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The other day I talked about the concept of an Architectural deck to describe a blueprint for making decisions. And there is a great example of a well architected solution that we can test the hypothesis of the Architectural Deck against – The Human Body.

Just a reminder, there are 3 layers to our deck;

1. Foundational – The core and basis that we have to work with
2. Functional – The tried and tested solutions
3. Innovational – The things that make the solution different or special

If we try and correlate this to the human body, or more specifically a component of the human body such as the legs. This may be described in the following way;

Foundational

If we look at the human legs, there are some very specific core capabilities that they have, such as balancing upright, being able to move a person around and the materials that are used to construct them; carbon based, organic material to create skin, bones, muscles, nerves and the blood that fuels the cells. This is foundational as its core to the human legs. And the observant ones out there would have recognised “well, that’s not unique to human legs!?” And how right you are! This is a great example of the core capabilities that most animals with legs have (give or take), and so we are working with something that has been proven. The “give or take” takes us to the next layer; functional.

Functional

Human’s can walk, run, jump and do a variety of different things with their legs. But there are some tried and tested methods that have been employed. For example, there is nothing stopping you from walking backwards with you legs wide a part and feet pointing outwards (granted, it would be difficult). But the point is, we humans typically don’t walk that way. We have adopted ‘best practices’ in walking, we use our hips, bend our knees, put one foot in front of the other etc. So although there are many ways to handle movement with our legs, to get the most optimised functional movement from them, we adopt this best practice.

As an aside, think of the down stream benefits here. Pediatrists have been treating well known issues based on these best practices, how do you think they would go treating you if you always walked the way described above? Shoe’s are designed based on this premise of walking. There are many other support benefits.

Innovational

So what are the exciting innovational aspects that we can attribute to legs? Firstly, the fact that humans effectively walk upright, which would gives us the competitive advantage against certain other animals. But that is not fair, we should compare apples with apples. So think about the well oiled machine that is an sprint runner. Their muscles are finely tuned for explosive strength that is converted to speed. This is different to a marathon runner that is focussing on stamina. Sprint runner’s bones are strengthened, and the the other systems in their body (lungs, heart etc) work hand in hand to provide this competitive advantage. Although they may have the same make up, they have innovated in how they train and focus on key parts of their legs that sets them above others.

Can you think of other examples?