Bret Victor - Seeing Spaces

SUMMARY

Bret Victor proposes "seeing spaces" as evolved maker spaces, emphasizing immersive environments for deeply understanding complex project behaviors through advanced visualization tools, presented at the 2014 EG conference.

STATEMENTS

Bret Victor designs tools for creators in software, electronics, music, animation, and mathematics to visualize and understand the complex behaviors of their projects.
Traditional craftsmanship occurs in spatial environments like rooms that extend the body, contrasting with software tools confined to tiny desk rectangles.
Maker spaces provide communal access to high-end equipment, promoting creation over consumption, but focus mainly on construction rather than understanding.
Modern projects like robots, responsive clothing, and interactive machines involve high internal complexity with embedded software, requiring deep insight into behaviors beyond mere assembly.
The primary challenge in building complex projects is comprehending why systems behave as they do, necessitating "seeing tools" over construction tools.
Examples from NASA, particle accelerators, and power grids show that complex systems demand dedicated control rooms for real-time monitoring and understanding.
A seeing space shifts focus from assembling materials to embedding makers in a giant microscope-like environment for profound project comprehension.
Seeing operates on three levels: collecting and displaying data from smart materials, viewing across time via recordings and histories, and exploring across design alternatives through systematic testing.
Smart materials with abundant sensors, processing, and communication ensure all relevant data is captured and displayed in the room, making information glance-accessible.
Powerful seeing tools enable a spectrum from tinkering to scientific discovery, fostering deep understanding, invention, and contributions to human knowledge.

IDEAS

Rooms as macro-tools extend the body spatially, unlike screen-bound software, allowing immersive creation.
Maker spaces excel in community and access but overlook tools for debugging complex, software-embedded inventions.
Construction tools suffice for simple builds, but seeing tools are essential for unraveling why intelligent systems like light-seeking robots fail or succeed.
High-stakes operations like space launches build entire rooms as visualization hubs, a model applicable to everyday making.
Stingy sensor use in projects often causes failures; abundant, cheap sensing turns materials "smart" for effortless data revelation.
Time as a manipulable dimension lets makers rewind events, trace patterns, and compare iterations, turning history into an interactive notebook.
Digital storage's abundance means every project run auto-documents, enabling searches for past anomalies without extra effort.
Systematic exploration of design parameters—testing ranges automatically—reveals optimal behaviors and their reasons, surpassing trial-and-error knobs.
Seeing spaces democratize scientific thinking by providing visualization that bridges tinkering to theory-building in uncharted domains.
Non-scientific habits like recipe-following stem from invisibility; immersive seeing propels makers toward discovery and knowledge-sharing.

INSIGHTS

Immersive seeing spaces transform making from opaque trial-and-error into transparent scientific inquiry, accelerating innovation in complex technologies.
By prioritizing data-rich environments over minimalism, creators avoid self-inflicted failures, embedding intelligence into materials themselves.
Visualizing time and alternatives reveals systemic patterns invisible in the moment, enabling predictive understanding of dynamic behaviors.
Shared seeing spaces leverage communal resources for expensive visualization tech, mirroring maker ethos but elevating it to cognitive empowerment.
Tools that span tinkering to engineering foster versatile thinkers, essential for exploring frontiers where textbooks lag.
Deep visibility combats superstitious thinking, cultivating a culture of evidence-based invention that enriches global knowledge.

QUOTES

"I think people need to work in a space that moves them away from the kinds of non-scientific thinking that you do when you can't see what you're doing -- moves them away from blindly following recipes, from superstitions and rules of thumb -- and moves them towards deeply understanding what they're doing, inventing new things, discovering new things, contributing back to the global pool of human knowledge."
"The primary challenge is not putting the pieces together the primary challenge is understanding what the thing is doing and why it's doing that and how you can get it to do what you actually want it to do."
"We now live in a world where sensing sensors are cheap processing is cheap we need to start working with smarter materials that collect a lot of data about what's going on out there."
"Your entire history of what you've done with this project automatically becomes a kind of notebook where you can just browse through everything you've done."
"If you want somebody to span that entire space to be able to draw on all those ways of thinking they need to be able to see what they're doing they need powerful seeing tools."

HABITS

Embed projects in data-rich environments from the start, using abundant sensors to capture all behaviors without deliberate setup.
Record every action and run automatically, treating the project's history as an searchable, browsable notebook for ongoing reflection.
Systematically test design variations across ranges rather than ad hoc tweaks, analyzing results to understand optimal choices.
Work in shared spaces to access high-end visualization tools, collaborating to overcome individual resource limits.
Step back from moment-to-moment observation to view patterns across time and alternatives, fostering deeper systemic insight.

