Passion. Creativity. Integrity. Teamwork. Ambition. Innovation. These are the qualities that have made Wilson Sporting Goods Co. the number one sports equipment brand in the world. And these are the qualities that our global team embodies every day as we pursue one shared bold mission: to ignite the true
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Veteran industrial designer Matthew Cockerill has worked for PriestmanGoode, Samsung, tangerine, Seymourpowell and others. Now an independent consultant who focuses on "creating unexpected, relevant solutions for what's next," Cockerill was recently asked to chair a panel discussion on the role of design and technology in the home. Following the panel, which featured some of the industry's heavy hitters, Cockerill isolated six important takeaways and put them into print. Here they are:
____________
"Smart Living: the factors shaping ambient technology in our future homes"
by Matthew Cockerill
Our experience of our homes is changing as they become increasingly tech-enabled, from explicit interactions with screens to whole-room led interactions where technology is more observant, responsive and prescient to our needs. I recently hosted a panel discussion with researchers, designers and engineers from some of the world's leading brands, including Samsung, IKEA, Google ATAP (Advanced Technology and Products) and Nest, to discuss the opportunities and challenges of embedding more ambient technology into our future smart homes. Here are six key [takeaways] from that conversation.
1. The aesthetics of technology have become more complementary to our homes.
When technology such as the radio and television first entered our homes, it took the guise of furniture. But Sung Bai, Head of industrial design at Nest, pointed out that over time, as brands wanted to showcase their tech more and stand out in the market, we ended up with shiny tech objects in our living spaces that eventually started to become obtrusive.
We're seeing a reversal of this trend now as brands let technology visually recede into the fabric of our homes with products like the wireless speakers from Sonos, Libratone, Google and Amazon taking inspiration from home furnishings. Samsung have gone a step further in this regard with the 'ambient mode' on their OLED TV that matches the screen image to the interior wall colour and texture, eliminating the black rectangle in our home when it's on stand-by.
Samsung's "Ambient Mode" allows the screen to virtually disappear
2. A sense of agency will become increasingly important.
Smart products can give us the potential for more control at home, but also take control away from us as they become more autonomous. There is an important balance to be made here. As Rick Marks, Director, Technical Project Lead at Google ATAP, put it, "one of the really interesting things about our home is it's where we have the most authority over what's going to happen." For this reason, products that increase our sense of agency and empower us to do more than we can currently do, rather than those that simply do everything for us, will feel more appropriate in our future homes.
At the moment, we don't always have a sense of initiating, executing, and controlling technology. Marks, who spent 19 years at PlayStation before joining Google ATAP, believes that there are lessons to be learned from the video game world to help achieve a greater sense of agency. This includes creating a really well-defined interface of how to interact with our increasingly intelligent technology at home.
Google ATAP's Project Soli enables touchless gesture interactions
3. We should unlock new experiences, not just enhance existing ones.
Ambient technologies have the potential to allow us to do completely new things in the home. But a lack of imagination often results in the transfer of existing screen-based digital products into new technology platforms. [However], things start to get interesting when we combine smart products. For example, smart doorbells (with one time access) and cameras in the home might eventually give us the confidence to accept services being carried out within our home without us being present, such as internet deliveries. New technologies like 8K resolution and 5G could open up the opportunity to deliver more intimate interactions in the comfort of our homes with, for example, healthcare professionals, beyond what we do now. Initially for convenience, ideas like these have the potential to open up radical new ways of using our time and our homes.
The Nest Hello smart doorbell
In turn, technology might change the very nature of our houses. Yasushi Kusume, Innovation & Creative Manager at IKEA, explained that they experimented with transforming the walls of our homes from barriers into filters that allow in the things we want, like sunlight and fresh air, and filter out what we don't, like pollutants and noise. While this idea requires a fundamental change to the architecture of our homes, a lot of the tech we need for this already exists.
4. Collaborative, not competitive, product development is key.
Most of the devices in our homes are designed separately from one another. Despite technology standards and reducing platform fragmentation, we're still not at a point where services work seamlessly across products unless they come from one company. It's hard for designers think like this when they often working for a single brand. But more cross-collaboration between brands could deliver much more complete and interesting solutions for consumers in the home. Each brand able to bring their particular strengths to the table.
5. Technology as a social enabler, rather than social barrier.
Currently, technology is focused around personal devices, which often isolate people from one other. But ambient technology, where we don't have to interact with our digital products through screens, opens up opportunities for more multi-user experiences that can reintroduce or enhance the social experiences we have in our homes. Through whole-room experiences we will be able to interact and collaborate together seamlessly in the same space which we wouldn't have been able to do before. Suddenly, technology becomes a social enabler, rather than a barrier.
In the past, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft utilised cameras with depth sensing to understand multiple users inputs for gaming purposes. Now more advanced systems coming on stream like Intel's RealSense and Amazon's AWS DeepLens coupled with deep learning algorithms are allowing designer to conceive new multi user experiences for their everyday lives not simply for gaming.
Amazon's AWS DeepLens is a programmable and trainable smart camera
6. Technology must be constantly interrogated.
A word of caution was raised about embedding observant and data capturing technologies into our homes. Rick Marks from Google ATAP identified the move away from cloud computing to edge computing, which stores data more locally to where it's being used rather than on a small number of centralised data centres, as partly relating to concerns over trust and privacy. Indeed, there is an ongoing tension between the desire to create better and new experiences enabled by data-gathering services and growing concerns around surveillance. We need to fully understand the implications of new technologies in this area and bake-in privacy and trust into all products and experiences we create for our future homes.
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In this age of technological gizmos and design-for-Instagram, it's easy to forget what the real promise of industrial design is: To deliver useful, durable, attractive, ergonomic, mass-manufacturable objects to the masses. Smart Design recently tackled such a project by entering the BetterBin Design Competition, which asked entrants to redesign New York City's ubiquitous--and very long-in-the-tooth--green trash cans.
