Nick Fabian, industrial designer at DeepDish Engineering, takes us on a philosophical journey well worth considering for any startup or innovations-based company. Because that little detail that could be the make-or-break of your brainchild, well, chances are it’ll only pop out at you when you see the big picture—including everything that is NOT your product.
Nick is a recent recruit here at DeepDish, freshly graduated with honours from UNSW, yet with a wealth of insights and creative thinking. Growing up in Sans Souci near Botany Bay, he loved making stuff with his hands.He started getting serious about it in high school, designing and building a number of tables. Says Nick about his design journey, “one thing that’s really helped me from day one, is that I’ve got this visual, multi-dimensional perception, almost like 3D. In my mind, I can for example take myself on a walk through my grandma’s little town, viewing buildings and roads from different perspectives.”
That practical ability is handy when it comes to explaining products and functions to customers. But it’s not the objects per se that driveNick’s innovative industrial designs—it’s the human angle.
Question: when does a product cease to be nothing but an object? Answer: as soon as a human interprets it.
The point was brought home to Nick in Don Norman’s classic book The design of everyday things, which triggered Nick’s career choice as an industrial designer. In the first chapter, Norman famously argues for the importance of door designs to clearly communicate how the door should be operated. Should it be pushed, pulled or slid? Sounds simple, but that’s not necessarily so. Just look around at all those signs saying “Push” or“Pull”—there’d be no need for them with more intuitive designs.
Products always communicate something, and just like with marketing, the person who gets to decide the meaning is the receiver—not the sender. It’s only what the user thinks and feels that matters. So, in order to create the perfect product, you have to design for their unique mindset. “This is where a savvy industrial designer enters full immersion, method-actor mode,”says Nick. “If you can put yourself in the shoes of the user and visualise ever little detail of THEIR reality, you can nip potential down-the-track disasters in the bud. But that requires proper study of all the relevant data, as well asa creative mind and the experience to decipher the big picture and join the right dots.”
Unfortunately, many businesses skip this step, disregarding the user mindset in order to focus entirely on the physical function of the product. And not only that: “oftentimes, clients come to us with design solutions instead of presenting us with the original problem,” says Nick. “They come in with, say, a drill when what they really need is a hole—which you can create in many ways”.
That’s why DeepDish Engineering employ first principles thinking every time a client comes in with a project. “We go straight back to the problem at hand,” says Nick, “and oftentimes, we can envision an altogether different kind of solution rather quickly. It’s like in another favourite book of mine, Malcom Gladwell’s Blink: when you combine sufficient knowledge and experience with open minds, your intuition can serve up solutions at a glance. Designs that would have been extremely time-consuming to arrive at by logical reasoning.”
But it’s not a one-man job.
“We have a multi-disciplinary team. Founder Ahmed Rafiq is a senior engineer with heaps of experience in the entire process, from ideation through to marketing, and he’s really good with supply, budgeting and factory supervision. So, Ahmed will start by telling us roughly how much we’ll have to spend on different parts to optimise a design whilst still keeping it profitable. That informs my design thinking whilst our lead mechanical and mechatronics engineer, Mark Spaile, looks at material choices. And all the while, we’re sharing our thoughts—DeepDish Engineering is a flat organisation, where the best ideas are always heard.”
The team wields a huge width and depth of experience. Ahmed has worked in R&D and commercialisation of consumer and industrial products for over 23 years; Mark’s been in everything from design engineering concepts to production for some 18 years. And whilst Nick is a recent graduate, his uni studies made him familiar with a wide range of different customer realities, and for three of his years at uni, his side job saw him lead the industrial design of high-end IMAX filming equipment.
Combined, the team’s perspectives cover most customer realities. “Whatever comes up, there’s usually at least one of us who can associate the problem and the user mindset to a different context”, says Nick,“so we can paint that vital user scenario quickly, and in detail.”
Nick has deep respect for the knowledge and experience thatAhmed and Mark have gained over decades in engineering. When asked if he thinks his recent uni studies brought something that older generations might be lacking, Nick singles out visual design. “Modern design should include an element of branding wherever possible”, Nick remarks, “and sometimes it can be done in ways that actually make the manufacturing process quicker and cheaper”.
He uses the design of SiteHive’s environmental sensors for example, “the ribbed design of the metal casing not only makes the product look as sturdy as it is—it also introduces a very recognisable branding statement whilst making the manufacturing process quicker and cheaper. It’s a simple win-win-win solution.”
But it doesn’t end there. “The big picture doesn’t only include the present context”, says Nick, “it goes all the way through the product’s lifecycle, far into the future. Will it be used in tandem with new, yet unreleased tech? Will it need replacing in a few years? What will it belike to recycle it? You need to consider every single aspect of the users’ reality, because your brand isn’t what you think it is—it’s whatever your products make customers think and feel.”
“Mechanical and mechatronics engineering and design is about so much more than physical principles and functionalities,” finishes Nick,“it’s about the products will become part of someone’s life story. So, I always start by walking myself through that story, much like I might walk myself through my grandma’s little town. You can go a long way with solid understanding and empathy.”
That’s human-centered design.
#mechanicalengineering #industrialdesign #mechatronics #humancentereddesign
