TALAMANA · THE AI LITERACY MAP FOR ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN · Judgment · AGE 18—20 · POSITIONAL · METHOD

Against the unaided way

Do the task once unaided and once with the tool, because memory flatters the new tool.

When to use

Whenever you are about to say a tool is faster, better, or worth the money. Before the claim, not in defence of it.

The method

Do the task once the unaided way, by hand or by your old method. Time it. Keep the result. Then do it with the tool. Time that. Judge both against the same four lines of "done" (written first, see GOOD ENOUGH, FIRST). Write one sentence with both numbers in it and one sentence on what each version had that the other lacked. That sentence is the only honest review of a tool you will ever write.

Watch for this

Comparing against an imagined version of the old way, slower and worse than it really was. Memory flatters the new tool. Only a baseline you actually produced can be compared.

The Lab's note

Producing your own baseline is the Lab's recommended method for judging a tool, not the only one. Published comparisons exist, and one in architecture is linked below; they tell you what happened to other people. The two sentences tell you what happened to you.

Try it

Pick one task this week you would normally hand to a tool. Do it both ways. Write the two sentences.

Prove it

Show the pair, unaided and assisted, with the times, the criteria, and the two sentences.

How it works

This is the control group, borrowed from experimental science, where nothing counts as an effect without something to compare it to. The baseline also moves with the person. A 2026 study of thirty-six students, from architectural engineering and other disciplines, doing an architectural concept-design task found that generative assistance gave no overall performance advantage across the group but significantly improved the performance of novice designers, and lowered participants' confidence in their own creativity. So "faster than what?" has a second half: "for whom?" Your baseline is yours. It will change as you do, which is another reason to keep producing it.

What this idea builds on

What this idea opens up

Sources

Open this idea on the map · The complete map · Logika · RBDS AI Lab, India · revised every edition.

Age grows from 11 at the centre to 22 at the edge, and six sectors show the learning strands. Tab into the map and the arrow keys step from idea to idea, following the links where there is one. Enter opens the idea under the cursor, and E reads out its links and the reason recorded on each. Press slash for Search, question mark for the full key list, and Escape to leave. Open Ideas for the complete readable list, including what each idea builds on and what it opens up.

LOGIKA · RBDS AI LAB INDIA
ON-RAMP · AGE 11 · FIRST ENCOUNTERS, NOT GATES — IDEAS · — DEPENDENCIES
DONE
OPENS NEXT
SOLID — STANDS ON