What Happened to Design?
I’m one of those designers who fuss with things, think about stuff a lot, and judge good design on the combination of aesthetics, tactility, and functional elegance of simplicity. I don’t find complex messes good design, nor do I believe that “designing for the masses” is good design. I really don’t care what sells for $0.99 from shipping container loads – bad design made cheap enough to sell, is still bad design. I am far more interested in design that causes someone looking to spen $0.99, to pay $9.99, because the product is so evidently superior. Anyone can push volumes with throw-away procing, it takes expertise to deliver real value that enhances the human condition. Further, I believe that truly good design includes some amount of controversy caused by pushing the observer to see something new and unfamiliar – that will capture some, satisfy some, and offend a few. If the worst one can say about a product is that is is a little boring, I contend it is a design failure. Good design should create at least 2% negative “hate it” response, or it will never capture the 10% who will become advocates, committed addicts, and pure lovers of the product. the balance is found in creating a product that generates a certain number of over-commitment from more than it generates distaste. if it generates neither, it is nothing more than engineering without design.
Humans are junkies for stuff. The more we have around us, the better we ares supposed to feel. I believe we do have a fear of loosing stuff we care about, or having a favorite thing wear out and not be replaceable. Unfortunately, the marketing gurus have latched on to this. First, they fuel the addiction by flooding us with stuff to collect and stack around us. Second, they provide us so much of this cheap crap, that we set aside our love of quality and design in favor of cheap junk that barely satisfies the intended need. This allows us to avoid the risk of loosing something we care about, or having some favorite thing wear out. Better an endless stream of junk we don’t care about, that we can toss without concern when it fails, than to pay for something we eventually find priceless, that wears out. Marketers want us to buy the same thing over and over and over. They give us reasons to do just that – new models with added features, new styling, fresh colors, bigger advertising… etc… Wrap ourselves in piles of short lived, low performing junk – it’s the American way!
What better way to make something new than to jam it full of micro-processors, flashy blinky lights, digital readouts, and other such nonesense? Wrap all that in some shiny plastic and we have a winner! The design teams making these things will tell you about all the wonderful advancements in technology, and how surveys tell them these things get great response from focus groups, etc… Let’s not forget that the personality-less Hondas, Toyotas, Chevy’s, Fords, Hyundais, etc…. are all products of expert design teams, given the horrid assignment of developing the least risky product ever in the minds of consumers, trained for decades now to suspect anything with real style, or who fear actually choosing something they like, lest someone judge them. Better to own something that puts the dog to sleep than something that someone might not like. We’d rather be boring than controversial, seen as a spot in the dull gray fabric of humanity, than a star shining amongst the flat landers.
I personally have had my limit of gadgetry. I have a Corvette that at 25,000 miles has had to have driver and passenger side control modules replaced, has regular issues with stuck electric window regulators, intermittant door lok control, a battery sucked down from security system drain. The mechanics of the car are flawless, the gadgets are crapolla. This goes for my BMW 325is, which regularly has some warning or another on the dahs, that eventiually goes away, or requires the car to restarted – more gadgetry. Meanwhile, our older 318ti, with minimal doo-dad load, has had virtually no issues in 70,000 miles – except for one electric window regulator failure, something we have had issues with on viurtually every car we have owned at one time or another. I guess the general population has gotten so lazy that cranking a window is considered a deal breaker.
I’d love to have the ability to buy a car today without all the junk crammed into it. Manual windows, manual door locks, and toss all the phony marketing farf key without a key junk, witness protection brother is watching electronic interfaces, and a stereo that sounds great without including a super computer processor. I’d trade all the garbage any day for a car with personality, light weight, and simplicity in maintenance. I;d prefer time be spent on the design, the feel of the machine, and the ergomics. In other words, fire half the electrionics engineers and replace them with creative designers. Put more into molds for interesting shapes and great tactical components (like plastic that is no plasticy), and seats that don’t rock on the computer controlled, security interfaced, memory modules interactive junk rails. Just give me the old school lever adjusters on a rigid mechanism – more mechanical expertise, less electrionic wizardry controlling bad quality hardware.
