Short video of someone I admire greatly as a designer. Someone who inspired me when I was in teacher training and someone who actually interviewed me for a Design teaching job once. I have followed Dick and his work with Seymour Powell for almost 30 years. He always talks sense and with passion.
Tag Archives: Design
My Top Ten Design Fails (Shopping Trolley Muppets and Other Things)
Everyone at some point in their lives have encountered a product, service or ‘thing’ that simply does not work right…or at least not as the user had anticipated (or indeed as the designer had envisaged the user ‘using’ it).
We all have our own dislikes, frustrations or even hatreds for these products, services and ‘things’ that we use in our daily lives that simply don’t do what we want, as we want, when we want. On almost every level, they fail. Abysmally.
So, here is my own top ten of fails, in no particular order of merit or ‘fail’…Please add yours to my blog in the reply section below and let’s see what size of compendium we can build up on this.
For fun 😉
Predictive text. Drives me nuts. Simple words become nightmares. Names become rude slogans and its not until you have sent your message that you realise you have just called your loved one a ‘chilly bunt’ (or something worse….). Anyway, I’m off for a Hermaphrodite. Damn, I meant Heineken….see what I mean?
Q. Do not make predictive text the default setting on your mobile technology. Make it a ‘select’ item that you have to look for in the sub menu. That way you avoid the problem.
‘Rip off’ tops on food products as you find on yoghurts, microwave meals (the cellophane bit…) and so on. Do they ever really work properly? They tear off in ‘strands’ leaving you to dive in with your fingers or use the end of the spoon to ‘flip’ the remaining shreds off, sending dairy product or hot microwaved product onto clothing and walls. Grrrr….
Q. Please can we have a ‘pull off’ lid on food containers that works in one easy to manage ‘pull’? If not. A simple clip/screw on lid will suffice….possibly.
Rubbers/erasers on the ends of pencils. All they do, at best, is smudge your work with an artistic pink goo or, at worst, rip your paper to shreds. Do yourself a favour and invest in a decent pencil and a decent rubber/eraser.
Q. Why indoctrinate young kids with these foul pieces of design at such an early age? Ban them (the pencils with rubbers on that is, not the kids) from primary schools and beyond. Please.
Hotel showers. Yes, you read that correctly. Not so much the actual shower as such but the cubicle surrounding it. Firstly, despite my best efforts in units with curtains water still gets out. Curtains are too short or do not pull around enough (especially on those stupid shower units stuck in a bath).
Secondly, I can never find a decent little shelf at a convenient height to place my shampoo and shower gel. I end up having to try and balance the two items on the actual tap/shower unit ‘thingy’ and invariable one or both of the items fall off, sometimes breaking the lid or splitting the bottle. Genius.
Q. Get someone to DESIGN your showers with the USER in mind? If you are stuck, give me a call.
Supermarket trolleys (and the people that use them). Bear with me on this one…I suppose in a way this is a bit of a left field call BUT some of the absolute morons I have encountered in supermarkets using trolleys is unprecedented.
We could start with the ‘out of control’ person who fails to control their trolley and allows it to either ‘wander’ into your shiny paintwork as they walk towards the supermarket doors OR they simply leave it unattended as they load their own car so that it slowly runs away into your car in the car park (Thought – brakes on supermarket trolleys like airport ones have?)
Now we are inside. Idiot one has absolutely no idea which way they are going, so you anticipate their move and overtake on the left as they are looking right….but they turn left straight into you pinning your kid who was walking beside your trolley (Thought – install ‘trafficators’ – google it – like you used to get on early Morris minors and Mercedes).
Next you have the family clan who just stop in the middle of a crowded isle to have an argument or discussion about something – blocking the whole damn channel. Follow that up with the business man/woman who parks their trolley in front of the most widely sought out shelf of kids cereals as they cheerily run off to different points of the compass to get their food and drink items….only to return and find you gently moving their trolley so you can get your kids pack of ‘wheatabillycrunchythings’ from the shelf. They then attack you with a frozen fish or similar accusing you of interfering with their trolley (‘no parking trolley here’ signs with trolley wardens handing out penalties and fines if caught?)
Humph. I won’t go on…you get the picture.
Q. In addition to my above suggestions can we please introduce two things:
Firstly, a driving test for supermarket trolley users with ‘L’ plates for first time users, numpties and morons?
