Design Evolves

If the 7 Series BMW or the New E-Class Mercedes are a great piece of design work, it is a result of nearly a hundered years of evolutionary design work.

The lastest models from these companies are an improvement on an earlier model that was already very refined design.

It would be quite unlikely that a designer given a 1950 model of the BMW as the base to improve upon (with no other new design input) could produce a design that looked like the 2010 model.

Big steps and jumps are indeed possible in design work but the basic nature of designing remains evolutionary.

Design for the life cycle

First there was design for Fashion

Then there was design for Manufacturability (high volume - low cost)

Then there was design for Quality

Now we need, design for the Life Cycle.

What happens over the life cycle of a product or service, from raw material to renewal and/or death. What are the impact of the product or service on costs, life and environment over its entire life cycle, will/should drive design.

iPhone - Design is the difference

Most of the pieces of technology and manufacturing methods that go into making of an iPhone are also available to other handset manufacturers. Design is the difference.

Purpose drives design choice

The iPad has already sold over 2 million units in the first few weeks of its launch. Remember the tablet PC? (sorry! maybe you own one).

In comparison to the Microsoft's tablet PC, the iPad has a more focused purpose - that of browsing and viewing therefore it lends itself to a greater design sophistication and excellence. It is the trade off (the choice of not doing some things, of leaving somethings out) that creates the room for greater sophistication in the direction of what you choose to do.

A good design is more likely when the purpose is defined in a simple coherent way.

Design of an environmentally friendly public toilet

I have often (almost always) been saddened by the how unclean public toilets in India are. Much money has been spent on building public toilets that are difficult to clean and expensive to maintain.

So on a recent trip to Konoor, I was delighted to see a public toilet that was so simple in its design that it would have cost next to nothing. But also that the design was so elegant that it was both easy to clean and maintain (actually maintenance free).

A channel that runs on top of a brick wall, about two and a half feet in height, is used for urination. The channel slopes down wards to allow quick and easy flow of urine to the end of the channel where it flows into an underground tank filled with brick pieces to allow for quick and easy absorption of the urine before it slowly seeps into the ground below.

A small tap placed at the other end of the channel is turned on whenever there is a need to clean the channel (which is not very often). The effort required to clean the channel is minimal.

There is virtually no need for chemicals to disinfect or deodorise the toilet as there is no spilling, splashing or accumulation of urine due to broken or clogged pipes or vessels.

The design positively impacts economical, environmental and social aspects. I hope more public toilets make use of such designs.

Design Constraints

Design constraints are frustrating. But constraints are the reason for the existence of a design. Indeed it is the constraints that makes a design possible.

All of life seems to fights against gravity. But can life exist without gravity? Is gravity an obstruction to life or a support to it.

Keep returning to where it all begins

The world is made up of myriad forms but the source of it all is one.

Building this awareness is the key to simplifying our lives & work.

This understanding can also be a source of great creativity.

Understading that all things negative(problems) & positive(solution) have a common source is critical to gaining control over our problems and to unlocking of our creativity.

Keep returning to the source.

Keep returning to where it all begins.

We need to redesign almost everything for life in the 21st Century

I get the idea as I pick my tooth brush up this morning. I'll be discarding this tooth brush in a matter of few days. It already seems like I have used it beyond its effective life span. But then I will be discarding the the whole tooth brush when it's only the bristles that need to be replaced. The rest of the tooth brush (the handle etc.) is actually just as it was when I first bought it some weeks ago. The point is a lot of the 'things' that we buy and use today were designed at a time when the constraint on resources was not a factor requiring much consideration. These 'things' have become misfits in today's world.

Many a successful innovations since the start of the industrial revolution (and even before) need now to be replaced. Indeed the success of the Industrial revolution itself might have hastened the need to discard them. Improved purchasing power (due to cheaper manufacturing and financial innovation), spreading prosperity (due to expanding trade) and population growth (on the back of better health care) have ensured a continuous growth in the demand for these innovations. But then these innovations were never designed with the impact of very large scale usage in mind. Take for example the personal Automobiles, designed for user convenience & improved quality of life, the falling costs and rising purchasing capacity have resulted in such wide spread use of this mode of transport that it now is negatively impacting the quality of life (not just of the bystanders but the owners themselves).

Having stretched material supply to exhaution, we now need new innovations that are resource efficient, sustainable, and renewable. The economics of scale itself might be on its way out. So also the life styles of the 20th century.

The design difference

General Motors' Chevrolet Volt electric car could get 230 mpg in city driving, making it the first American vehicle to achieve triple-digit fuel economy if that figure is confirmed by federal regulators.

Volt's fuel efficiency in the city would be four times more than the popular Toyota Prius hybrid, the most efficient car now sold in the U.S. If drivers operate the Volt for less than 40 miles, in theory, they could do so without using a drop of gasoline.

Such gains usually cannot come from optimizing, they are the result of some fundamental Design changes.

Unlike the Prius and other traditional hybrids, the Volt is powered by an ELECTRIC MOTOR and a battery pack with a 40-mile range. After that, a small internal combustion engine kicks in to generate electricity for a total range of 300 miles.

Hybrids like Toyota's Prius on the other hand use a small INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE combined with a high-powered battery to boost fuel efficiency.

Use of the electric motor as the prime driver probably reduces the number of moving parts as the power can be transmitted over the wire (instead of a mechanical power train) resulting in considerable savings on moving parts that are not really needed to move the vehicle around.