Sangam: A Confluence of Knowledge Streams

Elegance as Complexity Reduction in Systems Design

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dc.contributor Industrial and Systems Engineering
dc.creator Iandoli, Luca
dc.creator Piantedosi, Letizia
dc.creator Salado Diez, Alejandro
dc.creator Zollo, Giuseppe
dc.date 2018-08-27T12:40:46Z
dc.date 2018-08-27T12:40:46Z
dc.date 2018-08-26
dc.date 2018-08-26T07:05:05Z
dc.date.accessioned 2023-03-01T18:51:51Z
dc.date.available 2023-03-01T18:51:51Z
dc.identifier Luca Iandoli, Letizia Piantedosi, Alejandro Salado, and Giuseppe Zollo, “Elegance as Complexity Reduction in Systems Design,” Complexity, vol. 2018, Article ID 5987249, 10 pages, 2018. doi:10.1155/2018/5987249
dc.identifier http://hdl.handle.net/10919/84918
dc.identifier https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/5987249
dc.identifier.uri http://localhost:8080/xmlui/handle/CUHPOERS/281557
dc.description Elegance is often invoked as a characteristic of good design, but it cannot be pursued as a design objective because of the absence of actionable definitions that can be translated into design strategies and metrics. In this work, we analyze elegance in the context of systems engineering using a perspective that integrates visual art, Gestalt psychology, neuroscience, and complexity theory. In particular, we measure elegance as effective complexity and theorize that it can be achieved by a process of complexity resolution based on the adoption of eight visual heuristics. We present an empirical study in which a sample of systems engineers were asked to assess alternative representations of a same system and show that effective complexity is strongly correlated to perceived elegance and systems effectiveness. Our results are consistent with independent findings obtained in other fields including design and psychology of perception showing that good design must embed an effective level of complexity achievable through a mix of familiarity and novelty.
dc.description Published version
dc.format application/pdf
dc.format text/xml
dc.format application/pdf
dc.language en
dc.publisher Hindawi
dc.rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
dc.rights http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.rights Copyright © 2018 Luca Iandoli et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
dc.title Elegance as Complexity Reduction in Systems Design
dc.title Complexity
dc.type Article - Refereed
dc.type Text


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