Sources of Dynamics Introduction

Dynamics of design activities are caused and influences by diverse factors. Designers have to make decisions in a limited time based on the imperfect information they have. They are working in situations that are constantly changing due to forces beyond their control. Designers are using and relying on knowledge and skills that they do not fully understand and cannot explain. And at the same time, they do not have any strong underlying principles, theories, and laws to guide them.

In this part, we discuss our view on the main reasons behind occurrence of patterns of dynamics between design situations, design outcomes and design resources. We address the following topics:

• The moving target problem,
• Increasing interconnectivity,
• Learning and creativity,
• Reliance on tacit knowledge and skills,
• Social dynamics, and
• Lack of strong theories and principles.

Our primary goal is to provide an initial categorization of sources of design dynamics and to relate them to the patterns from the previous chapter. Our overview of sources of design dynamics is not intended to be complete, but rather a starting point and the proposed classification is not a clear-cut.