Much nothing about ado

Well a little while back I posted my first post in just over a year. As I said I've been quite busy.

I've been working on a couple of toys, fun, challenging (First time I've worked on toys) tight budgets, shot deadlines. Always good to learn about new things.

I gave a work related learning workshop at Richard Lander School for the year 10 pupils studying Design Technology, resistant materials and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed that. Those young folk really got to grips with some model making, they also had really great ideas, but perhaps most encouraging of all, they really understood how design has created many problems for our society but how design also will deliver some answers to some serious commercial, social and environmental issues.

I've been working on a long standing consumer product design project, helping James Williams of Keebunga get ever closer to bringing his waterproof car key case to market. With budgets getting tighter and funding being ever more difficult to acquire, it's been a long haul but the end is finally in sight. Just about to receive final pre-production samples and the toolmaker ran into some difficulties. Thankfully they've spotted the error, which was too high a barrel pressure on the injection moulding machine, so a couple of mould tweaks and another run this Saturday means James is on the cards for receiving samples on Tuesday 17th August. After some pressure testing with help from the very nice chaps at AP Valve in Helston, its off to do some field trials (shouldn't that be sea trials?). Some product photography from the very lovely Anj at Andrea Michele Photography, in Truro. (OK I'm biased, she's my missus), a bit of coding to the website by Jump Media, a bit of graphic design for the website layout and then let the sales begin (much nervously finger crossing).

I've been doing some SEO work on my own website and experimenting with graphic layouts, though still not happy with it, (I doubt Ill every be happy with it to be truly honest). I had most of the test re-written for me by the very excellent copymonkey company in Bude, owned by Martin Dorey, who has himself written a cracking book called 'The Campervan Cookbook' where Martin shares his insight and skill in the art of two burner hob culinary creations.

On and off I've been working on a EV (Electric Vehicular) concept with some help from the very tallentd concept artist, Phil Pendlebury of Sursurus Art. More on this at some point in the hopefully not too distant future.

Is there anything else?

Oh yes. I'm happy to report that the delivery of the first 10,000 Frontier stoves have been delivered to Shelterbox, to help those affected by some of the most terrible natural disasters in Haiti, Pakistan, Chile and others. More stoves are on the way.

On a personal note, I was particularly pleas at how well the project went. Straight from Drawings to production standard. No changes where necessary. We worked hard to produce a specification on the Frontier stove that would ensure repeatable and economical manufacture. I would like to say and give a big thank you to Matt, Jeanette and Dan of Gait International who did so much to help communicate with the manufacturer and ensure product arrived on time and to budget.

Design Council are busy bees apparently

Recently I read an article on the Design council’s website written by the CEO David Kester advocating support for design businesses to help boost the economy, as indeed we should expect of the Design council

It was a good article by and large. However I found myself agreeing more with the commentators than I did with the article itself.

This is what David had to say:-

“So what does
this mean for economic policy? It needs to say, ‘people first’. The
customer or the citizen must be at the very centre of everything we
create. Our companies and public services have to provide more choice and
better experience using the best and latest technologies.”

Well, as for giving customers what they want, I'm reminded than a once great industrialist said "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse".

Now I'm not suggesting that all customers don't know what they want, but I am certain all customers know what they don't want. Also the same with choice is in my experience somewhat different. So many times too much choice confuses and delays decision. Mostly these pitfalls are circumvented by good design. Sadly most design is actually quite poor.

Never fear however, because given time enough, the consumer let us know what designs are bad. The article upholds Apple as some sort of bastion of all things good with design and customer service, but just look how long it took for the public to proclaim the short comings of the illustrious Apple's iPhone4.

The article also slated UK manufacturing stating

“on what should
we build our (economic) plan? What will be our bread and butter for the
next hundred years? And please don’t say manufacturing because the numbers
just don’t stack up. “

Well I’m quite staggered. Yes its true our manufacturing has declined from 25% of 50 years ago to 9% of GDP today, but those that remain are some of the very best in the world and compete well on price and much better on quality. What good is a product in a world that is sustainability aware, if the cheap import lasts but a year or the alternative at twice the money lasts five or more? Consumers are becoming increasingly aware not just of environmental sustainability, but more recently of economic sustainability. Here in the UK we are at the cutting edge of sustainable design.

And finally; to echo the sentiments of one of the commentators, Maxine Horn et.al. regarding funding for UK businesses. I am increasingly frustrated that my clients looking for some assistance find the bureaucratic and time consuming hoops they have to leap through, to finally get a refusal because they have asked for too little seems to me that the many events (media friendly parties) that are staged are more focused on protecting the organisations own funding stream than they are in helping others. One I know of has a £9m budget to help 50 businesses get funding. Yes, that’s right, they don’t actually give any funding, they only help companies get it from another source and thus far have been alarmingly ineffective at anything other than quaffing champagne.

As a QANGO we could assume that the DC is vulnerable to cuts in funding, but then I suppose it depends on who writes the reports and who they in turn know as to how vulnerable the DC really is. Personally I see it much the same as others. An expensive toothless tiger more interested in media exposure to help retain its own place in the system.

If I am wrong then the DC should put its money where its mouth is and, to quote, the Design Council’s £150,000 per year CEO, David Kester;

“That means taking some risks and backing key sectors rather than picking winners. Here one has to make a distinction between the sources of wealth and the enablers that we will depend on.”

Then how about this? Start putting funds into the bee hive and stop spending on the bee keeper

You can read the article here

Design Thinking. Who owns it?

I read a comment on another blog recently from an engineer who objected to designers wanting to “own” design thinking as if were a special skill only they (designers) posses.

I feel the commentator was justified in feeling that design thinking is being attempted to be owned, but from reading and participating in many debates on design thinking, I don’t think it is designers trying to hog the limelight.

True Many designers have commented that to be a true design thinker you need to be a designer, but I disagree. Even as children we design and everything we see, touch and experience has been designed. The question is, “is it good design?”

I am a mechanical engineer turned industrial designer. I don’t think designers are trying to own some esoteric process. In fact much has been debated that corporate, business and finance types are trying to own design and use it as the next breakthrough competitive edge.

The debate goes further into the differences between finance oriented thinking, where shareholder value is most important, and design oriented thinking is as the article suggests more people, solution, emotion oriented thinking.

Having the world witness the successes of design oriented companies (or design oriented at least at face value) seen a surge in profits in recent years, some are heralding design thinking as being the saviour of business.

Many designers protest that those would prostitute the art, dilute the very essence of design and devalue it.

It is however folly to think that design oriented thinking or finance oriented thinking alone can make any company successful. Any successful business is a combination of finely balanced and optimised parameters, (perhaps it’s the engineers thinking that will rule then?) working in harmony.

For some time the design industry has levied complaint at education saying that graduates have little or no commercial understanding. Now there is complaint that business doesn’t have enough design understanding.

In truth everything is designed and engineered and of course financed. Be that a business process, a service, a product of some advertising graphic. Where those designs embody the four behaviours of a designer

Inquisitive; where question after question is asked, (often very stupid ones but nonetheless effective by process of iteration and elimination).

