Download or read book Software Design for Flexibility written by Chris Hanson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strategies for building large systems that can be easily adapted for new situations with only minor programming modifications. Time pressures encourage programmers to write code that works well for a narrow purpose, with no room to grow. But the best systems are evolvable; they can be adapted for new situations by adding code, rather than changing the existing code. The authors describe techniques they have found effective--over their combined 100-plus years of programming experience--that will help programmers avoid programming themselves into corners. The authors explore ways to enhance flexibility by: Organizing systems using combinators to compose mix-and-match parts, ranging from small functions to whole arithmetics, with standardized interfaces Augmenting data with independent annotation layers, such as units of measurement or provenance Combining independent pieces of partial information using unification or propagation Separating control structure from problem domain with domain models, rule systems and pattern matching, propagation, and dependency-directed backtracking Extending the programming language, using dynamically extensible evaluators

Download or read book Flexibility in Engineering Design written by Richard De Neufville and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-08-12 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to using the power of design flexibility to improve the performance of complex technological projects, for designers, managers, users, and analysts. Project teams can improve results by recognizing that the future is inevitably uncertain and that by creating flexible designs they can adapt to eventualities. This approach enables them to take advantage of new opportunities and avoid harmful losses. Designers of complex, long-lasting projects—such as communication networks, power plants, or hospitals—must learn to abandon fixed specifications and narrow forecasts. They need to avoid the “flaw of averages,” the conceptual pitfall that traps so many designs in underperformance. Failure to allow for changing circumstances risks leaving significant value untapped. This book is a guide for creating and implementing value-enhancing flexibility in design. It will be an essential resource for all participants in the development and operation of technological systems: designers, managers, financial analysts, investors, regulators, and academics. The book provides a high-level overview of why flexibility in design is needed to deliver significantly increased value. It describes in detail methods to identify, select, and implement useful flexibility. The book is unique in that it explicitly recognizes that future outcomes are uncertain. It thus presents forecasting, analysis, and evaluation tools especially suited to this reality. Appendixes provide expanded explanations of concepts and analytic tools.

Download or read book Design for Flexibility written by Guy André Boy and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-06-19 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Design for flexibility requires anticipation, preparation, creativity and experience. Future highly digital sociotechnical systems should contrast with those stemming from technology-centered engineering that produces objects and machines with the immensely codified and rigid practices we know today. Most of the time, current technologies are designed and developed for normal situations, leaving users to manage abnormal and emergency situations themselves, sometimes under unforeseen, extreme and/or dangerous conditions. Putting humans at the center of the design of flexible sociotechnical systems means visualizing possible futures, modeling them, simulating them and leading them down the right paths. This book is for the engineering designers, who seek to better understand the roles of humans and organizations developing complex life-critical systems. It is also for those who train future designers who will have to take into account the well-being, safety, sustainability and efficiency of the actors of future sociotechnical systems. It is about an emergent discipline, human systems integration (HSI). The aim of the flexibility challenge is to put the artificial at the service of the natural, and not the other way around. The author, an aerospace engineering designer, has worked for 40 years in the field of human-centered design (HCD) of complex systems, discovering repeatedly that automation leads to rigidity, especially when things go wrong. It is urgent we had a new paradigm where flexibility is a major asset in human systems integration. HCD is seen here as the combination of practices and technologies to come.

Download or read book Flexible Housing written by Jeremy Till and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-19 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flexible housing is housing that can adjust to the changing needs of the user and accommodate new technologies as they emerge. Flexible Housing by Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider examines the past, present and future of this important subject through over 160 international examples. Specially commissioned plans, printed to scale, together with over 200 illustrations and diagrams provide fascinating detail and allow direct visual comparisons to be made. Combining history, theory and design the book explains the social and economic benefits that can be achieved and shows the various ways it has been and can be delivered. The book ends with an accessible guide to how flexible housing might be designed and constructed today to achieve adaptable and ultimately sustainable buildings. Housing designers, housing managers and students of architecture, construction and housing will find this book of immense value both as a comprehensive reference and design manual.

