James L Adams—People and Products: Emotions and Needs

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Jim Adams

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Emotions and Needs

02/09/2016

The Training of a Pickup Owner

Some time ago, I wrote a post complaining about my then reasonably new Toyota 8ft. bed pickup. My complaints had to do with its size (except for the 8 foot long bed). It was simply too big. But since I still have it, it must have some good points, so in all fairness.I figure that I should mention a few redeeming virtues to it.

I first experienced pickups when I rode around with my dad in his 1939 Chevrolet. Eight foot bed, but smaller machine. Eight feet is a magic number, since building materials, single mattresses, and all sorts of other things can be put into an eight foot long space, and if there is a closable end (the tailgate) they will stay there. He drove the truck for over 25 years, before losing it in an accident, and then acquired a 1966 Chevrolet pickup, which he drove until he died, at which point it went to my oldest son, and now I am restoring it. All eight foot long beds. But pickups have grown.

At one point, I needed my own pickup, and bought a new small Toyota truck (six foot bed). It was a wonderful machine, and passed through the hands of two of my children before it was finally sold. My older son is into his second small Toyota (Tacoma), and has had terrific luck with them, but they all had shorter beds. I meanwhile went through an 8 foot bed blue Ford F150 (wrong color for California’s central valley), and a white one (more acceptable to the culture). Both of them served me well, except as the bells and whistles increased in number and complexity, although the drive trains in both of them gave me no problems, I had increasing problems with failures of remote control features, electronic ignition systems, etc. So I decided to buy another no frills Toyota, and go back to the smaller model because of its convenience in parking and driving around cities. But as I tested the new Tacomas, I realized I had somehow gone from a large person to an extra large person, and I couldn’t easily get my knees under the steering wheel, my head under the top of the door opening, etc. Perhaps less flexible?

Also, I have always been an ad-hoc camper, and had shells on my Fords, enabling me to sleep in the 8 foot bed in the rain, and my wife to ride in back on a mattress and read books and listen to music when we took long trips (probably illegal, since there was no seat or seat belt back there). So I bought a white Tundra, even though it had the shortcomings I mentioned in the earlier post.

Too high off the ground, demanding a running board for my wife to get into it, and making it impossible to reach objects in the middle of the bed.
Door too wide to be fully opened in tight parking situations.
Turning radius too large due to wheelbase of the truck, in turn partly due to an overly long cab. I wanted a single seat, but the “conventional cab” has room behind it, presumably to put things. But the space is such that things put there will disappear forever, because it is a high and narrow space, and how many of us are going to remember what we stuff into a space such as that?
Too “car like” instead of “truck like”. Large body panels with little structure behind them which dent easily, lavish and expensive rear light enclosures that are difficult to change when the break (it is a truck), etc.
The step on the back bumper enabling you to easily get into the back is covered by the tailgate when it is open.
And more

My previous experience had taught me much about ordering a pickup. I knew it was important for me to:

Order the minimum of bells and whistles (remote control devices, TV cameras, luxury upholstery, etc.), since over long usage, they would be likely to fail. If you lose your manual key to open the cab and start the engine, you probably have another one, and if not, the nice people from AAA can solve your problem. But if your digital “safety system” fails, you probably better hang on to your wallet and take it to a mechanic.
Go for the smallest engine available. It will have plenty of torque and speed for me and I don’t plan to race my pickup.
Go for two wheel drive. Four wheel drive obviously has more traction, but tempts one to try to attempt overly heroic feats. There is nothing more pathetic than a stuck four-wheel drive vehicle.
Get an eight foot bed. The two extra feet are worth the extra move needed to get into a parking space in most lots, and the worry about whether you are going to make the U- turn at the intersection. Besides, your friends and family always want to move eight foot long items. Security is a load of plywood sheets and other building material with the tail gate closed. And you can sleep in it.
Get one that is easy to get in and out of, because that seems to be a primary activity with a pick up.
Unless you have a dog or very small kids, forget anything behind the main seat, but make sure it can seat three people. I seem to do quite a bit of moving for young perhaps newly married couples, and they both want to go along, so stay away from fixed central consoles.

So what have I done to now be much more fond of my truck, than when I initially bought it? I have not done the major modifications I had planned, like lowering the body and beefing up the springs. But other things have happened.

First of all, I have accumulated the various dings and scrapes having to do with normal usage of such a truck, so I don’t have to worry about it. The truck and I can curse together when we find a new scrape in a parking lot, which makes us closer. (Incidentally, when people ding your pickup in a parking lot, they tend not to leave you a note—I guess that’s reserved for cars). I once had the unsettling experience of observing a farmer friend of mine drive a new pickup home, only to attack the inside of the bed with a crowbar, since he did not want a bed liner, and did not want to have to worry about the shiny new paint and bumpless interior. He wanted to put it to work immediately. I understand that, but can’t bring myself to do it.
I put running boards on it, just like in the 1930’s
I built several fine sturdy yet light weight boxes that I could stand on to reach material in the center of the box, and use to easily get in the back when the tail gate was open. But after the boxes were repeatedly stolen by people for storage containers (especially my wife}, I shortened an old rake which I keep in back to help me reach things. And I learned to climb in the back, using the bumper step, before I open the tail gate.
I have learned a set of skills associated with the truck. I have a plastic removable bed liner in the back, because I frequently load and unload heavy objects and it is somewhat slippery so that objects slide more easily on it. I have become quite good at moving things where I want them while en route. I can move them forward by an usually abrupt stop. I can move them backward by accelerating up the hill to my house. Just a few hours ago I had three toolboxes, some old tractor parts, and a bunch of just-bought loose groceries in the back, and I was able to use the uphill road to my house, my brakes, and my steering wheel to arrange everything in the order I wanted them—sophisticated swerving adjusts things sideways.

So I now love my Tundra. It has just taken fifty thousand miles for us to get used to each other. | It is still too big, too far off of the ground, and too fancy. But now it is looking older and more used like I do, and I am looking forward to the next fifty thousand miles.

Do you suppose people become more fond of products that they use a long time, both because they become more skillful at using them, and because they become “old friends”? I sure do. What does that say about constant new digital equipment and continual new “upgrades”?

Posted at 05:49 PM in Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Human fit, Management, People, Problem Solving, Product Quality, The nature of technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/03/2015

Homemade "Popsicles*", an Outstanding Product

My brother John is still growing fruit and vegetables on the remaining acres of the family farm in Rialto in Southern California. In fact, he seems to be living on the last orange grove in an area that at one time was totally planted in citrus. When I occasionally visit him, I always bring home a large amount of produce, in particular fresh oranges. These are oranges straight off of the tree, and have a much different taste than oranges that have been processed for sale in grocery stores, and especially from concentrated frozen orange juice. Having grown up on an orange grove, I obviously ate them and drank their juice in all known forms. In the process I learned much about them, and am highly skilled at peeling them, segregating the parts without getting orange juice all over myself, and the gentle art of poking a hole through the rind with my finger and squeezing the orange to extract the juice. In fact, I enjoy eating part of the peel when I eat one. And I make frequent use of a high quality juicer (Philips).

I seem to have a great liking of cold things to eat and drink—ice cream, margaritas, “slushies” of various sorts, frozen fruits, gin and tonics, ice tea, sorbets, or just straight ice cubes, which to the horror of my wife (and dentist) I happily chew up when my drink is gone—a sin I inherited from my mother, so it is in my gene pool, rather than a bad habit.

When I was a kid, I loved popsicles, and the habit still exists, but now I make my own (simple because the world is full of “molds”, sticks, and other such equipment). When I was a kid there was usually frozen fresh orange juice in an ice cube tray in the refrigerator, which I used to eat constantly, and even better, fresh orange juice popsicles —easy to make, given the many molds available in the world—just pour the juice into the mold and stick in the freezer. See photo below of a tacky plastic mold that produces “modern” ones with easily washable plastic stick complete with drip holders (useful for young grandchildren). And above, of course, the final product above. And unlike many child-hood treats I have given up (cotton candy, cookie batter, licorice), I still make them –

But part of the fun, if one likes icy things, is experimenting with the limitless numbers of flavors available by not only using varieties of juices fruits, and flavorings, but also reaching out to unlikely combinations. Some have escaped me (chicken, salsa), some are difficult (chocolate), but I become even more challenged, rather than discouraged, and my failures can usually be melted, or even heated, leading to interesting taste experiences.

If you are not addicted to this food form, I recommend it, especially in the summer in California.

*Popsicle is probably a trade name, so I should probably be using “frozen juice on a stick” or something like that, but hey, having your trade name used generically is the big time. Do you have a Kleenex? Where can I Xerox this? Who made your iPhone?

Posted at 09:46 AM in Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Making, Fixing, and Tinkering, Management, People, Problem Solving, Product Quality, Working with the hands | Permalink | Comments (0)

05/04/2015

Sherry Turkle and Alone Together

Sherry Turkle, an excellent writer, is a clinical psychologist and a professor at M.I.T. and has spent her career examining the effects of technology on society. She has written three books focusing on computers, the first, The Second Self, written in 1984, was dedicated to the interaction of computers and people. The second, Life on the Screen, was written ten years later and devoted to the use of the computer to form online identities. Both were quite positive about the potential of the computer to help us develop. Her last one, Alone Together, subtitled Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. was published in 2011, when her daughter was in college, and shows much more worry about the effects of computers on us, particularly on the young.

Her research subjects for this book ranged from young children through college students, and being a social scientist, she interviewed and interacted with a large number of them. Her findings and associated information about trends in computer application are covered in the very readable book. I read it when it was first published, but I just re-read it, and found it even more thought provoking, perhaps because my grandchildren now range from 3 years to 17 in age, and I have been able to compare the effects of computers on them with that of my own children, and on my brother and me — three generations of drastically different usage.

The first section of Turkle’s book talks of robots – computers and computer controlled devices intended not only to serve us, but to evoke emotions in us. A sizeable business exists in computer controlled toys for both children and adults that do so, ranging from simple toys such as Tamagotchis, Furbies, My Real Babies, AIBO’s, and Paro’s through the much more “human” appearing and acting products being experimented with at places such as M.I.T. Turkle discusses the ethical and practical issues associated with machines designed and built to stimulate love and other emotions in humans through such mechanisms as neediness, communication, and aesthetic appeal. She delves into such issues as their use in caring for and interacting with the aged in nursing homes and with children. In the case of providing companionship for lonely elders, she points out the value in providing them with something to love and care for, but also questions as to why real humans are not doing this instead. She also responds to an apparent increase in desire for robotic mates on the part of extreme computer believers, by pointing out that robots themselves have no emotions and even though they may seem to love you, they do not care for you at all.

The second section is about communication and interaction over the internet, and nicely overlaps the first, since although they do not have three dimensional bodies, there is certainly an essence of robot in the avatars we design for ourselves in many games and in the role that social networking can play in our lives.

Turkle goes into great detail on the positives and negatives of internet communications, and in her usual style tells many stories, good and bad, as examples of what is happening. Since I still mix with college students, it has been interesting to me to see the progression from telephoning to e-mail to instant messaging to texting. What next? More and more messaging of shorter and shallower character? She tells stories of students texting each of their “friends” 20 times a day and staying away from telephone conversations for fear that they will let their friends know more about them than they would like; of hurt feelings and misinterpretations; of overly controlling parents; of treating people more like things and things more like people; and finally of the tremendous amount of time and energy devoted to social networking.

When our children were young, my wife liked the analogy of tree people and phone people. When tree people had problems, they would climb a tree and try to figure out what to do to solve them. When phone people had problems, they would instantly get on a phone and call their friends to discuss them. Now it seem we have progressed past phone people to tweet/text people, and trying to communicate with more and more people by saying as little as possible. Why do we seem drifting toward huge quantities of shallow statements? Is a sound bite mentality the natural defense to a surplus of information?

In the March issue of The Atlantic magazine, there was an excellent article by Graeme Wood entitled What ISIS Really wants. We subscribe to The Atlantic, and I had read the article, which was very thoughtful. But in the May issue, they printed several reader responses, and then, to my amusement they put in a “Tweet of the Month”, which was “Disagree w.parts, but @gcaw’s new Atlantic essay on ISIS is the rare, genuine must-read. I felt challenged, even provoked, through it all”. The tweet was from @shadihamid, who is a Brookings Institute Fellow, and undoubtedly an expert in this area. But was I not a subscriber to The Atlantic, and even if I was and had not read the article, Mr. Hamid’s tweet (if I read it, which would have been unlikely) would probably not have convinced me to. Granted that he is good at restricting himself to 140 characters, I would bet he deserves a few more, and if he had them could convince more people to read the article.

If you have not read Sherry Turkle’s book Alone Together, I recommend it highly. It is even more pertinent than it was when she wrote it. If you did read it when it was published, you might find it interesting to read it again.

Posted at 12:41 PM in Creativity and Innovation, Current Affairs, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Human fit, Internet, Management, People, Problem Solving, Product Quality, Symbolism and Cultural Values, The nature of technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

03/29/2015

The Forklift—A Good Product

When I began my hobby of restoring old equipment, I realized I needed to lift heavy parts and sub assemblies. So 40 years ago or so I restored a 1950’s Clark Yardlift 40 forklift, which was free to me, since it belonged to a farmer friend, was not in running condition, and no longer had the performance he wanted. It is a relatively small machine (capable of lifting a load of 2000 pounds ten feet in the air, tilting its forks over a range of 15 degrees, traveling 9 miles per hour forward or backwards, and weighing about 6000 pounds plus load. Although it has inflatable tires up front, it is unhappy on rough or soft ground, and the forks have no sideways motion)

But of course, like most fork lifts, it is extremely maneuverable, and since it is only 42 inches wide and 11 feet long with forks attached, it is consistent with my yard and other spaces where I work. It also has the advantage of being fueled by Propane, so it does not mind being unused for long periods of time. When I want to use it, it reliably starts and does its thing.

What do I use it for? More and more as my wife and I age. The photograph (taken by a fascinated neighbor) shows my wife at low elevation and I attacking our front hedge. We hide behind ten foot tall hedges, which are a pain to trim from ladders. However, with my wife on the pallet, along with a small generator and an electric clipper (in her capable hands), no mere hedge can slow us down. Similarly I can carry anything weighing up to two tons wherever the forklift can go, and I can’t remember ever being able to lift two tons myself. In fact, I can probably do more aided by my forklift now than when I could leap tall buildings with a single bound, but was trying to live without a forklift. And, of course, it has unlimited kid-entertaining potential (see next two photos.

Unfortunately, forklifts are considered an industrial product and not designed for people messing around in their yard. And perhaps there are not that many people doing so any more. But I would think there would be a market for a cheaper, lighter, yard model, at least for those of us who are aging but still like to move heavy loads around, trim smaller trees, and work on second stories of houses. Of course, there are many boom lifts (cherry pickers etc.) used by painters, tree trimmers, utility people, and other “professionals”. But they are expensive, limited in load lifting ability, and one can get into trouble lifting large loads too far from the base. And worse yet, for people like me, it is very difficult to find one that is free because it is broken. (I am under pressure go find one again, since my foot slipped on the clutch in our last hedge trimming session, almost dumping my wife in the hedge – cherry pickers are controlled by the person in the air)

So I consider my forklift, even thought it is now 60 years old, an outstanding product, which has become a friend that helps me live the life I choose.

Posted at 09:44 PM in Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Human fit, Making, Fixing, and Tinkering, People, Product Quality, The nature of technology, Working with the hands | Permalink | Comments (0)

03/09/2015

Life and the Distractions of Technology

In 2006, Matthew Crawford wrote an article in the New Atlantis magazine entitled “Shopcraft as Soulcraft”. It is here. My friends and I who are believers in the benefits, if not necessity, of working with the hands on tangible objects, loved it. He followed with a book of the same title in 2008. I have never met him, but think I should because I have been working on a similar book (working title Making, Fixing, and Tinkering) for several years. I am far from a full time writer— partly due to necessary hobbies involving working with my hands— so I don’t know when I will finish. But I have suspected since I saw his original article in the New Atlantis that we think along similar lines.

Now I am sure of it, because I just encountered an article he wrote in the Sunday Review Section of the March 8, 2015 edition of the New York Times entitled “The Cost of Paying Attention”. The article was based on another book of his that is forthcoming entitled The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. The article from The New Atlantis is here. I am excited about reading the book when it appears, and will comment on it in a future post.

The article in the Times has to do with the constant distractions we have from such things as television, print, digital devices, and marketeers. He uses the example of the difference in feelings and ability to think or focus on specific activities in the lounges associated with upper class flying, and the general waiting areas, which are papered with advertisements and filled with noise and other distractions. His final short paragraph summarizes his thoughts: “I think we need to sharpen the conceptually murky right to privacy by supplementing it with a right not to be addressed. This would apply not, of course, to those who address me face to face as individuals, but to those who never show their faces, and treat my mind as a resource to be harvested”

To me, an example of distraction is social networking.. When I retired from active professoring in 1999, the internet and mobile phones and computers were not nearly as central to life on the campus. But realizing that I was not yet dead two or three years ago, I figured that I had better catch up to our culture, and that social networking was a part of it. So I joined Facebook, Twitter, and Linked in. I linked to a few close friends, and was immediately overwhelmed. I had not realized the capability of these “services” to find people I knew in the world and harangue me about linking to them. Neither did I realize the number of people I did not know in the world who wanted to link to me for reasons of possible employment, support for graduate study, a source of contacts, or simply to better brag about their number of “friends”.