"New York City is home to more than 23,250 public street litter baskets," the competition brief reads. "The most widespread design—the green, wire-mesh basket—is affordable, easy to service and has remained largely unchanged since the 1930s. While iconic to the streets of New York, the wire basket is in need of a redesign to better address the current and future waste needs of the City."
As an NYC native, I don't consider myself the end user for a public trash can. I feel that distinction belongs to the sanitation workers who tirelessly empty them, helping to keep our city clean. If you've ever watched one of them hoist a full can--which might weigh over 100 pounds--to empty it into the back of the truck, and if you consider that their routes require them to do this hundreds of times in a single shift, you won't wonder why the NYC Department of Sanitation's workers are referred to as "New York's Strongest."
This is where design can make a real difference. If you can take even a little effort out of emptying that can, the benefit to the worker grows exponentially. Not to mention that you've got this object on practically every corner that everyone will see, and it oughtn't look like a dated eyesore. Smart Design had their work cut out for them, and I think they knocked it out of the park. (The competition judges clearly agreed, naming Smart a finalist.)
To learn how Smart executed their design, we interviewed industrial designer and project lead Dan Grossman.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Core77: What was it about the BetterBin competition that drew Smart Design in?
Dan Grossman: As a designer, you want as many people using and interacting with your products as possible. That's the dream, and the idea of having millions of New Yorkers interacting with our trash bins for the foreseeable future is really a dream project in many ways. It was an opportunity that we just couldn't pass up. As soon as we saw the competition, we knew it was something that we all wanted to be a part of.
We're a New York City-based firm, and we've done a lot of work with the City over the course of our nearly 40 years in business. Most notably, we had collaborated with the Department of Transportation to rework the new taxicabs, in collaboration with Nissan. So working with the City is a bit of our DNA, and for both myself and the team, having the opportunity to design for the City is such an amazing opportunity.
Designing a municipal trash can is real nuts-and-bolts ID. What kinds of research did you guys do?
There's very few projects that you approach that have the history and longevity of the New York City trash cans, so the first bit of research was really understanding that history, understanding how they have or haven't evolved over the past 100 years. The existing trash cans, in some iteration of the current construction, have gone mostly unchanged since the 1930s. So [we sought to] really understand the history of the object itself.
From there we went on to the next layer, which is working with the DSNY (the Department of Sanitation) attending these open houses, communicating directly with representatives, and interacting directly with sanitation workers. Having the chance to talk to them one-on-one, communicating with them on the streets, and also just a lot of observation. The trash routes that happen every day and wake you up in the morning, now we were getting out of bed to go watch them happen in real time. That type of actual observation and interaction with the actual users themselves, that was a huge part of our research.
The last thing was watching civilians. On one side of the spectrum you have the sanitation workers that service these things. The other side was watching everyday New Yorkers like ourselves interacting with these cans, watching them throw things away when the can is empty and when it's full. Watching them move around them and navigate their daily lives around these objects was certainly interesting.
One of the things that I really like about your design are the grab handles on both the top and bottom. What was the insight that led you to that design?
One of the biggest challenges that a sanitation worker has while servicing a trash can is the weight; these cans can get extremely heavy when they're full. They're about 30 pounds-plus when they're empty, so you can imagine the daily [demands]. Having to lift 30 to 100 pounds every other block is extremely strenuous, and that's what leads to a lot of injuries on the job.
So we sought to understand: "How can we improve the actual physical experience of a sanitation worker servicing the bin?" And that started with the ergonomics: How they lift it, how they turn it, how they twist it, how they drag it. These are all things that we took into consideration when we were designing for it--really watching how they actually lift the can.
And they don't just lift the can, they hit it against the [inside of the compactor]. That noise that we hear that wakes us up in the morning, that's a sanitation worker banging the can against the side of the truck. And they do that because trash gets wet and gross and things get stuck to the bottom. So they do this thing where they turn it and twist it, they're literally rolling the can on the side.
So these are the pain points and touchpoints that we established as opportunity areas to design into. Creating handles for them to lift, handles for them to turn and twist, and handles for them to essentially bang it against the side of the truck. We just wanted to give the user, who's the sanitation worker in this case, as much flexibility and opportunity to comfortably service and use these cans.
Your design features vertical bars around the can. Those are to provide protection for when they're banging it against the truck?
Yes, precisely. There's a lot of constraints that had to go into this project, and one of the things I mentioned prior was weight. The other thing is durability. These cans are serviced thousands of times in their lifespan, and New Yorkers are tough on things. These cans get a lot of wear and tear. Aside from just daily usage and living on the street, they're also being literally lifted and thrown and banged and dropped.
So a big part of the work that went into our final design was trying to create something which would structurally hold over time, through all these challenges. We wanted to create a sort of roll cage, like with race cars, around our trash can so that it would be really strong, and able to withstand anything that was thrown at it.
What was the most interesting or surprising thing that came up during your research?
Understanding the ergonomics and [the sanitation workers'] behaviors was the most interesting thing.
The thing that was most surprising to us, was actually finding a newfound respect for the existing trash cans. As designers and as New Yorkers in general, it's really easy to crap on things and be like, "That's not good, and "That's not pretty," and "That's not cool."
But you start to realize that for a thing to live on the streets of New York for almost 100 years, there's a lot of really great things that went into that. And you start to realize the value engineering that has enabled these trash cans to be mass produced, to be serviced, to be replaced and discarded in some sort of a systematic way. There's a lot of really good thought that went into it. The more we learned about the existing can and the more we watched sanitation workers use it, the more we didn't want to just completely reinvent it. We wanted to evolve it. We wanted to make it better.
