Any designers out there who want to make biotechnology that is welcome and accessible?
https://www.designsojourn.com/dieter-rams-and-his-10-design-commandments/
• Good design is innovative.
• Good design makes a product useful.
• Good design is aesthetic.
• Good design helps us to understand a product.
• Good design is unobtrusive.
• Good design is honest.
• Good design is durable.
• Good design is consequent to the last detail.
• Good design is concerned with the environment.
• Good design is as little design as possible.
I’ll add some of my own rules of thumb:
- Good design uses as much commercial off-the-shelf as possible. (e.g. don’t re-invent the screw standard if you can use screws from the hardware store or McMaster Carr.)
- Good design provides for “getatability” of the parts. This term was lifted from an article in American Machinist from the early 1900′s. (Corollary – If you design one part to be almost impossible to get to, chances are it’s the part that will break first.)
- Good design assumes the thing will have to be taken apart. (e.g. If the faceplate of an electronics enclosure has all the lights, switches, buttons, and knobs, and the electronics themselves are bolted to another part of the enclosure, provide connectors so the two parts can be separated when the enclosure is taken apart.)
- Good design follows function. (e.g. If the thing being designed needs to be able to be stacked, don’t make it shaped like an Airstream trailer.)
- Good design maximizes bulk purchasing and minimizes spares. (e.g. If it requires twenty push button switches, use the same push button switch in every case. You reduce costs through bulk purchasing, and only need one or two spare switches to cover every switch on the device.)
- Good design is easy to make. (e.g. It is POSSIBLE to machine a 90-90-90 sharp inside corner in a block of metal, but it’s a real pain and will cost a fortune. If a rounded corner will work just as well, use the rounded corner: it’s easier to make.) Talk to your manufacturer. They’ll know the tricks for making a design cheap and easy to build.
I’d love to see others.
Tom