Secondly could we introduce an ‘Ikea style’ approach to supermarket shopping where you go round in one direction only. If you miss something there are one or two ‘short cuts’ or you simply just have to go round again. Bit like the M25 for my British friends….
Wheels on moveable BBQ’s. You move the BBQ, they fall off or fail to rotate rendering the BBQ static and making you wish that you had purchased the one without wheels in the first place. WTF (sorry….pet hate of mine. I love BBQ’s).
Q. We can design wheels and axles that live together in harmony on cars, planes, buses, motorcycles’ skateboards….so why can’t we have them on a BBQ please?
Car Dashboard Warning Lights OR Steering Wheels (depending on your viewpoint). You know the little orange light you can’t see as it is hidden behind the left hand spoke of your steering wheel that tells you your engine has just ceased to live anymore…? The reason why you can’t see it is that ‘modern design’ dictates that you can control speed, volume, sat nav, phone, air con and other things from your steering wheel so it is now so bloody fat (and requires a degree to work it) that it hides the important stuff on your dashboard e.g. That little sodding orange light that tells you that your engine has expired (or that you have just run out of go go juice, or that your engine has over heated….take your pick).
Q. Can we please put the important warning lights somewhere where they are more ergonomically accessible by the user? Maybe on the steering wheel…duh?
Hospital Crutches. The ones with the ‘easy to adjust’ ball bearing-on-a-spring mechanism? Easy to adjust? You kidding me? I have never able to get the right height for me or my kids as the adjustment does not offer that ‘half way house’ position that you are looking for. Also, after half an hour of use your hands are blue as all the blood has drained out of them and your palms are red raw. Oh, and what about the rubber bits they put on the bottom? They are lethal if they meet a wet surface. Like outside on a rainy day…or in a cafeteria where the floor has just been washed…or, from personal experience, in an airport toilet area where there is no flaming sign telling you the floor is wet until you find yourself horizontal with your head in a urinal and your crutches now scattered at all points of the compass . You get my drift…no pun intended.
Q. Can we have a comfortable, easy to adjust non-slip crutch design please that does not cause more injury and pain than the original ‘pre crutch’ ailment contributed?
Ceramic/Porcelain mugs when used in a Microwave. Ouch. Does not happen if you pour boiling water in from a kettle BUT if you microwave your drink the mug/cup gets scalding hot and that’s when you end up with ‘Royal Dalton’ branded into the palm of your hand.
Q. Is there not a way of designing a ‘cool handled’ mug for microwave use? When you take it out you can actually hold your drink safely? It would be handy…
Television Remote Controls. Did you know that there can be up to as many as 86 buttons on your average remote control? EIGHTY SIX. If we take away the on/off, volume up/down and programme up/down buttons. That leaves us with 81….okay, so lets take away (for the advance anoraks reading this) the menu button, remote in/AV option, numbers 0-9 and possibly the satellite link key (or what have you). Now we are left with 70 buttons. SEVENTY! What the hell do they all do?
In an age where most countries have an ageing demographic, and many did not ‘grow up’ with this technology, it is painful watching an old age pensioner (my mum for example) trying to turn on the TV let alone choose a channel and then adjust the volume. Why? Too many buttons, too small in size (especially with onset of arthritis) and illegible to someone rapidly losing good sight. Downright confusing.
Q. KISS? Keep It Simple Stupid. Either design a control that does not need all that often underused functionality OR design a skin (patented idea by me now ‘light bulb moment’) that rolls on to your average control (yes, like a condom…) that masks out all the non-required buttons leaving just the basic buttons exposed.
Genius. I’m here all week. I look forward to seeing your thoughts below.
Richard Seymour: How Beauty Feels (Video)
A story, a work of art, a face, a designed object — how do we tell that something is beautiful? And why does it matter so much to us? Designer Richard Seymour explores our response to beauty and the surprising power of objects that exhibit it.
Designer Richard Seymour works on products with soul — from a curvy, swoopy iron to a swift and sleek city motorcycle. Seymourpowell is regarded as one of the world’s leading product and innovation design consultancies, with clients who include Ford, Virgin Galactic, Tefal, Casio, Nokia, Guinness, Samsung and Unilever. Seymour is also consultant global creative director of design to Unilever’s Dove, Axe/Lynx and Vaseline brands.
