The Art of Micro Design


Book Description




Design for Micro-Utopias


Book Description

Everyone is already painfully aware of our predicament - ecological extinctions, dwindling fossil fuel reserves and economic chaos. The solutions are less obvious, despite the many opportunities that surround us. We have never had more access to resources, knowledge and technology but this is not the problem. What we lack most is creative thinking, fuelled by collective optimism. In a pragmatic world run by careerist experts this is hardly surprising. As voters and consumers we are trained to choose and complain, but not how to envisage what we really, really want. How can we design a better world unless we revive the art of dreaming? For without dreams we are lost. Perhaps it should be the duty of all citizens to imagine alternative futures; in effect, to think more like designers. After all, designers have always been dreamers, and have often found ways to realize their dreams. Design for Micro-Utopias does not advocate a single, monolithic Utopia. Rather, it invites readers to embrace a more pluralized and mercurial version of Thomas More's famous 1516 novel of the same name. It therefore encourages the proliferation of many 'micro-utopias' rather than one 'Utopia'. This requires a less negative, critical and rational approach. Referencing a wide range of philosophical thinking from Aristotle to the present day, western and eastern spiritual ideals, and scientific, biological and systems theory, John Wood offers remedies for our excessively individualistic, mechanistic and disconnected thinking, and asks whether a metadesign approach might bring about a new mode of governance. This is a daring idea. Ultimately, he reminds us that if we believe that we will never be able to design miracles we make it more likely that this is so. The first step is to turn the 'impossible' into the 'thinkable'.




Micro


Book Description

Very small buildings have a special appeal. The constraints of space and cost can actually liberate the imagination. This book includes projects which consist of no more than a few key spaces, in many cases just a single space. It also features 53 case studies.




Design as Art


Book Description

How do we see the world around us? The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision forever. Bruno Munari was among the most inspirational designers of all time, described by Picasso as ‘the new Leonardo’. Munari insisted that design be beautiful, functional and accessible, and this enlightening and highly entertaining book sets out his ideas about visual, graphic and industrial design and the role it plays in the objects we use everyday. Lamps, road signs, typography, posters, children’s books, advertising, cars and chairs – these are just some of the subjects to which he turns his illuminating gaze.




Building Micro-Frontends


Book Description

What's the answer to today's increasingly complex web applications? Micro-frontends. Inspired by the microservices model, this approach lets you break interfaces into separate features managed by different teams of developers. With this practical guide, Luca Mezzalira shows software architects, tech leads, and software developers how to build and deliver artifacts atomically rather than use a big bang deployment. You'll learn how micro-frontends enable your team to choose any library or framework. This gives your organization technical flexibility and allows you to hire and retain a broad spectrum of talent. Micro-frontends also support distributed or colocated teams more efficiently. Pick up this book and learn how to get started with this technological breakthrough right away. Explore available frontend development architectures Learn how microservice principles apply to frontend development Understand the four pillars for creating a successful micro-frontend architecture Examine the benefits and pitfalls of existing micro-frontend architectures Learn principles and best practices for creating successful automation strategies Discover patterns for integrating micro-frontend architectures using microservices or a monolith API layer




Introduction to the Design of Fixed-wing Micro Air Vehicles


Book Description

This intriguing book breaks new ground on an emerging subject that has attracted considerable attention: the use of unmanned micro air vehicles (MAVs) to conduct special, limited duration missions. Significant advances in the miniaturization of electronics make it now possible to use vehicles of this type in a detection or surveillance role to carry visual, acoustic, chemical, or biological sensors. Interestingly, many of the advances in MAV technology can be traced directly to annual student competitions, begun in the late 1990s, that use relatively low cost model airplane equipment. The wide variety of configurations entered in these contests and their ongoing success has led to a serious interest in testing the performance of these vehicles for adaptation to practical applications. MAVs present aerodynamic issues unique to their size and the speeds at which they operate. Of particular concern is the aerodynamic efficiency of various fixed wing concepts. Very little information on the performance of low aspect ratio wing planforms existed for this flight regime until MAVs became of interest and the proliferation of fixed wing designs has since expanded. This book presents a brief history of unmanned air vehicles and offers elements of aerodynamics for low aspect ratio wings. Propulsion and the basic concepts for fixed wing MAV design are presented, as is a method for autopilot integration. Three different wing configurations are presented in a series of step-by-step case studies. The goal of the book is to assist both working professionals and students to design, build, and fly MAVs, and do so in a way that will advance the state of the art and lead to the development of even smalleraircraft.




