the product design process, sharing with you some of the things I've learnt over the last

15 years to help you become a better designer and improve your projects.

In this episode, I'm looking at innovation.

Innovation in product design could come from a revolutionary idea, but revolution is almost

as rare as rocking horse poop. What's this, maybe, oh, oh, no, false alarm. I would say

99.9% of innovation in product design is evolutionary, incrementally improving on what has gone before.

Now this is a beautiful chair, it's perfectly functional, you could argue it can't be improved,

but everything can be improved, depending on who's using it. There you go. But adding

a cushion to a chair isn't innovation. Innovation is defined as a new method or idea.

You can innovate every area of a products life through manufacture, storage, shipping,

use, repair and part replacement to its end of life and recycling.

I once spent a long time helping to reduce the part count in spray caps and pump actuators,

because innovation is often about making things simpler by reducing parts. Saving just a tenth

of a pence on one item won't mean much, but on an item that sells in its billions its

significant and saving a few ounces on one item won't mean much either, but has a big

impact on fuel costs when shipping thousands and not just economically, but also environmentally.

So There are two sides to innovation, the innovation that the customer sees, that improves

their experience and the innovation that they don't see, that improves the product behind

the scenes.

I think the greatest innovative advances in the future are going to be in materials and

manufacturing, because many of the things we require and use in our daily lives are

already so well established that their functionality can't be noticeably improved any further just

by changing the form. As an example, look at tennis rackets. The form of the racket

has hardly changed, but the materials have really advanced to make rackets stronger and

lighter. So innovation can always be driven by advances in materials and manufacturing.

To me, innovation is like running the 100 meters. There are a lot of teenagers who can

run 100 meters between 12 to 15 seconds with no training. It takes quite a bit of training

to be able to run sub 12 seconds and lots of dedication, effort and natural ability

to run under 11 seconds. The amount of extra training you have to put in to run a fraction

of a second faster is disproportionate to the amount of time you gain so you have to

really want to do it and innovation is exactly the same, it does take a lot more hard work

and time and often the improvement is fractional, so some people view innovation as risk. Now,

there can be a strong argument for if it ain't broke don't try to fix it. But these days,

most markets are so competitive that to not innovate and improve, especially in areas

like consumer electronics, to keep doing the same thing over and over is far riskier. There's

a brilliant line by James Bryant conant, behold The turtle he makes progress only when he

sticks his neck out.

With all innovation, you have to be wary of introducing gimmicks. The best Unique Selling

Point is one that provides a clear improvement, ideally for the same or definitely a cheaper

price and that makes your design more appealing aesthetically or otherwise to your target

audience.

So if we park improving a product by looking at areas of its life cycle, how else can we

innovate?

Innovation can come simply through your design philosophy, why do you design? A long time

ago I was introduced to the principles of inclusive design. If I design an object for

the person who would find the task the hardest, I improve the design for everyone. A simple

example is the redesign of a clothes peg I did for a neighbour who suffers from arthritis.

Using standard pegs put pressure on her fingers so redesigning the peg made it easier for

her to use so hopefully better for everyone else as well.

The materials that I used are exactly the same, but my design philosophy and carefully

listening to my target market was what helped me innovate on that occasion.

Another method is to observe products from different areas and combine their functionality

to lead to a new product breakthrough. I use plasters, correction rollers and Sellotape

and my designers intuition tells me that somewhere in the combination of these products from

different areas, could be an innovative wound care product. But with this method, you are

waiting to happen upon these things, it is not problem led and so it is rarer to get

success.

So what I wanted to show you, because this isn't one of those series that just talks

about stuff and especially as this is the first episode in my series on product design,

is how to innovate through getting the right brief. The brief is the start of every successful

project and I cannot stress enough how important it is for you to answer the brief properly

and for companies employing designers to give them the right brief, so it's important that

where possible designers work with the client to create the brief together based on discussion

about the desired result. There are lots of examples and advice on how to construct a

brief on the Internet. But I wanted to show you how framing the brief directly affects

the outcome. So to demonstrate, I'm going to follow two briefs to design a vegetable

peeler. I've chose a vegetable peeler, because it's a simple two piece design, but with innovation

it's worth considering that the less complex the product, the less opportunities there

will be to come up with something new, so today because I've only got two parts, my

task is going to be harder.