I enjoy writing posts to this blog, and sending it to a relatively small number of people by way of twitter and facebook, because it keeps me thinking about issues in which I am interested. But I do an embarrassingly poor job of responding to comments, adding information to my sites, accepting new “friends” and “contacts”, or otherwise following the etiquette of being linked to hundreds of thousands of people. I am impressed with people who do so, although at some point it seems to require an assistant, if not a staff to keep up with all of this communication. But I have more rewarding projects to do than I will ever finish, am constantly finding new activities that are rewarding, and I certainly don’t want an assistant or staff. Social networking, although seductive, I consider to be an attention pirate. And even e-mail has joined the list. I seem to be spending more time making filters to trash information I don’t want than I do dealing with messages of value to me.

Advertising is another evil. There are of course the ads that interrupt TV programs, and the pop-up ads on the internet. And I should apologize to the New York Times, because a couple of weeks ago I wrote a gentle rant against their “new” format for the Sunday magazine. I could not stand it. It was mostly advertisements for the usual luxury goods, and almost impossible to read because of out of control graphics —distractions. To my amazement and delight, the very next issue had moved back toward its traditional format —back to a reasonable weight, articles whose continuation could be reasonably easy to find, graphics that did not disrupt the flow, and a reasonable amount of advertisement. Perhaps the New York Times was simply making a quick chunk of money by selling ad space to the people who usually advertise in their ridiculously thick supplements on such things as Fashion and Travel, which consist most of ads. Hopefully they were influenced by a large number of readers like my wife and I (and friends) who were thinking of canceling their subscription because of the issue that contained their “new” magazine format.

And what’s with grocery stores? Next time you enter a “super market” pay careful attention to the advertisements. The good news, is that your mind will soon refuse to do so. The bad news is that if it did not, you would undoubtedly run into a shopping cart containing a couple of babies and being pushed by a shopper on their smart phone, either communicating with their spouse on what to buy or texting their friends, and end up in a hassle.

I am eagerly waiting for Matthew Crawford’s new book. Meanwhile I will re-think my interaction with social networking.

Posted at 02:17 PM in Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Global Constraints, Internet, Making, Fixing, and Tinkering, Management, People, The nature of technology, Working with the hands | Permalink | Comments (0)

03/03/2015

The Perfect Gift —An Old Rusty Tractor

The photograph shows another project that will keep me from getting in trouble. It is a model K 20 Cletrac tractor, probably manufactured about 1930. It was given to me by the family of one of my best friends, Chuck Whitcher, described here, who originally hooked me on the hobby of restoring old farm machinery, and who sadly recently died. Chuck had wanted to give it to me but I resisted because my cup is overflowing with projects of this sort.

However, I finally could not resist it, because it so perfectly fulfilled my requirements, such as:

I have had no hands-on experience with Cletracs, a very successful run of machines made by the Cleveland Tractor company. I grew up around Caterpillar tractors, and my oldest son and I have several older models. But Cletracs have fanatic and organized fans and fan clubs, and the owners of them delight in pointing out the advantages of them over Caterpillars of the same age. Obviously a chance to learn something here.
It is in my favorite condition – completely, but not terminally rusted, seemingly complete, and although not running, and probably not run for many many years, boasts an engine that with a large amount of effort, can be turned with the crank.
In its present state has low value (except to me), and therefore I can happily accept it as a gift.
It has that “Cletrac” look, from its Snoopy-doghouse engine compartment to its steering wheel (can you believe a steering wheel for a track layer?). Also lots of track wheels, which will help make up for the local loss of Jacque Littlefield’s tank collection.
In restoring it, I will meet large numbers of very likable people, who are not only owners and restorers of these machines, but know the way to replacement parts, if necessary.
It was owned by Chuck who was both a wonderful man and a mentor of mine.

The photograph to the left gives an indication of its present patina, and I plan to give the tractor special treatment to preserve it. Ordinarily, I tend to de-rust old machines and paint them in original colors. For this one, I will get it running well, figure out how to smooth out the rust, and give it some kind of coating to retain it. I want it to be proud of its age, just as I hope Chuck was when he died at the age of 91.

Posted at 08:41 PM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Making, Fixing, and Tinkering, Management, People, Problem Solving, Product Quality, Symbolism and Cultural Values, Working with the hands | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/23/2014

Product Quality and Time

Marian and I are extremely fortunate in that we seem to have everything we want in life. But this causes certain difficulties when times come in which people traditionally trade presents. Therefore we seem to have reverted to less serious gifts.

Marian has two dressing modes. One is levis and work shirt for her gardener and home life with me. The other is very tasteful and sometimes striking wear for public appearances. For her last birthday I found a prize in the window of the Stanford bookstore. I initially didn’t know what it was. I finally figured out it was a bright red blanket with sleeves, all covered with various Stanfordish images. It was so awful I instantly bought it for her. It accomplished its purpose, which was to cause her to laugh a lot and give me a bad time about how men could never properly buy clothes for women.

But then time passed. She reads a lot in bed, and found that it was very easy to throw the thing over her and put her arms through the sleeves to hold her book/pad. More time passed. She became very fond of it, and defended it strongly whenever I gave her a hard time about it. And now, you know how little kids have their “blankey” (often a raggy remnant of something that made them warm and comfortable (and still does))? Marian has made the awful sleeved blanket into an adult blankey. Photo proof below.

When I gave it to her I think we would have both agreed it was a product of exceptionally low quality. But now? I would certainly hate to try to take it away from her.

But this is not unique. The photo below shows my “every day” shoes. I occasionally get comments like “those shoes are old and coming apart. My retort is “but they are my old shoes. I recently noticed a lady walking an old and beat up dog and staring at my shoes as I passed her. I hoped that she would say “why don’t you get some new shoes?” Unfortunately she didn’t, because I would have said “why don’t you get a new dog”

It is perhaps unfortunate these days that we live in a society where everything is disposable, and people do not keep products as long as they once did, because I think one grows to love products over time, assuming they serve one well. I had my first car many years, and although it was not a very good car, I wish I still had it. As I said in a previous post, I am restoring my father/son’s 1966 Chevrolet pickup, and even though my 2011 Toyota pickup is technically a much finer machine, I am eager to revert to the 1966. Although I suppose my new OSX version 10.10 is a better operating system than the OSX version 10.6.8, I liked the old one better. It was an old friend, and we interacted well. I suggest that interaction time effects one’s perception of product quality, for better or worse. If a product serves you well, it eventually becomes a blankey.

Posted at 07:44 PM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Management, People, Product Quality, The nature of technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/16/2014

Technology and Dying

I recently read Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston, and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. Also a terrific writer, who has received widespread recognition for his skill with words. He is one of my favorite writers, and early in the history of this blog, I wrote very positive posts about three of his early books, Complications, Better, and The Check List Manifesto, which were about quality in medical care and how to achieve it. I recommend them as well as this one.

Being Mortal discusses the quandary of dying in developing countries. Most of us in the U.S. say we would like to die at home, And in fact in the 1940’s, most of us did. But by the 1980’s over 80 % of us died in hospitals, and the odds are that that is where we will draw our last breath, surrounded by sterility and technology.

Although we realize that we should spend the end of our lives enjoying our lives as much as possible, and looking back with pleasure at our lifetime experiences, we cling to extending them as much as possible. Hospitals are full of medical talent focused in exactly that direction—to cure, and extend lives. So we enter a hospital, subject to our hopes, which coincide with those of our doctors. The result may be that we die in a way that we would not have chosen —drugged and separated from friends and family.

Gawande argues for more sensitivity to the quality of our lives at the end, but realizes the possible conflicts between this and modern medical care, furnished by organizations of people trained to extend lives and proud of their skills to do so. This is being widely recognized these days, an appreciation that I am sure will increase as the Boomers reach the ends of their lives. This can be seen in the increasing visibility of hospice care, POLST (Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment) forms, and other means of dying without being connected to a host of tubes and wires, or because they have finally been disconnected.

Medical care is another situation in which technology has reached a sophistication level that may not always be the answer. Traditional Navajo indian attitudes toward death were interesting. When a person died, their negative aspects (lack of harmony with the universe) went into a chindi, or ghost, which would hang around the site of their death and burial and infect those who became close to it with sicknesses perhaps leading to death. As a result, there was an advantage for a person dying outside of their living quarters, which otherwise would have to be destroyed to protect others from the chindi, but in an uplifting environment. Interesting that this approach would help slow down the spread of infections, such as the dreaded antibiotic resistant MRSA bacteria that hang around hospitals. Only a limited number of people (4) were involved with preparing the body for burial and disposing of it, and they were careful to purify themselves afterward. The chindi was to be avoided at all costs.

The author Tony Hillerman wrote a wonderful series of mysteries taking place on the Navajo reservation, and in them would occasionally have the hero breaking a dying relative or friend out of a hospital so that they could die at home, hopefully out of doors surrounded by beautiful scenery, not only consistent with their lives, but sparing the hogan from destruction. The hospital typically would furiously resist this action. I would think that the hospital would be all in favor of this, because it would soon have been populated by large numbers of chindi, to the detriment of all who entered it, sick or healthy. But medical people are trained to cure, and technology continues to make them more capable of doing so. And they generally do not believe in chindi.

Posted at 08:09 PM in Books, Current Affairs, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Human fit, Management, People, Product Quality, Science, Technology, and Society, Symbolism and Cultural Values, The nature of technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

09/01/2014

Doing vs. Watching

The Sunday edition of the New York Times usually has rather ho-hum articles on the front page, because they are probably prepared ahead of time so that the staff gets some break in their lives. Predictably yesterday’s edition had an article about Congress, one about ISIS, one about gambling, and one about medicine. But the main article definitely got me thinking. The title was “Virtual Games Draw Real Crowds and Big Money”, by Nick Winfield. I must admit I was oblivious to this major movement. Turns out huge crowds are turning out to watch champion gamers compete on big screens—11,000 people filling Seattle’s basketball arena, 40,000 expected at a championship to be held in Korea. And there is the TV audience—apparently more than 70 million people in the world watch “e-sports”, as gaming competitions are called. A championship tournament last year attracted 8.5 million simultaneous viewers. As the article pointed out, this was the same number of viewers that watched the deciding game of the Stanley cup finals in hockey. Prizes are large and celebrity awaits the champions. Businesses are climbing on these events for advertising and sniffing profits. If you haven’t been following this development, the article is here.

I am familiar with the draw of computer games, since I have a step son who has spent years at Electronic Arts and grand kids who indeed love them. But strangely enough, I don’t seem to be attracted to them. I like reality rather than virtuality. I guess I am an extreme do-it-yourselfer. I would rather do things poorly than watch others do them extremely well. I liked to play sports, even though I was never that good, more than watching the “pros”. I would rather make and repair things adequately rather than hire people who would do such things more rapidly, and perhaps better. And as a further complication, I prefer the outdoors to the indoors—odd for a professor.

The N.Y.Times article discusses a champion gamer named Peter Dager and his environment as follows: “When not competing in front of thousands of people, Mr. Drager works from his childhood bedroom in Fort Wayne, Indiana. At the small desk in the corner sit the tools of his trade, a computer with two displays, a webcam, a keyboard, and a mouse” That is definitely not me. My hobby of rescuing unloved heavy machinery requires much of my yard at home, a bit of a friend’s farm (barn and open space), piles of swell tools and materials, loud cursing, forklifts, and such things as sunburn lotion, mosquito repellant, and occasional bandages. I am starting to realize that my friends and I who do similar things are perhaps a vanishing species, but I like us.

I have always wanted a full life of various experiences, good friends, and accomplishments I could look back on with pride. Oddly enough, although competitive, I have never wanted to be the best in the world at anything. I look back happily at the way I have spent my time. Dilletante? Perhaps. But the Times article has a short quote from Mr. Drager on how he reached the pinnacle of gaming: “What most people lack, he said, is a singular focus on games, a willingness to clear away all other distractions”. Later—“I, and many players like me, sacrificed everything. We gave up on sports and friends and school just so that we can play more”. Mr. Drager is apparently headed toward an income of $200,000 a year, but like most parents, his father wishes he would finish college.

But selfishly, I have never wanted to sacrifice everything—especially sports, friends, and school— in order to play games. And I sometimes worry about we homo sapiens spending more and more of our time “watching” instead of “doing”, I believe that as media becomes more powerful, and people in various parts of the world grow more affluent, there will be more and more powerful opportunities to experience life vicariously—television, travel tours, the internet, following the lives of celebrities. But is this consistent with the way we evolved? We continue to do damage to ourselves (wars, violence) and nature still speaks out (earthquakes, tornados). Are we going to lose our ability to recover from such things? Are we going to follow Rome and add lions and tridents to professional football? If we are going to have gladiators, it is probably better to have them computer generated and presented over big screens. But are we going to up the ante on professional performers as a result?

Enough of this. The day is dawning and I will get busy on my mundane tasks. In order to prevent nagging, when my wife wants me to do something, she puts my assignment on a post-it note and sticks it on the mirror I use while shaving. When I can no longer see my reflection, the rules require I complete the task. Today they read “put Formica on kitchen shelves over stove, fix fire-escape ladder, paint front and back porches, repair drain pipes in front, find a better home for TV and computer wires, fix screen door so it doesn’t bang, water orchids” Straight forward common acts, but promising a feeling of accomplishment when achieved. Perhaps not as seductive as League of Legends, but the weather is nice, and I am capable of doing a high quality job on such things, and I should shave. And since my wife is walking around the lake country in England with a few of her friends, I can sneak away, work on my vintage orchard sprayer restoration, and cover myself with sweat, grease, and perhaps glory in the eyes of some beholders.

Posted at 06:48 AM in Craftsmanship, Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Human fit, Internet, Making, Fixing, and Tinkering, Management, People, Problem Solving, Product Quality, Working with the hands | Permalink | Comments (0)

07/07/2014

The Internet and Me

I missed my weekly post last week, because I was at my Sacramento valley hideaway, which is not on the net, and I failed to write one in advance. I could have found wifi somewhere and sent one out, but I needed a computer break, and reaching the Stanford server (due to constant attempts to hack into it) now requires not only a user name and a password consisting of a series of random numbers generated by the server, but also a second password so lengthy and constrained, that people tend to tape it to their computer in order to remember it, which of course partly nullifies the whole attempt at security.

I spent my the time in the valley working outdoors at revitalizing a 1966 Chevrolet pick up and a 1975 Alfa Romero—ex kid-cars, perhaps destined to become grand-kid cars, assuming we aren’t all stuffed into robotic containers (my feelings are nicely expressed by a column by Della Ephron in today’s New York Times entitled "Less Sexy, Better for Sex", which is here.) I also thought about my interaction with the internet, which seems to be taking more and more of my time (although not nearly as much as that of many people I know).

As I hammered, filled, sanded, and sprayed, I could not help but realize how much I was enjoying the work (even though the temperature was sometimes well over 100 degrees). And also how much I did not miss my computer. The picture shows me celebrating one morning at Las Maracas, my favorite restaurant in Knights Landing, Ca. It was taken by Juan Barajas, one of the family that operates the restaurant. The meal on my plate was the first ever serving of “Mom’s Breakfast”, which I am encouraging them to put on the menu— a magnificent combination of biscuits, gravy, fried potatoes, eggs, bacon, and coffee—retro, probably unhealthy, but an excellent way to begin the day.

I did miss access to some of the information on the internet while sweating in the sun, but not social networking as now constituted. At my age, I am not looking to build a network of people I do not now know, nor sell myself or my wares. I still hang around Stanford, which gives me more than enough interaction with people who have the same interests as I do, and am fortunate in having more real (not cyber) friends than I can satisfyingly interact with. I enjoy writing posts to my blog, since it makes me think, and send notice of them to friends and connections at Facebook and Twitter, but I have made no efforts to widen my contacts, and find I would rather use my time for other purposes.

Clearly the internet will change over time, and it will be interesting to watch the process. As an example, There is an interesting article by Gordon Goldstein in the July/August issue of The Atlantic entitled “The End Of The Internet?”, which is here. He points out that the internet in its present global form, which is largely an activity underwritten by large businesses, is becoming increasingly bothersome to governments and citizens in other countries, as well as in the U.S. As you know, people world-wide are increasingly disturbed by such things as surveillance, hacking into “secure” data, general violation of privacy, ever increasing marketing, and material that is not consistent with their values.

In the article Goldstein discusses these pressures and possible new directions for the internet (or internets) which involve more regional and secure networks for various regions and nations. Something to think about, since many people are. Obviously such changes would result in more government regulation, less freedom, but perhaps also higher quality of information.