FACTS

NASA's space shuttle control rooms use sensors everywhere to monitor every system aspect in real-time for launches.
Fermilab's particle accelerator control room in Illinois visualizes complex particle behaviors for scientific breakthroughs.
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN employs a dedicated room to track operations, aiding the 2012 Higgs boson discovery.
Sensors and processing power are now inexpensive, enabling "smart materials" that self-report internal states unlike last-century minimalism.
Digital storage costs are negligible today, allowing unlimited archiving of project data for effortless historical analysis.

REFERENCES

Worrydream.com/SeeingSpaces (poster for the talk).
NASA space shuttle control room.
Fermilab particle accelerator lab control room.
Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

HOW TO APPLY

Equip projects with comprehensive sensors and communication from the outset to capture all internal and external data automatically.
Design the workspace with projections on walls and benches to display real-time data, making all project states glance-accessible.
Install video cameras and tracking throughout the space to record every run, enabling easy rewinding and temporal analysis.
Automate data storage and searchability, turning the full project history into an interactive notebook for pattern recognition.
Implement systematic parameter sweeps: define ranges for variables, run automated tests across them, and visualize comparative outcomes.
Foster communal use of the space to share costs of advanced visualization hardware, encouraging collaborative debugging.

ONE-SENTENCE TAKEAWAY

Seeing spaces empower makers to deeply understand complex creations, bridging tinkering to scientific discovery through immersive visualization.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Shift maker spaces toward seeing tools, investing in shared visualization tech to debug intelligent systems.
Adopt smart materials with embedded sensors to eliminate data scarcity in prototypes.
Make time manipulable in workspaces via recordings, revealing hidden behavioral patterns.
Explore design alternatives systematically, automating tests to identify optimal solutions.
Promote seeing as cultural priority, like 3D printers, to advance human innovation.

MEMO

In a world increasingly defined by intelligent machines, Bret Victor envisions a radical evolution of the maker movement: not just spaces to build, but sanctuaries to truly see. Presented at the 2014 EG conference, Victor's "Seeing Spaces" reimagines communal workshops as immersive environments where creators—tinkering with robots, responsive fabrics, or self-balancing vehicles—gain profound insight into their inventions' behaviors. Frustrated by software tools trapped in desk-bound screens, Victor draws from traditional craftsmanship's spatial freedom, where rooms become extensions of the body. "The room itself kind of becomes a macro tool," he says, urging a shift from construction to comprehension in an era of embedded complexity.

Today's maker spaces buzz with laser cutters, 3D printers, and lathes—vital for assembly, yet inadequate for the real hurdles of modern projects. Victor highlights how robots that garden or clothing that reacts to crowds demand more than soldering; they require peering "inside that robot's head" to diagnose missteps, like a light-seeking bot veering off course. Drawing parallels to NASA's shuttle control rooms or CERN's Large Hadron Collider ops center, he argues for dedicated "seeing rooms" where sensors flood the space with data. These aren't luxuries but necessities: cheap sensors and processing now enable "smarter materials" that self-report, projecting vital stats onto walls or workbenches for effortless glances.

At the heart of Victor's vision are three escalating layers of visibility. First, abundant data collection ensures nothing is lost—ditching last-century stinginess for wires that "know if they're attached." Second, time becomes tangible: cameras record everything, letting makers rewind runs, trace paths, and browse histories like digital notebooks, searchable for anomalies across sessions. Storage is free, so every tweak auto-documents, comparing iterations to reveal systemic causes. Finally, seeing spans possibilities—automating tests across parameter ranges, like light sensitivity dials, to visualize not just what works, but why, turning ad hoc poking into rigorous exploration.

This isn't mere tech; it's a philosophical pivot. Victor maps making on a spectrum from intuitive tinkering—vital for novices—to engineering's mathematical models, and ultimately scientific discovery in uncharted realms. Construction tools limit us to the left; theory spans the middle. But to traverse all, "they need powerful seeing tools," he insists, steering away from "superstitions and rules of thumb" toward invention that feeds humanity's knowledge pool. Though building such spaces poses engineering challenges and costs, Victor sees them as shared imperatives, akin to shuttles or printers—cultural commitments to understanding. In seeing spaces, makers don't just create; they illuminate the unseen, propelling us into a future of thoughtful, transparent innovation.