Download or read book Human Systems Integration written by Guy André Boy and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2020-01-27 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human–Systems Integration: From Virtual to Tangible Subject Guide: Ergonomics and Human Factors This book is an attempt to better formalize a systemic approach to human–systems integration (HSI). Good HSI is a matter of maturity... it takes time to mature. It takes time for a human being to become autonomous, and then mature! HSI is a matter of human–machine teaming, where human–machine cooperation and coordination are crucial. We cannot think engineering design without considering people and organizations that go with it. We also cannot think new technology, new organizations, and new jobs without considering change management. More specifically, this book is a follow-up of previous contributions in human-centered design and practice in the development of virtual prototypes that requires progressive operational tangibility toward HSI. The book discusses flexibility in design and operations, tangibility of software-intensive systems, virtual human-centered design, increasingly autonomous complex systems, human factors and ergonomics of sociotechnical systems, systems integration, and changed management in digital organizations. The book will be of interest to industry, academia, those involved with systems engineering, human factors, and the broader public.

Download or read book A Guide for Achieving Flexibility in Highway Design written by and published by AASHTO. This book was released on 2004 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Context-sensitive solutions (CSS) reflect the need to consider highway projects as more than just transportation facilities. Depending on how highway projects are integrated into the community, they can have far-reaching impacts beyond their traffic or transportation function. CSS is a comprehensive process that brings stakeholders together in a positive, proactive environment to develop projects that not only meet transportation needs, but also improve or enhance the community. Achieving a flexible, context-sensitive design solution requires designers to fully understand the reasons behind the processes, design values, and design procedures that are used. This AASHTO Guide shows highway designers how to think flexibly, how to recognize the many choices and options they have, and how to arrive at the best solution for the particular situation or context. It also strives to emphasize that flexible design does not necessarily entail a fundamentally new design process, but that it can be integrated into the existing transportation culture. This publication represents a major step toward institutionalizing CSS into state transportation departments and other agencies charged with transportation project development.

Download or read book Smart Flexibility written by Andy Lake and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Smart Flexibility: Moving Smart and Flexible Working from Theory to Practice is an engaging and practical management book to help organisations implement Smart Working, and take a business-focused approach to ’Flexible Working’. Written for managers at the leading edge of change, Andy Lake takes a strategic, comprehensive and integrated approach to Smart and Flexible Working. Taking an evidence-based approach, he sets out how to achieve measurable benefits across the Triple Bottom Line. Starting from the underlying principles and the compelling context for change, he takes a pragmatic approach to delivering change in each of the key areas of People (HR), Property and Technology. The book is designed to help professionals understand the vital connecting points across disciplines as well as innovations in their own fields. And there are separate chapters that look at the real impacts for sustainability, the impacts for ’Smart Government’, how to manage the ’Anywhere Anytime Team’ and how to take people on the journey towards a Smart Flexibility organisational culture. The book includes many insights based on the author’s experience and the latest research, many practical techniques for implementing change plus ten new case studies. Smart Flexibility is essential reading for anyone involved in workplace change and increasing the efficiency of organisations. It is aimed at managers who need to deliver change, and will be of great interest to consultants in the fields of workplace design, new technologies and HR/OD/Training.

Download or read book Mobile Information Systems written by Barbara Pernici and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-09-02 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a framework for mobile information systems, focusing on quality of service and adaptability at all architectural levels. These levels range from adaptive applications to e-services, middleware, and infrastructural elements, as developed in the "Multichannel Adaptive Information Systems" (MAIS) project. The design models, methods, and tools developed in the project allow the realization of adaptive mobile information systems in a variety of different architectures.