The internet already is serving separate cultures. Stanford students tend to text rather than write e-mail messages, and my older friends still seem to be stuck in e-mail, although they universally complain about the amount of “junk” they receive. Disagreeing interest groups (for instance liberals and conservatives or environmentalists and global warming non-believers) seem to like to communicate within the group, but not with each other. People with younger children have different interests in the trips, pets, and parties of those who don’t (and vice versa). And of course, there is the age phenomenon. Few of my friends in my age groups are active social networkers. They seem to want to use their time in other ways.

I am optimistic on the future of the increasingly digital world, although there are obviously lumps in the (driverless?) road ahead. Predictions of job loss among white collar workers due to digital automation are large, and lawyers, accountants, managers, and other highly educated and salaried folk are not going to be as quiet as factory workers when they lose their jobs to increasingly powerful and easier to use software. And I do think the fantasy of a peaceful, totally interconnected world population over a free universal system is somewhat like the 1960’s fantasy of a world of “make love, not war”. I also think that the internet desperately needs more quality control.

We are definitely not living in boring times.

Posted at 08:28 AM in Craftsmanship, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Internet, Making, Fixing, and Tinkering, Management, People, Product Quality, Science, Technology, and Society, Working with the hands | Permalink | Comments (0)

06/02/2014

Fire: Good Product or Bad Product

When I was growing up I loved fire. I am afraid I still do. I certainly know the downside of fire. It has always been dangerous to life, limb and property. As a child, while playing with my home-made match shooter (an exciting device constructed from two spring clothes-pins), I once accidentally set fire to a wind-brake full of dead and oily Eucalyptus leaves and stored oil-filed smudge pots, and still remember my terror at the result. A couple of years ago the house in Southern California my grandparents lived in and in which my mother and I were born burned down. Southern California, where I lived for many years, is famous for combining “wild” fires with homes (fire is necessary for some of the local plants to release their seeds). And one of the main reasons I left the area in the 1960’s was the air pollution, then caused mainly from non-regulated cars and trucks.

But fire was both comforting and exciting. Our house was heated by a fireplace. My father fortunately arose before the rest of us, and when I awoke in my frigid room, my first act of the day was to grab my clothes and sprint through the house to the fireplace, where I could don them in the warmth of the flames. My grandparents cooked their food on a wood stove, and on cold days my grandmother would happily sit with her feet in the oven and read. And we kids would rake the above-mentioned Eucalyptus leaves into large piles and burn them, breathing in the exotic smell of their smoke and seeing how long we could stand dangerously close to the flames.

On weekends the owner of the local food and hardware store would take us up to the foothills in his truck and we would build a fire and bake weenies and other food. As I grew older I was trusted with the forge and blowtorch and learned the magic of soldering. welding, and working hot metal. When World War II started, a large steel mill was built near to our house, and I was able to go watch the coke being pushed out of the ovens, the blast furnaces tapped, and the molten metal poured into ingots and then rolled into sheets and structural forms. And even smudging the oranges, a necessary but expensive and difficult job, was exciting to me (the photo is of my father in the light of the burning pots). Later I was to become a fanatic back-packer and grew to love open camp fires. While in the Air Force I had the opportunity to experience the fury of afterburners and the majesty of rocket engines. While working in aerospace, I had an opportunity to witness one of the Apollo launches from close-up, certainly one of the largert and most concentrated fires of all time.

But, the age of "open" fire may have peaked after somewhere between 500,000 and a million years of use by us and our predecessors. This is due to vastly increased populations and population density; appreciation of the finite supply of fuels and their value for usages other than burning; increased sensitivity to damage to our environment, and the development of alternate sources of energy.

And our perceived need for safety and controlling fire seems to grow. The county in which I live has increasingly discouraged wood fires because of particulate emissions, beginning with burning leaves, and now neither allowing fireplaces to be built into new houses, nor allowing existing fireplaces to be lit on an increasing number of days. In fact, after a large number of “spare the air” days last winter, I gave up and succumbed to a gas log, even though I once vowed to leave the area if wood fires were outlawed. Gas logs are convenient, and are somewhat reminiscent of a wood fire, but to me not nearly as satisfying. Leaves and trimmings are hauled away to be mulched, and my farmer friends in the valley are sharply constrained by no-burn days and restrictions on such things as stubble burning in the fields, since the air in the California central valley is fast losing its purity. And industry is certainly feeling the need to further control processes involving fire.

Oh well, I do like clean air. And there are always fireworks (for a while), and I still have my oxy-acetylene welding rig.

Posted at 10:05 AM in Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Global Constraints, People, Product Quality, The nature of technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

05/25/2014

The Hand and Product Quality, Part II

As I mentioned in my last post, last week I was to give a talk on the wonders of hands and the rewards of using them at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto. I did so, and the results were surprising. Full house, rapt attention, and when the audio visual equipment failed (as usual), I was going to go ahead without slides, but the crowd insisted we fix the problem and continue as planned.

I talked not only about the hands and how wonderfully capable they were in conjunction with the arm and the brain, but also about my own hobbies (wood work, metal work, rescuing vintage machinery) and those of a few people I know who are deeply involved in hands-on hobbies (building live-steam model railroad equipment, gardening, modifying and erecting buildings,cooking, restoring automobiles, tanks, and antiques of all sorts, knitting, blacksmithing, building airplane propellers , visual arts, and so on), Afterwards I took questions and some people didn’t seem to want to leave. I had obviously struck a chord.

This is actually not that surprising, since most of the people in the crowd were older (probably 50 and above on the average), and living in Palo Alto and surrounding area, probably had not spent their life in manual work. There is an increasing wave of interest in hands-on hobbies in the U.S. —maybe a reaction against the intangible nature of the "information revolution". But it seems to be strongest in younger people (the Makers) , and focused in areas where facilities are available (TechShop ) and organized groups with similar interests have formed. In any case, many people after the talk told me that they have been trying to find the time to do such a thing, but can’t seem to get started. My advice to them is simple. Make it your number #1 priority, assume your initial efforts will not be overwhelming, seek out experts for help and advice, but don’t compare your work with theirs. I used my mother, Jean Adams, as a good example. When we kids left home she decided to learn to water color. She had a background in making clothes, furniture, and other such necessities, but her painting experience was mostly confined to painting the house.

She took some lessons from a well-known water-colorist in Southern California named Robert Wood, and the two of them got along famously. At one point he convinced her to enter a painting in a show, which she did, and to her surprise won a prize. This was not in a region that had a sophisticated art movement going —no galleries, art magazines, professionals, critics, etc., and people liked Mom’s work. The rest is history. She ended up with a good local- and-beyond reputation, and eventually won a Califronia state award for her work. A few of her paintings are scattered around this post. Had she begun in Boston or New York, rather than in Rialto, California, she probably would have compared herself to world famous painters and given up.

I think I will spend a bit of time crusading to encourage people to dive into more activities that require the use of both their minds and their hands. I think they know what they want to do. They just need to jump into the water.

Posted at 09:09 PM in Craftsmanship, Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Internet, Making, Fixing, and Tinkering, Management, People, Problem Solving, Product Quality | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/27/2014

Outstanding Products – The Joy of Beautifully Built Scale Model Trains

My favorite uncle, Ed Cooley, spent his career first as a machinist and finally as the shop foreman of Hunter Douglas Co. I worked summers in the shop when I went to school, and was in awe of his knowledge (even though he never finished high school) and ability. After retirement he built custom machines, and even though I was by then an engineer and pretty good at making things, I couldn’t compete with him.

He had always loved trains, and one of the things he built was an extraordinarily accurate steam-driven model (7-1/2 inch gauge —distance between tracks) of a Pacific locomotive with tender. It took him two years part-time to build it and was accurate down to the handles on the valves in the cab. It would have taken me five years and would not have been nearly as accurate.

There is a large track layout in Riverside California named after Joe Hunter, who was my uncle’s boss and also a railroad fan, and each Sunday Ed would take his train to the track and haul carloads of kids (both young and old) around the track layout. They loved it, and so did Ed. Ed was certainly not alone. There are many people who have built such things, many track layouts, and even more people who like to ride them (usually free). I concluded at the time that these trains were outstanding products. The people who ride them have a wonderful time, and the builder not only has a great time building and running them, but also receives tremendous positive feedback from the people who ride them and who watch the show.

I have been tempted to build one, but have never been willing to devote the necessary time to doing so to the standards I would like. But I have had a few friends who have done so and I had the pleasure of watching a couple of them in action yesterday on an extensive track layout built by Jacques Littlefield, who was one of my students and who achieved fame by amassing a huge and beautifully restored collection of military vehicles, but unfortunately died a few years ago. These two people, who were good friends of Jacques, have built exquisite models and were running them along with trains belonging to a number of people in the San Francisco area who have made or otherwise acquired them.

The photo above shows Bill Boller with his locomotive and cars (cover story in Live Steam Magazine) at speed with passengers. The one below shows Peter Mosely with his locomotive. It was a magnificent day, the Littlefield ranch is spectacular, and I had a wonderful time wandering around, watching the trains, admiring the craftsmanship, talking to people, and saying goodbye to the tank collection, which is going to cross the country and join the Collings collection of historic airplanes. The result will be amazing, but I hate to see the tanks go, because the collection has been part of my life for a long time. Fortunately the trains will remain.

And I had my mind expanded by a person named Ron Siechen, who had a minimalist electro-mechanical driven engine pulling a couple of simple cars. He unloaded it, put it on the track and immediately began pulling kids around without needing an hour to get the steam pressure up and the skill necessary to operate the steamers. At first I was not so impressed by it, but it was so simple to operate and he was willing to let other people drive it (he is instructing Dick Denicola, the father-in-law of one of my sons, in the photo to the right), and at the end of the day, loaded it and drove away an hour before the steamers were able to do so. I realized the joy of simplicity, low cost, and the even greater pleasure kids (once again both young and old) got from being allowed to drive it for a short distance in addition to being able to ride it.

But if I were to play the game, I would probably go for steam and for scale accuracy. The results are spectacular, especially if your life span has overlapped the age of steam locomotives.

Posted at 09:33 PM in Craftsmanship, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Making, Fixing, and Tinkering, People, Product Quality, Working with the hands | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/22/2014

Non-Digital Writing Tools

I have just returned from spending a week at my Sacramento Valley hide-away working on my old machinery, and on a couple of books. The weather was beautiful (spring time in California), and I am now feeling terrific—partly because I got a lot done, partly because I love to work on old machinery, and partly because I was outside.

I came to realize some time ago, that screens (as in movie, computer, projection, pad, phone, etc) do not like the outdoors. The picture is degraded by sunlight and the device forming the picture would rather be dropped onto a carpet rather than onto rocks or into water. Unfortunately, I like being outdoors, and I do not like trailing long extension cords to power such devices, whether directly or through batteries. Computers are indoor things, especially if one needs a screen large enough to be able to work on two full-sized pages simultaneously. Therefore I often tend to resort to more vintage equipment, i.e. pencils or pens and paper, because they work very well outside.

But I use such tools inside as well. My wife and I have learned to re-cycle our unwanted mail (almost all of it) by keeping unopened letters in piles in various locations around the house to use for making notes, lists, or whatever. Eventually we re-cycle them like good campus residents. This proves faster and more convenient than constantly trying to remember where our pads or phones are, turning on our lap-tops, or running upstairs to our desk tops. And pencils and pens are required for certain family traditions. I lie in bed on Sunday mornings and struggle with the New York Times crossword puzzle. It is in the rather limp magazine section, the paper is rather slick, and computers are not allowed in the room since due to the time difference, red-hot puzzle people on the east coast have finished the puzzle and put the answer on the web. Since few people are strong enough not to take advantage of this, computers must be barred. Due to the nature of the limp magazine and the texture of the paper, high quality pencils are needed, not only to form easily readable words, but because it is often necessary to erase one’s brilliant, but ill fitting entry.

Unfortunately, it seems as though as we move to computers, the quality of non-digital writing tools is not only not improving, but decreasing. I have long loved the common wooden pencil with eraser. But pencil lines seem to be becoming less consistent, and erasers seem to wear out more rapidly and do a poorer job of erasing. The sample below shows the work of four pencils I picked up from a coffee cup on my desk where I store them. The ends had has five hard swipes with the eraser of the pencil that made them. They represented four different brands,. As can be seen, the lines they made were similar, except for the fourth one, which was fainter, and the success of the eraser went from acceptable to awful. This is the first time I have ever tried to compare pencils. The first two were old established brands (Dixon and Faber Castell). The last two I will not mention, because this is not a scientific comparison.

The message is that it seems that one cannot simply grab a wooden pencil any more and have it perform as expected. And in fact, the web is reflecting this by producing much information on them. See the list of pencil-related web sites here, or just put “pencil blogs” into your browser and ignore such things as eyebrow pencils.

The situation with so-called mechanical pencils is even more complex because of the many approaches they take to hold the lead (which of course contains no lead – it is a mixture of graphite and clay), feed it, keep it from breaking, etc. And such pencils tend not to include reasonable erasers. Furthermore good ones cost too much if you tend to lose them and loan them to friends (which I do). And they are less rewarding to chew and to drum on one’s desktop.

And then there are pens. Sharpies make great indelible lines on almost anything, until you neglect to put on the cap, in which case they will rapidly die. Such is true for most “give away” ball point pens, some of which will come with a retractable feature to protect pockets, and some with a fragile plastic cap that soon disappears. I am having great luck with a pen entitled Uniball Vision Elite, but it is a bit pricey and tends to run out of ink rather rapidly. And of course none of the lines from such pens can be erased, and therefore are of limited value for amateur cross word puzzle solvers like me.

Is the quality of pencils and pens being neglected as we move toward computers? Is it even going down hill? A worry to us who like to doodle, make sketches, and work on books in the sunshine.

Posted at 01:26 PM in Craftsmanship, Current Affairs, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Human fit, Management, People, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality, Working with the hands | Permalink | Comments (0)

02/23/2014

Stanford Good Products, Bad Products course, ME314, 2014

Winter quarter is almost done, but it does not seem like winter here in California, because the sun continues to shine, and the farmers (including my older son) continue to become depressed. Perhaps it will never rain again and we will return to desert, where we began before building our immense snow-dependent water system.

The course good Products Bad Products is also almost done. The Course outline for this year is here. But since I discussed the course in previous posts, I won’t go into detail again. If you go to the Categories section on the left of the blog below the Recommended books section, and click on "ME 314 Stanford course 2013, you will get some of it. But the web-site for the students “choose a good product and a bad one” assignments is no longer accessible from outside Stanford. Ashish Goel, who was one of the highly competent Teaching Assistants last year, and was in charge of all things having to do with the internet, was kind enough to put it back on an publicly accessible web site. The URL is here. If you would like to look at some of the student choices and short discussions, open the URL and have a good time. If you click on the title of the entries, photographs will appear as well as the complete short description by the student choosing the the products as an example of good or bad.

The course ends with amazingly well designed media-rich presentations of good products and bad ones based on each of the chapter areas of my books. Stanford students are good at media, and Dave Beach pushes it in the course, as you can see from the outline.

I wrote the book because the issue of product quality is extremely complex, subject to personal tastes and judgements, and in general difficult to define in a sound byte. But by spending effort judging products and arguing about them, it is possible to become much more sophisticated when dealing with the topic. Try it.

Posted at 08:44 PM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Books, Craftsmanship, Creativity and Innovation, Design, Education, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Global Constraints, Good Products, Bad Products book, Human fit, Internet, Management, ME314 Stanford Course 2014, People, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality, Stanford Good Products Bad Products Course, Symbolism and Cultural Values, The nature of technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

02/09/2014

The Beauty of the Old

This is a Bosch jigsaw, a wonderful machine. It allows careful control, holds many blade widths, has variable speeds, and can be used on ceilings, walls, floors, or metal and wood, on a bench, in a vise, or leaning against a wall. It is fairly new (for me) and one of my favorite tools.

The photo below is of a Barnes foot power saw, made in the 1870’s and presently in my living room. It likes only one type of blade, goes only as fast as one can pedal, and will only cut wood that is lying on its table. It belonged to my grandfather and was used a great deal not only by him, but also by my mother and me—especially me, since when I was a kid I got great pleasure out of making goofy things out of wood. When my grandfather died, I restored it, and later, among other things, happily made replacement pieces for the large wooden picture puzzles kids use in their early years. In fact I was in great demand by pre-schools to do exactly that.

Now why is this saw in my living room, and the Bosch saw not. The Bosch saw is well designed, attractive, and a joy to use. But the Barnes saw is BEAUTIFUL, both aesthetically and functionally. People can’t resist pedaling it, with the result that I have put a small piece of plastic tubing over the blade so they can’t saw off fingers. Its finest hour might have come during a visit by a wonderful woman named Jing Lyman, the wife of the then president of Stanford. Sadly, her memorial service is tomorrow, and the world will miss her.

Jing was a powerful woman, who apparently when young had wanted to be a carpenter. In those days, the profession was hoarded by men, but she did wood-working for a hobby and worked as a shop teacher. When she visited, she was wearing an almost ankle-length rather voluminous dress, but insisted that I find her a piece of wood so she could try the saw. I did so, and she climbed onto the saw and began peddling. At the time I had it well greased. Suffice it to say that her dress became so wound up between the greasy wheels and belts that it suffered terminal damage in the effort to free her. The saw now has no grease, and long dresses are not allowed.

Much of the saw’s beauty comes from the graceful castings of which it is formed. Someday I will calculate the stress in some of the members, because they seem surprisingly thin for the loads they carry—almost delicate. Yet when it was built the knowledge to do that was not available. The curves in the spokes of the pedal wheel are to keep the wheel from deforming as the spokes cool and shrink after the hot metal is poured into the mold during the casting process. But the final effect is elegant indeed. The table is a very nice piece of hardwood, as are the arms that hold the blade. There was enough paint on the saw when I acquired it to duplicate the color and the striping. I think even my wife is proud to have it in our living room.

It must be possible to make visually interesting machines, even if they are electronic. I laughed when I read about Apple suing Samsung for using round corners on their cell phones like they do. Do screens and keyboards necessarily have to show no individuality, and can people patent a form so bland, though elegant, as a cell phone? The final photo is of a Blickensderfer Number 6 typewriter—perhaps the ultimate in small typewriters. Obviously you wouldn’t want to carry it in your pocket, nor is it particularly elegant, but you should agree that it is more interesting to look at than your present key pad.

Posted at 06:42 PM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Management, People, Product Quality, The nature of technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

10/21/2013

Stuff, Treasures, Realtors, and Life-Style

I recently spread a bunch of old newspapers on a bench in my shop to protect it from some painting I was doing, and on the top was an article in the Realty section of the October 13^th New York Times entitled The Trouble With Stuff, by Contance Rosenblum. It is here. I usually don’t look at the Realty section, but I read this, because this increasing attack against “stuff” is starting to annoy me. What one person calls stuff is often another person’s treasure.

The article is about the problem that realtors have in selling homes in which people (often old) have accumulated such large amounts of objects and materials that realtors have to work to get it removed. Poor realtors — they can’t just move in their tacky “staging” and instantly make a sale (the writer is talking about New York, and even points out that it is a “tight” (good for realtors) market).

The author throws around the word hoarding, and points out that hoarding is now listed as a distinct disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (a controversial document) and an estimated 3 to 5 percent of Americans suffer from the condition (she doesn’t say who came to this grand conclusion and how). And as an example she digs up the story about the Collyer brothers, who received national notice for dying with 120 tons of books magazines, and other objects in their mansion in 1947—over 65 years ago.

According to my handy Dashboard Dictionary, hoarding refers to (1) amassing money or other valuable objects and hiding and storing them away (museums? The wealthy?), (2) accumulating a supply of (something) in a time of scarcity, (3) reserving in the mind for future use. Those don’t seem to be too evil or unnatural. And I think that in most cases, the problem Ms. Rosenblum has is that strangers (perhaps especially realtors who love blank space), or even family members can’t understand that the material in question has (or had in the case of death) such high value to the persons who accumulated it—probably even the Collyer brothers.

Ms. Rosenblum would probably consider our house “cluttered” (photo shows typical shelves in my home office). We love it the way it is, as do most people who visit us. My wife and I have lived in it for many years, raised four kids in it, are leading a full and wonderful life, and like to be surrounded by objects that provoke fond memories and please us aesthetically, And we are not about to “unclutter” it in order to simplify the life of a future realtor.

“Uncluttering” can also be dangerous to one’s well being. I watched two situations in which elderly distant relatives, having lost their wives, allowed things they loved and that reminded them of good times to escape the boundaries of closets, shelves, and drawers and fill the house. In both cases the houses were then “organized” by professional neatness nazis hired by their immediate families to do so. In both cases my elderly relatives died soon after. Coincidence?

But the realtors were probably over-joyed with the cleanliness and orderliness of their homes. Probably they radically reduced their commissions.

Posted at 10:22 AM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Design, Emotions and Needs, Management, People, Product Quality | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/08/2013

Product Quality, Marketing/Sales, and Life—A Minor Diatribe

When I arrived at Stanford, eagerly trying to understand such things as creativity/innovation and business, I cooperated in a number of workshops with a wonderful marketing professor in the business school named Bob Davis. He was a very entertaining guy and devoted to defining marketing as not only different than sales, but a higher calling. This is an activity that is common in graduate schools of business, even though it is a difficult line to draw. This was before the days of digital communications, big data, esoteric analytical techniques, and involvement of top level statisticians and psychologists. I was fascinated by the field of marketing, which seemed to be striving to better match products and people.

Now I am appreciably older, comfortably well off, seemingly equipped with everything I want, and amazingly annoyed by the inescapable presence of marketing/sales. Granted that I am not a typical consumer, but I am finding it insulting to have postcards trying to get me to subscribe to magazines drop out of magazines I already subscribe to, seemingly every store I enter trying to get me to join their “club”, endless attempts to get me to fill out surveys so that they have more information on me, and a world blanketed with advertisements everywhere I look and awash in commercials in all media I enter.

I know what I want/need, and resent people trying to add to the list or alter my choices. Do they think they know more about me than I do? I find the self-marketing attitude of many internet addicts somewhat obnoxious (even though I admit I was talked into social networking by my publisher, who told me that otherwise no one would notice my Good Products Bad Products book). I wonder at my wife’s daily ritual of rapidly going through our surface mail while standing over the re-cycling barrel, trying to avoid throwing something important away with the overwhelming majority of marketing-oriented junk.

Is there no end to this? I realize that we humans seem to love “deals”, and that it is possible to show that this marketing “works”. The recent trauma that J.C. Penney went through in seeking to move from hundreds of sales per year to constant lower prices (which I thought made great sense) resulted in a huge backlash and the resignation of its president after only eight months in office. So I was wrong. Of course an organization called One Million Moms turned against the company for using Ellen De Generes as a spokesperson. Not being one of the Million Moms, I can’t claim any insight on that one.

And of course, look at our ability to create “celebrities”, political campaigns, and national propaganda.

But how much does this constantly increasingly sophisticated and wide-spread marketing/sales actually benefit us and the economy? It definitely makes jobs, but is the noise it creates perhaps greater than the good it accomplishes?

I find myself avoiding products and being against people whose marketing interferes with the quality of my life, whether through producing billboards that mar beautiful country or attractive buildings, commercials that interrupt things I am interested in, messages repeated so constantly that I assume someone thinks I am so stupid I don’t understand them, junk mail, internet ads, phone calls that are unerringly synchronized with my meals, questionnaires, coupons, clubs, and other tools intended to influence me in ways the producers of goods and services think are positive.

I want good stuff, and can’t clearly see the correlation between the quality of the marketing effort and the quality of the product or person being marketed. I wish we would just produce outstanding choices and let me choose!

Posted at 06:00 AM in Current Affairs, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Good Products, Bad Products book, Management, People, Product Quality, Science, Technology, and Society, The nature of technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

07/18/2013

Product Quality—More Old Machines With Soul

In my last post I talked about two reasonably small machines I have restored. I received a question as to whether I had restored larger ones. Sure. Many. Here are photos of three. The first is a John Deere Model 55 Harvester, produced in the late 1940’s. A nice feature is that all mechanisms are exposed, rather than being hidden behind sheet metal, as is the case of modern harvesters. Perhaps a bit unsafe, but you can see what it does by looking at it

The second is an Austin road roller built around 1914 and weighing about 15 tons. It is powered by a large single cylinder engine equipped with huge 5-1/2 foot diameter flywheels intended to smooth out the power to the wheels. It was eventually replaced with a roller using a two-cylinder engine and smaller flywheels, a combination that could be better balanced and therefore have less tendency to leave ripples in the asphalt. It is a work in progress and I am now planning to fit it with it’s
emergency brake and an a compressed air starting system.

Finally the third is a Northwest crane, built in the 1930’s and capable of being used not only as a crane, but to move dirt and rocks when equipped with a drag line or clamshell bucket, or rigged as a power shovel. I have the buckets but unfortunately I am missing a winch and a clutch necessary to rig it as a power shovel, but I will eventually find (or make) them.

The crane is a particularly interesting machine because of the mechanical gadgetry necessary to get all of the necessary motions (front and back travel and turns, boom swing and position, winch functions) out of a single engine. It depends on a complicated collection of gears, clutches, and brakes, and operating it requires many more levers and foot pedals than the operator has hands and feet. It is particularly challenging to work on, not only because of its complexity, but also because most of the parts seem to be slightly heavier than I can lift. In a sense the older steam powered machines were mechanically simpler because they utilized a single boiler that fed steam to separate engines that powered the necessary motions. But my gasoline engine does not require heating up, cooling down, or cleaning out when I operate it.

Why do I do this kind of stuff? I love old heavy machinery, and for me, finding it, learning about it, restoring it, and fiddling with it has always been a terrific balance to being a professor. I am better at thinking esoteric thoughts if my fingernails are dirty. I suspect Marian sometimes thinks I am weird for doing this sort of thing, but I suspect she knows how really weird I would be if I didn’t.

Posted at 08:15 AM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Craftsmanship, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Management, People, Product Quality, Science, Technology, and Society, The nature of technology, Working with the hands | Permalink | Comments (0)

06/24/2013

Creativity, the Mind, and the Brain

David Brooks, one of my favorite columnists in the New York Times, wrote a column in the June 18^th edition concerning the present tendency to use neuroscience to explain the human condition. It was entitled "Beyond the Brain", and emphasized that the brain is not the same as the mind. The two words do have different meanings to most people, in that “brain” usually implies the 3 pounds or so of rather ugly meat inside our skull, and “mind” our more difficult to understand consciousness, cognitive output, and feelings. But we will continue to study the brain and its processes because we are curious and because new tools make it possible to learn more and more about it. And I think we all agree that the brain is necessary for the mind. But there are people (sometimes I am one) who believe that it may take something more powerful than human brains to totally understand the human mind, and computers are not it.

But I thought of this question last week, as I was asked to give a talk on the past 50 years of creativity to the 50^th anniversary party of the Product Design program at Stanford University. I had been a part of this program from its beginning until my retirement and had been quite involved in reading, teaching, consulting about and working on problems involving creativity, so I found this an interesting assignment.

One major change has occurred in the nature-nurture debate, which can sometimes bring up the brain-mind topic. Fifty years ago, we (or at least those of us around universities) were taught to view people as being formed primarily by nurture – their upbringing, their culture, their friends, and perhaps their schooling. Certainly people did not totally accept this, but it was politically correct to espouse it. Since that time, due to research in the social sciences and our preoccupation with genetics, this view has shifted. I have never seen a figure as to how much, but I would say that we give two thirds credit to what we have learned, and one third to our genes (brain), and the genetics argument continues to charge ahead.

An example of such thinking is a nicely written book written by Peter Whybrow in 2005 entitled American Mania: When More is Not Enough (W. W. Norton, NY—click on icon at the right for more information). At the time he was director of the Semel Institute for NeuroScience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the Judson Braun Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine. In his book Professor Whybrow discusses the reasons that so many of us U.S. citizens seem to drive ourselves to acquire more than we need, whether it be money, possessions, food, or whatever, at the expense of time and energy that we could use to better improve our satisfaction with our lives , and the welfare of our families and communities.

Whybrow argues partly from an evolutionary standpoint—through most of our evolution we have lived in scarcity, and have developed strong signals to inform us when our needs (food?) are not being met, but weaker signals when we have enough (the cause of obesity?). He also argues as a psychiatrist (“mania; a dysfunctional state of mind that begins with a joyous sense of excitement and high productivity, but escalates into reckless pursuit, irritability, and confusion, before cycling down into depression” —sound familiar?) and finally as a neuroscientist, explaining the purposes and functions of various parts and processes of the mind, and how they can cause us to lose the balance of our lives. He believes that genetics is a strong influence on this, and uses immigrants as a class of people that obviously pursue risk and uncertainty, and whose descendants do likewise.

It is a good read, and will get you thinking. And it speaks to both mind and brain.

Posted at 11:50 AM in Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Good Products, Bad Products book, Management, People, Product Quality, Science, Technology, and Society | Permalink | Comments (0)

05/16/2013

Product Quality - Bicycles

My wife and I recently had dinner with a couple of friends who are in their late 80’s, and move slowly in their walkers, but still ride their bicycles. In fact one of them still has an office at Stanford and and regularly commutes there to work on his bicycle. I was talking with him about good products and bad products, and he stoutly maintained that the common bicycle is one of the all-time great products – that people had gotten it right many years ago, and give or take new versions, new materials, new approaches to such things as brakes, gears, saddles, and pedals, and challenges from such things as recumbents, the bicycle has not changed significantly in his memory.

This made me think, and I realized that I have ridden bicycles ever since I can remember, and probably now take them for granted. I Started with a balloon tired, single speed, typically heavy version, which took me to school and back, and let me ride with my friends until it was eclipsed by a car (although the bike still hangs in my basement). I then left bicycles until after college and the Air Force, but rediscovered them when a friend and I spent a few months touring Europe on duplicates of a bicycle that had done well in the Tour de France the year before. After I became use to riding a bicycle again, to say nothing of ten speeds, very light weight, an initially painful seat, dropped handlebars, and an entirely new bodily position, I fell madly in love it (it hangs in my older son’s garage). I have ridden bicycles consistently ever since, and am now dependent on them for getting around the local area, riding in the hills for exercise, and especially getting around the Stanford campus. And I must admit I find it satisfying to ride past automobiles that are fighting their way through local traffic.

Without bicycles, Stanford would not work nearly as well. The campus is large and continues to expand, administrative offices are far apart, dormitories are far from classrooms, and although classrooms are far apart, the University still clings to ten minute class breaks. Although retired, I maintain an office on campus and still attend various meetings and functions. Walking everywhere might be good for me, but life is short. Bicycle traffic on campus is heavy and seems disorganized and perhaps hazardous to those not riding, but actually is surprisingly free of accidents and fun to be part of. The bicycles cover the spectrum from high performance to low and expensive to junk, and from single speed to many.

This photo is me on my present bicycle returning home from my office (a short trip). I realize I am not wearing a helmet, which is stupid and dangerous, but unfortunately I take many short trips while on campus, am not used to wearing a hat, and therefore tend to lose helmets and generally spend too much time putting them on and taking them off. I wear them when riding longer distances fast on roads full of cars, and endure the censure (especially from grand children and my wife) of not wearing one all of the time. The only person I have ever known who wore his helmet all of the time (including while lecturing and in meetings) is a Nobel Laureate.

The ideal campus bicycle is rugged, performs well, and shows enough wear not to be considered worth stealing. Mine qualifies. It needs to be a bit more beat up, but will get there. It is a mountain bike, even though I do not ride it in mountains, but it has the advantages of outstanding brakes (very important), does not mind jumping curbs (convenient), and is highly maneuverable. It has more gears than I need, but that was part of the package. I bought it new for a very reasonable price because it was painted green, and apparently the dealer had difficulty selling it, because green was not cool that year.

And I agree with my friend. Granted that they vary over many parameters, bicycles in general are an outstanding product. Traffic and air pollution were much more reasonable in Beijing before cars began replacing bicycles. And people probably got more exercise and reached their destinations more quickly.

Posted at 11:35 AM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Craftsmanship, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Global Constraints, Human fit, Management, People, Product Quality, Science, Technology, and Society, Symbolism and Cultural Values, The nature of technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

05/09/2013

Product Quality and Service

Are you ever impressed at how few people seem to work in “big box” stores? I was at one time entertained by Home Depot ads that featured mellow older clerks who were expert in some field of building (plumbing, wiring, framing, etc) and who would be pictured patiently explaining the process to less expert customers. I would like to find a big box store like that. In many, one is lucky to run down any employee in the store, and if one succeeds, there are usually several people trying to get their attention, and one is lucky if they even know where things are, much less how to use them.

I often meet people, who having heard about the service sector domination of the economy (it is estimated that 70% of all wage earners work in the service sector, as opposed to manufacturing or such things as agriculture, fishing, and mining) wonder why “service” is so lousy in the U.S. My wife happily quotes a comment she read at some time, that in England service is a tradition, in Japan it is an honor, and in the U.S. it is an insult. But such comments and reactions are based on the belief that service is about helping ordinary people through the day, not running a derivatives firm on Wall Street.

I have an unabridged Webster dictionary, which I love. It has two thousand and some pages of very fine print (three columns per page, ten words per line in each column), and I love it partly because of the amazing amount of effort that had to go into compiling it. But also, because it contains the common meanings of words, and these days we seem to be happily trying to re-define words to fit our contemporary needs. This dictionary contains almost two columns under service, and almost 50 definitions. The definitions in the first half column do in fact refer to people helping people. Only in the middle does one come across such things as “useful labor that does not produce a tangible commodity”. Here we move into the economic realm. But I think most people consider service to be help from other people, whether it be in person, in manuals, on the internet, or whatever. And I agree we could do much better.

