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Product Design
Jonathan Follett
First Edition
978-1-49193-824-9
[LSI]
Table of Contents
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CHAPTER 1
Jonathan Follett
1 For a fabulous overview and vision of this universe and the technical trends driving it,
check out the report Building a Solid World by OReilly editors Mike Loukides and
Jon Bruner.
economy.
Although still in its early stages, Upverter has made the leap from an
initial user base of hobbyists and hackers to enterprise clients. Simi
larly, on the mechanical side, GrabCAD makes it possible for engi
neers to share models so that they dont need to design a product
from the ground up.
The move to cloud-based software is also helping to accelerate prod
uct design. In the past, something as essential as CAD software
could be a barrier to entry for a startup. CAD software can be
expensive, especially if youre an early-stage company with a great
idea for a product and not much else. Enter the next generation of
CAD in the cloud, with less-expensive alternatives to traditional seat
licenses, like subscription pricing and even free versions. CAD soft
ware is being reinvented with the nimble startups, makers, and
hackers in mind. In this realm, both established players like Auto
desk, with its Fusion 360 offering, and newcomers like Onshape, a
company started by the former founders of SolidWorks, are compet
ing to become the product designers choice.
Design, engineering, and project management techniques are begin
ning to cross-pollinate across the domains of software and hard
ware, with a focus on modularity of design and quick iteration. The
timeline from the napkin sketch to the works-like/looks-like model
has become incredibly compressed, making it possible now for
designers to get something in a customers hands quickly. Although
the first prototype version might well be unrefined and buggy,
designers and engineers are able to learn much from quick iteration
cycles, as opposed to trying to make that perfect initial productan
ethos not all that much different from that practiced by their coun
terparts in software.
And, on the business and finance side, crowdfunding is wrapping
test marketing, promotion, and preliminary sales into a convenient
package. Early adopters from Kickstarter or IndieGoGo become
your core test audience, giving startups a critical initial market for
their new product ideas. Crowdfunding also limits the amount of
money you need to recoup from R&D, or, at least, it gives you the
opportunity to find that initial capital.
relatively easy to do. Were trying to find these creative ways to make
pseudo-customization possible at this median-level scale for people
who are trying to build products, Jon explains.
tory to work with you. If you get this right, you can build a really
strong foundation and create a successful company. But, if you get it
wrong, then its like death by a thousand cuts, and its very, very dif
ficult to recover, says Scott Miller, Dragons CEO.
Dragon is on the forefront of manufacturing service innovation,
making the process as transparent as possible and helping compa
nies select factories from a comprehensive network of service pro
viders, such as the one shown in Figure 1-3.
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More often than not, youre not going to find them doing a web
search, because its very difficult to know whos good and whos not
good. At Dragon, weve got a database of a couple hundred factories
weve worked with and are constantly expanding that, Scott
explains.
12
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process more predictably. But for the time being, it might very well
be that service innovation, like that provided by Dragon, will be the
driver of disruption.
14
Small Pilots
In the past, starting the manufacturing of a new product in signifi
cant volume always required an enormous leap of faith. Unsurpris
ingly, the result was that many projects never saw the light of daya
difficult outcome for product designers, indeed. For even the largest
of companies it can be understandably difficult to justify occupying
a manufacturing facility and initiating a 100,000-unit run when you
lack all but the most basic of market validation.
However, in contrast today, as large companies recognize the impor
tance of rapid innovation, theyre finding ways to run smaller pilot
programsmanufacturing 5,000 to 10,000 units in order to get a
full understanding of the product/market fit. By testing products in
the market at a small scale and gathering data quickly, companies
can make informed decisions about whether they should scale-up
manufacturing. If a company gets the signal that theres strength to a
product line, they can ramp up to full-scale production rapidly.
Developing Infrastructure
The product landscape is changing as Fortune 500 companies begin
placing their bets on emerging technologies. At the 2015 Consumer
Electronics Show (CES), Samsung announced its focus on the IoT
and the connected home. This might have seemed like a big bet for
the tech giant. The bigger play, however, might not be in the way
Samsung changes peoples interactions with their home appliances,
entertainment, and living environments, but rather in how the com
pany creates the infrastructure that binds it all together.
The IoT itself still lacks a solid infrastructure, which might still be
years from being developed. While the Internet itself is accessible,
there remains a huge gap between the devices that we create and get
ting to the Internet, says Ben Salinas, a designer and engineer at
emerging technology consultancy, Involution Studios. WiFi net
works require a lot of power to connect to and are inconsistent.
