Immediate Systems Human-In-The-Loop Cyber-Physical Systems that Embed Design and Implementation in Situations of Use

Design activity, especially in architectural praxis, takes place in spatialand temporal remoteness from the use of its outputs. Thisremoteness impedes the ability to respond to actual needs that arise in situations of use. Ultimately itmakes design dependent on hypothesis.Aim of this essayis to introduce the notion of Immediate Systemswhichembed design and implementation in situations of use and thus overcome the limitations of remoteness. Immediate Systems,as defined by author, are cyber-physical systemscomprised of interacting digital, analogue, physical, and human components. As meta-systems they include people and environments in a tight loop between human intention and immediate adaptation. Immediacyin this contextindicates a state of continuously available adaptability at the speed of human intention. Such meta design systems take design methodology to an extreme whichparadoxically resembles the situation before design emerged as separate praxis. The essaycontains three theoretical contributions. The first one proposes and frames the very notion of Immediate Systems. The second one, presents and discusses a series of examples of such systems. The third contribution, identifies conditions forand characteristics ofImmediate Systems derived from the first two contributions.