No Design Thinking, Just Wrong Thinking

I'm a latecomer to the cult of James Dyson. I've certainly heard of him, of course, but other than knowing he invented those cool vacuum cleaners, I didn't know all that much about him. I just read a BusinessWeek article on his latest invention, the Dyson Airblade, which doesn't cut people, as the comicbook-style name suggests, but rather is a super new air drier for hands in public restrooms. (Watch him demo it.) Not only is he a famous industrial designer, he's also staring a design school. But you probably already knew this. I'm slow sometimes.

What caught my eye in the BW article, however, was his focus on both the details of design and on what he calls "wrong thinking."

Dyson earns respect as a designer for

his willingness to get into the nitty-gritty of bringing a product to market. "He's different from other inventors," says Glenn Weston-Murphy, a lecturer at Yale University's Faculty of Engineering. "A lot of people have great ideas, but they have no clue how to turn them into products. James takes it to the level where it's commercial and productive."

In other words, he's a working designer, not just a design thinker. It took him 15 years and 5000 prototypes, according to a Fast Company profile, to bring his vacuum to life. Dyson once said, "Enjoy failure and learn from it. You can never learn from success.”

The second thing that caught my eye was his adherence to what he calls "wrong thinking."

True to his contrarian nature, Dyson looks for solutions where competitors see no promise. "We call what we do wrong thinking," he says. His engineers and designers are encouraged to try ideas that most people would consider crazy. The clear plastic dust collector in the cyclonic vacuum is one example. Market researchers warned Dyson that consumers didn't want to see dirt and pet hair collecting. As it turns out, a lot of people find the sight of their household detritus to be strangely compelling.

This wrong thinking extends back to the products he chooses to design, that is, back to design strategy. The vacuum basically sat untouched for decades before Dyson decided to redesign it. "I like frustration. I like seeing things in everyday life that don't work very well and try to make them better," he says in this article. Who thinks of hand driers as being worthy of design attention? Yet they work terribly, don't they? I know I'm constantly wiping my hand on my pants rather than use one. Or even after using one, because they simply don't work all that well. And, as it turns out, they are energy hogs and germ-spreaders as well.

Dyson cites as one of his heroes the visionary Buckminster Fuller and it's easy to see the connection. I think I now have another hero myself.

Originally posted at Sunday, July 1, 2007 | Comments (3) | Trackback (1)