Without help, we tend to buy the cheapest product, which may be of the lowest quality. I notice when I shop for tools with a friend who has spent his life as a mechanic, I spend more money and get better stuff. I no longer buy the cheapest house paint, because I don’t like to paint the house that often. The internet is becoming less trustworthy as it becomes more commercial, so I have switched to asking house-painters about paint quality. It would be better if I could trust sales people in paint stores to give me the straight poop. Somehow they are all convinced that their paint is the best. I bought a combination (always risky) toaster oven-toaster a while ago and it is a disaster, even though the sales person raved about it. In retrospect, he probably wanted me to buy it and knew nothing about it.

Higher quality requires more informed and honest information about products. It doesn’t have to come from personal contact, but personal contact is nice, and would make a lot of jobs.

Posted at 10:16 PM in Creativity and Innovation, Current Affairs, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Human fit, Management, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality, Science, Technology, and Society, The nature of technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/15/2013

Product Quality and Nostalgia.

Looking at the automobile page in the Sunday April 7^th New York times, I read an article by Jim Koscs about how a 1966 Cadillac was left to a 17 year old boy named Ray Knox in 1976 by an elderly lady who he helped in life and who in return treated him like an adopted grandson. He still has it, it is in great shape, and he obviously loves it deeply. I am sure it reminds him of wonderful times and a wonderful woman.

My wife and I are reminded of past pleasures by objects, and seem to have surrounded ourselves with them. My shop is full of old hand tools I don’t use, my office with things I have collected in various travels, and my basement with products that I no longer use, but that have served me well, or that I am fond of for other reasons.

This photograph is of a couple of Apple computers I used to use, that I keep because they are visually interesting. I don’t have any fond memories of using them. But today’s computers although elegant in appearance, are not very interesting in appearance. These two were, and are, fun to look at, although I will never use them again.

Some of these pleasures are vicarious. The photo below is os a 1975 Alfa Romeo that was my oldest son’s first major purchase upon graduating from college, and then became the entree to my wife's sport car period. I have never driven it much because I don't really fit into it but it is fun, and I keep it because it reminds me of my son’s happiness to be on his own in Colorado with a new job and of my wife’s pleasure at zipping around in something Italian with the top down. Beside, it will make a great car for a grandkid some day—maybe for the daughter of the very same son.

Nostalgia for products can definitely cause one to fill up a lot of space. But there are advantages to doing so. Old products definitely remind one of past good times and experiences, which are usually even better in memory than they were when experienced. My yard full of tractors is an example (one to the left). It reminds me of the pleasure of growing up on a farm, even though I obviously didn’t want to be a farmer. To stay with vehicles as an example, older products also can furnish old-time luxury (the 1966 Cadillac), thrills (my 1970’s motorcycles), novelty (there is a similarity among modern automobiles), a culture (collectors of antique cars), and even be good investments (my XKE Jaguar if I restored it).

But in order for products to produce nostalgia, they must be of noteworthy quality. One tends to bond with such products over long periods of time, during which they serve one and one serves them. Many products I am nostalgic about both required maintenance, and were straightforward to maintain. My first car was a 1941 Chevrolet, and I drove it for many years, during which I repaired it many times. We became one, I loved it, and I should have kept it.

I do not feel strongly about throw-away products. I am not nostalgic about computers for instance. I don’t keep them long enough to become attached to them, and hate them when they cease working and I can’t fix them or they are no longer competitive and become e-trash (except for the two above). But I still use the hammer I used to put an addition on my parent’s house while in high school, and have lovingly replaced the handle and de-rusted it several times.

Posted at 11:32 AM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Craftsmanship, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Human fit, Making, Fixing, and Tinkering, Management, People, Product Quality, Symbolism and Cultural Values, The nature of technology, Working with the hands | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/04/2013

The Oxy-Acetylene Tank Set—A Good Product

The photo shows my now classic middle-sized gas welding equipment. Big enough to cover my needs, but also small enough to lift into the back of my pick-up. It consists of the usual — Victor torch with cutting head and heating and welding tips, hose, tanks of oxygen and of acetylene, pressure regulators, and assorted related stuff (goggles, torch cleaning tips, spark igniter, cart, etc.) The equipment is sometimes loosely called a tank set. I recommend that all households have one.

I use it not only for welding, brazing, and soldering, but also for a broad range of usages requiring controlled heat. I have even occasionally used it to reheat my coffee on cold days when I am working out of doors.

The rusty mechanism on the table next to it on the old wagon is part of a very vintage McCormick Reaper (the one in the history books) that I am restoring. It is a crucial part, since it contains the shaft that rotates the arms that sweep the grain into the cutter and then onto the ground, and all sorts of pivoting parts that allow the arms to move up and down as they swing. The reaper is probably 130 years old, and has spent a good bit of that time outside, so when I acquired it the shaft had rusted quite firmly to the castings in which they turn. I soaked the whole mess first in penetrating oil, then in old diesel oil, and even in used brake fluid, but the parts remained rusted together. So I used the ultimate answer in such cases, which is to heat the castings red hot with my torch. Since heat weakens rust and expands holes, the rust gave up with the result that the shaft now rotates happily and the arms go through their motion. One of many uses for my tank set .

The tank set qualifies as a very good product according to the criteria in my Good Products Bad Products book. Costs are low for the capability it gives me, and it has never failed to do what I want it to do. It is easy to use and fits me well, is nicely made, and fills me with positive emotions, ranging from nostalgia to an instant sense of accomplishment whenever I use it. It is elegant in its simplicity, and lets me mingle with the welding culture. Environment? One generally uses a so-called neutral flame (no particulates) with this device, I am stingy in my use of acetylene, and I don’t use it that often. It certainly is not in the league of my furnace, water heater, or gas stove.

Also it is fun to weld. It never ceases to amaze me how easy to turn two pieces of metal into one with a simple flame. I must admit I generally use electrical equipment to weld these days, since it is fast, more easily controlled, and allows one to avoid oxidation by using an inert gas. But welding with a gas flame strikes me as a somehow purer experience. It's just me and the fire!

Posted at 01:21 PM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Craftsmanship, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Good Products, Bad Products book, Human fit, Management, People, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality, Symbolism and Cultural Values, Working with the hands | Permalink | Comments (0)

03/18/2013

More Stanford Good Products Bad Products course presentations

This post covers four more presentations in the course on companies/products that students consider to produce good products, or at least provocative ones. They were on the Symbolism and Cultural fit, Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, and Global Fit chapters of my book. Once again the presentations were excellent. I never cease to be impressed by Stanford students.

The first presentation was on the cultural significance of the “fixie”, or fixed gear bike – light weight, one speed, no free wheel (pedals cannot be stopped while bike is moving), often only one or no brakes. (see the Wikipedia page here). The pure form is used in track racing, less exotic ones (originally hand assembled from available parts) became symbolic of New York messengers, then hipsters, and now of a more widely spread culture, including quite a few Stanford students. “Fixies”can now be purchased in all formats from “pure” to including brakes, and even gears concealed in the rear hub (if you are in the culture, you may hiss).

The second was on a startup named Radian (description here), which produces a nifty camera addition that allows time-lapse and scanned photography. The culture is of course people who like photography. Each year this course costs me money since I discover a product I need, and this is my 2013 investment.

The third was Cloud Nine olive oil (Elegance and Sophistication). This is a small family owned and run business in Monterey county California, that produces very high grade olive oil. The presentation included not only samples to taste, but detailed instructions on how to properly taste olive oil. Website here.

The fourth was on the Brompton folding bicycle (here) and concerned with the environmental advantages of such transportation. This is an expensive, but extremely high grade machine that easily folds and unfolds to an amazingly small and easily carried package. It was demonstrated by a person from a bicycle store, who claims that at one time he felt a bit uncomfortable riding it in public (small wheels and frame, etc), but now loves it so much he doesn’t care what other bikers think about him—he feels sorry for them because they don’t have one.

Another good day!

Posted at 06:30 AM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Global Constraints, ME 314 Stanford Course 2013, People, Product Quality, Stanford Good Products Bad Products Course, Symbolism and Cultural Values | Permalink | Comments (0)

03/15/2013

Needs, Emotions, Aesthetics, and Electricity

I’m a bit late on this post because of a power outage during the late afternoon and evening, which caught me with an uncharged portable and a dead desktop. But it gave me a chance to think about our increasing dependency upon electricity, and the aging state of much U.S. infrastructure. As to dependency, I can remember power outages when I was a kid, and we would ignore them during the daytime, and light a few candles if at night. But my normally fast moving wife is slowed down due to some recent surgery, and has been entertaining herself watching movies on the TV and working on her computer. And I, of course, have become computer dependent. Throw in our major dependency on such things as the microwave, the coffee maker, and other such modern marvels, and without electricity, we are much less impressive animals, and perhaps are less amused sitting around in the dark talking to each other.

As to infrastructure, our power outages probably have something to do with a large construction project going on close to our house. A couple of years ago there was a gas main explosion in San Bruno, a town fairly close to where we live. Eight people were killed and a number of homes burned. As a result Pacific Gas and Electric (our supplier) has been doing a survey of gas pipelines, and guess what, a fairly main street close to our house has been ripped up for several months to replace a large gas pipeline (looks like 18 inches in diameter or so), which of course is buried close to other utilities. the job is requiring massive amounts of huge equipment and numbers of people. As I wait to be waved through the often one-way traffic, I cannot help but think about the many other elements of U.S. infrastructure that need upgrading, and the cost of doing so.

Back to the Stanford Good Products Bad Products course. The quarter is coming to an end and the student groups continue to report on businesses that produce products that they feel demonstrate the elements of quality in my book. On March 7, reports were delivered on three products that have high emotional impact and fulfill various needs. The first was Gatorade (website here), which has evolved over time from being seen as a functional replacement of electrolytes, to being a symbol of heroic accomplishment (often consumed in victorious glee and sometimes thrown on coaches). The second was Klutz (here), a company that produces products that are both educational and fun and show a profitable use of humor. The third was perfume, the presentation focusing on the making of perfume, but mentioning several companies that have become famous for a particular scent (Chanel #5?)

The fourth presentation focused on aesthetics and on a Kickstart funded startup that makes a pillow entitled the Ostrich Pillow, which is intended for better nap-taking during normally awake times. This resulted in some excellent class discussion ranging from the advantages of better support and comfort to take such naps (in class?) to the rather strange appearance of the pillow. You can see the reasons by looking at the website here. I guarantee you will have a reaction!. All in all another excellent day of presentations – lots of products to pass around, good use of media, etc.

I will write a couple more posts on presentations and then a final wrap up of the class, and then go on to other product quality comments. I once again recommend the blog site here containing a large number of individual student nominations of good and bad products for an insight to present university student values, some interesting and provocative products, and the range of quality in our industrial output.

Posted at 07:48 AM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Good Products, Bad Products book, Management, ME 314 Stanford Course 2013, People, Product Quality | Permalink | Comments (0)

03/07/2013

Stanford Good Product Bad Products course final presentations

The last few sessions of the Course ME 314 are dedicated to the final presentations by student groups on the topics in Chapters 4 through 9 of my Good Products Bad Products book. The class is divided into groups of four, and each group is given ten minutes for their presentation followed by ten minutes of question and comments from the other students and faculty. Professor Dave Beach, the teacher of the class, is a hawk on memorable, media intensive, and entertaining talks. He also encourages the teams to bring examples to class to be passed around, and so far the teams have been on target on all of these. I have listened to innumerable presentations in schools, businesses, professional groups, and many other environments, and would that they all had been as memorable, media intensive, and entertaining as these.

The students are asked to find a company that delivers a product in their area of very high quality, and report on the company and product. So far eight groups have given presentations. I obviously cannot go into detail on each presentation in a post to a blog, but I will list the topics and give you a link to a web page if one exists.

Four of the first eight presentations were on the topic of human fit – physical, sensory, and cognitive compatibility between the product and the humans using it. The products were the Boosted Board electrically powered skateboard with a range of 6 miles on a charge and a top speed of 20 mph, the off-road version of the Segway vehicle, the Boobypack, a bra somewhat between a sports bar and a bikini top with two pockets to carry such things as a cell phone and credit cards, and a toy under development that allows the user to construct three dimensional structures using various plastic pieces and rubber bands. The latter is not far enough along to be a company with a web site, but although meant for a younger age group (3 to 7), the students in the class seemed quite fascinated with sample structures they were given to play with. The first three products are well documented in the linked websites. As a sign of the present age, one of the products (the skateboard) has been developed by Stanford alumni, another (the toy) is being developed by a Stanford graduate student.

The next three presentations were on the topic of craftsmanship, and focused on Tcho chocolate, Yogitoes yoga towel , and Riddell football helmets. Chocolate was furnished to everyone for the first, and yoga and helmet demonstrations accompanied the next two. I gained personally from the chocolate presentation. I like chocolate so much that I chew it up rapidly and swallowed it. I learned that if you just leave it in your mouth on your tongue, you can taste it for a very long time before it all melts. I am trying to learn to do this, in spite of the fact that it is so satisfying to just gulp it down. The demonstrations were very noteworthy because they involved large and rapid movements in a very small space.

The eighth presentation was on the topic of emotion and products, and focused on the Kaeng Raeng detox drink. This is a drink that comes as a box of powder containing vitamins, proteins, and other “natural” products, and is mixed with water and drunk in lieu of food for a period (3 days? 6 days?). It is alleged to make you feel better, lose weight, and be healthier. Upon tasting it, the students in the class were somewhat unconvinced, but the group giving the presentation were quite positive about the product, and the product is obviously loved (emotion) by many people, Products such as this often have a positive emotional affect on people above and beyond nutritional effects – think of spas and meditation. And positive emotions do seem to correspond to health.

But I have noticed one bad product in all of this — the adapters needed to connect portable computers to the projection system in the room. The projection system is equipped with a VGA plug —somewhat standard. It would be nice if no adapters were needed. But computers (especially Apple’s portables) have smaller plugs, and they seem to become smaller with each version. If there is one thing I learned in my aerospace days, it is that larger connectors are more reliable over time. The adapters to the smaller plugs seem to become intermittent over time, and of course get lost, confused (which one is mine?), and sometimes simply don’t work.

I used to think Kodak Carousel projects tripped up presentations. But my experience at giving talks and lectures via digital equipment is that we are gaining in being able to make, organize, and store slides , but losing in system simplicity, especially in places we have not used before—I have mentioned the "smart" panels in some of the new buildings at Stanford before. Woe be unto the person unaquainted with these panels who walks for the first time into a room containing one of them naively expecting to figure out how to show slides without help from a native.

Posted at 11:49 AM in Craftsmanship, Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Good Products, Bad Products book, Human fit, Management, ME 314 Stanford Course 2013, People, Product Quality | Permalink | Comments (0)

02/07/2013

Product Quality and Population

Some day there will be a gravestone some place that will read “here lies James L. Adams, a kind and caring man, who died from a heart attack in stalled traffic”. I hate being trapped in such things, aware of my life ticking away and helpless to do anything about it. One of the blessings of being retired, is the ability to choose driving times when crowds are at a minimum. But this takes some thinking, because where I live the commuting periods are long (flex time and lots of people commuting to work in Silicon Valley ), and many people are on the road shopping and going to restaurants around lunch time. At times like these, the traffic is terrible.

But the other day I needed to be in the Sacramento Valley in the morning and back at Stanford by 5:00 p.m., with a few interim stops thrown in. The trip was only possible by car. I left at 5:30 a.m., which let me beat the commuting traffic pretty well, although the incoming traffic was already bumper to bumper and moving slowly because of people living far away in more affordable housing but working in the valley. But coming back I could not beat the traffic, ran out of back roads, and got caught.

I escaped my heart attack by musing about once good products that were no longer compatible with increased population density. The automobile is a truly sophisticated product in many ways —capable of carrying one long distances at high speeds in comfort. Still great if one drives around Eastern Oregon or West Texas—less great shopping in New York City or commuting in Los Angeles (photo by Monica Almeida/The New York Times). If too many of them are put together it becomes a terrible product – a small cell enclosing one and barely moving, if at all, while it pollutes the ecosphere, devours petroleum, and causes one to endure unhealthy changes in one’s vital signs and exhibit sometimes violently anti-social behavior. The present move toward “autonomous” vehicles is probably partly motivated by the fantasy that traffic will move more rapidly and one can entertain oneself by drinking, texting, watching TV, and sleeping as one is transported to work and back. But it may also have the effect of depriving the traveler of diversion and allow him/her more free time to curse and extend one’s middle finger toward others.

There are many products that work well in less populated areas (firearms, un-muffled engines, weed burners,) but not well in cities. Can you think of a few? This probably explains some of the differences in attitudes of people (and our good congressional representatives) toward such issues as high speed railroads and the environment. I would guess that people drilling for oil and gas in North Dakota experience less criticism than those who built platforms off of the shore of Santa Barbara California. And shooting game birds in Wyoming farmland is more acceptable than shooting pigeons in San Francisco’s Union Square.

I would also guess that some of the resistance people have to ever tightening regulations might result from having grown up in more sparsely populated areas and who remember freedoms that are no longer acceptable in densely populated ones. Even I am sometimes guilty of such behavior. I could better get away with throwing the garbage out of the back door in my youth (when there were chickens and orange trees there rather than neighbors) than in my present yard in an upscale community, even though garbage is good compost. And how can people have the nerve to prevent me from using my fireplace? Fireplaces were wonderful products when I grew up in an agricultural area – family and social centers and cheery winter heating. Apparently not so good in suburban Santa Clara Valley, California these days.

Posted at 07:31 AM in Current Affairs, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Global Constraints, Human fit, Management, People, Product Quality, The nature of technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

02/03/2013

Back to the Stanford Good Products Bad Products course (ME 314)

Since I have written a post about it, the course has had two more guest speakers, Kirk Hawkins, the co-founder of ICON Aircraft, and David Franchino, the head of Design Concepts. The web-site for ICON is here, and that for Design Concepts is here. You can also find information on Hawkins and Franchino on the web. The students have also been viewing the discovery videos made by various student teams, which are oriented toward gaining new and hopefully surprising insights into product quality. The assignment for these videos is here.

Readings have included one from Diane Ackerman’s book Natural History of the Senses, and Chapter 6 from my Good Products, Bad Products book. If you are not taking the course and have not read the book, the Chapter title is Products, Emotions, and Needs — Love, Hate, or Blah. The sub sections are How Emotions Play a Role, the Complexity of Human Enotions, Diversity in Emotional Responses, The Mechanisms of Emotion, Human Needs, Needs and Emotions, and Need Finding,

Emotion is obviously key to the subject matter of the course, although as I explain in the book, it is difficult to discuss in words and rigorously analyze. It is, after all, about feelings, and how do you describe or measure what it feels like to be disgusted, anxious, or joyous? I at one time considered beginning the book with the topic of emotion, but decided that I would expend too much energy explaining why I had written a book on emotion to some of my colleagues in the Engineering School. But believe it, the emotional response to a product is a major component of quality.

Diane Ackerman’s book uses written descriptions of experiences to explain the senses, as do many good writers explain emotions. One of my favorite books, which indirectly treats emotion, is Making Comics, by Scott McCloud (Harper Collins, 2006, New York, NY). The author draws and writes comics and books, and is an expert on comics, According to the back cover, Sin City creator Frank Miller called him "just about the smartest guy in comics". The book utilizes a comic-book approach to explaining them. In the process, the reader necessarily receives an insight to how emotions are dealt with in comics. The book will also make you better understand graphic novels and wonder why you never followed your early instinct to draw and write comics. More details can be seen by clicking on the cover icon on the right.

Posted at 09:00 PM in Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Good Products, Bad Products book, Management, ME 314 Stanford Course 2013, People, Product Quality, Stanford Good Products Bad Products Course | Permalink | Comments (0)

01/31/2013

Product Quality and High Heeled Shoes

For those of you following the class discussion blog , which contains the student choices for good products and bad products in the various categories covered in the course—if you double click on the titles, you will get the complete write-ups including the “comment” space, should you care to enter the discussion. Over the quarter, the discussions wll follow the flow of my Good Products Bad Products book.

The last class consisted of small groups of students commenting on the assignments to date followed by general discussion, and brought up a number of interesting points. Several comments were made that in many cases human fit and craftsmanship are often neglected because other elements of quality are seen as more important by marketing. But it is often, if not usually the case that they can and should be improved. Several examples were in the area of fashion products and cheap knock-offs of same. The emotional and cultural aspects of such products were seen to often swamp the functional, and such things as comfort, durability, maintainability, and craftsmanship often suffer.

The case of high-heeled shoes came up, as it usually does in this course. I know women who have spent many years in jobs in which high heeled shoes were standard wear, and, like many people, gained pleasure in following the path of fashion. But they are now paying the cost of having spent so much time having their toes stuffed into an inadequate and artificially shaped container, and walking with their ankles bent at an unnatural angle. The cost includes such things as hammer toes, bunions, sore ankles and other miscellaneous foot problems.

Being a man who has never been accused of being a fashion plate, and one who would probably wobble in high heels, I don’t quite understand the love women have for Jimmy Choo and his colleagues, but I accept that many would, if properly funded, challenge the shoe collection that made Imelda Marcos famous (or infamous). In fact, I would go further and suggest that looking at history from the binding of feet through the success of en pointe in classical ballet, to the size of Barbie doll feet and the staying power of spike heels high enough to leave the foot almost vertical, some women might be happier with no feet at all, or at least smaller versions relative to the leg, such as those possessed by horses.

But I won’t go into this obviously unsophisticated male viewpoint, because I have learned that I always lose in the following discussion. To me, it seems that it should be possible to produce woman’s shoes that not only fit and otherwise do their job well (athletic shoes, boots), but that are extraordinarily beautiful, lead in fashion, and are consistent with the plumage involved in “dressing up”.

At the end of my Good Products Bad Products book is a simple matrix suggesting that products can be scored according to their success in all of the quality elements in the book. My sentiments are clear.

Posted at 01:07 PM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Craftsmanship, Design, Emotions and Needs, Good Products, Bad Products book, Human fit, Management, ME 314 Stanford Course 2013, People, Product Quality, Stanford Good Products Bad Products Course | Permalink | Comments (0)

01/07/2013

The Stanford University 2013 Good Products Bad Products Course

January 8^th, 2013, is the first day of the winter quarter Good Products, Bad Products course (ME 214, 314) at Stanford University. I began this course in the 1980’s, and it has gone through several changes in name, course number, and department base since then. David Beach has been teaching it since I retired in 1999, and has changed it in many ways, although he has kept the intent of the course the same. He has continued to use my notes, and now that they have been published as a book, he is using it as a text in the course. Although it is listed as a graduate course in the school of engineering, it will include students from other parts of the campus as well. The majority of the class will consist of regular Stanford students, although there will be some part-time students who will be taking it remotely over the internet.

Classes will include a number of guest speakers representing companies and individuals concerned with and producing high quality products, lectures from David Beach, and discussions of the reading material, the speakers, and whatever other product-quality related concerns arise during the quarter. They will not only be reading and discussing my book, but will be doing exercises similar to the ones listed at the end of the chapters. They will write short papers on each, and I will talk about them and include some of the more interesting ones on this blog. I will attach a rough schedule to my next post to give you an idea of what occurs in each class meeting.

The course concludes with a series of consistently impressive presentations on the material in my book. Groups of students select the topic areas, do appropriate research, and being a bright and talented bunch with a love of media, come up with presentations that are entertaining as well as educational. I obviously cannot deliver the entire course in a blog to those of you reading my posts, but not taking the course. But I will keep you in touch with the course, forward student work when appropriate and interesting to you, and in doing so hopefully expose you a bit to the thinking of present day Stanford students. I will also continue to write posts on aspects of product quality design and manufacturing, and other topics not covered in the course. Please comment on my course-related posts, and I will forward the comments to the class, should they fit the activities that are under way. The more diversity in input to the students, the better, and any comments you make should result in lively discussions.

Although I have been retired from active teaching for many years, I continue to occupy an office on campus, drink the coffee, and heckle the people who continue to do the work. I still find the opening of winter quarter to be exciting. Although California weather is hard to complain about, it becomes a bit wetter in the San Francisco area, and the general energy level of the academic enterprise picks up a bit because it is not as much fun to go out and play. Hopefully I can convey a bit of this to you.

Welcome aboard!

Posted at 05:16 PM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Craftsmanship, Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Global Constraints, Good Products, Bad Products book, Human fit, Management, ME 314 Stanford Course 2013, People, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality, Stanford Good Products Bad Products Course, Symbolism and Cultural Values | Permalink | Comments (0)

01/03/2013

New Year's Resolution for People Making Industrial Products

I resolve to do what I can to improve the product I am working on —in fact to strive to help it become the best of its kind in the world—or if I think it is already is the best of its kind in the world, to work on improving it anyway, because someone is close behind.

In doing so, I resolve to consider not only the more easily measurable aspects of quality discussed by David Garvin in his now classic November 1987 HBR article (performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability) but also the more qualitative aspects covered in the Adams Good Products Bad Products book (perceived performance, performance/cost ratio, craftsmanship, consistency with human users and cultural values, aesthetic issues, sensitivity to finite resources and the environment, and finally emotional appeal. (Garvin did mention aesthetics and perceived quality in his article, which was entitled Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality, but brushed over them as being functions of individual judgment—Adams says hooray for individual judgment).

Finally I resolve to remain aware of the two cultures (the scientific and humanistic) mentioned in the Adams People and Products post of Nov 1, 2012, and to the extent that I have a bias, for instance, toward quantitative reasoning and logic (which are good) and away from aesthetics and feelings (which are not only good but powerfully affect people’s judgment of quality), or vice versa, I will do my best to get over it.

Posted at 08:10 PM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Books, Craftsmanship, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Global Constraints, Good Products, Bad Products book, Human fit, Management, People, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality, Symbolism and Cultural Values | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/17/2012

Product Quality and Balance

Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote a poem entitled “The One Hoss Shay”, that still is referenced by people associated with product design and development. It is about a mythical vehicle that is so well designed and crafted that it lasts 100 years without failing in any way, and then completely collapses as all of the parts simultaneously reach the end of their life span. If you want to read it, look here.

More of such balance in reliability and durability would be nice in modern products. Many products are annoying because some parts fail much earlier and more often than others, until finally these parts are no longer available and the whole product is junked.

But there is another type of balance, having more to do with quality. The photo is of my wife Marian in her 2004 Acura TSX, leaving early in the morning to control the world. We bought the car new to make up for a beloved Honda CRX that she drove for 18 years, until an evil person roared out of a driveway and destroyed it. She didn’t want a big car, needed to drive grand-kids and friends around, likes nimble and responsive cars, and at times can be a mild hot-rodder. The TSX is neither the fastest, the most beautiful, the most luxurious, the roomiest, or the best handling automobile available, but it is pretty good on all fronts. She has loved it absolutely for eight years. For her (and actually for me) it is an extraordinary blend. It is based on the so-called European Accord body (a bit smaller than the Accord sold in the U.S.) It has front wheel drive and the engine produces about 200 horsepower and is easy on fuel. It goes faster than either of us needs it to and is fitted with plenty of digital gadgets—Navigation system, climate control, sound system— but not so many that we will die messing with them while driving (a friend of mine has ceded the driving to his wife while he attends to the much more elaborate navigation system, the cell phones, the doors and windows, the TV, the climate control and sound system, and so on.) The TSX is also clearly a product of Honda, and we have always liked such things.

I spoke of David Garvin’s now classic article in the Nov 1, 1987 Harvard Business Review, entitled “Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality” in my post of Nov. 1, 2012. The dimensions he discusses are performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability, aesthetics, and perceived quality. The TSX gets high grades on all of them. In my book Good Products, Bad Products, I discuss performance and cost, human fit, craftsmanship, emotional response, aesthetics, cultural fit, and global fit. The TSX also gets high grades on all of them.

In the design, development, and marketing of many products, we often tend to emphasize only a few components of quality. These days we are excited about digital control. I just bought a new dishwasher. Since the old one failed in its rather complicated control circuitry, and since I couldn’t find replacement parts that I considered reasonably priced, I bought a new one with the fewest cycles and options I could find. I finally found one with only(?) five possible cycles, three options, a delay, and a large row of warning lights. Of course, we only use the “normal” button. The dishwasher will probably fail because of the circuitry necessary to allow it to do something we don’t ever use. As people used to say when I worked at the Jet Propulstion Lab, “Reliability is fewer parts”—that's electrical as well as mechanical.

Good Products should rate high in all components of quality—just like the One Hoss Shay did in reliability and durability.

Posted at 09:25 AM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Craftsmanship, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Global Constraints, Good Products, Bad Products book, Human fit, Management, People, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality, Symbolism and Cultural Values | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/15/2012

Metropolitan Opera HD Simulcasts - an outstanding product

I have always occasionally listened to an opera recording at home, and have seen a few operas live, but never considered myself an opera fan. I never much liked sopranos and was not thrilled by the traffic, the cost, and the crowds involved with live opera, and could hardly believe that people actually sat through Wagner’s Ring cycle, a couple of the operas being some five hours long. But I must admit I did not sit very close to the stage. In fact, one might say I occupied the cheap seats.

Two years ago some friends of ours suggested that my wife and I attend one of the New York Met Simulcasts , and now I am an extreme opera fan. Purist friends of mine claim that these simulcasts cannot compare with being at a live production, but maybe there is an analogy between being at a live football game and watching one televised with high definition onto a huge screen with outstanding sound, except met simulcasts are not interrupted by commercials, action is continuous, and the camera work and sound are to my mind far superior to those bringing you football games. Also, the subtitles are superior to haranguing football announcers, and the behind the scenes interviews and insights into the productions are wonderful. There is something to be said for live events, but also a great deal to be said for these simulcasts.

To mention a few related advantages, the theater where we watch these is only a couple miles from our home, parking is plentiful and free a hundred feet from the entrance, seats are large and comfortable with immense leg room and arms with cup holders, everything from popcorn to ice cream and coffee are available in the lobby, and extreme informality in clothing is welcomed. Finally, tickets are $20 or so. In my personal opinion these productions are much superior to the cheap seats at live performances.

What have I learned? Opera performers are incredible actors if watched up close, modern technology and huge screens do justice to the productions, and the subtitles and information that are available at the productions make operas easy to follow. I am now most fond of Wagner’s Ring cycle, and I now like sopranos. Finally, the productions do an excellent job of humanizing the performers and give insight into the impressive staging required.

To me, these simulcast performances are a use of technology I have difficulty criticizing (a unique experience for me). I often curse my computer, sometimes my car and leaky toilets, and always automobile traffic, but never these performances. To me they are miracles worth far more than $20, and I cry when the hero/heroine dies—which is usually.

Posted at 09:26 AM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Craftsmanship, Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Human fit, Management, People, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality, Science, Technology, and Society | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/05/2012

Good Can Opener, Bad Can Opener

The photo shows two can openers that live in my kitchen, One is an electric model designed by Michael Graves (a very famous designer) as part of a line of kitchen utensils for Target and manufactured by Black and Decker, the one in the foreground is a traditional hand operated one made by Norpro. The Michael Graves design has a sleek, sophisticated shape, is easy to clean (the cutting unit slips off and into the dish washer), and has a cute/humorous look about it (note pink and blue knobs). My wife loves it, and in fact has our kitchen liberally equipped with Michael Graves designed utensils, The Norpro one is a mechanism that has been around for many years, now outfitted with larger, easier to use handles. I would describe the Graves can opener as a delight to have on one’s sink, and the Norpro one as an honest and perhaps brutally functional design.

But, the Norpro device opens cans beautifully, and the Graves machine does not. The Norpro version allows one to clamp the rim of the can tightly between the blade and the serrated drive wheel as the blade does its work. The blade rotates along with the drive wheel, helping the process and delivering a rotary cut. The Graves version requires that the can be held rather skillfully against a stop as the smaller drive wheel drives the can against a stationary blade. My wife has learned the necessary skill to hold the can in exactly the proper position in the Graves can opener so that the can will behave. I have not learned the necessary skill, and have to put up with re-starting the cut several times as the can is rejected, hopefully into my hand rather than onto the floor.

To me, two great lessons are apparent from these two can openers. The first has to do with the power of the more emotional aspects of product quality discussed in my Good Products, Bad Products book. For my wife, these are more important than the crummy can opening job the Graves model does. The second is that good performance should be required before a product can be called good. Designers are often justifyingly criticized for exciting and beautiful products that don’t do their job well. For me, the Norpro can opener does its job so well in comparison with the Graves can opener that it is an excellent product, independently of its lack of sophisticated form. Furthermore, the Norpro model costs less and has fewer parts to break.—and it opens bottles to boot.

Finally, why do we need electric can openers? Years ago, cans were heavily used to preserve and distribute food, but now we have gone toward plastic containers and packages, frozen food, and rapidly delivered fresh food. We use much less canned food than we used to, so the can opener does not see nearly as much service. The hand-operated device can easily be dropped into a drawer when not used, dropped as a unit into the dish washer, and does not require an outlet plug or use electrical energy (not that energy for electric can openers ranks high among global problems).

I have an old electric lunch box in my office. It is made of aluminum and shaped like a standard lunch box, except it has a heating element in the base and an electric cord coiled in a compartment. Above the heating compartment is a chamber with a lid to heat soup or other hot food, and a small surface to make toast or grill a sandwich. I show it to people because most of them have never seen such a thing, and it invariably makes them laugh, because it seems like a foolish thing. But I don’t think it is as foolish as an electric can opener.

Posted at 08:30 AM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Management, People, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality, The nature of technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/01/2012

C.P. Snow, the Two Cultures, and Product Quality

C.P. Snow, a scientist turned novelist, is remembered partly for a talk he gave (the Rede Lecture of 1959 ) entititled "The Two Cultures", in which he made the point that the intellectual life of western society was split into two cultures, the humanistic and the scientific, and that this hindered our ability to solve many problems. This was followed by a widely read book of the same title. I talked about this in my post of 07/29/2012.