For the designers out there who need to infuse every project with video game mind-warp virtual reality, I offer that there needs to be more time spent on hard reality, and less on the ether and magic of computer games in product design. The development of cheap made-in-China hardware controlled by made in Taiwan computer dood-daddery results far too often in product that is poor in function, complex for no reason, and short lived. When the failure of one $1.90 relay requires a customer to replace a $1,200 door control interface module, their is no value, and no coolness. When the failure of a $0.05 chip causes a failure of an entire $3,500 engine control module, someone might want to reconsider the sense in this obsession with gadgets.
Let’s give the electronics and hyped up marketing smoke and mirrors a break, and look hard at the principle that is always applicable – Keep It Simple Stupid. Design is the path to freedom from drudgery and marketing department fed fervor for crap. What has happened to the profession of design? Seems to have been replaced by the double edged sward of product death – Marketing departments demanding “features” to sell, coupled with Accounting departments constantly wringing every last penny out of cost structres. The results ahve grown to be cheaply made, overly complex junk that is short lived, poor in tactile feeling, and mindane in style to make itthe most widely acceptable. That’s not design at all, that’s just sad.
An Ode to the Struggle of the Republican Party
To be perfectly clear: I am not a Democrat, nor do I endorse the Democratic party, its current policies, approach to governance, or its ideals. I am an independent (small “i”) – in that I have no party in which to believe in or support, as there are none that are truthfully representative of our needs as a people. The fact is, the “Independent” party is neither, thus, many like me find no affiliation.
I WAS once a Republican, a believer that we as a people should be empowered to pursue our happiness unfettered by federal intervention, in a truly free market. This was at one time the ideology of the party. While it continues to spout these ideals as its rhetoric, it has utterly failed to support them – while embracing other ideology that I absolutely degree with. It has become a party of white anglo-saxon protestants bent on forwarding conservative religious views as policy. (more…)
Recovery by Design
We have a golden opportunity to put design and conservation at the front of the new economy. If there was ever a time when value could be seen as a priority, its now. We need fewer throw away products brought in from exploitation markets, and more high value products with efficiency, durability, and tactile satisfaction. We need products that have minimal impact when made, minimal impact in use, and long life to reduce the impact of the end of the life cycle. This has been all but abandoned in the pursuit of cheap cost products to realize maximum profits from repeat purchase churns from product failure, and low quality to generate high profit. We need to return some of what we have lost in hyper consumerism to create a more robust and solid future. (more…)
Counterpoint: Imports are Necessary – In Balance
Imported products throttle unrestrained profiteering and monopoly building that arises from closed markets
Left to its own, an unregulated free market protected from the intrusion of competitive forces beyond its domestic borders generates another exploitative behavior – price gouging and monopoly building. The was played out in the late 19th century, when severe import tariffs stopped the flow of imports, leading to runaway price inflation. This is the foundation upon which protectionism gained its reputation as destructive. Corporations exist for the purpose of creating wealth though optimizing profits. When protected from competition, this comes in the form of higher prices – whatever the market will bear. With the opportunity to use imports, wealth building comes in the form of exploitation of cheap labor abroad.
We suffer a form of domestic protectionism now, that actually fuels the exploitation and devaluation that occurs from imports. The interesting paradox of this is that the restriction of immigration restricts domestic access to low cost labor, which leads to artificially high labor rates here. In reaction to the unrestricted immigration of the turn of the century, which depressed wage rates to intolerable levels, we enacted restrictions to immigration to ease stress on the working class.
So Why Would Anyone Harm the Home Market? (Devaluation for Profits Part II?)
One might read this article on the Apple iPod and its related job creation and think that this import thing is just not all that bad at all…. Of course, dig deeper and you will find that the “wealth” created here is not for higher salaries at all. The analysis is actually upside down. Professional and worker earnings in the USA are stagnant or declining, not improving. This has been well documented, and getting worse since 2006. Apple is doing nothing to repair this, or even change it. (more…)
The Pursuit of Devaluation for Profit – and How it’s Destroying Us
A robust value delivery structure includes many layers, each employing a variety of skills and talents. These layers all feed into a layer above, and often to the side of the primary value chain, creating an inter-connectivity within industries that reduces the impact of any one chain failing or slowing.