The first brief is to design a home cooks vegetable peeler using a standard blade. I've

looked at the hard points, the things I have to use and design around and in this case

that's the peeler blade and possibly the handle dimensions. I've also researched other competitors

peelers and looked at people's behaviours to try and find improvements.

As soon as I'm given a brief, my head fills with a myriad of ideas and I find the first

thing to do is get all these preconceived ideas out of my head onto paper, so my mind

can be open to let new ideas in. I spend a lot of time working ideas up in plan, because

I find its the fastest way to work up concepts that I can then make quick models from to

develop form.

Using the existing peeler blade I generated lots of forms and whilst I looked at areas

with different grips and de-eyeing ideas, the only vaguely innovative element I have

been able to incorporate is a scraping device. So here is a rough model of my final design

that I have made in wood. I've extended the de-eyeing area across the top of the blade

holder to create scraping elements for cleaning vegetables and I've removed material from

the handle, without sacrificing comfort or grip to make the product lighter and more

economical and environmental. But as you can see, it's not very innovative at all.

Now let's look at framing the brief another way - what if the brief is to design a method

for home cooks to remove the skin from vegetables, it's a subtle change to the brief from designing

an object to tackling a problem, but instantly this opens up such a huge range of possibilities.

Now my investigation can be really broad, I can look at all sorts of areas, ploughs,

planers, files, rasps, scrapers, brushes, ways this is done on an industrial scale,

the key here is diversity. I get to play with lots of things and ask questions, would a

rough glove work, could scientists genetically engineer self peeling vegetables or a solution

which removes skin. I can have fun with it, which is why product design can be one of

the best jobs in the world. With product design, every time I design I get to explore and I

feel like I go on an adventure.

At this point, all ideas have worth, but admittedly some are definitely better than others. Solutions

to remove skin from vegetables may sound daft, but my research shows this has been used commercially

to soften the skin of hard vegetables before mechanically scraping them.

I still want my design to be used in the hand and be small enough to fit neatly into a cupboard

drawer. I also don't want it to use a motor, as I believe on this occasion it's unnecessary

and because I believe product designers have a responsibility to design mass produced items

that use less material without affecting functionality.

When I look at my current swivel peeler I notice the leading blade, that guides rather

than cuts has become worn and dulled from being scraped across vegetables. I'm right

handed, so this peeler wouldn't work well for someone who uses it left handed, which

is one reason why everyone has their favourite peeler. So my first concepts looked at ways

to keep the leading blade sharp by protecting it or having it pivot out of the way. I then

looked at ways to adjust the height of the blade or move the guide up and down to get

a thicker or thinner peel. Trying to get a thinner peel led me to investigate saving

material by making thinner peelers. Most vegetables are round-ish in section and much much smaller

than this plate. Even peeling a one millimetre deep slice would only need a blade this wide.

But the problem with taking a slimmer slice is that you have to peel many more times to

get around the vegetable. So then I looked at trying to curve the blade, which is near

impossible, or using lots of shorter blades to make a curve. I can learn a lot from a

quick paper model. When this design isn't kept flat to the vegetable, the back blades

lift so only the front ones keep contact, not very effective. So then I experimented

with designs to get the blades to cut in-line.

So skipping a few stages, here's my final design. I'm not going to pretend it's brilliant,

but hopefully this has been a useful demonstration about how simply choosing how to construct

a brief can promote innovation.

I hope now you see the results from both briefs you can see that if I'd just stuck with the

first brief, I would only have had a very limited number of concepts that were not just

purely aesthetic, where as using the second brief you can see that the range of innovative

concepts I was able to generate was much larger, by designing with both briefs I get a mild

to wild range of concepts I could then present to the client, as one brief focuses on defining

an object and the other is interested in an outcome.

One final note. Not everything you design will be a success. Apple only take forward

2 out of every 10 designs they work on. Sometimes you can't reinvent the wheel, it isn't necessary,

there isn't time or budget for it and there isn't a public demand for it. So choose when

to innovate carefully. Once you have come up with something innovative, it may have

applications in other areas, so be prepared to capitalise on your hard work. I need to

scratch my head on where else I could use this? Ouch, Maybe not.

I hope you found this episode useful. This series takes a while to put together and is

dependant on several factors coming together, so unfortunately I cannot give you a time

when the next will be released. The only way you are going to be alerted to this if you're

interested is to please hit subscribe.

Thanks for watching.