Design Reading Group (paused)

Bi-weekly meetup to discuss design of things in all shape and form. Feel free to reach out if you’d like to join.

Current members:

  • Denis Kazakov
  • Josh Preuss
  • Will Held

Past topics and readings are below. Not all of the readings are included, but sci-hub..

8: (Josh, Denis) Urban Design

Reading:

7: (Denis) Japanese Design

Initially, was going to read framework type of textbook on design, but realized I disagree with their pitch of design as solely a search through some problem space to satisfy given constraints. As an antithesis, thought of Japanese minimalism and this is more a design through artistic lens.

Reading:

  • Patricia Graham, Japanese Design: Art, Aesthetics & Culture: Chapter 1

6: (Josh) Climate Policy Design

Focusing on feed-in tarrifs, renewable portfolio standards.

Reading:

  • Hal Harvey, Designing Climate Solutions: A Policy Guide for Low-Carbon Energy — energy section, specifically the design recommendations and case study subsections

came up:

5: (Will) Market Ethics

After having studied theoretical market design and it’s use in the world, we discussed questions of how to use market design to design ethical systems. This week the reading starts with a exploration into current ethical problems in both theoretical markets and real digital markets using marker theory at their core. Then, it covers both practical and theoretical guides to solving these problems, as well as a study of the problems that can arise when using the obvious solutions to problems such as discrimination.

Reading:

  • Understanding Discrimination in “Optimally Designed Markets”
    • Practical Study: Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy, Edelman et al., 2016 (Only the introduction needed)
    • Practical Study: Racial and Gender Discrimination in Transportation Network Companies, Ge et Al., 2016 (Introduction and Potential Modifications)
  • Theoretical Work:
    • Racial Discrimination in Labor Markets with Posted Wage Offers, Lang et Al., 2015 (Only introduction needed but the whole paper was fascinating)
  • How do designers avoid the problems above? What are the problems with obvious solutions like anonymity?:
    • Business Review Paper: https://hbr.org/2016/12/fixing-discrimination-in-online-marketplaces
  • Practical Study:
    • https://www.povertyactionlab.org/node/25107
  • Theoretical/Philosophical Proposal:
    • Ethics and Market Design, Li 2017 (Only the section titled: Informed Neutrality Between Reasonable Ethical Positions)

4: (Denis) Marketplce Design

Any exchange of something between two or more parties could be seen as a market. Market design is used in medical student matching, online advertisement bidding, kidney exchange programs, etc. It has a strong theoretical foundation and very intuitive applications, which makes it pretty sweet to study.

Reading:

  • https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6b51/fdd68f5b45e98b90731e00a5089d97fcb744.pdf - general marketplace review and framing
  • https://www.nber.org/papers/w16852.pdf - thoughts on internet markets
  • https://www.wired.com/2015/09/facebook-doesnt-make-much-money-couldon-purpose/ - specific example of Facebook ad bidding marketplace choice (VCG)
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey–Clarke–Groves_auction - proof of optimality (“honesty”) of VCG
  • https://izajole.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40172-016-0042-z - the “Empirical applications” sections about using platforms data for stuff.
  • “Is Transparency the Best Disinfectant?” A. Etzioni - an opinion on transparency (of markets) just for perspective.

Came up:

3: (Josh) Software systems design, part 2

Groups, interfaces, and abstractions and their impact on the user of these features. What makes a good API design.

Reading:

  • http://harmful.cat-v.org/cat-v/unix_prog_design.pdf
  • http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heh4OeB9A-c
  • https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
  • http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/endtoend/endtoend.pdf

2: (Will) Software systems design, part 1

Culture of productivity and firing at large companies. How the organizational structure defined product structure.

Reading:

Came Up:

1: (Denis) Game Design: choices & balances

Balancing games is game theory. But we focus on the game design tools and frameworks.

Reading:

  • Motivation
    • https://www.designer-notes.com/?p=369
  • Design practices for balance + building choices into the game.
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXQzdXPTb2A - some concepts of design choices available
    • https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DanFelder/20151012/251443/Design_101_Balancing_Games.php - some practices for trying to balance decision trees)
    • https://www.designer-notes.com/?p=438 - Slowing down to allow more fun. (allowing balance scales to grow bigger through artificial delay of endgame)
  • (optional) Theory of balance
    • https://www.coursera.org/learn/game-theory-1/home/week/1 - Stanford Game Design course.