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Vol. 11, No. 3, Summer 2000
Sarah A. Meyer, Assistant Professor, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
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The traditional view of a work environment is that of a linear process in which ordered parts make up the whole-that if the parts can be controlled, the end result can be defined and controlled as well. The design community, in contrast, is better described as a Gestalt-a psychological configuration in which the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. As Sarah Meyer, an adjunct faculty member at California State University and a graphic designer, explains, "The practice of design and its processes are best seen as a complex adaptive system." Complex systems are characterized more by relationships than by dissimilar functions performed for a mutual benefit. Taking Mitchell Waldrop's book Complexity as a jumping-off point, Meyer explains that there are four basic characteristics of a design practice as a complex system: self-management, cooperation, feedback, and flexibility.
Self-management implies that a firm consists of a network of people who act independently and without guidance from a central control. This does not imply that designers do not heed direction-just that they receive it in the form of feedback. When the system receives information, it internalizes the information and slightly changes the structure of the original process. Feedback comes from other members of an individual's cooperative behavior group, who rely on each other's strengths to strategize, analyze problems, develop methodologies, and create solutions. Self-management and feedback contribute to an environment in which flexible specialization is encouraged. This gives the individual the freedom to redefine and refine abilities and react to environmental changes via feedback.
These four functions are all equally important, and they depend on each other to create a working system. In this keynote article, Meyer offers interviews with four designers to illustrate each function and make clear how each contributes to the whole. "Management or self-management provides for the initiative and drive; groups and individuals address the intricacies of the design problem; feedback defines and educates the process; and specialization fills the specific design's needs."
Ideally, Meyer points out, the individuals within a design group and the group itself have similar objectives, but use different methods to accomplish those objectives. That is why collaboration often produces a superior final design that would not have resulted had the project been passed off from one designer to another, in the traditional "linear" mode. As Meyer says, "It is the knowledge gained by participating in the process that produces the final outcome."
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