General Collective Intelligence, Human-Centric Functional Modeling and the Current Limitations on Collective Design Cognition

Abstract

This paper explores the limits to the size and complexity of designs that can be created by humans. Beginning with the existence of a finite limit to the design output of any single individual, as a result, some design efforts require teams. However, anecdotally, when it comes to contributing to a single design objective, there is a limit to the size of groups, a limit to the diversity of skill sets, a limit to the diversity of design techniques and other problem-solving tools, and there is a limit to the range of objectives, at which the group can remain effective. Design processes are cognitive (reasoning or understanding) processes. And design tools are an automation of cognitive processes. Therefore design techniques and other problem-solving tools can be represented as the cognitive processes by which design problems are solved. The execution of these cognitive processes is then design cognition. Equating the term objective with the problem that has been defined, equating design techniques and other problem-solving tools with the cognitive processes by which those problems are solved, and defining the execution of these cognitive processes as design cognition, then since large complex designs must be created by teams, the limit to the capacity of groups for this cognition imposes a limit on the size and complexity of designs that can be created by humans. General Collective Intelligence has been defined as a system that organizes groups into a single collective intelligence with vastly greater general problem solving ability. Design based on General Collective Intelligence has been suggested to have the capacity to expand current limits to collective design cognition that might take certain classes of problems outside the capacity of groups to reliably define or solve. In any GCI based design process, Human-Centric Functional Modeling is a critical requirement in defining design problems as well as in creating the designs that solve those problems. This paper explores GCI based design, and the classes of problems that can’t reliably be defined or solved without it.