How can good design impact our future
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hi everyone we’re here from
tedx singapore studios talking today to
don co industrial designer co-founder of
the studio known as
stuck and also lecture at nus
hi don hey yeah good to be here so
really good to have you here today one
of the interesting projects that you’ve
done is something called the lift button
project and i think that that came out
of the concept of
people having to touch things which of
course became pretty much
anathema in during covet
what inspired you to do the lift button
project and what that’s all about
one of the things that we were
challenging ourselves to think about was
some you know when the moment you go
into uh don’t touch things
um it’s very quick for us to do sensors
and uh
you know uh distance sensing uh devices
that
completely take away your sense of
tactility
right um so now you know lift buttons
it’s been happening right
uh you put your hand here and then it
buzzes and then you can kind of like
activate the button but um
there is something about human beings
and needing to feel the button move
right that we we thought was lost i mean
this seems a bit myopic
almost like a designer talking about
something that’s not so important to
people but on many
levels i would say uh the the reaction
or maybe a bit of a design over
overreaction right to say hey
what if even at a distance the button
yields to our movement
right without touching it would that
make something interesting now the lift
button itself
to me to be very honest as a designer is
slightly superfluous as a solution right
because
these buttons uh and pressing them are
not
such an important thing in our lives you
know they
they to kind of feel that tactility but
but then it opens the question
to say could we do things with um less
yielding to that pandemic uh could we
kind of like have some kind of
uh more delightful response now a
parallel example that
may make more sense in this space
is a project that i recently guided in
nus
where we had a bunch of students rethink
how do you do a hand sanitizer
especially if you do a hand sanitizer
with uh children
and we’ve had them basically say if the
sanitizer was such a
mundane action of pressing it and if you
look everywhere
they spill all over the ground right
this this bunch of uh students they say
what if we brought more fuel into these
things and
they spent time trying to figure out how
do you make
sanitizer solutions bubble
right and so what they created was like
a bubble machine which uh
releases the sanitizing liquid in
in happy form right so children children
went crazy when they tested it because
you could just kind of like just put
over
and the bubbles came up now that may be
less superfluous than
than a leaf button because in some in
some instances i don’t know whether in
schools
perhaps if you want to cultivate a habit
right of say sanitize your hand
right maybe it’s good to bring in some
fun okay
let’s move on to another project another
one that you’ve been involved in is
called the sliding door
okay tell us a little bit about that you
see the the lift button
project um opened up this paradigm for
us
of things that move in sync with your
body at the distance
right and um the sliding door well the
lift button is a better
carrier of the message at this point in
time because people are sensitive to
touching you know and that’s where the
public spaces are
the sliding door um being a more
efficient format because you only need
one sensor and only one thing is moving
right instead of like 32 buttons would
be in my mind
a better place to use this concept of
kinetic touchless the whole kinetic
touchless type of concept was
basically coming out from you feeling
like you’re darth vader you know
the ability to kind of like uh lock onto
something
at a distance and then it follows you
even though you’re not touching it so
the sliding door is just that when you
get close enough
right it latches to your hands position
right and you can just open as much as
you want
release it goes back again it’s a it’s
for me very interesting because
if we talk about models which try to be
eco-friendly and they install the doors
that keep closing and you have to tap
the button to
have it open sure uh when you tap it it
opens fully
right right and it just stays there for
a while to let you go but um
here when you link it to your hand you
can just open as much as you need to go
through and just walk through and it
goes back so so that’s that’s for me
has some gains with regards to the
efficiency if we go back to the
idea that we use our resources properly
we always have to ask the question that
it endorsed right also you just don’t
want to be
um you know many years down the road
your grandchildren asking why did you do
that
yeah that makes no sense now uh that
that’s i think uh something that
uh yeah we we tend to look at okay often
um you’ve actually been credited with a
number of award-winning designs
so great congratulations it’s really
good um
what do you think is the one design that
you’re most proud of i’m
certainly most proud of uh the arc touch
mouse that
uh microsoft came and uh tasked them
with the challenge to do this
i guess for me uh that singapore
education where we are a little bit you
know um
uh broad-based especially in the earlier
years of your
schooling got me to connect design and
the problem at hand
with a simple phenomenon of thermostats
there’s the
bi-metallic strip in there that bends
with temperature right so
that clicked and i just thought we could
make
a bending mechanism from such principles
uh i made it
um i went to build it and i just gave it
to
the boss and i think they were a little
bit
stunned by how it worked um and so
that’s where it began
um i yeah so for me it was like yeah
it’s a nice it’s
kind of a nice little milestone for me
there must be so many things in terms of
design
in terms of design thinking there’s the
american school the european school you
know the far eastern school the japanese
school
when you think of certain designs what
gives you that inspiration where you
stop and you go
wow you know that is impressive i think
the one defining thing that uh i’m most
inspired by usually is
when somebody takes away something and
it performs better
than if you try to add something so the
reduction is type of approach
the object that always comes to mind and
i talk about quite a bit
is the balance bike right i’m not sure
if you’ve uh
balanced balance bike you know like the