Our economy is being driven by a process that seeks to extract profit from DEVALUATION over value creation. The difference is lost on those who focus on profit outcome and market share numbers over the buildup of a robust national inventory of value generators. The destruction of the manufacturing sector in the United States, along with the design, engineering, and services industries, is eroding our national capacity and reducing our economic diversity – leading to the volatile state we find ourselves in today. The United Kingdom discovered this too late, Germany has not – that is why the Germans own so many English brands, and still manufacture products shipped around the world – not to mention manufacturing around the world. Once a nation has lost its leadership in this value creation infrastructure, rebuilding it becomes virtually impossible. Others are using theirs as a weapon against our own – fed by our greed and lack of vision. (more…)
Time Magazine Gets It – well sort of anyway…
Check this article out in Time. It explains everything I have attempted here – that conservation is our best , cheapest, and most readily available fuel source. I am not alone….
The article made the cover as well
Time Cover Story – December 31, 2008
Here’s a piece of the action:
“This may sound too good to be true, but the U.S. has a renewable-energy resource that is perfectly clean, remarkably cheap, surprisingly abundant and immediately available. It has astounding potential to reduce the carbon emissions that threaten our planet, the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our security and the energy costs that threaten our wallets. Unlike coal and petroleum, it doesn’t pollute; unlike solar and wind, it doesn’t depend on the weather; unlike ethanol, it doesn’t accelerate deforestation or inflate food prices; unlike nuclear plants, it doesn’t raise uncomfortable questions about meltdowns or terrorist attacks or radioactive-waste storage, and it doesn’t take a decade to build. It isn’t what-if like hydrogen, clean coal and tidal power; it’s already proven to be workable, scalable and cost-effective. And we don’t need to import it.”
Now if we could only get the rest of the press to wake up and smell the free fresh air…
So here’s the dig – putting the blame on lighting (cover art), and using that spiral CFL lamp as the icon of energy conservation. This is becoming a little silly, espesially when the article makes a great deal of noise about foreign oil, which has nothing to do with lighting at all (electrical energy is not produced from oil.) The problem with rolling all energy into one big pile, is it leads people to believe thatif they buy an energy efficient car, they are doing their part… while sucking energy of a different type up at home, which taps totally different resources. Conservation is a two-front war. Oil use in transportation, Coal and Nuclear material use at home and in the office. Both are in need of substantial improvement.
But, at least it gets the big picture – we’ll just have to beat them up on details later.
We Must Recognize That Our World Has Changed Dramatically
A city in 1880 has little relevance to a modern metropolis, nor do the cultural norms of the time.
While its easy to look at the world and think this has all been this way forever, in fact, we live in a very unique period of time. The population has doubled since 1960, just 40 years. In the last 100 years (1908 to present) we have moved fully from a primarily rural/agrarian state of humanity to a fully industrialized metropolitan state of humanity. Since 1880, when there were no electrical power plants consuming coal of blocking rivers, we now consume coal, natural gas, and Nuclear fissionable materials at an alarming rate each day to produce trillions of kilowatts of electrical energy. We have moved from an existence in 1880 without internal combustion engines, to one where we are consuming literally billions of gallons of oil each and every day to operate engines in billions of cars all around the planet, on top of airplanes, electric trains, and trucks, which are all inventions of the last 120 years. In the last 100 years, our homes have grown larger, are now air conditioned, include refrigeration, constant water heat, continuous sewerage flow, and water on demand.
Not only are things different today than just a century ago, virtually everything we have done in this period has exponentially and dramatically increased our demand for energy, environmentally derived materials, and our impact as individuals on the planet as a whole. This cannot be set aside as a simple cost of progress. In fact, much of our use of resources and energy has been wasted and irresponsible. This can be forgiven as a product of the rapid state of technological evolution, where our culture has simply failed to keep pace with our innovation.
Now we know. We know that we cannot continue to do as we do now, and have in the past. The EPA was the first sign and stage of our awakening, and has made significant progress in reducing impact. The DOE is the next sign of recognition. However, the mass population remains blissfully ignorant, and resistant to waking up to the reality we face. This cannot be tolerated.