One of the things I've observed over the years is seeing sanitation workers dragging full, heavy cans over to the truck. How does your design of the feet, those bottom grab handles, hold up to the dragging action?
That was another thing, we wanted to make it easy. Our whole mission was to make the job of the sanitation worker easier and safer. And with these things being so heavy, they do often have to drag them, sometimes they even have to have two people drag them.
So the way we actually built our design, by creating these reinforcement bars and adding in all these additional handles, we also created these feet. And the feet do a couple things. One of them is they create a sled, and so these bars actually allow for the user, again in this case the sanitation worker, to tilt the can and slide it and drag it to the actual truck. These sleds are almost like skates--they actually allow the sanitation worker to move the can to the truck much more efficiently, and with a lot less [exertion].
The other thing is the feet do, is lift the can a little higher off of the ground. One of the funny--or gross--constraints that we had to design into, is making things more rat-resistant. As New Yorkers, we all know that rats are a part of our ecosystem here, for better or worse, and they obviously love to target the trash cans. That's where all the food and waste is. Getting it lifted a little off the ground so there's less rats drawn to it was a big opportunity that we tried to design into.
Do you mean that by elevating it a couple inches you can prevent rats from nibbling at the bottom, or is it somehow an anti-scaling device?
Yeah, it's more of an anti-scaling device. And also the base of our trash can is [an inverted] dome. We created a dome base. The idea is that one, trash is less likely to get stuck at the bottom and two, it's harder for rats to scale it.
What are some design features that came out of the civilian research?
We watched how people interact with trash bins that are either empty versus full, [which led us to] create this kind of halo at the top of our cans. That handle we mentioned earlier, we designed it so that it's 360, a sanitation worker can grab it from any direction that they approach the can from. And by adjusting the height of it and making it a little bit taller, we increased the handle space, which also created this halo. It provides a little more protection for when the trash overfills, it kind of keeps it all intact. It's not a bulletproof solution, but it's a little bit of a preventative measure.
Another big insight that we got from our research was people's understanding of not just trash, but of recycling as well: What can be recycled, what can't be recycled, and so forth. So one of the design elements of our finished design was a modular panel system. The current trash cans have a small sign that warns people of fines for littering or putting in household trash, which can get you ticketed. It's a really small surface area, and we wanted to increase the signage. So we created a much larger surface area for signage so that the city can provide better communication to New Yorkers as a whole.
The way the bars are actually built, those panels are actually modular, so you can add or remove panels, which allows both local neighborhoods or businesses to customize them. So basically you can sponsor a can and turn it into a billboard with panels that snap in and out.
It being just a design competition, were there any cost constraints imposed upon you?
There were so many cost constraints. For a competition, it's one of the hardest projects I've ever worked on. A lot of competitions are based around the future or hypothetical questions: "How do we improve this?" or "What's the future of tech?" This was very much like, "How do we make something real?" So throughout our entire process, we're very fortunate here at Smart to have an amazing team of mechanical engineers on staff.
And this was very much a design engineering project for us. From day one, we were designing and engineering every part to be both durable and affordable because at the end of the day, we pay for these things. Our tax dollars puts these trash cans on the street. Our tax dollars pays the salaries of sanitation workers. So we wanted to be mindful of how we're spending the City's money and residents' money.
We wanted to create something which is both aesthetically pleasing and could physically withstand the elements. So the challenge was durable and long-lasting, but also not cost prohibitive. These elements make for a really challenging design cocktail, but that's the type of stuff that we love. And it's exciting to work on. We always say good constraints equals good design.
Is there a chance that this design will actually go into production if it's chosen?
I sure hope so. That's the scope of the project. So again, a real reason why we had to be mindful of both engineering production and cost is that the winner is supposed to go on to actually replace the trash cans here in New York City. I'm sure some things will have to change because of sourcing, materials and a million other variables.
And just to be clear, the design on the street right now, those are prototypes that we built right here. We did all the welding. We worked with a manufacturer in the end, but all the original prototyping was done in-house, and then we brought it to a manufacturer, who actually put those 12 on the street, just to clarify.
What's a rough estimate of what they might cost?
Unfortunately, with the cost of materials and the potential of these imposing tariffs that we're going to have, there's a lot of question marks, but our goal was to make sure that they were within a certain frame, similar to what's on the street now. And we were very close to that target.
I probably should have asked this up front: What's your background, and how long have you been with Smart Design?
I'm an Associate Design Director here at Smart. I oversee the Industrial Design Department with the other director that was on this project, James Krause. I've been at Smart for just over a year now, so this was one of the first projects that I joined.
Working at Smart Design was always a big personal career goal for me, so it's been a real highlight both to have the privilege of working here, and to be able to represent them on an international stage, on a competition of this scale.
I'm from New York originally, and as an industrial designer I've had the opportunity to work on all sorts of different things over the course of my career. Prior to this, I was the Head of Design at a startup in New York City, BarkBox. Before that, I was a design director for Martha Stewart, overseeing her entire line for kitchen and home. I've designed perfume bottles, and I've designed chainsaws. This will be my first trash can, but it's been a big privilege to work on it.
I feel like that breadth is what makes the industrial design profession so much fun.
It's exactly why I got into it in the first place, and it's the reason why I still do it today.
_________________
The BetterBin Design Competition "marks the launch of Van Alen Institute's Product Placed initiative, a new series of design competitions to create innovative civic products that improve urban life." The competition was co-sponsored by the New York City Department of Sanitation, the Industrial Designers Society of America and the American Institute of Architects New York.
Smart Design's BetterBins can currently be seen in use at the following NYC locations:
- Midtown, Manhattan: 9th Ave between 43rd and 45th Streets
- Flushing, Queens: Main Street between Maple Ave and Cherry Ave
- Parkchester, the Bronx: Castle Hill Ave between Newbold Ave and Ellis Ave
Feedback can be provided to the DSNY here.
