The art of product design: changing the way companies that make things work

242 Pages·2014·1.845 MB·English

by  Meybaum, Hardi

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Praise for Th e Art of Product Design
“Th e communications revolution created by the Internet is breaking down
barriers between countries as well as companies, enabling talented individuals
everywhere to fi nd opportunities around the globe. Th e GrabCAD commu-
nity is a story of how smart, creative people from around the world can fi nd
each other; solve problems, old and new; and do amazing things.”
— Toomas Hendrik Ilves , President of Estonia
“Hardi does a nice job of amplifying the underlying trends that are revo-
lutionizing the mechanical product development process. At Kiva Systems,
we experienced these forces at work while designing and delivering four ver-
sions of our robot in four years—leveraging a broad community of intercon-
nected designers and suppliers, working virtually and across continents, then
physically, sometimes with next-day overnight deliveries. Th e power of this
radically new world always hit home when we booted up the fi rst prototype
and it ‘just worked’ as designed. Hardi’ s book is a must-read for executives
in and around physical product development—disrupt or be disrupted.”
— Mick Mountz , CEO and founder, Kiva Systems
“ Hardi tells two fascinating stories with this book, one about how he founded
and grew GrabCAD and the other about how he sees the world of product
design changing. Both stories are relevant to anyone seeking to take advan-
tage of new online communities and connections to grow their business.”
— Dean Kamen , founder of DEKA
Research and Development Corporation
“Th e online community Hardi and his team have created is a great example
of how today’ s unprecedented access to technology, content, and people is
changing the way we make things.”
— Carl Bass , CEO of Autodesk
“ Listen to the stories you fi nd in Th e Art of Design about the next industrial
revolution and you’ ll be ready for the future—Hardi has his hand on the
pulse of what happens next in the 3D design world.”
— Bre Prettis , CEO of Makerbot Inc.
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The Art of
Product Design
Changing How Things Get Made
Hardi Meybaum
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Cover design: Wiley
Copyright © 2014 by GrabCAD. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Meybaum, Hardi.
Th e art of product design : changing how things get made / Hardi Meybaum.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-118-76334-6 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-88103-3 (ebk);
ISBN 978-1-118-88104-0 (ebk)
1. Product design—Technological innovations. I. Meybaum, Hardi. II. Title.
TS171.4.M49 2014
658.5'752—dc23
2013046064
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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CONTENTS
Introduction Th e Digital Revolution
Gets Physical vii
1
Gearheads Get No Respect 1
2
Since the Potter’s Wheel, the
Most Important Tool in History 13
3
A Million Engineers on the March 35
4
New Culture, New Tools Converge
in the Cloud 79
5
Design Challenge: Break Down the
Monastery Doors 93
6
Here’s My Prototype; Please Kick the
Crap Out of It 125
v
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vi CONTENTS
7
Manufacturing: Here You Go;
Make Th is 149
8
Marketing: Engineers Can Do It Better 181
9
Th e Puzzle Pattern Emerges 199
Appendix 213
Acknowledgments 219
Index 221
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INTRODUCTION
THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION
GETS PHYSICAL
O
ver the past 30 years, anything and everything that needs no
physical form has been reduced to bits. Music, photographs,
newspapers, plane tickets, and money have all gone digital.
Soon, with driverless cars on the horizon, even taxi drivers may
be transformed from fl esh into software.
By comparison, change in things that must remain physical
has been almost glacial: How we design and make stuff today—
hardware, manufactured goods—is not radically diff erent from
what it was in 1980. And sadly, in the so-called post–industrial
age, making things has been downright uncool. Intangibles such
as software and fi nance have been where it ’s at.
But that ’s about to change—and very quickly.
Powerful forces are converging to drive a second great wave
of the digital revolution. Where the fi rst wave was about shed-
ding physical form, the second wave exponentially amplifi es
our ability to create physical form, in any shape or size to any
end we can imagine. In the process, it radically reorders all our
notions about making things: who designs and who builds; how
fast, where, and at what scale; and how is it marketed?
vii
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viii INTRODUCTION
It ’s not simply a matter of making new things we never
dreamed of. Th is revolution comes with the opportunity to
refashion thousands of everyday objects, making them smarter,
greener, and connected with the surrounding environment. And
now is precisely the time to do that as technological viabil-
ity converges with surging demand for solutions for critical
challenges ranging from spiraling health care costs to global
warming.
It ’s a revolution fueled by the monumental waste—waste
of time, energy, and health, both human and ecological—that
is built into our current technology. It ’s about red traffi c lights
at midnight: the oceans of motor fuel we emit and the millions
of minutes we waste while stopped at them, even when there ’s
no traffi c. It ’s about the millions of pounds of cure we adminis-
ter where nano-ounces of preventive health care would do. It ’s
about the millions who still die needlessly in car crashes despite
our having to endure red lights at midnight.
Th ere is a humongous load of needlessly stupid stuff in this
world that needs to be fi xed, not “when we get around to it,”
but right now .
If waste fuels this revolution, an explosion of creativity
drives it forward. At its very core are epoch-making new tools
that dramatically eliminate the barriers between human inspira-
tion and physical reality. If you can imagine something that you
know will work— anything —you can now build it, virtually if
not physically.
Th e revolution takes shape as creators awake to the vast poten-
tial these tools unlock. It moves forward as creators pioneer new
ways to organize human genius and eff ort around the new tools.
It accelerates with passion and excitement, from the earnest desire
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