Theyre not universal. We see a lot of devices tethering to a phone to
use that Internet connection. That still has issues.
Salinas continues, If youre one of these small companies that are
building a product for less than a few million dollars, you probably
Part 2. Growth and the Difficulties of Production in Volume
15
are playing with the frameworks that larger companies, like Sam
sung, Apple, and Microsoft, have already created.
When it comes to emerging technologies, for entrepreneurs and
smaller companies, the opportunities lie in bringing products to
market quickly, even if youre playing on someone elses network or
using someone elses infrastructure. For the larger companies, mak
ing that network, driving the standards, and owning the ecosystem
are the big plays in the long term.
16
Figure 1-5. LEO, The Maker Prince (Photo courtesy Carla Diana)
But where the book really shines, at least from a design standpoint,
is as an example of a product as dialogue. Readers share their works
on the books website and Diana makes ongoing adjustments to the
designs based on input from them. So, the book in some sense, is
always being updated, and Diana is having a conversation with the
books readers through the medium of a physical product.
One reason Diana created a childrens book about 3D printing was
to put virtual objects such as those in Figure 1-6 out in the world as
an experiment to see who downloaded them, why they downloaded
them, and what they did with them. That was a fascinating moment
17
for me, says Diana, because I felt like, Wow, you could have never
done this before.
People commented to me about some of the prints. They said, Oh,
this particular part grows more successfully for me standing
upright. I worked as hard as I could to try to get the objects to print
as well as they would with a typical FDM at-home printer. That was
a really interesting moment for me, too, because I felt like, Oh, I can
try this and I can just change the file.
Figure 1-6. All of the characters from the book can be 3D printed.
(Photo courtesy Carla Diana)
I did that because I am envisioning this future where it comes to
distribution: A designer, manufacturer, entrepreneur no longer has
to think about, Okay, well how many parts of this do I have to make
and where does it get warehoused? Where does it get distributed
and what retailers is it going to? Theres that whole dream of the
streamline distribution and I think its very realistic, states Diana
enthusiastically.
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I think disruption for disruptions sake will never win, says Ellen
DiResta, a strategic design advisor for companies like Sanofi and
Becton Dickinson, and former Managing Director for innovation
consultancy Design Continuum.
DiResta goes on to say, Every single client I have, I always love the
moment when I say to them: Nobody wants your products. No one
wants to buy an extra thing. Nobody wants to think about your stuff.
The people who think the most about your products are you guys.
Thats it. You have to give them something. You have to enable them
to do something. If you dont know what that is, and youre busy just
focused on your thing, you will miss the mark eventually.
The relationship between the designer and the user of products is
becoming ever closer. Understanding the intrinsic motivations of
the population engaged with your company is paramount to facili
tating those relationships going forward. In many instances, compa
nies base their product portfolios and their future plans on emerg
ing technologies and how they expect those technologies to evolve.
But the product-based relationship you have with your customers
can be deeper and potentially longer standing.
DiResta suggests that companies need to avoid being seduced by the
functionality of a potentially disruptive technology; instead, they
need to ask, How can these capabilities better enable our custom
ers? At the same time, the product designer needs to understand
the full extent of a technologys capabilities, because from this
knowledge, she can help define the desired user experiences.
Companies can err by going too far in the opposite direction, as well
expecting consumers to tell them what to do and what to design.
When, in reality, the motivators driving a consumers choices might
be something that theyre not ever going to be aware of, let alone be
something that they can articulate.
Decision Motivators
When I worked with a housewares company, I was interviewing
women at home who had kids in school. One lived in a very
depressed area and another person lived in Wellesley, Massachu
setts, which is very affluent, DiResta elaborates.
They had very similar values. Their choices were very different
because their means and their circumstances were very different.
19
The woman in Wellesley sent her kids to public school, because she
grew up so privileged and isolated and segregated... She felt like she
lived in a bubble. She wanted her kids to have a chance to be more
normal. Wanted and picked Wellesley and had a very, very nice
housebut by her background standards, very modestbecause
she wanted her kids to be normal.
The other woman home-schooled her kids, because she felt that the
school in town was just bad. Her house was not that great, but she
said, I cant send my kids to this school and expect them to ever get
out of this town.
DiResta continues, So you would say they are very, very different.
But the way they made decisions and how they chose, if you
reversed the two people, they would be making the same choices as
each other. The values that those products or services had to speak
to had to be the same.
