A6BenJacobErynZaynabMaryamAaron

A6BenJacobErynZaynabMaryamAaron

To-Do

please create an answer via the form for this assignment addressing the following issues:

• which was the most interesting idea/concept you learned from the article? what is the relationship of this idea/concept to your own work and own thinking?
• which is the most prominent meta-design environment you can think off? Why?
• analyze one computational environment in detail from a meta-design perspective? (if you can't think of a better one: analyze Microsoft-Word)
• argue in which sense the American constitution may be considered as a success example for meta-design

Most interesting idea/concept

Before the time of the internet, a computer was a single used, solitary machine where only one user at a given time could use the device. The Internet enabled users to collaborate and communicate as well as Co-Create online information to a point where now, the internet is completely co-created by any and all users of the internet. However, the internet was initially a text-based platform for communication. People would post blogs, critique online news, and write about events all in a form of text.

Using words is a common form of communication which is limited to the boundaries of words - there is not much opportunity for people to express emotions. Text-based environments lack the tools for a more dynamic form of communication. Through Interactive Art, people are able to create and designs environments in which they can interact with users for many purposes such as expression or education. Expression especially is a huge part of our society as people want to have an environment that can fit to their desires and Interactive Art gives them a way to do so in a creative fashion.

Through meta-design, learning communities can be easily formed and serve as a "guide on the side" for teachers in our education system. Not only can it provide a handbook for teachers about innovative ways of teaching, learning styles, interactive classroom, and information about their student's but it can also serve as a common ground for students to share ideas during learning activities outside the classroom. The education system can be revolutionized as a whole as new functionality are created to enhance learning and creativity.

Jacob: High-functionality applications try hard to meet all needs specified by users and introduce as much functionality as possible. While trying to do so however, high-functionality applications still overlook or miss the needed functionality, while introducing an entire slew of functionality rarely used.

My senior project, although fairly small scale, actually reflects this issue a little bit. One option for the design of the application was to provide a large amount of built-in functionality hoping to meet all of the sponsor's requirements, and run the risk of missing some functionality that was not thought of at requirements time. The sponsor, however, had a different idea to address their evolving needs. They told us to implement an API that would give users access to a short list of the most fundamental functions in the application. From these fundamental functions, they could then simply script whatever desired functionality they wanted themselves. In the end, this greatly increased the robustness of the project, while allowing the sponsor the ability to do things that had not thought of when they crafted the requirements.

Most Prominent Example

The most prominent of all is SketchUp: it is a 3D modeling program designed for architects, civil engineers, filmmakers, game developers, and related professions as well as common users. It enables users to create structures however they desire (although it does require skills). It was designed to be more intuitive, flexible, and easier to use than other 3D CAD programs and it can be easily customize according to the user's needs. It includes features to facilitate the placement of models in Google Earth. It supports: .3ds, .dae, .dwg, .dxf, .fbx, .obj, .xsi, and .wrl file formats. Google SketchUp can also save "screenshots" of the model as .bmp, .png, .jpg, .tif, with the Pro version also supporting .pdf, .eps, .epx, .dwg, and .dxf.

Video games: In early Real time strategy games like StarCraft while the user played the game, the game environment itself helped the novice player learn progressively as the levels became harder. The game also allowed online playing against real people from across the world. With this added feature, not only did the game help players learn but every player helped all of the other players progress in the game as well. The game then offered a way for player to create their own gaming environments through a development studio. This allowed the players to become developers and share what they developed with other players.

Many open source environments are good examples of meta-design environments, with Linux being the most prominent platforms. As the paper recognizes, there are some issues with open-source as a meta-design example. The end users and domain designers are usually highly skilled programmers, which needs to be taken into account when considering end-user development. Still, when focusing on this specific group of end-users in Linux, meta-design seems to be very successful. Given the openness of the environment, the customization, reuse, and redesign is nearly unparalleled, with thousands of users contributing to the resources the community has available. These resources are then freely available for further customization, reuse, and redesign. The Linux user-base also seems to be very tight-knit, and tight-knit communities tend to collaborate better than communities that are simply a loose collection of people.

Facebook is in a way a prominent meta-design environment. Everyone is able to create a profile then adjust that profile to fit their needs. For example they may create a profile in order to meet people, for business purposes, to stay in touch with friends and family or a way to express themselves, such as blogging. Facebook is completely focused on the users and it is important that they are able to achieve their goals and be able to modify their profiles/webpage to fit their purposes.

Detailed Analysis

J: I examined Wolfram Research's Mathematica software. Although most people tend to think of it as just a program for performing mathematical computations, Wolfram refers to it as a "computational platform" that can be applied to a diverse number of fields. Even on Wolfram's website, the software is shown doing image processing and analysis, astronomical computations on celestial data, and analyzing current and historical weather data just as easily as it performs pure mathematical computations. Given the extent to which applied math permeates many other fields, Mathematica really provides a solid platform for a diverse field of problems from many areas.

Mathematica provides a fair amount of support for users as co-designers and designers at run time. The software is split into two main parts, a kernel that performs computations, and a front-end that the user interacts with. While Mathematica provides a default front-end, users are free to use whatever front-end they wish, or even create their own. Users also have access to a large collection of additional libraries and addons for additional functionality, and may write their own. Wolfram's website lists over 43 addons that provide additional domain-specific capabilities, most of which were not created by Wolfram, but by Mathematica users. Many useful addons often provide functionality that Wolfram will later integrate into Mathematica.

Mathematica also supports the majority of the developments that the authors claim will help Meta-design. It supports task-specific languages that hide low-level implementation details. For example, I can tell it to compute an image's morphological euler number for an image processing task, rather than being forced to do the low level computations myself, and have similar language options for other domains. It provides a programming environment that gives users access to high level mathematica manipulation without the drudgery of having to do all the steps of complex tasks themselves. It allows collaboration through its webMathematica feature that allows web browsers on any platform (even phones or PDAs) to act as front ends to remote Mathematica servers, through its notebook format and free viewers for it, and through its integrated email and report generation features that can send reports, graphics, and other works to collaborators with minimal hassle. It also supports customization, reuse, and redesign through custom front-ends, user-built libraries and addons, and the sharing of these things.

American constitution as Meta-Design

According to the paper, meta-design addresses the following 3 necessities for environments: 1) They must be flexible and evolve because they cannot be completely designed prior to use. 2) They must evolve to some extent at the hands of users 3) They must be designed for evolution.

The US Constitution is a successful example of meta-design in that it meets all three necessities almost perfectly. It was realized when the document was written that it would never be completely designed before use - things would occur that would reveal the need or desire for future additions and elaboration. It had to include a mechanism for flexibility and a way to evolve, which was satisfied through the amendment process: It's a framework for government which can be extended or reworked later when the original design might not fit the exact situation it is needed. Furthermore, this mechanism for evolution was very much user driven, through a representative form of government: it involves as many stakeholders as possible as people (users) know their needs. The Constitution really has a sort of dualism in its design - there was an end goal for the document (a workable constitution), but at the same time, part of that end goal was to produce an evolving document that would never truly be finished.