Where Good Ideas Come From – Supporting Text To Video Post
Further to my recent video post, here is a brief Bio of Steven Johnson (Photo above), a link to his original TED talk and the 10 main points from that original TED talk ‘Where Good Ideas Come From…‘
ABOUT STEVEN B. JOHNSON
Steven B. Johnson is the author of ‘Where Good Ideas Come From‘ and ‘The Invention of Air‘, among other best-selling books. For more information about Steven B. Johnson’ work, check out his homepage.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
In 2010, Steven B. Johnson spoke at TED about the where good ideas come from. You can see that TED talk here.
Here are those 10 summarised points from his talk:
1) There are seven patterns of innovation that appear over and over in culture AND in nature.
Steven Johnson explains that innovation and creativity are fractal: they occur by following the same seven patterns throughout the world, whether it’s a city or a coral reef. Culture evolves the same way nature does. More importantly, the world proves in both settings that innovation has its best chance of happening when ideas are connected, not protected.
2) First innovation pattern: The Adjacent Possible
We usually romanticize the generation of new ideas. We like to believe in that breakthrough moment where one enlightened individual jumps ahead many generations with his idea, but reality is quite different. Ideas are are connected like doors. Open a door and you can see new ideas, but only ideas that are connected can be seen.
It’s by learning from other people’s ideas, or previous ideas of our own, that we come up with new ways of seeing the world. It’s a constant connection of innovation. The reason ideas that are truly disconnected fail, is because there’s no connection with the present yet, there’s no application in reality. These ideas are frequently called “ahead of their time”.
The key is not to isolate your room – your idea. Instead, try to connect it to as many doors -people, places, ideas – as possible.
3) Second innovation pattern: Liquid Networks
Ideas are not single elements. They are more like networks. They are not sparked by the connections between different elements: they ARE those connections. For ideas to happen, you have to place the elements at your disposal in environments where more connections can occur in the right way.
The best networks have two characteristics: they make it possible for its elements to make as many connections as possible, and they provide a random environment that encourages constant “collisions” between all of its elements. This is why “liquid” networks are the best. They provide more stability than gas, where there’s not enough time for meaningful connections to happen, and less rigidity than solids, where there’s not enough randomness.
Remember, the elements are worthless if they are not properly connected. A trip to the beach with your co-founders will provide more creative ideas than you working alone in the office with all your spreadsheets.
4) Third innovation pattern: The Slow Hunch
It takes time for ideas (hunches) to connect and evolve into something valuable. Patience and contemplation are key aspects of innovation. If it feels completely new, chances are it’s not that valuable. In other words, it takes time to open all the necessary doors in a network that lead to an innovative idea.
Many slow hunches never turn into something useful because our day-to-day matters usually get in the way. We forget them before we give them a chance to make connections and grow. This is why a commonplace book is such a valuable tool. By collecting every bit of interesting information, you have a place where connections can be made, where every review will reveal something new.
Bottom line: Write everything down, and let it bloom.
5) Fourth innovation pattern: Serendipity
Innovation can’t be planned. Elements are not always in sync with each other. Ideas sometimes arise from happy accidents, hunches connect in an unexpected way. This is the problem with brainstorming sessions: maybe the best idea pops up to one employee later that night, long after the session ended. The secret to help serendipity occur is to build networks where its elements have a chance to persist, disperse and re-connect. This is how doors that weren’t seen before get opened.
However, something else must happen: the discovery must be meaningful to you. Constant bouncing of elements means nothing by itself, there must be a purpose in mind. Building an environment where brainstorming is constantly running in the back is the ideal way to go get serendipitous. Maybe have a database of hunches, were ideas can slowly connect with each other without having the time-pressure of a meeting.
Here’s a good motto to encourage serendipity is “look everything up”, especially in our web-based world! You never know where a Google or Wikipedia search might take you, what connections you may discover…
6) Fifth innovation pattern: Error
Good ideas are more likely to emerge in environments that contain a certain amount of noise and error. Noise and error leads to unpredictability, which in turn leads to innovation. Attempting to eliminate every uncomfortable element of the network also means eliminating every unpredictable connection.
The reason failure is not a bad thing is not because mistakes are good, but because they are critical steps that one must go through in order to create something valuable. Avoiding failure at all cost is a costly stance. Failing fast and moving on to the next thing is a much better philosophy.
7) Sixth innovation pattern: Exaptation
The more connections the network encourages, the more diverse the purpose and usefulness of something becomes. For example, in an error-free environment, a match is a way to light the stove. However, introduce a blackout, and now it’s a way of lighting up the room. Exaptation is all about exploring more uses of already existing ideas.
