& çâÌæÚUæð´ ·¤è ¥ôÚU Îð¹Ùæ ÁæÚUè ÚU¹ð´ ¥ÍæüÌ ¥ÂÙð ÜÿØ ÂÚU ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´Ð ãæÚU Ù ×æÙð´, €UØô´ç·¤ ·¤æ× ·¤ÚUÙð âð ¥æÂ·¤ô ©gðàØ ·¤è Âýæç# ãôÌè ãñ ¥õÚU ÁèßÙ ·¤æ ¹æÜèÂÙ ÎêÚU ãôÌæ ãñÐ ÖÜð ãè ÁèßÙ ×ð´ ç·¤ÌÙè Öè ·¤çÆÙæ§ü €UØô´ Ù ¥æ°, çÁ™ææâæ ¥õÚU ©ˆâæã ÕÙæ° ÚU¹ð´Ð ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´, ÜÿØ ã×ðàææ ¥æÂ·Ô¤ Âæâ ãôÌð ãñ´ çÁ‹ãð´ ÂæÙð ·Ô¤ çÜ° ÂýØæâ ¥æÂ ·¤Öè Öè àæéM¤ ·¤ÚU â·¤Ìð ãñ´Ð

TANGENTS

Designs of Our Lives

BY IHTISHAM KABIR
The word design, according to the dictionary, means "to conceive or fashion in the mind." We often hear people say “the design of that house is functional”, or "the artist designed a beautiful dress", or even “the incident was by design."
But it was not until I had worked several years as an engineer that I learned the nuances and depth of design. When building something, I discovered, there are two types of design: external design and internal design.
Perhaps this is best explained by a historical example. In the fourteenth century, the city of Florence became wealthy and wanted to build something that would announce their wealth to the world. So they held a design competition. The winner -drawn on paper - was a beautiful dome-shaped cathedral. There was only one problem. No one knew how to build it. It took almost two hundred years and the genius of Filippo Brunelleschi to build this dome. He had to solve several difficult problems in structural engineering for this accomplishment.
In this example, the external design (or the functional design) is the shape and size of the dome as conceived by the designer. It is the answer to questions such as “What will it look like? and “How will people use it?" On the other hand, the internal design (or the engineering design) answers the question "How will you build it?" For any non-trivial project, both types of designs should be completed before starting the actual work.
For many disciplines this distinction is critical. For example, if you build a bridge without proper internal design,
all that concrete and steel may go to waste. But for software engineering, the distinction is often overlooked, because, once written, software can be changed or re-written without additional material cost. This tempts software engineers to take short-cuts in their design, but ill-designed software inevitably fails, both in performance and in the market.
When I started work in Silicon Valley as a software engineer, it took me time to understand design. It was not until I built the software for a medical ultrasound machine that I learned the distinction between the two types of design. For example, I could create a clever software technique for making measurements from the ultrasound images, but it was pointless if the radiologist could not easily access or use this functionality.
Why talk about design in the new year? Because when we set ourselves goals - New Year's Resolutions - we are, in a way, attempting to design our life. Our goals may include, for example, "Achieve a GPA 5" or "Get that desirable job" or, "Visit the place I always wanted to see." Then the challenge lies in taking the steps needed to achieve those goals. Unlike software or construction projects, life has many uncertainties; yet we all know people who find their way around life's obstructions and manage to achieve seemingly impossible goals. I suppose that's why we talk about a "well-lived life" and not a “ well-designed life."
Dear reader, may this year bring you closer to your goals and peace for this suffering country.
www.facebook.com/tangents.ikabir