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> When you divide and specialize design, you get design by commitee. In your counter-example, the design was not divided, and thus it is not a counter-example
by Buttons840 1y ago
> When you divide and specialize design, you get design by commitee.
In your counter-example, the design was not divided, and thus it is not a counter-example at all.
- spongebobstoes 1y agoThe division of design doesn't stop because some of the pieces can be bought at a store. The lamp design clearly was divided -- the final designer did not design the screws, lightbulb, wiring, and perhaps many other components. Someone had to design those components that were then combined creatively into a lamp. Dividing design into components that can be effectively reused is tricky, but it remains essential.
- alganet 1y agoReal examples often work better. Last week I was learning about Itanium. It was a processor designed specifically for HP. Its goal was to replace both x86 and PowerPC. HP would design the new systems to run on Itanium, and Intel would design the chip. There was an attempt at specializing design here, with both companies running on design constraints from another. They formed a design comittee. This was like the screw company making screws _specifically_ for one kind of desk lamp. It's division and specialization of design. A natural specialization (one company gets very good at designing some stuff) is not divided, or orchestrated by a central authority. In manufacture, it's the other way around. If you already have a good design, the more divisions alongside a main central figure, the better. You can get tighter tolerances, timing benefits, etc. My argument is that these aspects are not transferrable from one concept to another. Design is different from manufacturing, and it gets worse if we try to apply the optimizations we often do with manufacturing to it.