Download or read book Inclusive Theory and Practice in Special Education written by van Rensburg, Henriette and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2020-01-03 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inclusive education retains significant complexity associated with creating a definition, and there is significant importance within the surrounding narratives reflecting the broader definitions. Due to the flexibility within the definition, investigating current practices across an array of definitions becomes essential to developing best practices in special education. Inclusive Theory and Practice in Special Education is an essential research book that examines current shifts in the field within the overarching philosophy of inclusion and inclusive education. It reports recent research that focuses on the experiences of teachers and students in classrooms and ways of enhancing the practices of inservice teachers and early career teachers, as well as the preparation of preservice teachers. Besides presenting research from these perspectives, it also addresses a selection of broader issues that impact on policy and curriculum, thus identifying related concerns, including those of the wider community. Highlighting a wide range of topics such as learning disabilities, student mobility, and early childhood education, this publication is ideal for researchers, professionals, administrators, curriculum designers, academicians, policymakers, and students.

Download or read book Super Flexibility for Knowledge Enterprises written by Homa Bahrami and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-07-26 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: strategy, but we also focus on execution. We talk about organizational design, and also refect on leadership practices. Our assumption is that in a dynamic world, leaders at all levels, have to constantly switch gears, wear different hats, and na- gate at different altitudes. They have to think about the “total” enterprise, not in terms of compartmentalized silos or felds of functional expertise. Much like a g- eral contractor, they have to draw on specialized expertise, as and when needed, yet keep the big picture in mind. Our hope is that our diagnostic tools can help teams develop a shared frame of reference and generate cross-functional dialogue. The third driving force behind this second edition is the gradual convergence between the worlds of entrepreneurial start-ups and challenges facing established corporations. Innovation, agility, and initiative are no longer the exclusive preserve of start-ups. Established companies are looking for ways to re-invent themselves, to innovate, to think creatively, and to make their enterprises more fexible, agile and entrepreneurial. We have had the good fortune to sit at the intersection of these two worlds. We hope our ideas can beneft both groups. We set out to provide a “buffet table”, a menu of options that can be helpful for the two ends of the spectrum.

Download or read book UX on the Go written by Andrew Mara and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-27 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed with flexibility and readers’ needs in mind, this purpose driven book offers new UX practitioners succinct and complete intructions on how to conduct user research and rapidly design interfaces and products in the classroom or the office. With 16 challenges to learn from, this comprehensive guide outlines the process of a User Experience project cycle from assembling a team to researching user needs to creating and veryifying a prototype. Practice developing a prototype in as little as a week or build your skills in two-, four-, eight-, or sixteen-week stretches. Gain insight into individual motivations, connections, and interactions; learn the three guiding principles of the design system; and discover how to shape a user’s experience to achieve goals and improve overall immediate experience, satisfaction, and well-being. Written for professionals looking to learn or expand their skills in user experience design and students studying technical communication, information technology, web and product design, business, or engingeering alike, this accessible book provides a foundational knowledge of this diverse and evolving field. A companion website will include examples of contemporary UX projects, material to illustrate key techniques, and other resources for students and instructors. Access the material at uxonthego.com.

Download or read book Grow Home written by Avi Friedman and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2001 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Grow Home, Avi Friedman, winner of the United Nations World Habitat Award and internationally acclaimed architect, recounts the genesis and development of his innovative project in. Like the auto industry's approach to the economy car, Friedman's Grow Home gives people what they need in a house at an affordable price - a quality product that allows both the perimeter and interior of a house to be expanded and changed to fit the space needs and budget of its owners. Frills are extra. With economic restructuring, demographic shifts, and lifestyle changes, the traditional family - working father, stay-at-home mother, two to three children - is no longer the norm and the need for smaller homes at moderate cost has skyrocketed. The first prototype of the Grow Home was built on the campus of McGill University in 1990 and more than one thousand units were built across North America and Europe in the first year alone. In this illustrated guide, Friedman describes the background, conception, and construction of these modest (14' x 36') homes. He details their construction for prospective owners, builders, and architects, showing how past and contemporary precedents were transformed and how the first versions were adapted by the building industry. Visits to completed Grow Homes shed light on why such homes were purchased and the process by which they "grew." Friedman also shows how the design has been adapted for prefabrication to meet the needs of the developing world. He describes the contribution that small-unit design makes to saving valuable natural resources and shares his experiences in planning communities based on the Grow Home. The Grow Home reveals the development and history of a concept that revolutionizes the home and building industry, has been translated into over 10,000 housing units and has received, among many accolades, the United Nations World Habitat Award

