Tag: FeedbackLoops

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Carrier Wave

In radio communications, a carrier wave is a signal that carries another signal. The carrier wave is the disturbance in the electromagnetic spectrum that travels out across the medium. Information to be transmitted is encoded by modifying the base wave’s amplitude (as in AM, amplitude modulation) or its frequency (as in FM, frequency modulation).

The carrier wave metaphor is a useful motif for thinking about what it is that transmits feedback around a system.

Through my phone I am connected to hundreds of contacts — but that doesn’t mean I am in communication with them. In contrast, with the much smaller group of people I work on projects with, there is regular transmission of information. In this smaller group, regular dialogue creates a carrier wave for feedback — how is everyone feeling? Are things going well? Where are the potential problems? Some of these signals are not explicit, but more subtle shifts in conversation — changes in tone, mood or bigger gaps in the signal.

Our reliance on others tunes us into the feedback available through our relationships. I can easily search online for live data feeds concerning the quality of water in rivers around the country, but I’m far more likely to pay attention to the river I swim in.

When thinking about levels of interconnectivity in systems, consider the reciprocity that exists in those relationships. It is not enough to build connections. Through the internet, engineers have never been more connected to communities and ecosystems — but what matters is having something that flows through the connection. A carrier wave for the feedback.

This post is an extract from the Motif Library in the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design. 

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Tools for telling the future

What began as a conversation this week on the blog about how designers predict the future has unlocked some deeper reflections on how we approach regenerative design.

Let’s rewind.

As designers, we are always concerned with the future. Our job is to imagine how things could be and shape the conditions to get there. To do this, we rely on two types of indicators:

  • Lag indicators — evidence of what has already happened. The results of past design decisions. 
  • Lead indicators — signals in the present that suggest how the future will unfold.

When conditions are stable, precedent (ie lag indicators) can be a reliable guide to the future. But in changing, complex systems, the past is no-longer such a reliable guide to the future.

In these situations, rather than predict the future directly, we can try to assess the capacity of the system we are working with to successfully respond to change.

Capacity to change — a key regenerative lens

In regenerative design we use the living world as a template for understanding how to create systems that thrive. Thriving ecosystems adapt continuously to shifting conditions. This capacity to change is a key characteristic of living systems — and is a guiding principle for engineers (and other humans) thinking about how to create thriving systems. 

In the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design, we go on to define four factors that indicate a system’s capacity to adapt:

  • Building blocks that can easily be recombined.
  • Coexistence of diverse variations to allow for different responses. 
  • Feedback loops that reinforce adaptations suited to current conditions.
  • Mechanisms for retaining and repeating what works.

From analysis to a design brief

These four factors are both analytical prompts and design levers.

When we encounter a new situation, we try to establish the extent to which each of these is present and use this as a measure of the system’s capacity to survive and potentially thrive through change.

And they can be used as design requirements, giving us factors that we can build into a design brief to create a brief for thriving. 

In a complex situation it is hard to predict the future — instead, regenerative designers seek to make things better by building in the capacity for people and ecosystems to respond together to changing situations in a way that creates thriving for the whole system.