The reason cities are better suited for innovation than small towns, is not only because there are more elements, but because the amount of elements is enough for subcultures and diversification to appear. This is the essence of exaptation. Elements connecting in a variety of ways large enough to create unpredictable combinations.
If adaptation is about ideas changing to tackle a clear problem, exaptation is about ideas accidentally tackling unforeseen problems. Improve the connections and amount of elements in your network, and you’ll have better chances of achieving exaptation.
8) Seventh innovation pattern: Platforms
The advantage of platforms is not needing to monopolize creativity. By creating a platform, innovation can come from anywhere. Every time a platform is built for a purpose, that platform serves as platform for other agents for new purposes. New ideas appear where platforms are open. For example, companies like Google and 3M are great examples of cultures where everything in order to have a consistent stream of ideas from the most unexpected sources. The main benefit of having a platform is to create an environment where all the other patterns of innovation can thrive.
Platforms generate ideas not only by fomenting specialization and diversity, but also by making it easy to “recycle” and reuse existing resources. By having an actual place (even if it’s virtual) where elements can connect, every resource is open for grabs. Imagine all the data that a platform like Facebook gathers nowadays that isn’t being used yet. It’s only a matter of time before some other element that’s involved in this platform finds a use for it.
In the end, platforms encourage team work. They show that it’s better to share than hide. They tell us that we don’t need to know everything. We can focus on one thing and wait for the platform to provide the rest.
9) Ideas have to be fully liberated to spark innovation. The fourth quadrant of innovation is the best situation for this.
The best environment for ideas are open-source environments, where ideas can be built upon and reshaped as needed by many people. This scenario is what Steven Johnson calls “The Fourth Quadrant”. There are four quadrants of innovation: individual/market centered, non-individual/market centered, individual/non-market centered and non-individual/non-market centered. History shows that the closer we get to the fourth quadrant, that is, the less money driven and individualistic the environment, the more innovative the ideas become.
This doesn’t mean it’s bad to be creative with individualistic goals in mind. However, it does mean that it’s best for society when we open up our ideas to everyone instead of keeping them to ourselves.
It’s interesting to see that this quadrant wasn’t always the best suited for innovation. In the Renaissance, the third quadrant (individual/non-market) provided more innovative ideas. The reason was that networks were slow and unreliable, and the entrepreneurial spirit wasn’t developed yet because there wasn’t enough economic incentive. Not surprisingly, the idea of the lonely genius is born during this time. By the time Gutenberg’s press and postal systems across Europe bloomed, and population densities in European cities increased, collaborative environments provided most of the innovation. This has only accentuated nowadays with even more collaborative tools like the internet.
10) Connections and spillovers are the natural state of ideas, while societal and artificial dams keep them in chains.
Ideas naturally gravitate towards the fourth quadrant. Although we may be inclined to believe that the lack of economic incentives of the fourth quadrant would be a turn-off for innovation, it’s actually those economic incentives that become an obstacle. With the promise of a payday, people are motivated to have good ideas, but they protect them instead of sharing them. Our “market of ideas” is inefficient, because we have created artificial dams, such as copyrights and patents, that are designed to keep ideas out of other people’s grasps.
However, this does not mean all restrictions should disappear. The lesson is this: we should stop believing that without economic incentives or artificial scarcity of intellectual property, innovation would disappear. On the contrary, strictly speaking about innovation, it would thrive like never before, although probably with a huge economic trade-off that is not desirable either. There is a balance worth pursuing.
Remember, there is nothing “natural” about intellectual scarcity. It’s all artificial. Ideas not only thrive in open environments: they seek it. Sure, competition has been a great source of ideas. But so has the crowd. When looking at your own environment, embrace the random, connected, full of mistakes and hunches, diverse and non-competitive philosophy of the fourth quadrant.
Good ideas will come.
Where Good Ideas Come From
“We love to believe in that eureka moment, where a good idea suddenly comes out of nowhere to the lone genius.
In reality, ideas are born in very different situations. In “Where Good Ideas Come From”, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation to discover certain surprising patterns that explain the birth of good ideas, and what we can do to improve the creativity of our environment”.
What you miss when you are away from home…
Miss my baby…soon sweetheart…soon 😉
The importance of Sketching – a lost skill in schools?
