What to Expect

Design Impact will include a variety of different posts, which collectively are aimed at spreading ideas about advanced design, how design can be used to advance sustainability, as well as sharing ideas that provide context and motivation. Some posts may seem to come out of the blue, or be unrelated to the previous post, so I’m clarifying my plan here so you know what to expect. Here are the categories of posts I envision:

• Context: Material that illustrates how better design fits into the larger objective of moving (quickly) toward sustainability.
• Background: Posts that help support core material. This could include conceptual explanation of technical ideas, historical development, background on my perspective, or anything else that yields greater insight into core topics.
• Core: Accessible description of topics in advanced design, such as how engineers use models or simulations to predict how something is going to behave before they build it, or how they can use optimization or statistics to investigate design alternatives and help make design decisions. Discussion of the link between advanced design and sustainability.
• Examples: For me, a concept does not become really clear until I’ve seen it demonstrated on a practical example. I will use examples where I can to clarify ideas and show how advanced design techniques can make a meaningful difference. In most cases I will provide only overviews and main results from an example in posts, but will provide links for further reading or computer code downloads for those interested in details. These examples take time to develop, so please be patient with example post frequency.
• Interaction: My vision for Design Impact is to become an interactive forum for discussion of design, its role in improving sustainability, and what can be done to expand the positive impact of design. I welcome comments, emails, and suggestions for new topics or examples. If you find relevant articles, new developments, or other interesting material, please send me a note and I may write a post about it.
• Guest Bloggers: I’ve been speaking with a few individuals, who have some interesting insights into engineering design and sustainability, about writing guest posts for Design Impact. If you are interested in contributing to Design Impact as well, please share your ideas with me by sending an email to james at design-impact.org.
• Current Events and Announcements: Each day we can find a mountain of articles that relate to sustainability or ‘green living’. Occasionally I’ll find one that is especially relevant to the mission of Design Impact, and share my thoughts of it in a post (for example, the last post Feeling Green). This might happen in the midst of a series of posts on some other topic; my thinking is that timely commentary may be worth the interruption.

Thanks everyone for spending some time on Design Impact. I hope you find it valuable. Please take a moment to share it with a friend or collegue. You can send them a link to www.design-impact.org, or you can use the ‘Add This’ button below to share specific posts with a group through Facebook, LinkedIn, or any of your other favorite networking or bookmarking sites. You can also use the RSS feed or email subscription features. With your help we can spread these ideas, build a stronger readership and community, and develop a meaningful impact.

Today’s question: what do you think of the format for Design Impact that I’ve outlined above? Do you have suggestions for making this blog more valuable? Please leave a comment below or send me an email.