Comments on: James Dyson on Engineering Designers https://blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com/2010/09/21/james-dyson-on-engineering-designers/ Clarify Today, Design Tomorrow Fri, 18 Aug 2017 17:58:55 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.1 By: Julian https://blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com/2010/09/21/james-dyson-on-engineering-designers/#comment-610 Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:08:53 +0000 http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/?p=4773#comment-610 That’s a great example. I’m hopeful that the role of design in collaboration with engineering will continue to evolve and that may have a lot to do with how engineering is taught as well as how it’s perceived. It happens in some places but as traditional engineering goes — it’s baiscally the invention of the world and creating the superlative tech hack or innovation with out any particular focus on what matters to people. ((My story about engineers starting with door knobs and admiring it but not really paying attention to the entire house that it has to fit on and in which normal humans live. Design-engineering or design-technology is closer to the intermingling. But, perhaps more than just an engineer and a designer working side-by-side. Designers should be engineers as well, and engineers — proper designers with all the sensibilities and sensitivities that go along with design practice.

]]> By: Allen Smith https://blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com/2010/09/21/james-dyson-on-engineering-designers/#comment-609 Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:00:01 +0000 http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/?p=4773#comment-609 I think you are right when you say Engineering has too much hubris in the design of products. I was cured of that hubris when I worked at Black and Decker by an industrial designer that proved design is every bit the equal to engineering.

The inspired Industrial Designer Carroll Gantz took the same “guts” of a poorly selling cordless vac and made it into a blockbuster product — the Dustbuster

Gantz believed that this new hand vac should look and function like a dustpan does, quickly collecting dust and debris for easy disposal. From this idea, the shape of the vacuum was designed to resemble the side-view of a dustpan, with a flat wedge shape and a handle. This visually conveyed the idea of a quick and easy solution to small spills.

He changed people’s perception from: “This is a crappy, low-powered vacuum cleaner” to “This is a great powered dustpan.” His design philosophy was not “form follows function” but form can enhance and suggest function.

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