Unfolding is a design process coined by Christopher Alexander.
Instead of imposing a predetermined vision, you let the right form emerge naturally from your context.
I paid attention to things I liked to do, and found ways to do more of that. I made it easy for interesting people to find me, and then I hung out with them. We did projects together.
I kept iterating—paying attention to the context, removing things that frustrated me, and expanding things that made me feel alive.
Eventually, I looked up and noticed that my life was nothing like I imagined it would be. But it fit me.
If you want to find a good design—be that the design of a house or an essay, a career or a marriage—what you want is some process that allows you to extract information from the context, and bake it into the form. That is what unfolding is.
It is a feedback loop between you and the context. By gradually adjusting the thing you are designing and observing how well it fits the context, you create a feedback loop that embeds the context’s knowledge into your design. Your design ends up smarter than you.
Unfolding is essentially the practice of shaping your life by paying attention to your milieu—the configuration of people, ideas, and information flows around you—and iteratively adjusting based on what resonates and what drains you.
Key Principles
flowchart LR A[Scan] A --> B[Theorize] B --> C[Act] C --> D[Learn] D --> E[Adjust] E --> F[Repeat]
- The context is smarter than you - it holds more nuance than you can consciously process.
- Start small and iterate rather than making big leaps.
- Pay attention to what makes you feel alive and do more of that.
- Make it easy for interesting people to find you and collaborate with them.
Tips on Increasing Information from Context
- Talk to practitioners. Speak to people already doing that work.
- Run small scale experiments.
- Unbundle abstractions.
- Overcome social fears. Don’t worry about looking stupid.
- Keep all possibilities on the table.