Empathic; where designers go beyond simple user centred design study or focus groups and actually submerge themselves in the world of the consumer; much like a method actor would when preparing for a role in a play or film.

Lateral thinking; where designers often meld ideas not just from one sector but often make the most obscure connections between materials, mechanisms, functions and most importantly, people.

Passion; designers are sickeningly passionately to an idea and give up their whole sense of self to move an idea forward into realisation.

Merged with sound business reasoning (the fifth behavior of design thinking then) there will be success if that design is good. However we all know there are good design, good engineering, and good business and there is also the bad... sometime even the downright ugly.

***'Design orientation' and its derivitives is a phrase/s coined by Raymond Pirouz

Dear blogger, please forgive me for I have sinned.

Dear blogger it's been 1 year since my last blog post! Crikey!

Well I have been rather busy with projects such as the product design project, waterproof car key case for Keebunga and the Frontier Stove sustainable product design project that is distributed to areas of natural disaster by Shelterbox. We've also been working on a couple of fun projects, designing games and toys... how cool is that?

Well I've made myself a promise to blog at least once a week. I'll continue the popular inventors themed thread "I've got an idea... it's gonna make millions" and carry on venting my spleen in the "you know what really grinds my gears" courtesy of Peter Griffin.

Watch this space as they say.

by the way... anyone know who 'THEY' are?

I have a great idea, It's gonna make millions! (Part 3)

OK so you got your Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) signed by you and whomever you should meet up with to discuss your idea and work out how it's going to get on the supermarket shelves, but wait a minute... who's help do you need?

Many people approach a friend, an engineer, or perhaps their bank manager or a patent attorney or local Business Link perhaps, but are these the right people to talk to? When should you begin to have a dialogue with them? What materials will you need to help discussions move along? Who should you speak to first? Who next?

Different people you will come into contact with at various stages of the product development will require different information which is relevant to their role and you would do well to hold off speaking to those on the financial side of things until you've spoken to those on the intellectual property and technical aspects first.

As a general rule of thumb your first port of call could be an Intellectual Property (IP) Lawyer with an outline of your ideas as a sketch or even a written document containing a description of what your idea does, what problems it solves, references to other similar competing products (a.k.a. Prior Art), how your idea works.

This of course is not limited to physical product you can hold in your hand like a food mixer or something, in fact it could be anything such as a new chemical formula for a new type of polymer, or it could be a method of manufacture, it could even be a new medicine or software architecture. However, whatever your idea is we shall stick with the idea of this theoretical product being some sort of consumer product like a hair dryer or toaster.

So what should a IP lawyer do for you? Well for about £200.00 per hour I'd want them round my house tending to the garden and putting out the trash, but that's never going to happen. The least you could expect is some honest answers about your idea. Usually a good and experienced IP lawyer will have seen many ideas come and go and will have a reasonable hunch if your idea is worth pursuing or not.

In any case an IP lawyer can file for a patent, conduct a search on other idea to check if you idea is just duplicating something or may indeed infringe someone else’s patent. This latter point is particularly important because if your great idea does indeed infringe someone else’s idea and the sue, you could be in for a very hefty bill

Your IP lawyer should then be able to point you to a good industrial designer, in fact many IP lawyers refer to industrial designers to have your sketches professionally drawn up to file along with other documents and sent to the patent office.

You could of course bypass the IP lawyer and go straight to an Industrial designer to begin the detailed design and development of your idea to prototype and file your patent later or perhaps not even file a patent at all.

Well more on the role of an Industrial Designer in Part 4 of this series but for now let’s delve a little further into the minefield that is Intellectual Property.

First of all let me get my little disclaimer out of the way... if what I tell you here goes horribly wrong then it’s your own fault for being a cheapskate and listening to an old hack like me and not seeking out the advice of a professionally qualified and accredited IP Lawyer, so I wash my hands of you..nerrrrr :-P

OK that’s that out of the way... now where were we? Oh yes IP

Let’s suppose for a moment you have spent a few thousand pounds of your lifesavings with an IP lawyer drafting up such things as descriptions, abstracts, mosaics and claims, you get your patent applied for certificate in the post and you proceed with the next step.

The next thing your IP lawyer (or yourself if you decided to go it alone) should do is ask for a search of prior art. Actually I normally advise to have this done first as finding out your idea has already been patented can prevent you wasting money on an application that won't be granted and if that doesn't put you off, it at least gives you some direction NOT to go in if you still want to develop your idea. This information should be presented to your industrial designer for their reference.

After the search your patent, if accepted on the grounds no other patent of the same idea has been granted, will be published after approximately 18 month from your initial filing date. Publishing your idea means that your idea is now in the public domain for anyone to read and COPY

After your patent application has been published its time to spend some more of your hard earned wonga on a "substantive examination" which basically is a panel of technical types looking at your idea and deciding if its "novel, inventive and not otherwise known to one skilled in the art". If you think that a convoluted way of saying "is it a new idea" then read a few abstracts... them IP lawyers sure do earn their money.

Continuing with the IP lawyers for a moment, let’s just consider if they really are worth the £200.00 per hour or up to £600.00 per hour plus for worldwide applications that they will charge you. After all there’s nothing stopping you filing your own... and that would only set you back a couple of hundred.

As I mentioned above, take some time to read some of the many hundreds of thousands of patents files with the UK Intellectual Property Office and you will read obscure terms like "substantially coaxial to" and "normal to the face of". All a bit weird and esoteric if you ask me and I happen to read lots of them.

Not only will an IP lawyer draft your application in a language that the Intellectual Property Office likes, they will also write your application to be as robust as possible and as commercially attractive as possible.

So what does it mean to have a robust and commercially attractive patent? Well if your patent says something like :-

" it's a box with a lid for putting shoes in"

then practically anyone could come along and say:-

"it’s a container occupying a three dimensional space having in internal volume accessible via an opening to one or more surfaces to facilitate the filling of aforementioned internal volume with a variety of objects. The opening is closed via singular or multiple surfaces dimensioned to substantially reduce said opening to proportions that disallow the extraction of said objects without first being moved or removed form said opening"

In the first example you invented a shoe box, in the second example you invented all boxes... which idea do you think is robust and commercially attractive? Which idea is worth more? Which idea is most likely to go unchallenged by some skilful rewording of some future patent application? Like I said those IP lawyers may well be expensive, but if your idea is really that good, then it could be money well spent. Oh, one more thing, You are very unlikely to get any form of investment for an idea that hasn’t been patented.

In the UK there is the "Smart Award" accessed via Business Link, but you'll need a very strong case to get the grant and to get the grant you must not have done ANY R&D work before applying and you'll need a substantial amount of your own money and a strong business plan for exploitation of the concept normally requiring the high possibility of the creation of jobs.

Well now for some horror stories, the sort that makes would be inventors shiver with terror. These are necessary tales of woe in order to point out some of the many traps they lie in the dark undergrowth of Intellectual Property Law. Some are well know, some are not. Are you sitting comfortably? The we shall begin.