Download or read book Flexible Product Development written by Preston G. Smith and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2007-09-10 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this landmark book, Preston Smith attributes the recent declinein innovation to pressure from financial markets that drivesmanagement toward rigid development approaches such as phaseddevelopment processes, Six Sigma, and project office. Theseprocesses have unintentionally (but effectively) made changesduring development more difficult, disruptive, and expensive, whilethe need for change continues at an accelerating pace. Flexible Product Development is a hands-on resource thatprovides the tools and strategies needed to restore flexibility toany organization and remove the obstacles that stand in the way ofresponsive new product development. Preston Smith introducesapproaches that can enhance development process flexibility bycreating and maintaining development options, delaying decisions,and, in general, reducing the cost of change. Step-by-step, heexplains the basics of flexible product development, provides abroad array of flexibility-enhancing tools, and guides the readerin modifying the organization?s values to embrace this new way ofoperating.

Download or read book Rigid Flexibility written by Pei Wang and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-09-01 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the most comprehensive description of the decades-long Non-Axiomatic Reasoning System (NARS) project, including its philosophical foundation, methodological consideration, conceptual design details, implications in the related fields, and its similarities and differences to many related works in cognitive science. While most current works in Artificial Intelligence (AI) focus on individual aspects of intelligence and cognition, NARS is designed and developed to attack the AI problem as a whole.

Download or read book Bulletproof Web Design written by Dan Cederholm and published by New Riders. This book was released on 2007-08-09 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No matter how visually appealing or content-packed a Web site may be, if it's not adaptable to a variety of situations and reaching the widest possible audience, it isn't really succeeding. In Bulletproof Web Desing, author and Web designer extraordinaire, Dan Cederholm outlines standards-based strategies for building designs that provide flexibility, readability, and user control--key components of every sucessful site. Each chapter starts out with an example of an unbulletproof site one that employs a traditional HTML-based approach which Dan then deconstructs, pointing out its limitations. He then gives the site a make-over using XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), so you can see how to replace bloated code with lean markup and CSS for fast-loading sites that are accessible to all users. Finally, he covers several popular fluid and elastic-width layout techniques and pieces together all of the page components discussed in prior chapters into a single-page template.

Download or read book On Flexibility written by Meir Finkel and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-28 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Flexibility presents a force planning concept that will enable armies to cope with the growing diversity of battlefield requirements, and especially with technological and doctrinal surprises, through applied adaptability and flexibility, minimizing the over dependence on intelligence and prediction involved in this process today.

Download or read book Deterministic Flexibility Analysis written by Chuei-Tin Chang and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditionally, design and control decisions are made in sequential stages over the life cycle of a chemical plant. In the design phase, the optimal operating conditions and the corresponding material and energy balance data are established mainly on the basis of economic considerations. In the subsequent step, the control systems are configured to maintain the key process conditions at the fixed nominal values. Because it is often desirable to address the operability issues at the earliest possible stage before stipulation of control schemes, the systematic incorporation of flexibility analysis in process synthesis and design has received considerable attention in recent years. This book focuses to a large extent on computation and implementation methods of deterministic performance measures, i.e., the steady-state, volumetric, dynamic and temporal flexibility indices, in various applications. The formal definitions of several available performance indices, their mathematical formulations, and the corresponding algorithms and codes are provided in sufficient detail to facilitate implementation. To show the utility of flexibility analyses, the book presents several practical case studies including membrane modules and heat-exchanger networks, solar-driven membrane distillation desalination systems, and hybrid power generation systems. It also includes MATLAB and GAMS codes.