To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design Henry Petroski
Publisher: Vintage

The last post about "The Evolution of Useful Things" reminded me about another of Petroski's books that I read some years ago: "To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design". An older uderstanding creativity is in this book: “To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design” by Henry Petroski. In science a single failed prediction can disprove a theory, no matter how many previous tests it has passed, while in engineering one successful design can validate a concept, no matter how many previous versions have failed. People all over the world learn to drive quite successfully with roughly the same configuration of controls. His first book, To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design, appeared in 1985. Petroski has written more than a handful of books on engineering and picking up any one of his would qualify for a must-read. A quarter century ago, in his classic book To Engineer is Human, Henry Petroski demonstrated rather convincingly that failure is indispensable to successful design. To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design by Henry Petroski. Henry Petroski is a professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University. Human-Centered Design has become such a dominant theme in design that it is now accepted by interface and application designers automatically, without thought, let alone criticism. To study the fundamental physical potential To study these questions means exploring, not the time-bound consequences of human actions, but the timeless implications of known physical law. The activities, after all, are human activities, so they reflect the possible range of actions, of conditions under which people are able to function, and the constraints of real people.