Once upon a time there was a young inventor whom we shall call Mr X to protect their identity and he had a wonderful idea. Mr X said to himself "if this isn't going to make me millions then my name isn't James Dyson" OK Mr X may not have actually used those very words but I’m using a good deal of artistic licence here so give me a break OK... sheesh!

Well as is well know Mr Dyson invented the 'dual cyclone' bag less vacuum cleaner and almost got his idea ripped off by one of the biggest manufactures of 'Hoovers'. But Mr Dyson sued the 'Hoover' manufacture and won, but before winning his case Mr Dyson was also in debt to his lawyers to the tune of some £18,000,000... Bet he's glad he won then!

Another tale I tell is of a friend of a friend of a friend who invented a new type of hearing aid. Many thousands of pound into his development he employed the services of an Intellectual property lawyer...who duly ripped off the idea and tried selling it to someone else!

My final tale and one I was personally closely involved in as an industrial Designer. A plumber had invented a new type of fitting that allowed assembly of high pressure fluid systems without traditional solders or compression or crimp fitting and could therefore be easily repeatably dismantled and re assembled. The patent as mentioned earlier was robust and had applications ranging from domestic plumbing fittings to automotive and aerospace fluid systems. As you can probably guess it was worth quite a bit.

The plumber, unable to fund manufacturing himself approached some venture capitalists who seeing the potential funded further development and subsequently floated a new company on the stock market and headed up by one of the UK's most celebrated chairman’s and a team of heavyweight business men CEO's directors engineers and such like, to raise further capital to buy out one of Europe’s largest plumbing fitting manufacturers and a hydraulics specialist.

I was approached to develop a power tool to make the required groove and chamfer on the end of tubes after a number of vendors had failed to achieve the correct geometry as required by the fitting being under high pressure in hydraulic systems.

Having patented the required tube manipulation technology on one of my earlier projects, a prototype was built for the company which worked well within the specified limits and in fact allowed the company engineers to further improve the performance of the fittings making them even more attractive to their automotive and aerospace customers.

After some time I was curious that I had no further enquiry about further development of the power tool which was necessary for the company to fully exploit their IP. I did wonder in fact if my robust patent had in fact fallen foul of some clever engineering by this giant of a company.

I telephoned... no such number. I Googled, and to my amazement... the company had gone broke!

It transpired that the inventor of the fitting had taken the PLC to court disputing who actually owned the IP as the inventor thought he sold a licence and the PLC thought they owned the rights in full.

Instead of finding some common ground with the inventor and reach a deal the PLC decided that they would stick to their principles and counter sue. As the lawsuit dragged on the PLC share price went down and down and down. Sales for fittings declined as customers waited the outcome of the court case, the inventor had notched up a bill with his lawyers of some £34,000,000.

End result? The inventor lost and was bankrupt with a £34M debt, and the PLC you might ask? went on to rip roaring success having claimed victory and exploited the IP... NO they went into receivership despite winning as share price fell catastrophically low and a captain of industry fell on his sword. Corporate ego can be just as damaging as a personal one.

Whilst it may win investors and bank managers over to have a patent for your idea, believing as they often do that a patent will bestow a magical protective shield around the business, lest ye not forget it’s one thing to have a patent… it’s an entirely different proposition defending it.

And that brings me back to an earlier point I made regarding what an IP lawyer can do for you. Remember that search? Well make sure you or your lawyer does their homework or you may find yourself on the receiving end of a law suit for infringement of someone else’s IP.

In the next instalment we will visit the industrial designer and look what expertise they can offer to an inventor in the quest for the materials needed to win that all important investment from the 'Dragons"

Calling from a taxi

Have you ever been in the back of a taxi cab and needed to make an important call only to find you have left your mobile phone at home or your battery is flat?

Well if you happen to be in London or Birmingham city centre and you're lucky enough to hail one of the 100 O2 branded black cabs kitted out with an O2 Taxi-phone in addition to charging units compatible with most O2 phones.

Taximedia was commissioned by O2 to develop the advertising using their 'supersides' product which sees the cab beautifully painted with company branding.

Taximedia approached KeyMT one of Europe's biggest and most respected muti-media specialist to develop the hardware required to support the PR campaign.

In turn KeyMT came to Buff to design and develop the integration of the Motorola car phone electronics into the taxi interior.

With a lead time of one week and a budget of just £100 per taxi, Buff really had their work cut out and pulled out all the stops in order to meet the very tight deadline.

Buff sent a section of the cab interior trim to Arrk France to be scanned, generating point cloud data as a reference surface allowing the phone fascia to fit snugly against the trim. Whilst the Motorola electronics where reverse engineered by Buff.

A new fascia, and new keypad silicone membrane where designed to reflect the O2 logo and the back light illumination LED's where changed from green to blue to match in with O2 branding.

The 3D CAD files where sent to Arrk's UK rapid prototype facility to test out the fit and function of the proposal before silicone tooling was produced to vacuum cast the 100 fascias.

Delivered on time and on budget Buff are proud to have been associated with KeyMT and the O2 'Cab Phone'

Pay What you Want or Get What You Pay For?

An interesting debate has been sparked over on Twitter about the merits or demerits perhaps of PWYW by C Sven Johnson of reBang and nithinkd (is he the coolest looking guy on that Enfield or what?) A debate which I will be following with a great deal of interest.
What is PWYW? You may well ask. Well sadly its one of those acronyms like WYSIWYG or FYI for Pay What You Want.

So what is PWYW? Well it’s basically telling your clients that your fee is whatever they are willing to pay. Now you may be thinking that the heck are you talking about man... that's plain crazy, but think about it for a moment...

PWYW has been used successfully for quite some time now in the realm of software downloads. One company reports that whilst most take the software for free, about 10% pay the recommended price; there is a small group of 4% who pay what they believe the software is worth to them for the utility it provides. The end result is that the company earns more than if they had priced their software to be in line with their competitors.

Another example of where the customer can Pay What you Want is eBay. A very different business model, but shows clearly a way of finding the price equilibrium for demand versus supply.

But your in the industrial design sector right... how could you possibly let the client determine the price… you would get 'ripped off' for sure. What if your going rate is let’s say, £30.00 per hour, but your client is willing to pay £50.00. On a small two week project, that could be an extra £2,000.00 helping keep the re-po man away from the front door.

On the other hand, let’s say your £30.00 rate has gone unfulfilled for a couple of lean months... a real possibility in these slower economic times. What would you say to 'some crazy inventor' who can only afford to spend a £1,000 on getting some design work done so he can make his pitch to potential investors? Do you turn him away and slug it out on the doorstep with the re-po man over your 50" Sony flat panel? Or do you say, "hey maybe if I give this guy a brake, I can pay for the TV and he can present to his investors... maybe he'll even comeback with some more cash and I can make that car payment too"

Well both of the above situations have happened to me... even the re-po man bit, though I didn't have to slug it out with him as actually he was quite a nice guy and bought me a little more time with my creditors which allowed me to pay off what I owed without any serious implications.
In the first case, my client discussed terms and conditions with me, he offered more than the tendered amount in exchange for 'on demand' service as he required a fast turnaround working in the automotive sector for such clients as GM, Aston Martin, Bentley, Rolls-Royce et.al

In the second instance, my client (James Williams of Keebunga) was an 'inventor' with a great idea, but no idea about the cost of developing a product. At that time I had a lull after a storm of work. Liking James's ideas and his general demeanour, I decided that I could help him perhaps get his idea a little further along and help me keep the cash flow looking healthy. The premise on which I offered my services as I did at one third of my rate (my rate isn't £30.00 per hour in case your wondering... you'll have to commission me to find that out), was that should I have full rate work, it would take precedence.

