1. Comment #182367 by rod-the-farmer on May 19, 2008 at 9:10 pm

One of my previous jobs was that of Product Manager for a large multi-national. I became aware of the extraordinary value of good industrial design many years ago. Some time ago I received a pressure washer as a gift from family members, and it had so many design flaws that the complaint letter I hand-delivered to the HQ of the manufacturer was three pages long, single spaced. Poor design results in premature discards. We cannot afford to have so much junk design relegated to the scrap heaps of our planet. Good design does not cost much more, and the products will last longer.

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2. Comment #182379 by doglived on May 19, 2008 at 10:15 pm

Re rod-the-farmer

Spot on. So did the manufacturer respond to your complaint?

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3. Comment #182391 by mordacious1 on May 19, 2008 at 11:27 pm

This talk was way below the usual high quality Ted presentations. Am I being too picky?

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4. Comment #182400 by eirik on May 20, 2008 at 12:33 am

re: mordacious1

I see your point, but I enjoyed the talk (or at least parts of it). Starck had some interesting takes on life and how we should live it. I especially liked his angle of view metaphor, and his impression of the "final man". Well worth the tip, RD.net!

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5. Comment #182403 by zepner508 on May 20, 2008 at 12:51 am

i think he was being an artist, which to me means finding a new way to clarify the details of life we all know but can't understand until they are explained in terms our senses can comprehend.

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6. Comment #182410 by LaTomate on May 20, 2008 at 2:59 am

I think that although not the best TED talk, he explains who he is and why he does what he does with humour and humility. I think it's a nice way to see how evolution can integrate your world view.

And he's French like me, so his horrible accent added a level of humour to it for me - I could tell what he was thinking in French and trying to get it across in English :p

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7. Comment #182413 by rod-the-farmer on May 20, 2008 at 3:24 am

Re comment # 2 by doglived
I delivered the now-dysfunctional item, left it in their Canadian corporate lobby, and said "Don't bother refunding my money. You need every cent you have to fire your current industrial design people and hire some new ones." A few weeks later I got a response saying they had forwarded my note to their world HQ in Germany. I never heard any more. Now if I see someone looking at that brand in a local store, I tell them I had one once, and it was the worst piece of design I had ever seen, in any category. They only made that model for a short time, and while I have not looked closely at their new ones, I don't think they fixed all the flaws I pointed out.

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8. Comment #182414 by DjSouthPaw on May 20, 2008 at 3:32 am

I liked the talk, once i got past the French and my giggle had settled

as i understood it ( or as far as i did ), the Angle of View he's talking about relates both to our development from using our mind for selfish and self-sustaining reasons?.. and that we need to let our
eyes rise more upward, to look ahead with the improvement of civilization in mind ?

And he seems to re-inforce Richards point of view, that we need to take the poetry of nature witch is science, with the utmost seriousness and see it not only as a mean of creating things for our benefit.. but live by the lessons learned by it, and proceed to grow away from superstition


Did i misunderstand the speaker, or?

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9. Comment #182437 by Shaden on May 20, 2008 at 6:02 am

rod-the-farmer,

I'm glad to hear you went through the trouble of letting the company know that its product was horrible. Most people wouldn't have bothered.

It's hard not to feel bad for your family members that got you the gift though, since they wanted you to be happy and instead you got a hassle.

I know I feel bad when someone gives me a gift and I either don't use it or is was of poor quality in which I can't use it, since they only wanted me to be happy.

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10. Comment #182497 by Eventhorizon on May 20, 2008 at 9:07 am

I love this guy. He's got loads of energy and is completely off his rocker. Great fun!

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11. Comment #182516 by LaTomate on May 20, 2008 at 10:06 am

DjSouthPaw:

I think you got it right, that civilization should be our primary goals, and that it's not necessary to be a genius to do so.

I think also that his serious point is that our civilisation isn't all that good, that in this epoch being a designer isn't all that helpful and that the only reason he's doing what he does is to maybe be able to offer the tools so that future generations can start over with a clean slate and build a better world rather than have to inherit our deeply flawed ways.

I think.

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12. Comment #182534 by bitsphere on May 20, 2008 at 11:24 am

Well said LaTomate.
However, as a designer myself, I know that the primary function is to solve spatial and utilitarian problems with novelty. Evolution in design could be just a metaphor for natural evolution, but I deeply sense that our thoughts and solutions are deeply rooted in our past, inherited by millions of years of the surviving chain of the selfish gene. The mysterious way of how ideas in design are generated suggests that.

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13. Comment #182536 by Neil Schipper on May 20, 2008 at 11:37 am

I encountered a piece of equipment with a flaw. For your amusement: http://www.gekkou.co.uk/tektronix/

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14. Comment #182638 by Lionspoint on May 20, 2008 at 5:43 pm

"God is the answer when we don't know the answer."

Very simple but profound. If this man coined the phrase then he is well on his way to historical remembrance...

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15. Comment #182651 by Frankus1122 on May 20, 2008 at 6:43 pm

I was commenting on another thread about the importance of design. Bruce Mau had a Massive Change exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario a couple of years ago.
There were some interesting ideas generated which I am still thinking about.
For example I think cars are terrible. I drive one but I am not happy about it. I would like a form of transportation that was not so bad in almost every way I can think of. I know about bikes but they have certain limitations.
For more on Massive Change:
http://www.massivechange.com/

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