I am working right now on an upgrade project taking a very old financial management system up a few versions to the latest version of the same system. While this is a long-overdue project and the end users will be much better off, I am already getting a bit nostalgic about the system to be replaced.
At the same time, the place where I work is in the middle of a full redesign of its web presence. The firm doing the visual design embraces a concept of ‘graceful degradation’ of web pages — mostly handled (by what I can gather) in stylesheets.
At the same time i am studying systems architecture at school, so I am brushing up on fault tolerance — which also embraces the concept of ‘graceful degradation’.
At the same time, I am really putting some thought into a design metaphor that I can extend throughout a number of projects at different phases. I love metaphors: I have been an addict ever since studying with Mark Turner. This metaphor would have to be pretty bendable and sturdy; the spider web of metaphors. For a number of years I have been pushing two around: wabi sabi and fractals.
Perhaps I can keep both. They could be the Wonder Twins of design metaphor: “form of . . . shape of . . .” The perfect example I need is a thing that forms fractally then degrades fractally over time with enough substance to be able to be compared to a system. Hmm. Any ideas? Something between a snowflake and a glacier maybe?