Over the course of the last year, my first 'premium rate' client has continued to use my services on a number of projects, whilst James and I re-negotiated various deals to suit his changing needs. On one occasion I did the work 'for free' to be billed at some undetermined date (OK, not actually free then). When Keebunga needed to move more quickly in order to meet criteria for a government grant and investors we agreed a higher more normal rate.

The end result is that Keebunga managed to get a product developed at an affordable price. James Williams says "Had it not been for Buff offering their services at a price that matched my budget, Keebunga would never have come to fruition". With product about to come to market, an investment plan in place and future product releases planned, Buff has already been selected for to design and develop these new projects.

So you see, it's not only the banks and mortgage lenders that can get creative with money. Only is your aim is to stash the cash or help a fledgling company come to life? I suppose there may well be some truth in the old saying 'As you sow, so shall you reap'

"You know what really grinds my gears?" (Part 3)

You know what really grinds my gears? Bad product design, that's what!

Yeah, I know I said that already but it's still hanging around like a bad smell.

Sadly though this is the second product from the same manufacture to have been a let down.

In this case the product was a baby feeding bottle sterilizer from a well know manufacture who is part of a global player in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and consumer electronics markets.

The problem encountered was the way in which the sterilizer unit held the bottles... not just any old bottles, but bottles from the same manufacture (looks like I'm a gluten for punishment).

The unit was 'design' to hold a number of bottles in an inverted orientation, so the sterilizer could do its black magic sterilizing thingy at its best. To facilitate the positioning of the bottles and aid their inverted orientation, there where six rings a little smaller than the bottle neck opening. The problem was, that these rings had been positioned such that all six bottles wouldn't stand up as they where too close to each other so they either fell over or you could only sterilize three bottles at a time... bit wasteful of the resources and bad for that there greeny type carbon wotsits 'n' environment stuff.

Naturally we took the sterilizer unit back to the shop. I mentioned to the staff... blank expressions ensued. No real surprise to be honest. I returned home and sent an email to the company, outlining the problem, to which I received a rather indifferent and curt reply... oh well.
What amazes me though is that not only did this design error get past design review, got past prototype and got past tooling... it actually ended up in the shops! I think it an insult that a company thinks it can palm off a poorly designed products onto its customers.

But fear ye not... this story has a happy ending.

Yesterday I saw a new improved sterilizer from this manufacture... the problem has been corrected. So whilst I no longer need a baby feeding bottle steriliser as our little fella has out grown the need, I'm happy that at lease this design flaw is sorted out.

Can Spaceclaim claim the future of CAD?

Spaceclaim have released the above video on YouTube which I came across via Solidsmack on Twitter.

Quite frankly I'm staggered! I suppose we all expect that this would happen sooner or later, but really, I was expecting later rather than the sooner.

For those who might have seen Ironman, the connections to Robert Downey Jr manipulating CAD files in holographic free space are obvious and certainly the technology, whilst in its' infancy is already available. It's only a matter of time before such things become a practical reality.

I do however have a few reservation about this showcase. Spaceclaim have made some claims in the past that haven't quite held up to scrutiny according to some reports by the media.

My second reservation is, that for more than a decade I have been attending demonstrations, exhibitions and trade shows, where various vendors have demonstrated the capabilities of their software, I have found that the scripted and rehearsed presentations have shown the software in the best possible light. However, when put to the test of working on-the-fly, often I have found the software to be much less polished and on occasion a downright flop.

Lets hope that this won't be the case for Spaceclaim as it could well be the making of them. Though expect the likes of Autodesk, and Siemens to be hot on their tails, I know Dassault already are.

What Women Want

Do you remember the 2000 box office hit film What Women Want ?


Mel Gibson play an Advertising Executive, who by freakish accident is able to hear the thoughts of women and uses his new found talent for unscrupulous means and to further his career in the advertising agency world.

Now you're probably thinking 'this supposed to be a blog about design? Not some sort of film review'


Well in the film Mel has to design an ad campaign for a shoe manufacture... see, it is about design, oh ye of little faith.


Mel's accident happens in the bathroom when he's electrocuted whilst holding a hair dryer and trying on some women's' products in order to help him understand his target market. The morning after he is able to hear what women are thinking.


Now over the years I have heard many a fellow complain 'what do women want?' Some claim that even women themselves don't know what they want. Now before rushing to comment that I'm some sort of neanderthal misogynist, please read on, because believe me or not, I'm going somewhere with this.


Empathy... said to be one of the key personality traits of a designer. If a man was truly empathic towards a woman's needs, wouldn't he know, What Women Want?


I've bee told that "sometimes" I'm in touch with my feminine side. Whether or not that is true, I do make an effort to try and 'walk a mile in someone else's shoes' be that a woman, a teenager a child , whoever.


The thing is with empathy you can't really be truly empathic until you are able to draw parallels with others feelings about a situation with your own feelings towards situations in which you have found yourself in the past that are at least similar enough for you to understand their emotional frame of mind.


My partner Anj and I met via the Internet. We got together because we have such deep empathy for each other. This is because whilst living more than 300 miles apart, we have led similar lives and have remarkably similar motivations and thinking. Sometimes its almost ethereal and scary how we just know what the other is thinking... we even think the same things at the same time... even when we are apart (which is rare). Once we even had the very same dream on the very same night... how cool is that?


Now, although I can be empathic, I must confess that I am not naturally an empathic person. I have to think about my feelings and those of other in an analytical way. I am after all of the INTJ Jung, Briggs, Myers personality type.


In 2005 I took part in a worldwide study (run by the BBC in the UK) to determine differences in the ways in which men an women think. This was shown on BBC1 in July 2005 and can be found on Youtube in 6 parts.


The study for me was an emotional journey of self discover. I learned that my awareness that I lack natural empathy does not prevent me form learning to emulate it, but for sure I learned many years earlier when I worked in marketing that you certainly can't fake it.


The BBC, concerned about my reaction to the 'nappy test' part of the study (2m 40s in on this video), they very kindly paid for some counseling with a psychologist, to help me better understand my reaction. I had held my father to blame for my feelings of underachievement but through the conversations with the psychologist I leaned a hidden truth about myself. My relentless push for Utopian perfection in all that I do, was producing some negative emotional reactions to any for of critique and in particular from my father whom I hold in high esteem for his own achievements.. I felt in fact somewhat in my fathers shadow. When I later discussed this with my father I learned from him that he made his critical observations as he felt I had more to give.. he even declared that he felt he was living in MY shadow. I was shocked I can tell you. Of course now when I see someone who is something of a perfectionist, I can empathise with their emotional turmoil of never being able to reach their goal. I can tell of my experiences and hopefully help such a person to come to terms wit the fact as a perfectionist, you will never be satisfied, but to take encouragement that everyday, you take a step further to the impossible dream.



