Computational Design Thinking for Designers

NJ Namju Lee
2 min readJul 18, 2020

--

Computational Design

The keywords could help designers to start thinking like a computational design specialist. Computational thinking in design asks you holistic approaches to resolve a small design problem while also asking you an extremely isolated process to fix a comprehensive design concern. These different levels of the approach become huddles to understand computational design processes for designers.

The keywords could guide you, who have no computer science backgrounds, to deal with the dilemma, and you would be able to get a sense of understanding of developing computational design process in manifold circumstances in your design practices.

THE QUESTION / IMAGINATION / HYPOTHESIS

Understanding Problem, Concern & Issue
Declaring Inputs & Outputs
Writing Instructions

THE METHODOLOGY & APPROACH

from Whole to Parts & from Part to Whole
from Simple to Complex & from Complex to Simple
from Generic to Specific & from Specific to Generic

THE MANIFESTO & POLICY

Deterministic or Stochastic
Converge or Diverge Design Space, Optimization, Pareto efficiency
Top-down
& Button-up
Holistic or Partial
Existing or Emerging (Revealing)
Oriented or Disoriented
Centralized or Decentralized
Procedural or Iterative
Ultimate(Best) or Optimal

THE IMPLEMENTATION

from Infinite to Finite FEM, Structure Analysis
from Implicit to Explicit
from Ambiguous to Certain
from Entangled to Separated Pipeline
from Inactive to InteractiveComplex system
from Phenomenological(Observation) to Predictable(Model & System)
from Intuition(Imagination, Hypothesis) to Implementation

SPATIAL DATA MANIPULATION

Dumb or Smart Component Oriented Programming, React, Unity3d
Reciprocal (Mutual & Dependent )or Isolation(independent)
Public or Protected or Private
Abstract
or Concrete Implementation and Inherent
Connected
or Disconnected
Static
or Dynamic(Instance)

THE TOOL & THE PRINCIPLE

Analytic-Oriented & Object-Oriented & Functional & Procedural & Component...
Relational Hierarchy
Properties and Behaviors
Pure & Impure
Condition & Loop
Coordinate system, distortion, projection remap interpolation …

  1. Breaking down & Differentiating Issues, Problems, and Tasks
  2. Developing Spatial Data Structures
  3. Implementing Algorithms

ADDITIONAL NOTE

Pipeline for Interaction, Data, and Geometry Visualization — link

--

--