The disruptive technologies that will be the most successful will
enable people to do what they want to do from the beginningjust
in better ways that fit with their changing context. Thats really
what Apple did, DiResta says. Nobody wants to interact with tech
nology. Apple provided technology in a way that you can work
through technology to do the things you want to do.
This is not a new idea in design; rather, it is one whose time has
come. The Design for Environment (DfE) program, put in place by
the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as far
back as 1992, includes as a part of its toolkit the lifecycle assessment
(LCA), a systems-based approach to quantifying the human health
and environmental impacts associated with a products life from
cradle to grave.
Today, using software tools such as thinksteps GaBi, designers can
complete a product lifecycle assessment to determine its carbon,
water, and overall environmental footprint, along with resource and
energy efficiency for its manufacturing and usage.
We can select materials that are environmentally friendly early in the
manufacturing process, because recently there has been great inno
vation in materials such as biodegradable plastics.
From a recycling standpoint, the biggest opportunity might lie in
Design for Disassembly (DfD), making electronic products much
easier to separate into their core componentsfrom circuit boards
to metal and plastic partsand sending each of these into their
appropriate recycling streams. Perhaps one day, hopefully in the
not-too-distant future, we will have printed circuit boards (PCBs)
designed for easy component removal, minimizing the need for des
oldering and exposure to heavy metals.
Design for Remanufacturing (DfR) is a similar strategy that strives
to remove durable components of a product at the end of its lifecyle,
reprocess them, and use them once again in a newly created item.
Even though this kind of design for a products end-of-lifewhether
it be for disassembly and recycling or remanufacturingdoes take
more effort, there is a tremendous opportunity here for product
designers to take responsibility for and control of the aspects of the
product lifecycle that were overlooked during previous eras. For
both startups and large companies alike, this systemic view of prod
uct design is worth remembering, when encountering the pressures
to release something quickly and just get a product on the shelf.
On-Demand Production
In the future, we can also consider that there might be no need to
phase out products if manufacturing can be generated on demand
and the price for creating individual versions is low. Today the print-
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Conclusion
In this evolving world of emerging technology and product creation,
designers who can create objects that are both compelling to the
consumer and within the bounds of manufacturing capabilities will
be exceptionally valuable. Understanding your materialswhat they
can do and what they can tolerateis key, be they plastics and met
als or pixels and code. With such an understanding, product design
ers can offer their insight, not only to envision future products, but
also to think about the process for getting there.
How do we approach product design and the evolving product life
cycle?
Here, inspired by Dieter Rams, the influential industrial designer
known worldwide for his landmark product designs for Braun and
Vitsoe, well conclude with three principles for good product design
in this brave new world of emerging technologies:
Good product design serves as an enabler for people.
To make a product useful and understandable, our understand
ing of the user must be of primary importance.
Good product design is innovative in process.
Drawing on new ideas for working togetherfrom crowdsourc
ing to open source reference designswe can stand on the
shoulders of others to create better products.
22
Company
Link
3DHubs
3DHubs
http://www.3dhubs.com
Arduino
Arduino
http://www.arduino.cc
Fusion 360
Autodesk, Inc.
http://fusion360.autodesk.com
GaBi
thinkstep
http://www.thinkstep.com
GitHub
GitHub, Inc.
http://www.github.com
GrabCAD
GrabCAD
http://www.grabcad.com
MakerBot
http://www.makerbot.com/
OnShape
OnShape, Inc.
http://www.onshape.com
http://www.irobot.com/For-the-Home/
Vacuum-Cleaning/Roomba
Shapeways
Shapeways, Inc.
http://www.shapeways.com
SolidWorks
Tessel 2
Technical Machine
http://www.tessel.io
Upverter
Upverter, Inc.
http://www.upverter.com
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Acknowledgements
The universe of possibilities presented by emerging technologies,
from the IoT to robotics to additive fabrication, is vast and intimi
dating but also inspiring. Product design is changing so quickly that
there can be no shame in admitting that even those of us closest to it
can only guess where its going.
The designers, engineers, and product folks who were kind enough
to talk with me and inform and refine my thinking for this report
include Drew Carlton, Carla Diana, Jeff Champagne, Ellen DiResta,
Craig Mauch, Jon McKay, Scott Miller, and Ben Salinas. I couldnt
have put this together without them.
As usual, the OReilly Media editorial team was fantastically suppor
tive. Both Mary Treseler and Angela Rufino have pushed me to
articulate the promise I see in the design field of the twenty-first
century.
I should say, as well, that my wife Jen tolerates my late night writing
binges, of which she has supported more than her fair share.