The rising trend for 'Design Thinking' is an attempt mostly by the business community and by some design companies to cash in on the personality traits of designers, attempting to emulate such values as empathy. I do believe that these 'design thinkers' could emulate such a personality but I do have one or two reservations.

Some of those who are expressing interest in 'design thinking' seem to have missed the point somewhat and give the impression that they are not attempting to use 'design thinking' for the purpose of creatively solving problems that effect the quality of life for the users of product and service, but are trying to manipulate 'design thinking' to make more profit.

True 'design thinkers' are not so self serving in my opinion. Of course there are those who are designers and whose apparent primary aim is to make as much money as possible, using design as a means to an end, just as there are those who are not designers, whose primary course of action is to bring benefit to mankind, with profit as a by-product of their transactional processes.

Coming full circle, I wonder what an average 'design thinker' would make of some observations I've made about what women want. Could it be....

• Flowers?
• A pretty designer dress?
• Expensive perfume?
• Jimmy Choo shoes?

before considering those, ask yourself these questions: -

• When a woman is hassled for erm.... 'intimacy' with her partner, Why does she often dress dowdily and eat lots of chocolate and sulk rather a lot?
• Why does a woman, whose homestead is fraught with aggression, indifference, patronising speech etc. Why does she feel the need to dress up, buy flowers, wear perfume and jewelry when she is with her friends?

Conversely

• Why is it, when that same woman feels special because she is loved for whom she is. Is appreciated for the human being she wants to be. Is encouraged with affection to do the things she has her heart set upon. Why is it such a woman feels no need to prune and beautify herself to excess when with those very same friends?

What Do Woman want?

Perhaps if you need to ask the question, then it may already be too late

I would like to give special thanks to Becky Blackwell, Raymond Pirouz and an extra special thankyou to my Anj x for helping me put together my thoughts for this blog post

I have a great idea, It's gonna make millions! (Part 2)

There you are sat in the green room, waiting to enter the 'Dragon's Den' all dressed up in your Sunday best with sketches in hand and a cardboard and sellotape model, all brightly coloured in with Emily's felt tip pens, tucked neatly inside your brief case... you'll blow them away with your invention... they won't be able to resist the urge to invest.


Ten minutes later you emerge from the den, sweating, stammering, model in tatters and your dreams shattered. How could it come to this you wonder? Why didn't they get it? Why didn't they take me seriously? What on earth is wrong with a one point twenty one gigawatt, automatic potato peeling machine? So just how can a crazy inventor be taken seriously by the suits?

First of you will need a good foundation, something that will say to the designer, patent attorney, bank manager et.al. "Hey, I know what I'm doing". Businesses have begun to borrow from designers more recently, with the current business buzz word being 'Design Thinking' The suits belive that crazy inventors with all of their whacky problem solving solutions, may just yield them their next 'break through idea', so why not take something back? Why not borrow from their 'Business Thinking'?

The cornerstone of your foundation you're going to need is a 'Confidentiality Agreement' or 'Non Disclosure Agreement' (NDA). This will set the tone of any future conversations, it says "I am being professional, and I'm knowledgeable about business practices" it opens conversations up in a business language the suited professionals understand... and more importantly, a language they appreciate. Besides which a NDA will also offer some protection to your intellectual property (IP) and signals you're not about to let yourself get ripped off, something I know many inventors fear.

With co signed NDA in hand, you can then begin to open up some dialogue, but if your brief case still contains that napkin sketch and cardboard model, all your NDA effort is going to go to waste. Sure, in the past a 'back of the envelope sketch' was often good enough, but today investors and manufactures have much higher expectations. Anything less than a functioning prototype is falling very short. That's not to say you must have a working prototype, but trust me, you will find it very difficult to gain the trust of anyone but the bravest visionary with anything less.

Of course a working prototype is going to cost a fair amount. Recently at Buff we commissioned a prototype for Keebunga for what is quite a simple product. The first stage cost was £180 for stereolithography rapid prototypes in unfinished state. By the time the final prototypes where commissioned, some £8,000 had been spent and that's not counting the actual design costs.

On top of your NDA and rather expensive working prototype, you're going to need a business plan of some sort. Even if you're trying to sell a licence to manufacture rather than venture forth into the minefield of manufacturing the product yourself, investors, grant officials, bank managers et.al. will not take you seriously unless you have a very good idea of what the market potential is, who your demographic are, what the capital expenditure and unit costs are going to be and what sales channels you propose. And you'd better be prepared to back up you findings and assumptions with some hard evidence of valid research.

One final thing before I leave you to ponder. You will need a realistic idea of how much your idea is worth. I have seen some licenses sell with a royalty payout of 1% or 2% of retail value... and believe me, that's not a bad return.

If any of you have watched 'Dragons Den' on BBC TV, then you'll no doubt be aware that the dragon business investors often ask for a much higher percentage of the business shares than the inventor usually offers. Why is this? Well lets take a look at a fictitious example of the automatic potato peeler that the wonderful Heath Robinson designed in the picture above. If you have such a drawing its really worth little more than the paper and a token gesture towards your time and intellect... £2,000 would be a good result. A working machine is worth not only the value of the sketch, but also the value of the sum of parts, your time spent developing and tweaking the idea and some recognition that any prospective manufacture/investor is now faced with a much lower risk, as they now know the idea works ... in principle. If you can actually fund the production tooling and run a few thousand off and sell them, then the investors also know the market has been tested. It is this adding value and lowering risk that investors and manufacturers are really interested in.

As a sketch, an idea will need lots of money spent on developing it. One recent example was £300,000 investment to take a concept to a manufactureable product, and that wasn't even a complex product, so with those sorts of development costs in mind, a manufacture is hardly going to offer you the £10,000,000 you believe your idea is worth. Of course if you have manged to get your idea developed to a working prototype stage, the risk to the manufacture and investment they'll need to put in to take the product to market is lower, thus you can command a little more, but it still isn't going to be remotely close to the sorts of figures most people believe their idea is worth, and in my experience nothing... and I mean nothing pisses off an investor more than a prospect over valuing to ridiculous proportions. If you want to be taken seriously, then you need to get serious with yourself first.

In my next blog entry on this subject I'll venture into a little more detail about how to put together a proposal and where you can go to for help. In the mean time download an NDA from the Buff website and get it signed...btw, it's free to download ;-) http://www.buffindustrialdesign.co.uk/NDA.pdf

A special thanks to Raymond Pirouz, who helpd shape some of my thoughs for this post through his tweets on twitter

"You know what really grinds my gears?" (Part 2)

I'll tell you what really grinds my gears... Good customer service, that's what! Yeah, that's right, you heard me. No I haven't lost the plot, well maybe I have. OK I'll explain.

Good customer service... Every one's doing right? Those companies that offered poor customer service have gone out of business, only the good ones are left. Agree? I'll wager you don't!

