Chunk4

"Whether or not the world should have diversity, it does."

The world does need diversity. Diversity satisfies individuals' variable tastes. For example, when designing presentations, someone prefer to use PowerPoint while others enjoy prezi. Distinguished features of the two presentation tools match diverse demands of different groups of people. Someone is attraced by the "zoom in and zoom out" function of prezi whereas others love those beautiful templates provided by PowerPoint. Then, diversity promotes development of designs. There are so many related products in one domain. For example, elluminate and wimba are two leading web conferencing systems used in educational context. What is the weapon the designers use to compete and win the market? They should make continual development to improve every aspect of the product.

"and the question remains as to how individual designs come to be distinguished from related designs."

The problem comes out that how can one design be outstanding from other similar designs. We should look hard enough at the imperfections of related designs, avoid those imperfections and make improvements in our new design. For instance, laptops and cell phones can sometime function as part of audience response system. How can those devices outweight the benefits of clickers that are more popularized in ARS? Designers should detect shortcomings, limitations of clickers and investigate whether those imperfections can be avoided or improved with the use of laptops, cell phones.

Reference

Petroski, H. (1992). The Evolution of Useful Things. New York: Vintage Books.