Related papers: Complexity as Design Material
In visualization, the process of transforming raw data into visually comprehensible representations is pivotal. While existing models like the Information Visualization Reference Model describe the data-to-visual mapping process, they often…
With even the most trivial of applications now being written on top of millions of lines code of libraries, API's, and programming languages, much of the complexity that used to exist when designing software has been abstracted away to…
Crystals are a state of matter characterised by periodic order. Yet crystalline materials can harbour disorder in many guises, such as non-repeating variations in composition, atom displacements, bonding arrangements, molecular…
That computers should be easy to learn and use is a rarely-questioned tenet of user interface design. But what do we gain from prioritising usability and learnability, and what do we lose? I explore how simplicity is not an inevitable truth…
This paper investigates two aspects of process thinking that affect the success rate of IT projects. These two aspects are the changes in the structure of organizations and the epistemology of Information Systems Development. Firstly, the…
Infographics are visual representations designed for efficient and effective communication of data and knowledge. One crucial aspect of infographic design is the interplay between text and visual elements, particularly in circular…
Context dependence is central to the description of complexity. Keying on the pairwise definition of "set complexity" we use an information theory approach to formulate general measures of systems complexity. We examine the properties of…
In the first part of this paper, we present a unified framework for analyzing the algorithmic complexity of any optimization problem, whether it be continuous or discrete in nature. This helps to formalize notions like "input", "size" and…
Discussions of software design often refer to using "design spaces" to describe the spectrum of available design alternatives. This supports design thinking in many ways: to capture domain knowledge, to support a wide variety of design…
Intrinsic computation refers to how dynamical systems store, structure, and transform historical and spatial information. By graphing a measure of structural complexity against a measure of randomness, complexity-entropy diagrams display…
We initiate a study of the complexity of quantum field theories (QFTs) by proposing a measure of information contained in a QFT and its observables. We show that from minimal assertions, one is naturally led to measure complexity by two…
The design of a building requires an architect to balance a wide range of constraints: aesthetic, geometric, usability, lighting, safety, etc. At the same time, there are often a multiplicity of diverse designs that can meet these…
The term complexity derives etymologically from the Latin plexus, which means interwoven. Intuitively, this implies that something complex is composed by elements that are difficult to separate. This difficulty arises from the relevant…
Research on digital degrowth predominantly critiques digital expansion or presents alternative digital practices. Yet, analyzing the link between digital technologies and complexity is crucial to overcome systemic obstacles hindering…
Complex systems, from the human brain to the global economy, are made of multiple elements that interact in such ways that the behaviour of the `whole' often seems to be more than what is readily explainable in terms of the `sum of the…
Design is often characterized as an act of problem-solving. This is a perspective that, while pervasive, risks reducing complex socio-technical conditions to easily fixable issues. This paper critiques the ideology of "design as…
With web and mobile platforms becoming more prominent devices utilized in data analysis, there are currently few systems which are not without flaw. In order to increase the performance of these systems and decrease errors of data…
As urban critic Jane Jacobs conceived, a city is essentially the problem of organized complexity. What underlies the complexity refers to a structural factor, called living structure, which is defined as a mathematical structure composed of…
Colors are used as effective tools of representing and transferring information. Number of colors in a palette is the direct arbiter of the information conveying capacity. Yet it should be well elaborated, since increasing the entropy by…
The science of complexity is far from being fully understood and even its foundations are not well established. On the other hand, during the last decade, the random motion of particles or waves - the so-called diffusion - has been known…