The excuse that we have the right to drive anything we wish, regardless of the impact on others, is simply and absolutely wrong minded. While the right must be protected, the right to be irresponsible and irrational dioes not. Driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol is illegal, so should driving an irresponsible vehicle that poses a threat to other drivers due to its mass and bad design, and a threat to the environment from its consumption of fuel and rubber. We do not have the right to be idiots, to be ignorant, or to be irresponsible. Our rights are founded on our remaining informed and cooperatively cognizant of ouindividual responsibility to others as members of the human race. If we violate our rights from inaction, ignorance and irresponsible behavior, we deserve to have them restricted or taken from us.
In just 120 years, humanity has been transformed, as well as the need to culturally realize the true implications of our modern life.
Conservation is an art and science, and a way of enlightened living. Design of conservative living and products is the single most exciting opportunity in front of us today. The time has come to set aside our addiction to marketing hype and focus on blending the technologies we have available to us with emotionally engaging products, communities, buildings, and lifestyles, that result in our living the highest quality of life, with the least amount of impact on the planet at every level. For those that see this as a threat, I can offer only that we have no defensible position for continuing to consume and waste as we do today. There is no future in it, period. The choice is clear, we must learn to evolve our culture to a more sustainable, responsible, and enlightened existance. Failing this, we will only face the ugly spectre of cultural destruction as the costs of our irresponsible acts crush our values and desire for freedom.
We are far better served to voluntarily engage a sustainable lifestyle and culture now, even when the financial costs are high, than having it forced upon us later, when the price we will pay for our lack of action exceeds our financial capacity to resolve. The first step is the realization that the world has changed dramatically in the last 120 years, which demands we redress our thinking as members of humanity, on a level as revolutionary and as dramatic as the change we have experienced in our technological capabilities.
Let’s Green Up Motor Sports Now
Originally car races were a marketing tool.
With the growth in concern over energy use, oil imports, ecological impact, and the state of the economy, is racing cars really relevant any more? Car racing was born of the inevitable crossover from racing of horses amongst breeders and stable owners proving their animals superior, to car manufacturers proving thier brand superior. What won on Sunday sold on Monday, and all of that. In the early phases of the automobile, it was necessary to prove the durability of the technology, the performance it was capable of compared to incumbent horses, etc.. Racing made sense in these terms.
Horse racing proved breeder quality
As the sport progressed, more and more brands emerged to use racing as a proving ground. At the same moment, racing offered a fun pass-time for thrill seekers, a new way to tempt fate. Adrenalin junkies could not resist, and the sport ballooned, then exploded. By the mid 1960’s, motor-sport became the single largest spectator sport in the world, a position it maintains today. Further, motor-sport also became one of the largest amateur sportsman activities, and a large portion of the national economy. Even today, aftermarket race and automotive modifications parts is a multi-billion dollar industry, hosting some of the largest trade conferences, and employing hundreds of thousands of people at every level.
The issue here is not whether motor sport exists, or whether it is of a certain size. The question is whether it can continue to remain relevant in the face of global energy issues, environmental concerns, and the changing economic landscape. Another question may be: Is motor sport a responsible hobby?
Certainly, if one considers the waste created by worn tires every weekend, oil dispensed, fuel consumed in cars adn tow vehicles, the energy consimed to build and maintain the cars, pave and maintain tracks, transport hardware, and house those involved at events… the impact and cost to the environment is certainly worth considering.
Can motor sport be cleaner? Absolutely. Technology is readily available to convert all racecars to strict use of renewable, carbon neutral fuels, to specifiy long lasting tires, limit configuration and modification of race vehicles to more sustainable construction, to reduce the pollution and waste generated from fuels burning and lubricating oil use. In reality, motor sport is only dirty to save a few dollars in the near term, while all efforts to reduce energy use and environmental impact would produce long term cost reduction of the sport as a whole. Only short sightedness and institutionalized thinking hold the sport back from making real progress in this area.
Racing can be a LOT greener than it is now, and a lot cheaper for everyone.
While some may contend that racing cars is irrelevant and needs to be banned outright. This ignores human reality. Humans need recreation and sport, that is as much a part of our existence as eating, choosing mates, and hanging out at Martini bars. Attempting to stop this will fail, miserably. Motor sport is part of this fabric, and includes more than people driving cars in circles or down a straight line. Behind every car is innovation born of the midns of creative thinkers in a wide range of disciplines. At the amateur level, the recreation of technological creation is alive and thriving. At the professional level, motor sport remains a test bed for leading edge ideas, and a training ground for the future’s leading edge transportation thinkers. The recreation of motor sport is no different than any other, and binds social groups as tightly as any other activity, thus remain part of the fabric of humanity.