Let’s face it, my utilities company sucks. Not just a little bit, no, I mean they suck big time. They do everything right of course, or so they would have us believe, their customer service is award winning apparently.

Take my phone company for example; I was having a sandwich and coffee in my local deli recently reading the local paper when I came across an article about the phone company that they were going to offer small businesses advice on developing good customer service. They in fact where going to team up with a well respected and high profile businessman come TV star. Well, I nearly fell of my chair laughing... Ohhhh the irony, if only the journalist knew what adventures I had had with the phone company, they may never have bothered to run the story.

I'm sure if I told you my story of phone company adventure, it would be familiar to many of you (are there many of you actually reading this?) No doubt you would simply click the 'Next Blog’ button and move on. Big corporations you see, whilst having huge resource to develop key performance metrics and run Kaizen events to improve customer service, what they lack is humanity. It's not just the big companies though.

My partner Anj (a photographer) recently went to the local market to pick up some material for a backdrop. The stall holder gave exemplary customer service, they gave good advice, they were polite, they had very competitive prices, yet Anj swears she won't use them again, Why? Once again they lacked humanity. Really, if the stall holder cracked a smile, I'm convinced their face would have disintegrated.

So what the heck has this got to do with design? Well recently there has been lots of talk about 'Design Thinking'. Some schmuck decided that designers have something of value to add after all and companies are desperate to jump on the 'Design Thinking' band wagon.

I don't think there is any need for me to waffle on about design thinking, there are plenty of blogs and tweets to read out there, but what I will say is that as usual businesses want a chart to measure it with... well good luck to you I say... you'll need it. How do you measure empathy, compassion, understanding, love... how do you measure love?

What's really going to be the competitive differentiator is love for your customers! No I'm not suggesting you should start dating them. The sort of love I mean is simply caring. You can't fake it, you can't develop a standard operating procedure for it and you certainly can't measure it, but it is very real, and makes a REAL difference to the customer experience.

Take my partner Anj for example. As a portrait photographer she needs to give exemplary customer service, yet the other day she went on a shoot and forgot her soft box. Her competitive advantage over her high street competitors comes from offering a personal service, no pressure sales pitch and affordable prices. However, you can copy her actions, but you can't copy her motives. You see Anj really believes... no really FEELS that her clients deserve good photography, affordable prices. To her those capture precious moments are importantly, because as a mother herself, she really understands the humanity in her work.

In my own business, I have made close friend with my clients, some have even helped me move house (thanks James, thanks John). I think I've achieved that not through good customer service, hey, I rarely answer the phone after three rings and I'm normally surrounded by some level of chaos, but I do believe in my clients with passion, and I care about THEM, the people, not the money or if their product is going to win me an award... I love them!

I have a great idea, It's gonna make millions!

That is what many people proclaim when engaged in conversation with engineers, industrial designers and businessmen.

Sadly though, many of these enthusiastic people get a rather short shrift from those engineers, designers and entrepreneurs, often being labeled "another mad inventor".









In fact, recently, I had been talking to a government department advisor who suggested that engaging such people in conversation was a 'waste of time' and 'these crazy ideas never lead anywhere'.


Why such a stoic and acerbic rebuff from so many industry professionals ? Well I have observed that there is certainly some evidence of envy towards the inventor, but it is mostly the Dr Emmet Brown stereotype that people think of when engaged by such inventive mavericks.


In industry, innovation is being touted as the next big thing, so why does industry have special dispensation from these caustic labels? Well perhaps there exists some snobbery, but the main reason I can discern is that many inventors suffer from living up to the stereotype a little to closely. Let me explain, most inventors exhibit the following traits: -

• Incredible enthusiasm for their idea


• Zealous belief their idea is the next big thing


• Often over value their ideas nett worth


• Limited understanding of manufacturing


• Limited understanding of development costs

Juxtaposed to this stereotype are the industry professional who are supposed to their antithesis having a good and realistic understanding of these things, however the truth is that industry is a little closer to Dr Brown than they would care to admit. So what really separates these groups?

Industry is often cautious about their ideas, they have experienced the epic cost of development and disappointment of market failure. They have better grasp of the profit margins achievable and thus more accurately guess the nett worth rather than taking a wild stab in the dark as many 'mad inventors' seem to do, but one thing is certain, industry often don't know all the answers, but they do know where to turn to for expert advice and are respected by those consultants and it is these that are the key differentiators between 'the mad inventor' and the 'industry professional'.

So the key ingredient for you crazy inventor types out there is often partnering up with people in the know such as engineers, intellectual property lawyers, marketing consultants. But how can I get these people to take me seriously you may ask? Who can I turn to?

Well I'll save that for another blog entry as dinner is waiting to be eaten (mmmm... pork sausage sandwiches), besides which I feel a rant coming on... something that 'really grinds my gears'.

Renault like the Wind

Well as promised I bring you bloggings from the world Series by Renault.

Of interest to some may be the Renault Design stand located in the paddock. This featured a finnished 1/4 scale model of the Renault Megane coupe concepts allong with a foam and clay models.

Also on show was a full scale show car the Renault Wind, a two seat convertable.

A bit disapointing really considering the scale of the World Series to have only one concept car and one scale model and a few renderings. At a time when design is the second fastest growing industry and innovation being touted as the saviour of all things reccesion, I think Renault have missed an oportunity here.

With the automotive industry in a slump its hardly inspiring to witness such a feeble effort.

Renault: can do better, should do better, must do better. B minus, F for effort.

If you can be botherd, you can read more about the Renault Wind at Gizmag

World Series by Renault

My son an I are off to Silverstone this weekend to watch the World Series by Renault.

My love of motorsport has always played a part in my life as a designer. The technology, materials, quality of workmanship, optimisation of every parameter and not forgetting the Human Machine Interface has always fascinated me.

We are taking my sons digital camera and will take a few snaps of the event.

When I return perhaps I'll post about what product I find and maybe analyse a few to see what we can learn from this hi-speed hi-tech world. Hopefully I'll be able to find out what the motorsport industry is doing to lower its carbon footprint too

Designer diet

No, I'm not talking about some hip trendy new weight loss plan to give you that "cut look". What I am talking about is what an industrial designer likes to eat whilst working.

Although I work from a home office these days, there have been times when I used to go to the office and work with other industrial designers, so my observations are not based simply on my own lifestyle, but others also.

A couple of years ago my weight had crept up to just over 80kg, not a huge amount you might think, but at five feet, five and a half inches tall that's clearly a tad overweight (don't forget the half inch, that half inch is very important to a shorty like me).

The reason for the piling on the pounds is the deliciously evil flavors of crisps, cakes and chocolate bars.

You see, sat in my chair all day the only exercise I used to get was getting out the chair to go get more chocolate... and maybe swiveling my chair to the sound of a loud wheeeeeeeee.

What I couldn't quite figure out was why I had such an urge for sugary sweets as I don't really have a sweet tooth and I just put it down to middle age spread and the fact I didn't go walking and rock climbing as much as I used to in my twenties and all the sitting down, thus not burring off the energy.

Then I discovered, well told by a friend in the medical profession that my habit was normal for my line of work and similar.