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This is a senior position reporting directly to the CEO of a tiny and fast-growing cash-flow positive, national-award-winning, startup. It is a critical path role, requiring you to take our consistently amazing conceptual innovations from the level of concept to production-ready product. We are looking for someone to oversee both
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This post is presented by the K-Show, the world's No.1 trade fair for the plastics and rubber industry. Visionary developments and groundbreaking innovations will again lead the industry into new dimensions at K 2019 in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Color, Materials and Finish, or CMF, is still an emerging part of industrial design and one that rarely gets discussed. This interview with Alastair Curtis is the first in a series with key players in design that are leading in the use of materials and CMF. I invited them to discuss materials and CMF for different reasons. Coming from healthcare, automotive and consumer electronics they will all address the changing use of materials within their industries with a particular focus on plastics and the environment.
Under the design leadership of Alastair Curtis, Logitech has used CMF and in particular materials as a way to build a bold, new strategy where it has reinvented itself with products that are defined by lifestyle than its heritage as black ABS computer peripherals. Its use of textiles to change the way we perceive a loudspeaker as a product not just to play music but an excuse to have fun on the beach, in the park etc was one of the early pioneers that took this adventurous step to replace hard materials with soft. Their speckled effect K780 keyboard was a great case study in how you can push aesthetics for electronics to make the more 'domesticated'. It's a brand that I admire both in its approach to CMF and ability as an organization to push through new materials, something that is always a huge challenge.
Chris Lefteri: Logitech has one of the most distinctive, resonant, ambitious CMF and materials across its different products. How do you, as the guy who heads it up achieve that?
Alistair Curtis: It was a relatively low-hanging fruit if you go back five or six years when I first joined. Logitech had seen phenomenal growth for thirty plus years riding the wave of PC peripherals in the early days and the explosion of people having a home computer, be it a tower or even a laptop. In that rapid growth, in the ability to ride that wave, Logitech had automized the machine to deliver incredibly reliable products, but they were, some-what, cost optimized to be reliable tools rather than emotional products. Whether it was conscious or subconscious, it evolved into a predominately safe portfolio of, and I'm simplifying, but black plastic.
Obviously, the introduction of the smartphone, the introduction of the tablet had a huge impact on Logitech and Logitech's trajectory. Subsequently, there were some hard times and a reevaluation of the portfolio and a reevaluation of the company's strategy. Bracken Darrell was brought in as the CEO and I joined as the Chief Design Officer. As we built out the design team, we started to have an impact of the portfolio. One of the key members of the team that I brought on was the head of CMF Katherine Pulford. She set about establishing a CMF strategy and how to apply color differently to our portfolio, but also starting to look at what new materials and finishes we could bring to the portfolio. So it wasn't just about taking the mouse and taking it from black to red, but bringing silicones, bringing new materials and finishes to the products to bring about new experiences. As we started to establish a momentum, we then started to broaden the strategy across the whole portfolio and all of Logitech brands.
CL: You went from black plastic products to products like the UE BOOM that embody very tangible experiences, because of the materials. The BOOM for example for me feels more of an excuse to have fun on the beach, in the park, on the move, rather than just to listen to music it was also one of the early uses of textiles in consumer electronics. Using textiles was a pretty bold move.
AC: If you look at that time when we were getting momentum with the traditional sort of 'heartland' of Logitech - the keyboards and mice world, we were also just starting to get momentum with Ultimate Ears and the BOOM and the MEGABOOM which were using fabrics. At the time, the use of the fabrics was quite revolutionary in the consumer electronics space. I mean, now you kind of see fabric everywhere- Google, Apple across the board, but at the time the Ultimate Ears BOOM was quite a new product and it gave us a great canvas for color, and a great canvas for print, and for one-off graphics specials. The infusion of new materials and new colors in the keyboards and mice gave Logitech a huge amount of confidence about how it could start thinking about and talking about color and materials as part of its point of differentiation to the rest of the market and its competition at that time.
Ultimate Ears BOOM Portable Speaker
CL: So you have these speakers that are very dominated by color, textiles, soft-touch materials. Then you have mice which have a use of materials that tell totally different stories for different audiences. Where other brands might try to unify their products through a singular brand CMF yours are very individually targeted. Were you tempted to create a homogenous CMF for the brand?
AC: We have high level design principles which apply to every brand and every category we have in the company, but when you sort of helicopter down, and come down into each brand, we were very conscious about maintaining authenticity and uniqueness of brand identity within that specific brand. So, it's not to say we didn't necessarily use a certain color in multiple categories and multiple brands, but we were very conscious of maintaining a color palette specific to each brand.
CL: I think that it's quite a challenge for a lot of companies to integrate marketing, sales, sourcing into design and to understand the value of CMF and using unconventional materials. I know that from the organization point of view different teams at Logitech are very closely integrated. Does the marketing team embrace the whole CMF and materials approach?
AC: You know, in some ways it's harder now than it was five years ago. That's not a critique of the people today versus five years ago. If you go back five six years ago, the company had gone through a very tough time and was more open minded – I'm trying to say that when you've been sort of humbled a little bit, when you've gone through a hard time, you are more open minded to new ideas, new ways of doing things and new approaches. If you look at it from me coming in, it was a great time for me and the design team to come in and establish ourselves because there was no baggage, no history and the incumbency was ready for change. We were a natural change agent. Introducing new colors and materials was not that hard actually. The sales regions were very open minded very welcoming to new thinking and freshening up of the portfolio.
If you fast forward to now, we review every brand, every portfolio on a weekly basis. Not every product that's live, but we'll deep dive on a specific product within each business group once a week. From the earliest sketch all the way through to final products and launch, we try and do those reviews not just as a design team, but we also call in part of our marketing organization. So they have visibility in the early days but they also have a means to input and, to a certain extent, co-create as we evolve from a blank piece of paper to final product. So it's a much more collaborative, shared process versus a, 'we do our bit and hand it over, and someone else does their bit.'