But, not all is well here. Motor sport is rapidly becoming technologically irrelevant, founded on the acts of the participants and short sighted rules makers. NASCAR vehicles are no more than refined 1970’s cage cars, with the same carbureted, gasoline guzzling big displacement push-rod V8’s of the ancient past. These cars weigh over 3600 pounds, and consume more tires in one weekend than a family does in a lifetime. F1 cars are an insane mix of high technology and old school waste, burning gasoline, consuming rubber, oil, tires, and energy with aplomb. Sportsman racers are even more archane, often competing in vehicles that were obsolete before being converted to racers, or build on obsolete technologies, based solely on short sighted, myopic ignorance of the real impact of their actions. The concept of drifting and drag racing both appear to be nothing more than contests of who can consume the most fuel to burn up the most tires in the shorest period of time. All of motor sports is struggling with costs of racing and sagging participation, yet ignore the basic tenants of conservation (and the saving this will bring) based solely on arguments of one-time conversion costs.
For motor sports to survive and thrive into the future, those in charge and participating must recognize that the world is changing, and that past practice cannot continue and return satisfactory results. Cars must become cleaner, a LOT cleaner. The consumption of tires must be reduced substantially. Fuels must be renewable and carbon neutral, and limited in consumption. Oils must last longer. Cars and parts must be made more durable. In other words, the total cost of racing must be reduced at every level. Without this, legislation and intrusion of environmental controls, on top of escalating costs of wasteful behavior, will trim auto racing down slowly, until it is seen as irrelevant to the general population, who may choose to simply outlaw it except at the professional level. Robust participation at the amatuer level is necessary to the sports health. The only way to build this interest is to address the sport in modern terms, and to make it comply, kicking and screeming if necessary, with modern concerns and needs. Failing this, there will be a time when motor racing will indeed become irrelevant for the most part, dwindling to a few annual large events like the Kentucky Derby is to horse racing, generally ignored by the general public, a vestige of horse racings once central role as a sport around the world. That will not be much fun for us gearhead types who really enjoy automotive prusuits, who would like it even more if racing cars were at least as technologically sophisticated as a 10 year old economy car.
Nikola Tesla – The Unsung Hero of the Modern World
Tesla - image from wikibooks
If you are a fan and gear-head for volts and lighting, you have to be familiar with the guy that had a huge influence on our modern environment. This is Nikola Tesla, an immigrant from Croatia that thought beyond direct current from batteries and heated filament electric lamps. He once worked for Edison, but found him dull and uninspired. The two inventors had dramatically different styles. Edison was the plodding experimenter, who made his discoveries through a physically iterative process in physical bench tests. Tesla was the ultimate theorist, with a capacity to thing through concepts fully, before placing pen to paper, or committing to experimentation. He constructed demonstration of light, electricity, and magnetics only after being sure in his own mind of the outcome.
Tesla brought the distribution of Alternating Current power to the world, and revolutionized industry and life as we know it today. He also brought advancement to lighting in the form of advancing fluorescent and metal gas discharge sources, at very near the same time that filament heating using direct current sources were being developed.
Unfortunately, while Tesla was a showman (he put on some amazing demos of light and electricity) he was not the publicity hound or marketeer that other inventors of the era were. This set him up to be exploited by the likes of George Westinghouse, who essentially pushed Tesla aside to commercialize the AC inventions, without paying Tesla what was owed – which would have made Tesla the richest man in the world. Like the common crediting of the electric lamp to Edison, Marconi is widely claimed to be the inventor of the radio and radio transmission. In fact, Tesla’s patent for radio transmission, awarded in 1897, predates Marconi’s improvement patents of 1903. However, using family connections and a flair for commercialization, Marconi prevailed in recognition, while Tesla remained in the background.
For anyone who interested in the fascinating period from 1800 to 1908, where the modern world was birthed on the inventors who turned us away from fire light and animal exploitation to the electric and machine age of industrialization, Nikola Tesla is someone worth investigating in detail. You will be surprised and amazed by his work, and his reclusive personality!
These links are to biographical information and additional reading and books on Telsa:
