Designing Thriving Systems

This monograph illuminates a design mindset for systems, artefacts, that not only survive, but thrive.
Of itself an artefact is devoid of design quality until encountered in a specific social context by human attendants. Design quality is the affect of an intertwining of (a) an artefact's structural and behavior properties, (b) an attendant humanly conception of quality, an appreciative system, and (c) the enfolding social context of their encounter. To pursue quality in design is to interweave these three strands bound as a durable cord that evokes a visceral satisfaction or the delight of a ringing musical chord.
The human consciousness of design quality is fundamentally metaphoric and dynamic a perception of reality mediated by a personal value disposition. In the continuum of experience, living moment after moment, both the attendant's metaphorical appreciation and their sense of quality evolve. And thus, design quality issues from perpetual, concentric cycles of design-construct-experience-learn-assess-calibrate over the life span of relationship with an artefact.
Design-as-a-verb's purpose is to service the life in that relationship, sustain its survival, and hopefully, raise that life to a state of thriving. Design quality manifests throughout the cycles of design-as-a-verb, rather than as a product of it. Such is the mindset in which the designer must indwell and that design education must nurture.
While all artefacts are systems, the domain of artefact design of which I am most experienced is computing systems. Therefore, I will rest upon that domain to explore a theory and practice of design-as-a-verb designing thriving systems.

Enriches the understanding of design quality by enfolding both the objective dimension of artefact construction (technical rationality) and the subjective dimension of human perception of satisfaction (appreciative systems) Explains the core role of metaphorical appreciation in the human experience and comprehension of design quality Exposes the dynamic nature of design quality as the ongoing quest to align the artefact's realization with the evolving sense of human satisfaction in the dynamic social context Offers a step-by-step process for designing thriving systems using a cyclic recipe of reflection: design-construct-experience-learn-assess-calibrate Illustrates the grounding of designing thriving systems with examples in the computing domain: object orientation, relational data modeling, and secure cloud computing using virtualization Presents a pedagogy for computing artefact design and disposition needed to educate designers for the role of thriving systems designers

Inhalt
Introduction.- The Brain of Two Hemispheres.- A Marriage of Technical Rationality And Appreciative Systems.- Reflection-Driven Design.- Generative Metaphor: Names, Frames and Concept Displacement.- Ontological Depictions of Design Space.- Thriving Systems Choice Properties Extruded through Mediums of Construction.- Security Design Quality Named and Framed though TST Choice Property Clusters.- Educating Thriving Systems Designers.