CL: Spotlight, which is the presenter tool, is another great materials case study. You created the product from researching the emotions people go through when giving presentations. I read that you studied how it feels to give a presentation, with even the most experienced presenters getting nervous. You used that research to drive a product that was going to change the way that the presenter felt about giving presentations. How did materials feed into that product to enhance that experience?
Spotlight Universal Notebook Remote Control
AC: Yeah, the materials played a key part in many ways. I mean you yourself do lots of presentations and I do a fair chunk of presentations and however many you do, you still become nervous, there's still anxiety depending on the number of people in the audience. When we started to design that product, it was clear that the more you can provide confidence in the tools, not just Spotlight, but all of the tools, that they are going to work when you want them to work, how you want them to work, it takes a chunk of the anxiety away.
So when we were designing the product it was 'how do you make it as simple to use,' which obviously, we paired back the number of buttons to make it as simple to use but how do you make it feel solid, reliable and make you feel good through the premium-ness of the materials? Yes, I'm sure we could have made it out of a beautiful plastic, with great finishes. But the coldness of the metal, the rigidity of the metal and just the perception of what metal brings as far as higher value - it may only be two percent, it may only be three percent but its just that little more confidence it gives the consumer when they're using the product versus when they're using anything else.
CL: Ok so you were bold in the way you were using textiles for the BOOM speakers but you were also pretty brave in the K780 keyboard which is a CMF icon and one my studio often use as a reference. It has also inspired many other products with the same effect. It was quite radical because you're using a texture that could potentially appear to be a flaw, and you have to get it absolutely right in terms of the density of specs, distribution and the color. Was that a challenge to get through?
K780 Multi-Device Wireless Keyboard
AC: When it was first pitched and proposed, it was quite a challenge and I think it's fair to say even though, as you said, its held up like a quite a key product from introducing the speckle and the CMF, in your words icon, it's also fair to notice that it's not that color and it doesn't have speckles in every region. So I think in Europe it has the speckles, but in the US it doesn't have the speckles because the US market wasn't ready for speckles. They thought it would be too polarizing. So I think that probably indicates how challenging it can be to get something like that into the global portfolio.
CL: I've heard some companies talk about the sense that there is an expectation from consumers of perfection in products. You can look at phones as an example of completely seamless products- there are no joints, no screws. What's interesting about the keyboard is that you could interpret that as a sort of a natural product where inconsistency in the flakes maybe shows imperfection. Do you think consumers are moving towards more of an acceptance of that kind of effect- when it comes to sustainability because maybe there are certain materials where it would benefit them not being so perfect and pristine?
AC: If you ask me that about the consumer today, then I would say no, I think there still is an expectation of perfection driven by Apple over the past five, ten years. I think we have to change that and I think the consumer will evolve in their understanding of materials, evolve in their understanding of sustainably and the implications of sustainability. I think, if you ask me in five years time, in ten years time, I think the consumer will be having a very different perspective, I hope they will have a very different perspective.
That's the challenge, I think, for Logitech - we discuss talk about it a lot. Actually quite recently we have, regarding our position and the fact that we don't talk about it. At some point we may need to talk about it, not sort of putting the flag up and going, 'woo! Aren't we great from a sustainably perspective?' We may need to, in some form or another, think about how do we communicate that our product is using sustainable materials and sustainable processes versus the competition. Because if the consumer doesn't understand that ours may be more sustainable in materials and finish than the competition, they may look at our product as a lesser product because of that perfection dimension.
It's almost not apples and apples as a comparison. How we do that? I think we've still got to look at and explore ideas. Its like food packaging – you look at the packaging and it talks about the food inside, it talks about sodium, fats, fibers, etc. So you have a sense of how healthy that food is inside the packaging. I wonder whether this idea from packaging is going to have to happen, within the consumer electronics market. It's going to have to play a role similar to that in the early days, where a consumer can hold a mouse against another mouse and see that, functionally, they are the same product but also then recognize that one is far more sustainable solution than the other.
I mean, we are moving in that direction. There will be companies who take a position and pioneer and drive towards more sustainable solutions and others will be slower, but the consumer won't recognize that, and we're going to have to work out how to, 'educate' sounds awfully patronizing, but make consumers more aware when they're making those choices.
CL: What else can you share about Logitech's approach to the environment?
AC: In general terms, we're incredibly committed to sustainability, and not just an abstract sustainability target, we have distinct sustainability targets which are aligned with goals beyond Logitech. We're looking at the Paris Agreement and other measures. We're looking at our complete footprint and handprint for the whole company, from our factories to try and make the factory carbon neutral, packaging and all the way down through materials.
So it's not like we flick a switch and we'll go, 'okay, everything has to be fully recyclable material from the get go.' But we are committed to transforming the whole portfolio in line with our sustainability targets. We dropped PVC cables three years ago. But it's more about transitioning the whole portfolio, not only from a materials perspective, but also how we assemble them, how we make them disassemble-able, so the full circular program.
CL: I have heard that at Logitech you are doing this not because we've done research that says your consumers want you to do or expect it, but actually, because you, ethically, feel that you should be doing it.
AC: I completely agree, that's why we've not really talked about it publicly at all. This is very much going up to Bracken and going down to the leadership team across the board. It's a commitment to our future generations, it's not a commitment to making a more sellable product to the consumer.
This post is presented by the K-Show, the world's No.1 trade fair for the plastics and rubber industry. Visionary developments and groundbreaking innovations will again lead the industry into new dimensions at K 2019 in Düsseldorf, Germany.
