Camera slider

Christmas and New Year have gone and whilst I had a lot of fun, it's now back to the (literal) drawing board. I've been pottering about on a few projects for friends and I've also had one eye on the future. So to the future:

One of my latest jobs was to make myself a camera slider to (hopefully) improve the professionalism of my video's. I decided to drive my slider with an electric screwdriver, which currently are rediculously cheap, the one shown was £10. The rails are made from square aluminium tube from the local hardware store.  Professionally made ones are very expensive, but its such a simple device and there are lots of Youtube tutorials, so if you are into your film making, I recommend you have a go at making one and save a lot of money. 

I've also been working on a range of tables, but I'm not sure whether they will see the light of day as currently they won't work unless I find a way of defying physics and gravity.   I'm also working on another lamp and I have to finish of my wheelbarrow!

If anyone asks me 'What's the future?' It's Momo's, little indian snacks that are absolutely magic with a cold beer.  You can find the recipe in Rick Steins Indian book.  They must be made with the hot chilli dip he also recommends.  One of the best things I ate over Christmas - and I ate a lot!

Can product designers really change the world

Can designers really change the world?  Most of the time all we are doing is churning out the same old stuff with a different face on it (see my post about how many chairs there are, yet everyday there's a release about yet another one, 4 legs a seat and a back, it's slightly different from the last, but not by much).  So, I have been concerned with what actual value (not profit) I can add to my designs, how can designers really change the world? Or at least do their little bit whilst the scientists and engineers sweat the important stuff.

The problem is, it's very difficult to ascertain if what you're designing is good or not. Look at wind farms, they have to be better for the environment than burning fossil fuels, but how much better? They apparently kill quite a lot of birds each year.  They cost a lot in materials to manufacture and they are currently not that efficient.  On face value it all seems good, but delve in a bit and it gets murkier.

Recently we have been experiencing a heat wave in the UK and my car doesn't have any air con, by the end of a short drive, I have had to peel myself out of the seat.  So, a while ago I saw a post about making food coolers for poverty stricken areas in Africa.  Food is placed in a metal box, surrounded by wadding, (wool, or another absorbent material) held in place with wire mesh.  The wool is soaked in water and as the water evaporates in the hot sun, warmth is drawn out of the metal box, cooling the food inside.  The same thing happens when we get out of a swimming pool on holiday and feel cold as the water evaporates off our skin.  I know that it takes a lot of petrol to work air con, so air con is not environmentally friendly.  What if this low tech box cooler idea could be built into a car roof, so when it's hot, water from a bottle could be spread over the roof and as it evaporates it cools down the interior.  Is this environmentally better than air con and if so, by how much?  Does the amount of extra water carried and used on the roof, the extra material etc negate the savings on petrol?  

The problem is as far as I know there's no where to obtain the data.  What designers need is a really clever cost calculator app.  Our connectivity is now sophisticated enough to get real time updates on anything.  Why not an app that reads a CAD file, you state the products purpose and it recommends materials.  The best for friction, UV stability, hygiene, ease of reuse or recycling, longevity of the material, energy to process the material, energy to recycle the material etc.  Then based on your location, it recommends manufacturers.  If you have a supplier overseas, you input manufacturing source and distance to warehouse or shop, then the computer would generate a wealth of data, how many you can fit in a shipping container, or van and (based on weight) how much fuel it will consume on its journey from manufacturer to store, the best route, how many hills that involves, average time idling at traffic lights, material cost of product based on continually updating live market prices etc.    

This could shift the way things are designed.  Designers could tweak their designs and based on live data, get more accurate feedback on how a tweak here and there would really improve their design, to actually change the world!  At the moment the crux when designing is that you start out with the best intentions, but you really don't have a true picture of whether or not you are really doing any good and quite often the best intentions are misguided.   

is product design dead?

Surf Board shaper Neil Randall (if6was9) at work

Recently I keep stumbling upon debate about the death of product design, not in terms of definition, a change of name or description, but in terms of people,  it is claimed that product designers will be replaced by computers and machines.  This is not a new debate, but it has got me thinking.  If a computer can generate randomly or selectively, a thousand different skins for a product in a matter of seconds, what need for a designer?  I always took comfort in the slim hope that computers would not be able to understand or incorporate into the design the human aspect we currently take for granted.  For example, I recently watched a program about women designing products for women, with greater understanding than any male could bring to the table.  Could a computer grasp the subtlety that potentially a male designer may not?  Yes a computer could generate aesthetically pleasing exteriors to products, but will it ever be able to link in the human centred design elements that demonstrate the deeper, intangible aspects that humans intuitively bring to their designs.  

A few years ago I visited an old University amigo who was shaping surf boards in Australia.  I spent a few days in his work shop and had a go at shaping a mini board.  Whilst I was able to replicate the shape of a surfboard what i didn't understand was why, because I wasn't a surfer.  He was an excellent surfer and would feel the board and know what an extra millimetre off the thickness would do to the handling, how altering the curve would subtly affect the way the board carves through the water allowing him to tailor the board to an individual or making each board subtly unique.  Having hardly ever surfed, these are things I could not appreciate and thats the thing, products are designed by humans to be used by humans.  

A computer will be able to do subtle things to shapes that I can only imagine, but will it understand the humanity of the reasons why?  Probably not, but I don't think it will need to?  Due to advances in scanners etc in the future a human could walk into a booth (or through an airport) and within seconds the machine would know everything it would need to about that person, their grip strength, how much arthritis they have in their hands, underlying medical problems, their balance etc, then it could print products specifically tailored to their needs and they'd be ready for them to collect on the way home.  It could also monitor sales to work out which objects are aesthetically pleasing to each geographic area, age, sex etc, so that it can produce designs that will have a much higher chance of appealing.  A few years of statistical data build up and advancement in this area and it will probably have us all figured out. Maybe if/when this happens, product design as we know it will be dead, but by that time, based on the teachings of many science fiction films (Terminator, Matrix, I-robot etc) the death of product design and industrial design, will be the least of our problems!

Product colour of the future

My parents recently repainted their kitchen and my mother, who is famous for her lack of artistic talent, chose the paint colour, a cool grey (although can it be called a colour?).  I have to say, she's pulled an absolute blinder, as the grey she has chosen seems to compliment everything put against it incredibly well.  So it got me thinking, as I have said in previous posts, eventually our current obsession with black or white products will wane, so what then?  I would suggest this and will be using it in the not too distant future.  The future is bright, the future is grey!