Micro Electro Mechanical System Design


Book Description

It is challenging at best to find a resource that provides the breadth of information necessary to develop a successful micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) design. Micro Electro Mechanical System Design is that resource. It is a comprehensive, single-source guide that explains the design process by illustrating the full range of issues involved,




Micro Frontends in Action


Book Description

Micro Frontends in Action teaches you to apply the microservices approach to the frontend. Summary Browser-based software can quickly become complex and difficult to maintain, especially when it’s implemented as a large single-page application. By adopting the micro frontends approach and designing your web apps as systems of features, you can deliver faster feature development, easier upgrades, and pick and choose the technology you use in your stack. Micro Frontends in Action is your guide to simplifying unwieldy frontends by composing them from small, well-defined units. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology Micro frontends deliver the same flexibility and maintainability to browser-based applications that microservices provide for backend systems. You design your project as a set of standalone components that include their own interfaces, logic, and storage. Then you develop these mini-applications independently and compose them in the browser. About the Book Micro Frontends in Action teaches you to apply the microservices approach to the frontend. You’ll start with the core micro frontend design ideas. Then, you’ll build an e-commerce application, working through practical issues like server-side and client-side composition, routing, and maintaining a consistent look and feel. Finally, you’ll explore team workflow patterns that maximize the benefit of developing application components independently. What’s Inside - Create a unified frontend from independent applications - Combine JavaScript code from multiple frameworks - Browser and server-side composition and routing - Implement effective dev teams and project workflow About the Reader For web developers, software architects, and team leaders. About the Author Michael Geers is a software developer specializing in building user interfaces. Table of Contents PART 1 - GETTING STARTED WITH MICRO FRONTENDS 1 What are micro frontends? 2 My first micro frontends project PART 2 - ROUTING, COMPOSITION, AND COMMUNICATION 3 Composition with Ajax and server-side routing 4 Server-side composition 5 Client-side composition 6 Communication patterns 7 Client-side routing and the application shell 8 Composition and universal rendering 9 Which architecture fits my project? PART 3 - HOW TO BE FAST, CONSISTENT, AND EFFECTIVE 10 Asset loading 11 Performance is key 12 User interface and design system 13 Teams and boundaries 14 Migration, local development, and testing




Microshelters


Book Description

If you dream of living in a tiny house, or creating a getaway in the backwoods or your backyard, you’ll love this gorgeous collection of creative and inspiring ideas for tiny houses, cabins, forts, studios, and other microshelters. Created by a wide array of builders and designers around the United States and beyond, these 59 unique and innovative structures show you the limits of what is possible. Each is displayed in full-color photographs accompanied by commentary by the author. In addition, Diedricksen includes six sets of building plans by leading designers to help you get started on a microshelter of your own. You’ll also find guidelines on building with recycled and salvaged materials, plus techniques for making your small space comfortable and easy to inhabit.




Speculative Everything


Book Description

How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures. Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want). Speculative Everything offers a tour through an emerging cultural landscape of design ideas, ideals, and approaches. Dunne and Raby cite examples from their own design and teaching and from other projects from fine art, design, architecture, cinema, and photography. They also draw on futurology, political theory, the philosophy of technology, and literary fiction. They show us, for example, ideas for a solar kitchen restaurant; a flypaper robotic clock; a menstruation machine; a cloud-seeding truck; a phantom-limb sensation recorder; and devices for food foraging that use the tools of synthetic biology. Dunne and Raby contend that if we speculate more—about everything—reality will become more malleable. The ideas freed by speculative design increase the odds of achieving desirable futures.