There has been a lot of emphasis placed upon the use of CAD within schools. (Computer Aided Design). Given the way that we have embraced technology in our lives it is only right that we should embrace its use. But it often comes at a cost in creative school curriculums.
I feel that we have embraced CAD at the expense of teaching youngsters the vitally important skill of sketching.
It is important to understand that the modern Design (and Technology) department is not simply about manufacture. Sure, it is an important component BUT it is simply the much-needed icing on a very big cake.
The embodiment of an idea, teaching our young to think creatively (not divergently necessarily) and enabling them to convey their ideas on paper with a pencil in sketched and noted form are absolute pre-requisites if we are to help nurture a better future.
A quick sketch has no linguistic or cultural boundaries; it can convey a physical attribute, an aesthetic detail, a human resource structure, and so on.
The pencil sketch is, without doubt, the single most important design skill any student can have if we are to nurture creativity in our schools.
What subjects to include in a modern curriculum?
I recently replied to another blog regarding subject development and inclusion for a possible home schooling curriculum i.e what subjects should be included in the provision?
The blog is an interesting read, focusing on homeschooling, with many good points and comments added to help fuel the debate. Core subject areas such as Science, Maths, History, Geography, English and others were included but others were not. This did raise alarm bells and highlighted some issues close to my heart, notably suggesting a curriculum that seemed to have an absence of any core activity relating to learning another Modern Language or anything to do with Design (and Technology) or manufacture.
Design as an academic (yes, academic…) and creative discipline spread across all areas of manufacture (not simply ‘woodwork’ for less able kids as it is was 25 years ago in the UK) has to be included if you are to nurture and develop youngsters who can deal with a world that is changing quicker than anyone can really understand.
Design education at its core is about problem solving, prototyping, discovering, sketching, innovating, making mistakes, taking risks and communicating on paper, on a computer and/or in a range of materials. Teaching youngsters how to think creatively, divergently and appropriately to help solve a problem is key. Manufacture using smart materials, composites, textiles, metals, woods and so on with a mix of current technologies (3D printing, cnc machining…) and basic hands-on manual skills related manufacture is crucial.
Some of these skills, notably the thinking and problem solving skills, are a pre-requisite if you are to maintain a curriculum that can support wealth creation and provide genuine capability that will serve your future bankers, doctors, lawyers, politicians etcetera. Nurturing creativity is a basic subtext of education. Any proposed curriculum must not stifle it.
I also strongly feel that mastering at least one additional modern (and maybe other?) language is vital in todays world. Both my daughters (aged 9 and 17) are almost tri-lingual (English, French, Spanish) and the eldest is looking to start studying Mandarin. I am English, my wife is French – and you can probably argue that we have a slight head start here.
I am still amazed that many kids are still only taught to ‘Google’ in English – throwing in a French or Spanish word/phrase during your search will open up another third of the Internet for you allowing greater breadth and depth to your study, allowing access across different cultures and ideals. If you can really show off then throw Mandarin into the mix – the world is definitely your oyster in a few years time irrespective of academic discipline! Modern Languages are crucial to a youngsters development in this world which is becoming quite a small place to live in.
We are very naive if we think that our kids are not going to grow up and move into professions that will at least require them to communicate via email, talk on the phone or Skype to folk in another country at some point, let alone travel to another country with work (and quite possibly work abroad at some juncture in their careers). In 27 years I have either taught in a school, or worked as a consultant, in England, France, Hong Kong, Australia and Portugal. There will be more places to go as my work, or that of my wife’s, takes me there – of that I am sure. I reiterate; the world is a small place.
Of course there are a myriad of other subjects that need to be looked at, considered and either discarded or new ones thrown in to the mix but at this late hour I think I’ll stop there.
For now 😉
What most schools don’t teach….sadly.
Although American based, this video highlights a real black hole that exists throughout education around the globe. The basic fundamentals of communication technologies that have been with us for 30 years are not being addressed within curriculums worldwide. We all use computers. But the massive deficit of skilled workforce to feed our demands is simply mind blowing. Governments, schools and Curriculum Providers…WAKE UP! Schools need to embed coding and other basic ICT skills into regular routine educational provision from an early age. See my blog for more on this.
Timeline of Honda Engineering Excellence and Innovation
A wonderful timeline journey of Honda – through all it’s design and engineering excellence over the years.
Ardles - V2education 