further complicate it the brothers decided to build the two walkways at the same time, one working from the driveway to the circle, the other working from the deck to the patio. (Bear with me here.) To me it looked like a mess about to unfold. My landscape architect student son had another idea. He would let a pattern emerge.

Working with a few simple rules the two boys could independently approach the circle. Their rules: use 4 rectangles for every 3 squares; bridge 3 rows with 2 rectangles every once in awhile. The rest of us fed the pavers in batches of 4 rectangles and 3 squares. Randomness evolved.

Here's my lesson: first, trust competence; second, autonomous agents acting in accord with a few simple rules will produce something functional and unexpected. The circle and the walkways are beautiful…far superior to Dad's repeated pattern. Have a look.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about another lesson in emergent/organic processes…my participation in a day-long open space planning session for Coachville.