From my experience in industry and in academia, the issue is very much alive. The illustration by Matt Collins is from a column by Lawrence Kraus in the 07/29/2009 Scientific American, which celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the Snow’s Rede Lecture. His column can easily be applied to the present election campaigns. I am personally a believer in Snow's thesis, and since I enjoy both of these cultures, I have been often frustrated by people’s tendency to join one and criticize the other.

The outlooks of both cultures are necessary to secure high product quality. In a classic article entitled Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality in the November 1987 Harvard Business Review, David Garvin discussed the topic of product quality, and then listed the following necessary elements— Performance, Features, Reliability, Conformance, Durability, Serviceability, Aesthetics, and Perceived Quality. This was a time when U.S. industry had spent great effort on, and achieved great success in radically improving the quality of its products, spurred on by Japanese competition and the realization that improved quality led not only to added value, but decreased costs.

But although recognizing the importance of the final two elements, Garver did not emphasize them as hard as the others, because as he explained, he felt that judgment was not as universal in the case of aesthetics, and intangibles, such as advertising and brand names, influenced the customer"s perception of quality. The first six of his topics are easier to quantify, and be handled in a more scientific way (measured), but aesthetics and perceived quality certainly play a large role in the decision process of the consumer.

When I wrote my Good Products Bad Products Book I suggested a number of elements that were perhaps more on the humanistic side than the scientific—perception of performance and cost, human fit, craftsmanship, overall emotional impact, aesthetics, elegance and sophistication, symbolism and cultural fit, and finally consistency with global limits ( a topic both scientific and humanistic). I did so because I felt that they received less attention than they deserved in Industry, compared with the first six listed by David Garvin.

Although both scientific (if you would technical and quantitative) thinking and humanistic thinking are required for high product quality, continual effort is necessary to cause such a thing to happen. Even in the relatively large design activity in the Stanford Engineering school, where my office is located and where everyone would probably claim they support the merging of Snow’s two cultures, a walk around shows local areas where the white boards are covered with equations, and others where they are covered with sketches and post-it notes—not many with both. Much of the university, like much of the world, seems to tend to divide over mathematics. A few years ago, the Stanford Anthropology Department actually formally split into those who worshipped such things as probability and statistics, and those who did not. Fortunately, it has now been put back together, and can resume arguing about which of two equally necessary approaches is more important.

In many companies with which I am familiar, the split is even more apparent.

Posted at 07:11 AM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Craftsmanship, Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Global Constraints, Good Products, Bad Products book, Human fit, Management, People, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality, Science, Technology, and Society, Symbolism and Cultural Values, The nature of technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

10/25/2012

Good Products —the Joy of Stapling

This is my Arrow Heavy Duty T-50 Staple gun. I have owned it for many years, and it must qualify as a classic as it is still being made. Although powered staplers are available, they require wrestling with either pneumatic lines, electric cords, or discharged batteries, and I don’t need one, since I do not drive staples all day long. This stapler drives staples ranging from l/4 to 9/16 inch long, and such staples are invaluable for doing things such as fastening fabric or screening to wood, fastening panels to frameworks, and accomplishing other tasks in which nail and screw heads are too small.

It definitely qualifies as a good product by the criteria in my Good Products, Bad Products book. It is reasonably priced, seems to be highly reliable and long lived, since I have owned it many years and it has never failed me, bangs staples home with a vengeance, fits me very well,, is extremely well made, and is highly thought of in the culture of amateur, but capable builders and repair and maintenance people (of which I am a member). Although I am not aware that it is the Museum of Modern art in New York, it is a clean and functional design, and its unusually bright plating allows it to be easily found if its owner has a shop in which tools hang on nails, but usually do not return to the nails which they have previously occupied (me again). The stapler is easily understood, simple to load and use (no video or confusing manual required), mechanically elegant, and gentle on the environment.

And I have come to love it. I have an open barn, which as well as holding a great deal of wonderful objects my wife categorizes as junk, also contains a sprinkling of restored vehicles and other equipment and a few motorcycles and go-karts. It seems to be very attractive to owls, especially in the rainy season. I like owls, and they are nice to have in barns because rats and mice, who like to eat and use as nest materials such things as wiring harness insulation and seat cushions, stay away.. But owls are large animals, and they seem to have made the roof trusses in my barn into the official owl rest-room in the area.

Owl poop is seriously awful, since it is sticks to everything, seems to be impervious to water and most common solvents, and when finally removed, takes a bit of paint with it. So I decided to interfere with their pleasure by making it more difficult to roost on the truss members. The barn is 20 feet high, but I have a friend who owns a large forklift that is capable of reaching a 15 foot height, so I spent a few hours happily standing in a fruit box on the forks stapling bird netting to the appropriate truss members while he whirled me around the barn. It was really fun. The weather was perfect, the ride was exhilarating, and my stapler gave me the power to put the netting exactly where I wanted to. I don’t know if I have won the battle, because owls are indeed very wise, but I wouldn’t mind at all if I had to do more of the same. Tools are to extend the capability of your body, and the stapler certainly did (of course the fork lift did also). I would have looked pretty foolish trying to handle heavy sheets of netting 15 feet in the air while working a hammer or screw driver with one hand and holding nails or screws with the other.

But upon writing this post, I realize am also very fond of my Swingline model 747 desk stapler in this photo. I have also had it for many years, initially acquiring it for no cost after it was unclaimed after a large office move. It too is reliable, long-lived, elegant in operation, humble but pleasing in appearance, easy to operate, and gentle on the environment. And it always responds and never argues with me. In fact looking at this picture makes me realize that my desk is mostly covered by digital things that are always requiring and often frustrating. The stapler simply sits there and responds beautifully to having paper stuffed into its mouth and being hit on the head. I probably sometimes take out my frustration with my electronic equipment by hitting my stapler much harder than is needed, even though it is a most faithful servant.

And looking at the photograph, I also notice a few paper clips on my desk—even simpler classic products that do their jobs beautifully. And they are also useful for many other tasks, from cleaning fingernails to opening the spouts of old glue bottles.

Posted at 08:00 AM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Craftsmanship, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Human fit, Management, People, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality, Symbolism and Cultural Values, Working with the hands | Permalink | Comments (0)

10/08/2012

Science, Technology, and Society — Electric Cars

For some ten years, I chaired the STS (Science, Technology, and Society) program at Stanford University. There are many such programs in Universities, usually struggling for money and recognition. In the case of Stanford, it was not particularly loved by the Engineering School, partly because to study technology in a social setting is to become a bit critical of various aspects of it, and partly because the Engineering School prefers to spend its resources on producing professionals in their field, as do schools such as Medicine, Business, and Law. It seems that in a society such as the U.S., people simply want to accept technology and science as good, and are not that interested in either their nature, or where they come from, especially if mathematics is involved. When Jerry Weisner, an extraordinarily idealistic, bright, and politically connected man, was president of M.I.T., he attempted to start an entire STS school. Midst the political interests and overall lack of interest by Engineering and Science faculty members, he failed. There are some faculty who teach and do research in the area at M.I.T, but not even a department, nor is there at Stanford.

I feel strongly that since the U.S. is so committed to science and technology, general education should talk more about such things. I wrote a book on the difference between science and technology some years ago (Flying Buttresses, Entropy, and O-Rings, published by Harvard Press), and I think it is a good book, but the sales have been relatively modest. Many people would rather lump the two together as a field filled with people wearing pocket protectors and white coats, and in the case of success would just as soon give credits to “young scientists”, rather than learning about the processes involved.

I was reminded of the STS issue by a relatively small article in the October 7 New York Times Magazine entitled Why Your Car Isn’t Electric, in which there are a few quotes from STS people. The article is here. STS people sometimes argue about whether science and technology are more socially determined (what people want), or technology determined (what is possible). The answer is some of both. Products must be technologically feasible, but also wanted by the society. But directions of technology and science that are backed by lots of resources and demand win out, and become dominant as people get used to them and the infrastructure develops, Did you know your refrigerator might be powered by gas, were it not for all the money that General Electric had long ago? Those of you who are older might remember Servel.

Automobiles are the topic of this article. As is pointed out, the largest carmaker in the United States at the turn of the 20^th century was the Electrical Vehicle Company, which owned 30% of the electric cars in the county (it leased its cars) but was driven into bankruptcy by, as the article says, “a series of shady business dealings”. This gave an opportunity to people building petroleum fueled vehicles, who then improved their products over the years, until they became the definition of “cars”. Now it is very difficult to convince people to try other types of transportation. As an example of extraordinary efforts, the article informed me (I am not a Prius owner) that the Prius creeps forward when one takes one’s foot off of the brake, a feature not necessary, but included so it feels like a “real” car.

To me the nature of science and engineering and the forces that shape them is fascinating. I encourage you to dive into such issues a bit more. It may clarify questions such as whey are we making cities unusable at certain times of the day by clogging them with large petroleum-burning vehicles that are designed to go 70 miles per hour, but often can hardly move. Also why we developed nuclear weapons to worry about, and why we are automating so many people out of jobs.

Posted at 11:31 AM in Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Management, People, Performance, Cost, and Price, Science, Technology, and Society, The nature of technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

09/13/2012

Spacecraft and Cars

As the publicity says, the Curiosity Rover now on Mars (seen here from a Martian orbiter while descending under its parachute) is the size of a small car, about one ton, roughly comparable to a Mini Cooper. (2,500 lbs). But it is vastly more complicated, able to withstand the environment of launch from earth, and the entry and landing environments of Mars, as well as to operate with no maintenance through the three year or so lifetime of the flight (35 million miles) and surface operation.

Granted that although the environment of space used to frighten designers of spacecraft, it is now seen as fairly benign, since we have learned to control temperatures, orient ourselves, and correct trajectories on route. But the launch, entry, and landing present formidable problems in temperature control, structural design, communications, propulsion, and other areas to the designers of space craft, and the reliabily requirements are off the chart. Also, there is intense competition for being able to fly an instrument on such spacecraft, and launch vehicles are limited, so weight is of extreme importance. The Curiosity includes ten extremely complex scientific experiments in its weight, as well as the ability to move over unknown terrain, generate the necessar power, and communicate with earth.

When I worked at JPL, spacecraft were not nearly as complex, and often failed because we were just learning the game. But even then, we used to wonder about what was with cars. Why did they weigh 2 tons, when all they had to do was move down roads under human control? Why all the structure? It was certainly possible to make sufficiently stiff structure for much less weight Why did they only last for 200,000 miles or so? At 25 miles per hour, that was only 8,000 hours. The Voyager I. shown at the right , was launched 35 years ago (over 300,000 hours) has now traveled over 11 billion miles and is about to be the first object we have made to leave the solar system entirely.

Admittedly, once the Voyager left we humans, with our ability to damage things, it has had a pretty easy ride, and electronics seem to be more reliable than mechanical device, but still……

In the Sept 9 2012 issue of the New York Times, there was a review by Lawrence Ulrich of the Chevrolet Spark, a small car designed, engineered, and built in Korea, which will be sold in the U .S. The reviewer heroically tried to be positive about the car, although he could not help calling it such things as a “demented toaster”, and describing it as a “squashed face carnival buggy”. But right after the review was an article entitled “Taking the ‘Cheap’ Out of the Small Car”. Although the bias toward “big” (read heavy, “luxurious, ”over-powered, and canceling out the feel of the road) still showed, there were indications that car designers are finally closing with the problem of making more efficient and better designed transportation machines. But it did make me wonder. Where did we get this idea of and desire for “luxury” as it is defined in automobiles (and often expensive bordellos)? Why did we decide we didn’t want to hear any noise or feel the road? Why did we decide that we wanted driving to be as automatic as possible, rather than requiring more involvement of we drivers? And finally, how did we get caught in our strange expectations about what transportation machines should be?

I am still hanging on to a 1975 Alfa Romeo and a !970 Jaguar E-Type that have been in the family a long time and which I am in the process of restoring. They are not all that reliable by modern standards. I certainly don’t drive them between San Francisco and Los Angeles. And my wife’s Acura beats them as far as handling, speed, and yes, luxury, are concerned. But for most of my driving, they will be much more fun. And as for weight, it has become increasingly critical as fuel becomes more expensive and materials become more scarce (do you really think fuel prices will decrease with our new Frac gas? Wait until we add enough tax to repair our failing roads—hello European prices).

Indianapolis race cars weigh about 1500 pounds, are capable of well over 200 miles per hour, and seem to allow drivers to survive horrendous crashes. Can’t we at least make automobiles to go to the grocery store that weigh under a ton and also please Mr Ulrich?

Posted at 06:00 AM in Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Global Constraints, Human fit, Management, People, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality, Symbolism and Cultural Values | Permalink | Comments (0)

09/06/2012

Classic Products and Product Quality

My wife brought not only her wonderful self to our marriage, but also a classic Kitchenaid mixer. They both become even more wonderful as the years pass. But let’s talk about the mixer here. This is a photograph of it. It was originally light green, but at one time she was so in love with her Honda CRX, that I painted the mixer to match, even though it did not go around corners as fast. It is a product that is often called iconic, and after its birth in 1919, it arrived in pretty much its present form in the mid 1950’s. Its Wikipedia based history is here. It will undoubtedly outlive both my wife and me.

We both cook, and from time to time I try to perfect bread, so we do quite a bit of heavy-duty mixing. The mixer never even breathes hard. The top locks down, and the speed is variable. No other controls—none needed. The mixing tools skim the bowl inner surface, and everything is easy to clean. It is heavy enough that it does not move around the counter, the bowl secures to the base with a simple part-turn, its form screams MIXER, and no instruction book is needed to operate it. Also it has never broken in its 50 years of life.

It is easy to use, reliable and serviceable, beautifully made, elegant, makes one feel like a big-time chef, and does not involve disposable items. I love it. It gets high grades on all of the items in my Good Products, Bad Products book. The present version is definitely relatively expensive compared to the lower mixer prices at Walmart or even Target, but to me well worth the money, since obviously this older model does its duty magnificently and will continue through at least one human lifetime. Since we haven’t owned a new one for 50 years, I can’t vouch for their quality, but I am hoping Kitchenaid hasn’t succumbed to lowering the quality to reduce their costs.

Of course, by producing a mixer like this, Kitchenaid gives up the opportunity to produce a cheaper new model with “advanced” features and a shorter lifetime every few years, thereby opening up marketing opportunities and a chance to hook customers into buying new ones more often. Undoubtedly it would be easy to include a bit of digital memory that held all known recipes—and for all I know someone is doing that. But come on……….

I always think hard when I like something that I have grown up with or had a long time, to try make sure that I am not giving up a better option by giving too much credit to sentiment and what I am used to. But I usually conclude that if products stay around in near to their original form for long enough to be called “classic”, or “iconic”, there is something going on there. If you are a consumer, it is worth figuring out what it is, and demanding it from industrially produced products, If you are a producer, focus on making such products. They are better for your brand than all the advertising you can buy.

Posted at 12:28 PM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Craftsmanship, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Global Constraints, Human fit, Management, People, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality, Symbolism and Cultural Values | Permalink | Comments (0)

07/25/2012

Products and Personality

This is a photo of my 1943 Ford Jeep being driven around by one of my kids and family a few years ago. I acquired it about 35 years ago from a farmer friend. It had definitely paid for itself. It was stripped of everything that could be removed, had elements of many different colors of paint on it, and came complete with drainage holes made in the floor with a pick, no brakes, and a cracked block. But it ran!

Happily, all parts were and are available for it, and it was built to be easily maintained. If you have ever wondered, the side handles are to enable four people to lift the body off after removing a few bolts, thus exposing everything. My oldest kid was approaching driver’s license age, and the others were feeling strong car envy, so my plan (successful) was to make it into a kid driving machine.

It was easy to find the necessary replacement parts and I used the time-honored crack treatment of inserting screws into overlapping tapped holes until they broke off – no further problem. Despite the lack of seat belts, turn signals, and most other now-required safety devices, I licensed it, and we were in business.

Despite the fact that it is slow, noisy, hard to steer, hard to stop, open to wind and rain, and without any sign of effort to provide comfort, I love it, even though it would seem to violate many of the “essential” elements of product quality that I talk about in my Good Products, Bad Products book.

It simply drips with personality, and I have had it apart so many times that we know each other well. I have slowly replaced the parts that were missing when I acquired it, and during its life with me it has been in good mechanical shape, A few years ago I spiffed it up and gave it the paint job of the fighter squadron my aging Air Force boss had been a member of in World War II in order to give him a chuckle. Oddly enough, when many people see it for the first time, they are torn between not understanding why I have it, and thinking maybe they would like one.

I wonder whether any products I am purchasing now will be loved in this manner 35 years from now. Somehow I doubt it.