As an industrial designer you have to know, or at least try to guess, how an end user will think or feel about your product designs. But it's also important to know what your fellow designers are thinking and doing. Whether you will be competing with them, co-creating alongside them, or unwittingly collaborating with them to elevate the industrial design profession as a whole, having a good grasp of the views of other designers provides context for the work you're doing, keeps you well-informed and can be helpful when you need to make tough decisions.
Ideally you'd be regularly exposed to conversations with other industrial designers. We've got something nearly as good, which is the Core77 Discussion Boards. They're packed with information and opinions from practicing industrial designers, but we admit that the boards are so dense, they can be overwhelming. So in this series, we're going to start mining them for interesting discussions, editing them for clarity and presenting them in a format that resembles an easier-to-digest roundtable discussion.
We'll start off with this occasionally heated discussion, which was initially about generative design--but rapidly began to reveal the concerns of working designers vis-à-vis technology, creation, good business, meaning in design and more. To provide some context, the discussion was kicked off by a non-industrial-designer, "SK," who seemed to walk the fine line between trolling and debate; it was also initiated some years ago, so some of the references may appear dated, although the larger issues are very relevant today.
(Note: This conversation has been edited for clarity, length, flow, and troll reduction).
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SK: Years ago, on the Core77 Discussion Boards I attempted to interest industrial designers in generative design, which now seems to have taken architecture by storm. Every single architecture school of any consequence is trying to teach it. But from industrial designers I noticed a lot of scoffing and virtually no interest in generative design. I wonder if this has since changed?
Keifer: Without igniting a huge flame war, this reminds me of most designers' initial impressions of rapid prototyping. Both generative design and rapid prototyping technology seem to prompt a "Well, it lessens my importance as a professional, so it must not be positive" reaction.
I can certainly imagine that GD would be useful in design (as opposed to art). Assuming that I understand it correctly, it seems likely that various inputs (length, height, width, specific features, etc.) could be put together with standard template-like functions to create a product (most likely in less time/with less effort than a designer could give.) Of course, that wouldn't work for extremely specific things.
Art, on the other hand, maybe not. I appreciate art because it took skill to make it, not necessarily because it "looks cool" or follows artistic algorithms. I saw a video about generative art, it didn't do much for me. I'd appreciate it more if a person actually made it. But maybe that's just me, and I'm not really one to think that mass-produced objects are as "artistic" as individual pieces, so that probably distances me from some people.
Image credit: Genoform
IDiot: SK, I remember your original forum thread on generative design. Unfortunately most of the examples it showed were pretty bad, so it was a hard sell, but at that time I remember making the case (on a Core77 discussion) that in the hands of a good designer, it would be a very powerful tool for exploring variations on a theme (at the very least) once a design direction was underway.
I don't see it as a threat to designers at all, just another tool.
SK: Nowadays I certainly see more interest, or at least more people have heard of generative design. But the ship has left the port for industrial designers. Generative design is now fully embraced by cutting edge architectural practices to make both totally meaningless blobby shapes, but also to optimize performance to a very high degree. In architecture, generative design is going mainstream [see: The Bird's Nest and Water Cube from the Beijing Olympics].
Doing blobby stuff isn't easy if you have to crank out working drawings and resolve connection details--there is certainly some clever thinking and new capabilities required. Architects, unlike industrial designers, have created new skills and new value, through the adaptation of advanced design technologies which exploit the creative capacity of computers. In contrast, we are witnessing the demise of shape and color play, and with it the demise of professions focused purely on it.
Electroflux: The idea of using the computer to determine a best-fit solution given constraints is hardly anything new - it's the main strength of using the computer for any particular process!
SK: exactly. The understanding of design as a management of constraints is not new. The understanding that nature's designs are based on generative designs is not new. The understanding that computers can devise strategies that beat the best human players is not new. The use of computers as intelligent design tools is not new.
But for most industrial designers, the concept that the computer is more than a 3D drawing tool seems to be very new and hard to digest.
Generative design is about using the computers for design exploration.
Cameron: I've had happy accidents in modeling programs before. Does that count?
SK: Just imagine if you can choose from thousands of accidents. That is how nature designs.
CG: That's not really a fair comparison, because nature designs by incorporating subtle mutations and relying on natural-selection over many generations to pass on the strongest attributes.
I don't understand why you'd want a computer to generate meaningless design for a designer to choose from. As a designer, I want more meaning to go into form-giving, not less.
SK: Don't understand why? Simple: Generative design can do a far better job, faster and cheaper. It can extend human imagination. This is what architects are using generative design for.
Electroflux: Maybe the problem with industrial designers not picking up on this en masse is that as-is, it doesn't contribute much to the design process. A "Randomize parameters" tool is a rather different beast than "Fill in this space with stuff, make it strong, and use as little material as possible."
Architects seem to be using the latter approach in your given Beijing Olympics examples. While ID and Architecture share many aspects--both are designing things ultimately for the benefit, comfort, and safety of people, taking materials and space/shape in consideration--there's a big difference in scale. Simply making random designs is nice, but what if you could teach the computer styling and form? The architects weren't just getting random width and height walls and windows on a concrete rectangle, and until the tools for ID can move past that stage, I see this being rather hit-or-miss for benefits.
Perhaps if you could teach the computer about form and style, give it a parts library it can work from or build off of.
SK: In generative design, the designer is very much is control of style. Generated designs in most cases appear to belong to a design family, very often with strong stylistic commonalities. The big difference between those who use generative design and those who remain skeptical is that the first sector focuses on what it can do and the second on what it cannot--for now.
Brook: SK, I am disappointed by the responses you are getting from this topic. If so-called designers cannot think of a use for this tool, then what is the state of our design thinking? People, you need to up the ante, big time, in your creative levels and progressive thinking.