Truck drivers, computer programmers, analysts et.al use up lots of glucose or blood sugar, and this sugar needs replacing. A pea sized gland right in the centre of your head called the pituitary gland send out messages to get yourself tanked up with lots of lovely stickies.

However, there is a word of warning to be heeded here more than just a reminder that such indulgences will expand you waist line, your brain whilst it needs the glucose can suffer irreparable damage by over consumption... there is truth in the old saying 'everything on moderation'

As usual the recommendation is eat a balanced diet and get plenty of exercise. With EU law stipulating that we should take a ten minuet break after twenty minuets of work in front of the computer screen why not use this time to walk to the shop for some fruit instead of those Mars bars or Snickers you usually crave

Greenpower

I met today with Alex Childs, a maths teacher at Penair High School to discuss how Buff Design coud be of help to their Greenpower car project.


For those of you who are not aware of what Greenpower is, let me fill you in on a few details. Run by by the Institue of Mechanical Engineers and; Greenpower is electric car racing for schools, colleges, apprentices and youth groups, the aim being to promote engineering and technology as exciting careers, to those aged 9-25.



Being keen on enviromental concerns as much as I am on motorsport, Greenpower allows me a little indulgence in my passion for cars and racing whilst maintaining a modestly clear concience.



My involvement with the project will be in the form of helping to raise sponsorship, and perhaps helping get a few of the more technically challenging part made on a shoestring.



One of the needs of the school is to generate 2D drawings for part fabrication, and some 3D modeling to help get an visual on the bodywork and its potential aerodynamic performance.



Hopefully This has already been sorted out as I spoke with a value added reseller who is willing to supply the software for free. all that needs to hapen is for the school to approve the introduction which hopefull can happen in early July

"You know what really grinds my gears?"

I'll tell you what really grinds my gears, bad consumer product design, that's what!

At risk of being sued by Peter Griffin for nicking his tag line, I thought I would share some of my grievances I have with some of the many consumer products I have owned, used or looked at and walked away from in disgust.

Now fast approaching the big four ohhh as I am, when I can become an official G.O.M. (Grumpy Old Man) I finally get to air my views and pent up rage all of these years for bad design.

Case in point, today I was feeding our five month old baby with his Phillips Avent baby feeding bottle. Now the little chap is a tad independent and grasps for the bottle, he appears even at this early stage to be ambidextrous (it kinda runs in the family) and he reaches out enthusiastically for the bottle (quite a good design might I say). To to aid our little fellow in gaining a good grip we decided to purchase a little add on extra, a pair of handles that fit rather neatly under the cap, clamping the said device to the bottle so baby can have a little go at feeding himself.

Well no actually, you see, who ever it was that designed the handle didn't really care about baby ergonomics did they.. no, perhaps they were thinking that babies didn't really need them and designed them to be used by a 95th percentile adult, or maybe they were smoking pot and just didn't give a toot, whatever the reason I don't know.

You see the baby bottle has to be tilted to allow the milk to flow down towards the teat, easy if your a grown up, but these little nippers just can't raise the elbow and articulate their tiny little wrists to hold the bottle at a suitable orientation as the handles are parallel to the axis of the cylindrical body.

Now a simple remedy would have been to actually study how a baby might hold the bottle and such an exercise would immediately have alerted the industrial designer to affect a pair of handles substantially perpendicular to this bottle axis. in fact looking at the design the handles could have been better shaped, would have taken a nice soft TPE over moulding for baby to grip and would have required a tool no more complex.

And that's just for starters, I could go on and on and on, and if you know me at all, you'll know I probably will.

Praying for a Mantis

If like me you've got four kids then you'll know how difficult it can be to keep track of where the TV remote has gone. Is it down the back of the sofa? Under the sofa? In the toy box? Maybe the baby has finally managed to eat the entire thing, rather than just gnawing at the edge and dribbling on it. Who knows?



Well up and coming talented industrial designer Siona Ward perhaps has the answer. Her initial Apple Mac like concept is now taking shape in the form of "Mantis" a foot operated remote control.



The design has evolved in to an advanced concept
that has realistic prospects of being manufactured and marketed is the guise shown with a bent acrylic coffee table and the remote control unit clipped over the top. Of course the unit could be engineered to be something of a universal fit to a variety off coffee table styles, thus opening up the opportunities to sell to a wider target audience.

Furthermore, with a good user interface I can see this project having advance menu driven actions that could control not only the TV, but also a plethora of consumer electronics that fill the average home.

Siona has entered her Mantis remote control coffee table for the James Dyson Award and I'm sure she would appreciate it if you readers (are there any?) would take a look and perhaps consider voting for her.

I hope this hits the shops; because if it does I'm heading straight down to the electricals store to get me one, then I don't have to hide the remote from the kids anymore, because when I do I can never remember where I put the flipping think, so I'm praying for a Mantis.

The Passing of a legend

Don't panic, this isn't an obituary for Phillipe Starke, Dick Powell or Richard Seymour. No, but the family is sad non the less, because on Monday Freddie the Hamster passed away.

So why mention that on a blog about design? Well I said Freddie was a legend (named after famed comedian Freddie Starr) and this is because not only was he a little crazy in his antics (no he didn't bite the head off a human... it was just a joke that the press got hold of, he was going to sue you know) but Freddie was a legendary design guru. Oh yes, Freddie knew a cool design when he saw it, he might not have had any RayBan's (do you know how difficult it is to get RayBan's hamster size?) but he did have a Habitrail Ovo Suite... very swish.

Now in my humble opinion (me humble? opinionated yes, but humble?) the Ovo is a fantastic combination of form and function. it is clear that the designers, engineers, marketing and research guys have put a lot of hard work into the Ovo. The clever way that the tubes use a single moulding that is mirror image across a plane normal to the split line means only one moulding is needed to make the two part assembly. The ease of assembly so the kids can take it apart to clean out the hamsters old bedding (do you seriously know any kid that looks after the family pet?) and the array of add on accessories such as a training wheel, a mini maze and a sleeping pod et.al.

However I do have to temper my enthusiasm with the knowledge of having lived with the Habitrail Ovo, the material has proven a little fragile, more especially on the large 'helmet visor' like cover of which two were broken. OK it was misuse, well, that is if you consider miss use being an 8 year old dropping it on to a linoleum floor from waist height, or Mrs Buff bumping into it with the Dyson? Personally I don't think that could be considered misuse. We industrial designers should design not only for manufacture but also for living with, and that means understanding how people use things. In the past perhaps these things didn't matter in what has been a 'throw away society', but these days of personal and corporate social responsibility to each other and the environment, do we really want to be designing product so fragile as they need replacing before even the warranty runs out?

Another gripe we had with the Habitrail Ovo has been all the little nooks and crannies that trap dirt and can't easily be cleaned out, especially the patented connecting rings which overtime jam up and become stiff to turn the locking mechanism, but also wear rapidly and fail to grip the tubes the result being the penthouse suddenly becomes a bungalow and the whole thing swings down under its own weight.

