This week’s reading was the first time I have heard about the concept of Pace Layers yet I found this concept pretty easy to understand because even in everyday life I have been able observe the different paces of changes happening to technology, cultural habits, the neighborhood I live in, architectural infrastructure, the nature surrounding me, and many more. This concept gave a more specific definition to how there are different levels within all sorts of organization which each individually develops at different rates. In interaction design, this theory, proposed by Stewart Brand discussing component’s different pace of evolution within a system, extends the lifestyle of interaction design work because it encourages designers to consider the long term and short term components that a system can update, change, or redesign. By understanding and categorizing the business into layers based on its pace of change, designers can evaluate the elements of bottom layers and be more considerate with these choices. Elements of bottom layers change slowly and cost more time and money to change while the outer layers change rapidly and are much more fluid. In Brand’s framework of the Pace Layers concept, the system is divided into six layers: Fashion, Commerce, Infrastructure, Governance, Culture, and Nature. When using this model for interaction design work, we can consider the product itself as the outermost layer, it constantly changes to satisfy the market’s demand and catch on the current trends. The technology of a product might be of an inner level where it is changing a little slower than the trend but develops accordingly to market research. Then we might think about regulations and policies regarding a product as a layer closer to the bottom which doesn’t change that frequently because of the large scale impact it holds. The innermost layer could be the behavior of user and expectations.Through evaluating the different layers of an interaction design work, designers would be more likely to come up with solutions that can sustain and last for longer. Recognition of the innermost layer encourages designers to create stable foundations of a system that also has the ability to innovate in the outermost layers that are made to be flexible.