Posted at 07:54 PM in Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Management, People, Product Quality, Working with the hands | Permalink | Comments (0)

06/24/2012

Quality, Decision Making, and Logic

I am particularly fascinated by the illogical and non-scientific components of human decision making — even among logicians and scientists. Three of my favorite books have to do with this, and I recommend them to anyone who has not read them – particularly if they are involved in engineering, science, or business and concerned with product quality. They are not fresh off the press, but I recently looked through them, and was again pleased with their style and message.

The first two, Predictable Uncertainty, by Dan Ariely, and Nudge, by Richard Thaler, and Cass Sunstein, are often associated with behavioral economics (see the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman discussed in my post of Dec 15, 2011). Ariely’s book, which reposed in the New York Times top seller list for a considerable time, contains a wondrous collections of examples of “illogical” decision_making drawn from research in the field and thought-provoking facts (a tape measure once owned by John F. Kennedy went for $48,875 dollars at an auction, and the 70^th home run ball hit by Mark McGwire for three million at another one). Arieli’s background was originally in psychology, although he at one point also earned a Ph,D in business. He now holds forth as a Professor at Duke and in many other locations.

Richard Thaler, co-author of Nudge, is a professor in the Chicago School of Economics, with a background in economics and is a behavior economist. He obviously a stong person, because one does not think of this school as a wondrously supportive environment for behavioral economists. Cass Sunstein is a Law Professor at Harvard, although he is now on leave as part of President Obama’s staff (Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs) where he is attempting to better apply the messages in the book . Among other things the book proposes (and backs up) the amazing power of small interventions to change people’s behavior. An example is the difference between requiring effort to volunteer organs on death (complete a form that you are willing to donate), vs requiring effort to not volunteer (complete a form that you are not willing to donate) . The resulting difference is huge, and for many reasons. But at least in California, we are using the wrong approach and complaining about the scarcity of transplant organs. Nudge is in a sense a bit more applied than Predictable Uncertainty, but built on the same principles.

The third book, How Pleasure Works, was written by Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale, It is also extremely pertinent to Product Quality. The first two books bear more on how and why people make decisions, this one is more about the mechanics of and reasons for emotional response. Bloom talks about origins of emotion, and how strongly and why people respond to non-functional aspects of objects – authenticity, rarity, history, uniqueness, and essences of objects that are based on our experiences and our species.

All three of these books are beautifully written, and amusing to read. The reader cannot help by identify with the examples. We often come across “silly” behavior in experiments and situations, only to realize that we either also act in that way, or might if put in the situation. These books guarantee a great deal of such experiences. An example might be the increased value placed on something one owns, such as a used and faithful automobile) versus what one might pay for an identical object one does not own (an identical car on a used car lot) – this often appears in the discrepancy between asking price from an owner and offer from a prospective buyer.

Buttons representing each book are on the right side of the blog under recommended books, and clicking on them will take you rapidly to the appropriate Amazon page, should you want more information.

Posted at 12:48 PM in Books, Design, Emotions and Needs, Good Products, Bad Products book, Management, People, Product Quality, Science, Technology, and Society, The nature of technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

06/11/2012

Hammers and Quality

Tools that have evolved over many years tend to be of high quality and often survive breakthroughs in technology. Think of the common hammer, one of my favorite tools. It has certainly benefited from many years of development, and still holds its own despite the presence of nail guns, which have captured a large piece of the “commercial” market because of their speed.

I was introduced to “hand” tools early in life, as my family used few power tools and did all of its own construction. Here is a photo of me at 21 months of age, helping build the family house.

I had my own small hammer, and was attacking a nail that was a bit beyond my size, but I was definitely encouraged to learn to use tools. And I did. And the basic skills have served me very well indeed.

One advantage of the common hammer, is that not only does it perform its job well, but it has not changed a great deal over my life. The two hammers in the photo below are one used by my grandfather, which I acquired upon his death 60 years ago and have used constantly since then, and one I acquired a few years ago because it is heavier and better suited for framing.

Evidence of maturity can be seen because there is not a lot of difference between the two, even though the one with the wooden handle may be pushing 100 years of age. Having trained on my little childhood hammer, I seem to be able to pick up any hammer—new, old, mine, my neighbor’s, one in our student shop or belonging to anyone in my family— and use it equally well with no training, no short course, and no manual/video. It is a hugely flexible tool, useful for everything from driving nails to demolishing unwanted structures, preventing pieces of paper from blowing around, and scratching my back. And it does not need time to boot, deliver spam to me, post advertisements, crash, or die.

Examining the hammer in the context of my Good Products, Bad Products book, it certainly delivers great value for its cost, fits me, is nicely made, is a beautiful, elegant, and sophisticated device, gives me membership in a culture I respect (those who work with hand tools), is very easy on the environment, and I obviously love it. Happiness to me is building things, and nothing surpasses banging on things with my hammer.

Posted at 07:40 AM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Craftsmanship, Design, Emotions and Needs, Global Constraints, Human fit, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality, Symbolism and Cultural Values, Working with the hands | Permalink | Comments (0)

05/10/2012

Two More Dave Beach Questions

In Dave Beach and my “conversation” described in my April 16 post, the next two questions from him, after “why is manufacturing important”, were “why is product quality important”t, and “how are the chapter concepts in your Good Products, Bad Products book related”.

Product Quality is important for three reasons:

1. Competitiveness

2. The Quality of Life

3. Motivation and Self Image

For the foreseeable future, businesses will continue to compete, probably globally, and hopefully material well-being will rise, at least in poorer nations. It is also probable that businesses in wealthier countries will have continuing problems competing with businesses in poorer countries in the production of lower quality products, Also higher quality products have a marketplace advantage and are both more attractive at the same cost (Toyota automobiles), and offer higher profitability at a higher cost (Apple iPhones),

Technology is hopefully for the purpose of benefiting us humans. It should satisfy our needs, make our lives more interesting, keep us healthier, maintain our environment, and decrease hardship. If it does not do such things, it fails. In a sense, overall product quality can be measured by how much a product improves the quality of life.

It is extremely rewarding to be involved in the production of use of an outstanding product. Organizations producing such products and the people working in them are proud of their role. People associated with them become more involved in their work and more productive. The United States used to be very proud of the label “Made in America”. Wouldn’t it be nice to get there again – to feel that whatever we produced, it was the best in the world?

The Chapters in my book have to do with the performance, cost, and price of industrial products, compatibility of the products with the human user, craftsmanship in the production of them, emotional reaction to them, aesthetic appeal of them, the symbolism and cultural fit of them, and consistency of the products with global constraints (environment, etc.) These factors are related in that they are all essential in the production of them and benefits to the user, and difficult to handle quantitatively. At first glance such things as performance, cost, and price, seem easily measurable, but it is more difficult to do so over the lifetime of products and when the subtleties of perception are included. As one proceeds through the chapters, metrics become more and more difficult to describe the quality of the product and the reaction of the user. Love? Beauty? Elegance? Symbolism? When it comes to global constraints, it becomes simpler to attach numbers to such things as supply of resources, severity of pollution, global warming, and loss of species, but for many (most?) people there seems to be a good bit of resistance to using these numbers and the desire to collectively bury our heads in the sand and hope the problems are not real.

I will delve further into this in a future post.

Posted at 05:20 PM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Craftsmanship, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Global Constraints, Good Products, Bad Products book, Management, People, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/16/2012

General Topics on Manufacturing and Product Quality

Since the Stanford ME 314 Good Products, Bad Products course is now over, I will leave the topic. Should any of you reading this blog be teaching a similar course, or if you would like to do so, contact Dave Beach (dbeach@stanford.edu), and he will be glad to send you information or conspire with you.

I am scheduled to give a few talks on my book, as part of the routine of bringing it to people’s attention. Dave and I did a “conversation” on the topics contained in the book to a couple of hundred people on the Stanford campus last week, and it was fun. The format called for Dave to ask me questions, and for me to answer them as best as I could. I actually had the easier role, because I had the option of muttering a few words and then saying “what do you think, Dave?”.

I thought it might be of interest to discuss a few of the questions and answers (?) with you. The questions are here. Look through them and think about how you might answer them. I thought that beginning with the next post, I would give you my personal, perhaps biased opinion on some of them. But just so you know that the U.S. is not alone in worrying about such questions, here is an interesting article on Japanese concerns about the topic of manufacturing that was on the front page of the April 16 edition of the New York Times.

Posted at 01:37 PM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Craftsmanship, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Global Constraints, Good Products, Bad Products book, Human fit, Making, Fixing, and Tinkering, Management, People, Performance, Cost, and Price, Product Quality, Symbolism and Cultural Values | Permalink | Comments (0)

03/13/2012

Update #5 Stanford University course ME 314

Two more Good Products, Bad Products topics have been covered by student presentations since the last post. Four of them focused on Craftsmanship. The companies chosen were Heath Ceramics, Ferrari, West Coast Classic and Customs, and Casa Na Avore. Edith Heath founded Heath Ceramics in the 1940’s, and the company, has clung to her standards, and several of her designs, as it has slowly grown. Ferrari is wedded to high craftsmanship for both performance and traditional reasons. West Coast Classic and Customs is a local company that specializes in both restoration to original (or better) condition, or resto-rods. Casa Na Avore is a Brazilian architecture form that specializes in tree houses.

The next four groups gave presentation on companies/products that dealt with emotion and human needs. The first two were Tone Fitness (dumbbells), Disney (Disneyland), Diageo (Captain Morgan Spiced Rum), and Phillip Morris (Marlboro cigarettes). The group presenting Tone Fitness stressed the user support and motivational information, and did an interesting informal survey that correlated love of the product with the frequency of its use. Apparently people who buy exercise equipment and do not use it grow to hate it, whereas those who use it regularly become quite fond of it. Disneyland needs no explanation. I have had many opportunities to visit it, since when my kids were growing up I lived in Southern California. I clearly remember how much I hated to take them to it, and strangely enough, what a good time I had when there. People like to criticize it, its prices, its long lines, etc., but it truly is a marvel. Even the French now like it.

It was interesting that both liquor and cigarettes were chosen this year as examples of products that were associated with strong emotions and, for better or worse, strong needs. I was embarrassed to realize I had devoted little attention to drugs such as nicotine and alcohol in my book. They are both endemic to our species, and highly controversial. An interesting point brought up in conjunction with Marlboro cigarettes, is that their advertising budget continues to climb even though it is now restricted in format. They are putting more of it into sponsoring athletic events, point of purchase, and, of course, in countries other than the U.S. An interesting statistic about alcohol, is that is apparently involved in one out of every 25 deaths (75,000 total, 16,000 in automobiles), 40% of suicides, and 60% of murders. And yes, I drink it.

The presentations, as is usual for the course, were top notch and highly entertaining, complete with volunteers from the audience and costumes. I think it fair to say that Dave Beach (and I) were quite satisfied.

I am not including URL’s for these companies and products, because your browser will have no problem in finding them, should you want to find out more. The submissions by last year's students for products showing good craftsmanship are shown here, and for products showing poor craftsmanship here. Similarly those paying strong attention to good fit with emotions and needs are shown here. Those doing less well at considering emotions and needs are here.

Posted at 12:53 PM in Craftsmanship, Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Good Products, Bad Products book, Management, ME 314 Stanford Course 2012, People, Product Quality, Stanford Good Products Bad Products Course | Permalink | Comments (0)

02/20/2012

Stanford Good Products Bad Products course (ME 314) update #3

The students continue to read my Good Products, Bad Products book and for each chapter submit examples of good and bad products, guesses as to why the bad ones might be bad, and ideas of improving them. Since the class is large, the amount of information is too large to include in this blog. But each of the student groups that will present the final summaries is reading all of the submissions having to do with their topics and giving us a short summary of them. I will include one of the summaries for Craftsmanship here, one for Emotions and Needs here, and one for Aesthetics, Elegance and Sophistication here.

I will not include any of the good and bad product write ups from the students here, but I will include summaries of good and bad products from the 2011 class. Products showing good craftsmanship are here, and poorly crafted products are here. Examples of good products as far as Emotions and Needs are here, and bad ones are here. Some products considered beautiful are shown here. And some thought to be elegant are here. Finally, here is a list of products that the students found to be repulsive!

During this time period, Peter Mondavi, the Co-proprietor of the Charles Krug Winery, was a guest speaker. This is one of the older wineries in the Napa valley, and is noted for the quality of its wine. The Krug home page is here. The class also read from the book Natural History of the Senses, by Diane Ackerman (Knopf Doubleday). This is one of my favorite books, and I have added it to my recommended list to the right. She is a wonderful writer and not only talks about the senses, but is able to convey their power through words and stories.

The class also took a field trip the Littlefield Collection of restored military vehicles. Jacques Littlefield, who unfortunately died a couple of years ago, was one of my favorite people. I had the opportunity to get to know him well because he was a student at Stanford when I joined the faculty in the 1960's, and one of the most regular customers of the student shop. As projects, he made radio controlled model army tanks. Upon graduation, he accepted a job in manufacturing at Hewlett Packard. When he decided to retire in his late 20's, I realized that perhaps he had access to money, and indeed he did, being the son of Ed Littlefield, a billionaire.

Jacques spend most of his life, effort, and quite a bit of money collecting and restoring military vehicles, especially tracked one. By the time of his death he had put together not only the largest private collection of tanks in the world, but probably the most beautifully and accurately restored ones. The collection consists of approximately 100 tanks, and another 100 military vehicles of other types.

The field trip was for several purposes. The collection shows an amazing level of craftsmanship. It also demonstrates the love of a person for machines. Jacques had access to enough money to do anything he wanted to, and he elected to spend much of his life working on and understanding a particular tpe of industrial product. The collection results in strong, and sometimes mixed, emotions, on the part of the students. And finally, although brutal devices of war, the mechanisms involved often demonstrate a high degree of elegance. Jacques also loved trains and other equipment, and his home was complete with one of the largest 7-1/2 inch gauge model train layout on the west coast. The San Francisco Live Steam club continues to hold forth there. And he donated the beautiful organ in the Stanford chapel, and liked it and the people who manufactured it that he had one installed in a specially built addition to his house. As usual, the trip was most successful.

Posted at 07:12 AM in Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication, Craftsmanship, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Management, ME 314 Stanford Course 2012, ME314 Stanford Course 2011, People, Product Quality, Stanford Good Products Bad Products Course | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/22/2011

Conceptual Blockbusting

I will shortly start writing posts about the “Good Products, Bad Products” book being published by McGraw Hill and which has just left the bindery and is scheduled to be in stores and on sale over the web by January 13^th. But first I would like to write a couple more posts about creativity, innovation, and change, because the book argues for more emphasis on product quality, in particular on a number of aspects of quality that in my opinion receive too little attention. Increasing quality requires creativity, innovation, and change.

In this post I would like to say a few words about a book I wrote entitled Conceptual Blockbusting. The success of this book has amazed (and obviously pleased) me. I wrote it in 1974 at the request of the Stanford Alumni Association, which was beginning a series entitled “The Portable Stanford”. The idea of this series was to give alumni a quarterly opportunity to buy a small and readable book by a Stanford faculty member. The book was based on a three or four hour mini-workshop that Bob Mckim, a colleague in the Design Division at Stanford, and I gave to a number of alumni gatherings. I was willing to play, but Bob was busy on another book, so I wrote it. As I remember, I wrote it in rather short order, since it was based on material that I used in teaching courses in design and in creativity, and I had an extraordinary talented editor/designer named Cynthia Gunn.

Here we are almost 40 years later, and it is still selling and gathering favorable comments not only in the U,S., but in a number of other countries. Why? At this point I think I can guess, although when I wrote it I doubt if I would have. Its timing was good. There weren’t that many books on creativity at the time and the world seemed to be in the process of change. It describes a number of inhibitions (blocks) to creativity and innovation that are common among homo sapiens. In fact it is good that they are, because creativity is combined with control in life, and if we were without any inhibitions to creativity, we would probably not be here as a species. The book is intended to get the reader to think about these inhibitions and question them. It includes reasons for their existance and strategies to decrease/ get around them. Along the way it discusses a bit of theory that is pertinent to understanding creativity and gives many exercises and problems that allow the reader to experience these inhibitions. I have given a very large number of talks and workshops on this topic, and it turns out that people generally enjoy thinking about creativity in this format and find that it gives them often valuable insights into the way their mind works.

I have written four editions of this book, and although flatteringly I have often been asked when I will do another, I do not know if I will, because creativity and innovation are receiving much more attention now than when I wrote the book. In short, there are creativity books, symposia, games, educational programs, and people who consider themselves experts all over the place. But I am mentioning the book here, because it is an indication of the way I think about creativity (in terms of blocks) and I will refer to it from time to time. I guess also because over these many years I have been convinced that it must be a good book.

As you may know, if you click on the book descriptions in the side bar of this blog, you will be rapidly transported to the pertinent page at Amazon.com, where you can learn more about the book pictured. Conceptual Blockbusting is among them. I will add a description for books I review and have found helpful as I write posts. I am also including a brief outline showing the blocks discussed in Conceptual Blockbusting here.

Posted at 08:06 AM in Books, Creativity and Innovation, Design, Emotions and Needs, Engineering, Management, People | Permalink | Comments (0)