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Last time I talked about using ideas, concepts, patterns from one domain or discipline to help with designing for a completely different one (you can check it out History Repeats, use it to your Advantage).
This time, let’s consider a real world example.
Starting with a little history
A few years ago, folks spent a lot of time making cloth, weaving, using looms. This was all done manually with the help of a rudimentary machine. People had been doing this kind of work for a few hundred years. But as we all know, fashion changes and there was a big market for intricate weaves with specialized colors, in complex patterns.
To make this happen, a series of clever folks figured out a way to tug on certain threads, at certain times during weaving, to create these patterns. Their innovations lead to the invention of the Jacquard Loom, the year was 1804.
Jacquard’s idea took these various previous ideas, and he created a series of cards, that would be attached together in a loop. This loop would advance through the loom to control which threads were pulled at what time. Each step of the weave would advance…
