This is the first entry in what I am planning to be a continuing discussion on how technology (especially, but not limited to, electrical technology) fits into, affects, and is affected by our world. By world, I mean our physical, social, economic, political and psychological world.

My point of view is that all design is systems design, whether we intend it or not. In the real world there is no such thing as separate independent systems. There is only the confusing hodgepodge of interacting forces, which we attempt to understand by inventing categories such as electricity, communications, power, economy. We design technology by creating in our minds a rapidly expanding grid of sectors: lighting control, building automation, communications, IT, IP, Internet, social media, fire protection, HVAC, transportation, stock market, government, education, healthcare, industry etc.

Devices
If I’m designing a particular device, say a lighting controller, I first have to decide why I should design it. There’s a quick and simple answer: my boss told me to. But why does she want me to? I have to know what I’m aiming at. Do we want to make it cheaper than the competition’s — or better than theirs. Should it be designed to easily tie into a network? Will it have special features like an IP interface, or DALI, or built-in intelligence? Will it have features that will allow it to enhance workers’ comfort and productivity? For example could the controller be integrated into a building system to save energy through daylight harvesting, but at the same time allow someone at a desk to control a task light for their individual comfort level? Before the design is started, the designer should be thinking about questions like these; but at some point, with this in the back of his mind, the designer has to get down to the nitty-gritty details. But it’s very important to return to these questions as the product is being developed. Along the way, it is important to ask yourself, and others, is the device I’m developing answering these questions in the way I intended?

You have to think about the people who will use your controller. My design can be a stroke of genius but it won’t be much good, if people won’t feel comfortable using it, or if the people using it don’t see that it offers them any advantages, no matter how clever it is.

Systems
Devices have to fit comfortably with the systems in which they will be used. To my mind the smartest device design is one that can be easily connected to any system; and I think that is clearly the direction in which technology is headed.

I was having breakfast the other day with Robert Akovity of Integrated Building Controls, Inc. (www.planetibc.com) and talking about building control systems.  His point of view, which I completely agree with, is that the future of integrated building management is with open systems. Any device with an IT interface can be linked with any other and controlled and monitored by a central computer. Robert summed it up by saying that there are really only four types of data transfer points: analog in and out and digital in and out. I would add that this means that we are free to concentrate on optimizing the devices, the systems, and the way in which we send the data back and forth — the infrastructure.

Systems and Devices
If devices are to be integrated into a system, each device should have a unique address. That way any device can be made to talk to any other in a peer-to-peer network. Then the system can be designed, tried, redesigned and retried. It can be a living adaptive organism, changing as the system performance is evaluated and as conditions and needs change.

Systems and systems
As I suggested earlier, giving a system a name, for example security system, is really somewhat arbitrary. Is access control part of the security system — yes; but it could also be part of the fire protection system. Occupancy sensing is typically thought of as used for controlling lighting; but it can also be used to adjust the HVAC in a particular room; and it wouldn’t be a stretch to think of it being part of the security system as well.
We have to open up our thinking about systems as the systems themselves become more open.

Trouble with systems
Everything new that we do to improve things brings with it a new set of problems. A necessary element of progress is coping with and learning from, the new problems that come along. For example I was just reading about the record-breaking short-time drop in the stock market this week, which was not caused by panic or any other human intervention. It was caused by a tiny glitch that triggered a high-speed series of automated events.

System designers always include negative feedback as a stabilizer, but a slight shift can cause the feedback to become positive and precipitate a series of events spiraling out of control — a small change produces a larger change in an ever-increasing unstable spiral.

Another example of this was the Northeast power blackout of 2003.

The moral of this is that we have to consider the ways that systems go wrong as part of the design process and when things do go wrong we should take that as an opportunity to learn how to make things work better.

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