SK: Don't be disappointed; this is typical. It's wrong to assume that designers are creative thinkers and open-minded. I have not found them to be. Many are extremely focused on creating meaningless variations--which is, in fact, what inspired my interest in generative design. Those unfamiliar with generative design find it threatening. Designers spend a lifetime honing their work processes, and naturally they are reluctant to entertain disruptive thinking. So I do not blame them.
It was the same in architecture. Only the younger generation has embraced this technology. The older guys can't deal with it, it is just too much. But before long, they sensed that there is something in the technology for optimization and for marketing some forms of hi-tech design approaches. The main difference in architecture was that there were many dedicated academics who had worked unrecognized for decades on futuristic design technology. However, what led to uptake was the availability of easy-to-use CAD tools, and the sheer enthusiasm of design students who are now busy out-competing each other in generating designs.
Here are some examples of products I designed using generative design, around 2006 (hence it's an MP3 player):
Image credit: Genoform
CG: When I look at all those renderings of differently proportioned MP3 players, I just see "meaningless variations," so I guess you've succeeded.
SK: You make a valid point. But they were generated in four to five seconds, and in the hundreds. Would you agree that there are thousands of such meaningless designs currently on the market, designed at much greater expense and time? The good thing about digital design now is that you are able to see what is being designed or generated and kill those that you don't like. If you have skill, nothing is stopping you from modifying it to your liking, as you surely do with your other designs.
What you create, I can guarantee will not be liked by quite a few others. If they are industrial designers themselves, then we will possibly be down to a fractional percentage. I am sure you would agree, if you ask those connoisseurs who do not like your design, none of them are likely to blame SolidWorks or ProE or any other CAD package you use.
I don't consider myself a competent product designer; I am clearly not. So, the designs displayed suffer in quality. This has been pointed out many times and I accept my shortcoming. But I am not sure why many intelligent designers are unable to distinguish the quality and capability of CAD tools from sample designs created by it? Can you explain?
CG: The thousands of meaningless designs you refer to, were likely done without any kind of design process. They were done with a "shotgun" approach which is common in the East where manufacturing is cheap. The theory is that you flood the market first with as many inexpensive variations of a product as possible and see what sells. In the West, it's more common to have a "rifle" approach, which utilizes a lot of research, strategy and design process to ensure the product hits its mark, reducing risk.
Generative software is great for the meaningless "shotgun" approach, but designers strive for the meaningful "rifle" approach.
For example, if an Industrial Designer were to design an MP3 player, a good design process would be to use "generative research" (aka co-creation) to help isolate preferences among those customers. In an hour, I would make a bunch of wood or foam shapes, and hand them to research participants. I'd ask them to talk about the merits of each shape and weight, talking about how they'd use the product in their life. I would then give them a bunch of cut-outs that represent controls, like screens and buttons. I'd let them choose among them, and place them on their preferred model wherever they'd want. I'd have them discuss why. I would then go back and improve the fidelity of the concepts, by sketching and modelmaking. I'd then do another round of research.
Here's why that process beats generative design:
1) You want physical models, not renderings, and today's rapid prototyping software just isn't as efficient as a designer carving a bunch of concepts out of for a few hours.
2) You want to separate your research variables, and progressively-disclose choices to the user. In your MP3 example, you've created a bunch of renderings, but you'd really need to create thousands more to cover all the variations. That's just not practical for the research participant. Rather than give them 10x10 choices, you want to give them 2 choices of 10: pick your shape, pick your controls.
3) You want your subject to co-create with you. Give them a bunch of controls and have them choose what they are and where they go, and tell you why. This is cheaper, faster and gives you more meaning.
Cdaisy: As for "you want physical models not renderings"--you're saying it's more efficient to carve objects by hand out of foam instead of modeling it and sending it to a desktop printer or the like? Cheaper maybe, but more efficient? You must be one hell of a whittler!
NURB: I don't think CG was taking issue with the output (hand carved, rapid proto, etc.), his issue was the disconnected nature of flushing out 1,000 variants of one design without any thought to it. His process will get you from concept to completion with a much better outcome. The shotgun approach rarely works well.
Image credit: Bitonti Studio
Cdaisy: I think it depends on what you are using it for. The image of the spoons is a good example. A spoon is a spoon. Do you really need a ton of research to design a spoon? I would say not really, but you do want a shape that is both functional and pleasing to the eye. So if I can get 1,000 variations quickly and simply pick the one I like the most, I would say that's a pretty efficient use of my time.
Isn't that the argument people make for sketching being so important? Showing variations of the same object quickly?
NURB: Of course, but as someone else said you'd need to teach the computer your aesthetic in order to get the same result. It would have to learn from its visual mistakes, and build on a "happy accident" that makes the for more pleasing. That's something I doubt you will get by simply modifying a few parameters and pushing Go.
Electroflux: Which is why you'd somehow need to build on what's going on here. As I said before, the architects aren't just pressing a randomize button either. If they were, few would see the value of this either.
They have a question they want answered, they may know roughly what the answer should be, but the human-time to get it is quite large. The computer can just create 1,000 variations, run physics simulations, and delete the 900 that fall apart.
But teaching it aesthetics is a bit different than teaching it to make a strong roof.
EngineerErrant: Having generative design software to create things like truly random shapes is exactly the sort of tool CG would need for the design process he's talking about.
I think the shotgun/rifle dichotomy being set up is meaningless. There's an element of randomness requisite in creativity, and generative design is great for that. It's not like the final product is being spit out by the program and sent straight into production with zero analysis with regard to usability or aesthetic or structure or whatever else. (On the flipside, it's not like there isn't a randomly-generated-shapes aspect when we sit down in front of a piece of paper and draw shoes. Whatever we've got going on the radio gets assimilated and processed.)
SK: As for shotguns and rifles, it all depends what you are shooting at. If you are going for ducks, shotguns will do, as ducks fly in a group (products too are similar and belong to groups). It's satisfactory if you bring one of those flying fellows down.