children’s bicycles where
you know there’s no pedals right they uh
and i i was just stunned seeing my kids
um
take to it and then all of them
learn to ride a two-wheeled bicycle
faster than
any other kids that i know of right in
fact they don’t even have to be trained
so for me that’s a a great example
because
you know you can say let’s teach a kid
to learn a bike
let’s hold it let’s add wheels to it
right
someone just says let’s take away the
pedal right and then the kid is now
running on his legs but
when he gets a certain momentum it
balances by itself the kid never ever
kind of deals with you know things that
support him
and my daughter she was uh there after
having
used the balance back from for for like
a few months on
our own she she was like say let me try
the paddle bike
right the two-wheel paddle bike got 15
minutes she got on it and she’s riding
around the shop herself
we didn’t have to teach her how to ride
the bike so that was for me like a
you know a really brilliant type of uh
solution which is
um aligned with the clever use of
resources
in fact it reduces the use of resources
to solve the problem
do you apply that when you’re in your
designs is that you try and take out
yes as much as you possibly can um it’s
a bit like a
it’s a bit like a mantra we go through
all the process and we always ask
ourselves
okay now can we take out something you
know can we do this with five dollars
instead of fifty dollars
right it’s not that it’s literally that
reduction but um it causes
us to just oh maybe it’s time to to
think of
the other way around instead of yeah
everybody has the ability to learn
creativity how so
well creativity fundamentally is about
improving things
right and i think everyone
in big and small ways are improving
things in their lives
the challenge is this the challenge is
how do you cultivate a healthy
discontent
right healthy discontent yes i mean tell
us more yeah
i’m all for a contented outlook towards
life right
okay but in terms of improving things um
we need to cultivate the status quo yeah
we need to cultivate a certain kind of
healthy discontent
so that we are able to see the gaps and
the moment that you can see the gap
you know a human being is usually able
to kind of say how do we kind of close
that gap
most of the time we are either
conditioned to numb
ourselves from seeing that gap or
we we need some frameworks to help
ourselves to think that way but
as as a designer operating for you know
some years we’ve
trained ourselves on certain signals
that we always use
so at any one time we can always see an
object and
know how to improve it in some aspect
for human beings now
i think a lot of people can do that for
many things in
even at work or their home it generates
for me actually another question though
which is
isn’t what you’re talking about also
around attitude versus aptitude i always
found that
somebody has to have a certain level of
aptitude to be able to do something
which is why i asked you about
being teachable but also you’ve got to
have the right attitude to be able to
apply that
would you agree or what would you agree
on um in fact
uh you need both and um
sing education even um there there will
be
uh ones who have a lot of aptitude and
so there’s a stronger inclination in
this space
but you still kind of need to work it to
unwrap that
gift of the talent that you have you
know it’s you know somehow
the way we are given gifts we it’s not
just like oh you’re just brilliant right
from the start
right even if you have the inclinations
too you have to work at it
now then there are others who maybe have
less
aptitude right naturally um they can
gain a very good stretch right to a
true just attitude but
in the same spirit of utilizing
resources for their maximum
potential we see designers and students
this way too meaning that
let’s put everyone in their best game
space you know
where their natural aptitudes are let’s
maximize that
and they are also happier but but this
also engenders the next question of
this is not necessarily age specific
right i mean you could also have someone
who decides to want to go into
industrial
design at a later age and start to learn
and suddenly
they discover an unknown talent right uh
yes
uh in fact even at nus
we’ve had very interesting candidates
with who are like in their 40s and 50s
who
decide after years of successful career
elsewhere
they say i just want to learn design now
you know and they come in and it’s like
oh
you are maybe 20 years older than me as
your teacher yeah but
but but but really uh they surprised us
and
sometimes even more so because of the
clarity that they come to this with
uh students you know from say
the younger age they might come to say
let me try out design but this is
someone who is like i’ve done a lot
um now i want to look at design so that
clarity is quite uh
quite different um in one of the
articles
that has been cited you talked about
this concept of
imagining better possibilities can you
talk to us a little bit about that
imagining better possibilities yes i
think it’s relating to
things like the healthy discontent but
we can imagine better possibility in so
many ways uh
that could be really frivolous and so i
would prefer
if we imagine in certain kinds of boxes
that are productive
for example we know that human beings
always want to
gravitate towards bonding right for
example we know that and it doesn’t
change right we need to be social
creatures um of course there has two
sides to it the the bond dynamic has
like
the need to be together and also the
need to be a part right
so if we if we always bring to uh
everything that we do this question for
example as a lens
i think we suddenly can realize that
there are a lot of things that we can
improve right like
um how does a sitting layout like that
between you and me or chess
create a better conversational response
right how do you know how does a
backpack
that you bring to school build
friendships right i think
yeah or maybe even help you to open
conversations with another classmate
right they i mean these are questions
that we don’t usually ask of
things that we we um uh
work on right but when you say
possibilities yeah this is where we
start to ask these questions
and but of course we we don’t ask the
frivolous ones we try to ask those that
the human being will resonate with
don ko co-founder of stark
industrial designer lecturer it’s been a
pleasure
i’ve learned a lot thank you very much
for your time thank you it’s been great
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