About
The symbol, the story, and the person behind it.
A mathematically grounded model of how people build things, translated into a framework that everyday builders can use.
The Story Behind Making Pattern
It started with a gap in systems engineering and a question no one had fully answered.
Systems engineering has existed for nearly a century. It has put rovers on Mars, built some of the world's most complex aircraft, and coordinated massive human efforts. Yet for all that history, nobody had ever given it a unified theory that explained, from first principles: what it really is and why it works.
That gap is what Christian Sprague spent close to a decade trying to close. Studying the field from the inside, he found a sprawling collection of tools, frameworks, and heuristics, but no common foundation beneath them. He became fixated on a single question: what is the unifying pattern under all of it?
The answer came from working in his garage. While developing custom exercise equipment, Christian lived the pattern of prototyping, testing, and iterating.
Every variation navigated the same three things: what was needed, what resources were available, and what solution was being built. Need. Resources. Solution. The work of making was simply the way each one acts on the others.
From there, Christian spent years developing the mathematics behind the model: a system of differential equations describing how those six activities shape each other over the life of any project, and how they either converge toward a finished thing or gradually fall apart.
Next came the revelation: These six activities are not just how engineers build. They are how people build anything, a business, a product, a home, a life.
Making Pattern is the translation of that rigorous, mathematically grounded framework, from the academy and into the hands of every builder.
The Founder
Christian Sprague
Ph.D., Systems Engineering, Cornell
Director of Product, INCOSE
Christian is the founder of Making Pattern, a framework shaped by a decade of work at the intersection of mathematics, systems science and engineering.
He earned his Master's and Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from Cornell University, followed by postdoctoral research in systems thinking. He continues to serve as Director of Product at INCOSE, the world's leading systems engineering association.
Beyond his professional work, Christian is a husband, father, and man of faith. Problem-solving, creative thinking, spending time with his family, the master Builder, and dog, are among the great joys of his life. He brings that same warmth, purpose, and drive to everything he does.
When we become better builders, our lives improve, and so does the world around us.