With a rifle, if you get the target wrong, it is a miss. It's wrong to assume that you know exactly what will succeed, so a rifle approach is a gambling approach. Gamblers always believe they will win, or else they wouldn't gamble. But companies have less and less use for gamblers. This is a reality that few would argue with.
The description of your own design process is useful, but it is the best? You don't seem to be using any of the capabilities that computers can provide you.
If you want to prototype a lot of designs, then you will find generative to be most useful. The range of designs that you can generate are in the billions. So you will never cover the entire range of possibilities, even if you wanted to. It is up to you, to narrow it down to a few that you like to show your clients.
Also, generative design is perfect for the co-creation you mentioned, because genetic models can also be driven by consumers (replacing random inputs).
I hope I have convinced you of the merits of generative design.
Image credit: Genoform
Travisimo: To get a computer to spit out ten quality concepts, or to even pick ten good ones from your thousands of generative iterations, you are still going to have to understand the design problem and customer, input all the key variables in careful ways, and spend the time to refine whatever gets spit out.
It's going to take just as much time to do it (with the target consumer in mind), and I still don't think you would be able to capture all the critical information needed to generate the best solution - the human brain mixes variables in ways computers cannot.
Fractal patterns is one thing, but I don't believe your system will be spitting out iPhone killers anytime soon.
SK: Babies don't run as soon as they are born. Generative Design is still in its early stages. In its late stages, those who do not use it will not be in the business of design. Chess masters once thought that they were unbeatable by computers, not very long ago.
Travisimo: Maybe for engineering-type challenges, like finding the optimal shape for a fuel injector in an engine, generative design is a perfect approach. Evaluate designs for certain constraints, kill off the bad ideas, mutate the good ideas, et cetera.
Design that resonates with people is much more than just product geometry. Who exactly is going to be setting the criteria that this program would use to judge and evolve the products? Who is going to judge the resulting designs, and to what criteria?
To know the right criteria to input is like the wicked problem that can happen in design, which is to figure out exactly what the problem is in the first place. Afterwards the answer is more straightforward to solve.
SK: Judging the results would obviously be the designer's job. I'm reminded of an old professor telling me there was a similar reaction, when CAD was first introduced. Generative Design is a powerful design/search tool. Designers should not be threatened by it. Good writers are not threatened by word processors.
Travisimo: Of course it's the designer's job, SK, I feel like you're making my point. The designer has done the groundwork, has the experience, and spent the research time to know what the ideal solution would be. If he's worth his salt, he could sketch ten focused concepts without ever needing to sift through the generative designs, making the whole system needless.
Designers do a lot more than just sketch and pump CAD. Experience and creative problem solving is our value.
CG: And I have to say, you've got the shotgun/rifle thing backwards. The shotgun approach is the gambling approach since most of the shots will fail to hit the target. This won't work for western companies that have brands to protect--they need to ensure the products they create hit the mark and build positive brand equity. Western retailers won't allow it either: Wal-Mart will only sell one or two of your coffeemakers, not fifty.
Desktop printers: Not only will they have to get cheap, they'll have to get really fast to beat the typical Industrial Designer in carving foam. Let's not forget that there is some upfront time programming the generative model to create all those variations. In a timed side-by-side comparison, I guarantee the Industrial Designer will get to a preferred solution much faster and with less waste.
Creating billions of options: It's just not practical to weed through that many concepts. A progressive approach to both creation and down-select is more efficient.
Co-creation: I'm a believer in this, but sitting a participant in front of a computer and letting them find their ideal design is really just user-friendly CAD, not generative design.
Being convinced: I'm not.
From what I'm hearing, generative design is about automating the process of creating "meaningless designs" like spoons. This may be useful to someone, but not me. I'm looking for tools that help me put more meaning into my designs. If I was designing a spoon, my approach would be to spend a lot of time with people using spoons. To look at their style choices. To look at their cultural standards. To look at the use-cases. To understand their priorities when buying a spoon. From that information, I would design.
Can generative design process all that input and arrive at a better spoon? If not, then it's just a distraction.
Cdaisy: CG, so the higher ups in your company will let you spend that much time and money on a spoon design? I want to work where you work!
Spending a lot of time with people using spoons? Come on, man. The sad reality is that it comes down to whether or not the buyer at a retail store or big box chain likes the shape and quality of your spoon. All that research, time and money can be flushed right down the toilet if the buyer looks at it and says "meh". Research is important, but sometimes all you really need is a sexy shape that utilizes your taste and skill as a designer.
Consumers don't always know what they want until they see it. Same goes for buyers and bosses. Design isn't ALWAYS about solving problems. Sometimes it just has to be functional mass-produced piece of art that people want to buy. Are we not supposed to set the trends? Does everything you design need to be inspired by focus groups? Isn't that the reason terrestrial radio stations suck?
That's not to say your points aren't valid, but there are situations where this TOOL would come in handy. Let's say with a glassware company for example. Set the parameters for a martini glass and let it rip! Worst case scenario is that it sparks an idea you didn't have before. What's so wrong with that?
I think it would be a fun to have a generative design option available to me. Set certain parameters, look at the results, pick a few of the best ones, tweak the parameters a bit, look at more results, pick out a few more, narrow it down to three, show the boss, make some tweaks if you need it. Done.
IT IS NOT A REPLACEMENT FOR THE ENTIRE DESIGN PROCESS. It is a very cool option you can have ready in your tool box if you need it. sheesh!
SK: That's the problem with designers--wanting to put in meaning. Ask your boss if he wants meaning or money.
IDiot: DID YOU REALLY JUST SAY THAT?
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--To be continued.
"There are some problems with folding furniture," observed mechanical engineer Chi-Hao Chiang, who left his native Taiwan to pursu...