That said, the Habitrail Ovo is still a cool if a tad expensive design with only few minor flaws. Still, I think industrial designers can do better, should do better, must do better

The genius that is Kenny Rodgers

Yes, that Kenny Rodgers, the famed country and western singer. "Why genius?" You say. Well because he gives good business advice in his 1978 hit "The Gambler"*. The chorus line beginning with "You got to know when to fold 'em, know when to hold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run"

The reason I mention this now is because in the last couple of days I have "walked away" from business, rather than get embroiled in something we are not equipped to do to the standard that our clients should expect of us, or in the second case we don't want to design a tool which we believe won't work for the client and would affect both our reputation and client's reputation too.

In the first case, we were presented with a product design project that has a large graphic design and print element. This not being our core competence, and not wishing to simply subcontract the work out thus raising the clients costs, we decided to forward to work on to a competitor. Now some may think that's just crazy but think about it for a moment.

If I had taken on the work, it's doubtful first of all that after all the time spent doing cost analysis and quoting, the price would more than likely have been uncompetitive if the project where to be outsourced, wasting my time, the subcontractors time and worst of all, the client time.

If I had elected to do the work in-house in order to price competitively, the likely outcome of winning the order would be out of control costs as the project would no doubt take longer due to the lack of in house experience and probably run over budget and past schedule... not good for one's reputation!

In the second case this week of knowing "when to walk away" we turned down a long standing enquiry to design a tool for a medical device manufacturer. At Buff Design, we don't just simply design products, but we design entire product lifecycles, including manufacturing processes and equipment.

The story goes back to last August, when we were approached to help solve a manufacturing issue with a medical device production. The company was having to scrap more than 60% of its production to non-conformance issues. We flew over to the client's site to take a look first hand at the production process and quickly concluded that the work holding that had been specified was simply not working as it should. We proposed a new fixture design that we could guarantee to solve the problem and reduce scrap to at maximum of 0.3% but costing €40,000.

We demonstrated the business case and showed the client that a return on investment would be seen in less than 3 months by reducing scrap and speeding up the operation a little too.

Since submitting the proposals and quotation the client has asked if we would reduce the cost of the tool by simplifying the design. Knowing that the proposed design is one of only two pragmatic solutions and the one chosen would require less maintenance thus the total cost of ownership over the life of the tool is less, we declined the work because once again we believe that our reputation, our commercial partners and the client's reputation would be damaged as a result.

My thinking is, that such decisions whilst difficult to make are necessary for the long term good of all concerned, believing as I do that what goes around comes around. Sometimes it's hard to keep the faith, and the payback seems to elude you, but in the end it comes back to you as in the case with the tool design, the client has now decided to take our advice and go along with our proposals almost one year after first submitting them.

So as a reminder, listen to Kenny when he says "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run'

*Written by Don Schlitz

Inspiration

As an ID professional with a leaning towards the more technical aspects of industrial design, from time to time I feel a need to refresh my creative thinking, get new ideas, open myself up to new forms. Over the years my designs have moved from rather a geometric, almost cubist style towards more organic and free flowing forms.

Whilst I recognise that I am very much a "form follows function" thinker, in order to bring more creativity into my consultancy practice, I employ various people where a client needs a more free thinking or conceptual approach.

For personal inspiration I often find I turn not to a fellow industrial designer but to artists and in particular sculptors who also work in a 3D world but at arguably a higher level of right brain thinking.

One such sculptor I often look to is my good friend Andrew Thomas whose work can be found at http://www.3dsculptor.com/ . Andy's work sometimes puzzles me, sometimes surprises me and occasionally I have a little aversion when I see a juxtaposed design such as "Reason", that I often find turns gently and slowly to admiration.

In fact I solicited Andy's advice whilst working on the Keebunga project for James Williams. Although the form of the Keebunga project was dictated by its function, some of its detailing owes a little of its aesthetics to the inspiration of Andrews "Unity" and "Hidden Depths".

So my advice to aspiring students, amateurs and seasoned professionals alike is, get down to your local museum, go to the library and borrow some books, immerse yourself in a creative world beyond supermarket shelves stacked with steam irons, jug kettles and coffee makers. If you do I guarantee it'll change the way you look at design, the way you create, you'll become better and I wager happier too.

This is how caravans should look

Over on Product Design forums, Rob Villa has produced a stunning concept of a brighter caravaning future, he says

"My design is inspired by airstreams and 50s style, highlighted by the whitewall
tyres and wheel covers, and the sleek airstream form and aluminium band and dark
windows"

The interior is modern and sophisticated with a bedroom located above the main living area created by an electrically operated pop up roof, access to this bedroom space is provided via the moveable ladder at the end of the kitchen area.

There is a comfortable sized bathroom and a clean kitchen with fold out breakfast bar area. In the main living area there is a sofa which also doubles as a bed with a second slide out mattress and stackable chairs provide more seating options. Additional space is provided via the fold down rear panel which gives a decking area which can be used as both an inside and outside space.

Having worked in the caravan industry myself I would conclude that the time is ripe for manufactureres to develop their model ranges using Rob's design as inspiration. For sure production models are bound to look somewhat different after concessions are made to manufacturing and market research but who wouldn't want to holiday in something so fantastic looking? I know I would!

Pro/E Wildfire 5.0 and direct editing

Pro/Engineer 5.0 highlights + Direct Edit sneak peak from DEVELOP3D on Vimeo.

News just out from PTC, authors of the much lauded Pro Engineer Wildfire CAD program of the pending release of version 5.0 due out sometime in Q4.

Not big news perhaps, but PTC bought Co Create one of the leading, direct modelling or explicit modelling as its sometimes known CAD developers. PTC have been working hard it seems to meld the freedom and ease of use of Co-create and the power of parametric modelling.

The average CAD jockey has been awaiting this technology convergence for more than a decade and we first saw it in a truly usable format with SolidEdge V20 from Siemens PLM with their acclaimed Synchronous Technology or ST for short. It was obvious I suppose that PTC where going to follow this trend as has Autodesk with their pending Inventor Fusion product line up and the same with Catia V6 from Dassault Systems.

Interestingly PTC look like they have gone a step further in integration of the two technologies, whereby both systems work with one interface, without the need to switch from one method to the other with the loss of parametric data, though it's perhaps too early to really tell if this is the case until one can get a hold on a trial version when it's available on general release.

Another interesting move by PTC is the dropping the Lightworks engine in favour of Mental Images rendering engine. Certainly it could be argued that PTC needed to catch up with Solidworks in this area, as do Seimens but Lightworks have also upped their game in recent times too, no doubt brought about by increasing competition from the likes of Bunkspeed Hypershot and Photoworks.

I have to say I’ve always been impressed with Pro Engineer for its scalability and engineering prowess with a whole host of add-on’s that can take you all the way from designing a simple two part clamshell all the way up to a complete Ferrari Formula one car. Indeed whilst looking at purchasing SolidEdge, I also considered Solidworks and Pro Engineer and have to say it was a close run thing between PTC and Siemens offerings. Have I made a mistake? Well I believe that Siemens will rise to the challenges from their competitors and deliver products to match. Time will tell.