transformology

[transformology]

People don’t buy things. They buy feelings.

People don’t buy things. They buy feelings.

At the core of every purchase is a problem—something they don’t want to deal with, something they fear. People don’t just spend money for the sake of it; they spend to avoid discomfort, to escape uncertainty, to feel in control.

What do people fear?

Death – The ultimate fear. They buy health, safety, longevity. Medicine, insurance, fitness programs, organic food, anti-aging creams. All of it is a desperate attempt to push mortality further away.

Boredom – People are terrified of their own minds in silence. They buy distraction, stimulation, novelty. Streaming services, social media, video games, concerts, travel—anything to fill the void.

Ugliness – No one wants to be undesirable. They buy beauty, status, attention. Fashion, skincare, plastic surgery, designer goods. Even the illusion of exclusivity sells because people want to be seen.

Stupidity – People fear feeling left out, sounding ignorant, or not being taken seriously. They buy knowledge, expertise, validation. Books, courses, coaching, degrees, self-improvement programs—all ways to reassure themselves that they’re not falling behind.

Everything that sells successfully taps into one or more of these fears.

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What's your prediction of future?

I want to describe the future in forms of adjectives. Ongoing update...

thinner,

lighter,

clearer,

quieter,

extremer,

faster,

less wire

less steps

[transformology]

one email to designers at OPT

I'm sure you know of Jonathan Ive of Apple, a legendary designer who shaped consumer electronics of our time from inside out. He successfully revitalized the aesthetic of late Ulm (Dieter Rams) and built an amazing design team that created a series of iconic Apple products. Most importantly - challenge the engineering priorities with design priorities (e.g. macbook unibody) and have made "Apple design" a such strong brand. Of course we need to better define what engineering and design mean here. But we all would agree that design has been driving the success of Apple and its many products.

I recently read this short profile of him on WSJ and thought it would be nice to share with you. I think we are at an exciting time where computational design is expanding from a digital tool, to an aesthetic style, to a way of thinking and problem solving. What's beyond that? I also keep thinking about the fact that many of our inbound customers are in luxury goods, who care about "design" a lot. If design meant rectangular blocks with rounded corners in the past two decades, what does design mean now, What does design mean to us, and why should people care?

It is alway rejuvenating to read stories of inspiring figures. It helps to keep refreshing and updating what's core of what we do. Feel free to share your thoughts in the email thread. Hope this would be a start of more conversation about design at OPT.

[transformology]

What is Design

Design is the reasoning of form, not the form itself. Form is just the medium for design. Apply this to all human imaginable length scale and dimensions.

When we say something is not designed, We mean the form has little reasons. When we say something is overly designed, we mean the form is bearing too many reasons. And when we say something is badly designed, we mean the form is simply unreasonable.

Form is also not permanent. It changes at the scale of seconds, hours, or years. The reason of the states of the forms is also design.   

However, a formless design is not a design. It is a policy.  Form is the only medium for design. 

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Translating problems

Just like a theorem can be proven by numerous ways, all problems can be solved by different approaches and disciplines. 

This conclusion sounds like nothing insightful, but it is very hard to internalize, execute and drawing a limitation line. Very often, our educational background strongly limits our perception of a problem. “This cannot be solved”; “It will take years”... Sometimes we thought we found a solution, and worked very hard to implement it, only to find out that it can be solved much more elegantly by other expertise. If we acknowledge that, and start to incorporate such new solutions, we are lucky. The worst result would be, that we reject simpler solutions, only because we have put so much effort on the complex one, and we even feel proud of how complex it becomes.

The most exciting scientific discoveries or engineering solutions are simple, not only because of the embedded sense of aesthetics in us, but also the higher potential to scale. 

Always asking yourself, can I explain my solution in one sentence, once equation or one image. If not, you need to translate the problem.

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Principles

Wear uniform

Think long term (like 30 years from now)

Build stories and languages, not things

Create your own universe by building your laws of the physics

Collect samples and be a sample for somebody else

Tell the truth to everyone including yourself. (bullshit never works long term)

Speak slow. Pause. Make notes.

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Evolution of making (notes)

How do we make things? There are millions of the answer, as we have so many different products in life, which are built by thousands of different machines. But how do we, abstractly, make things?

In the old time, we make things by hand. The dexterity of our biological hands determine the quality and performance of things we made. Then comes the machine. By having a set of automated motions: rotating, translating, drilling, extruding...we achieved much better quality and performance of the same thing we used to make by hand. 

So we can say, that the mechanical motions are the means we make things. For hundreds of years, we built a rich library of those motion systems to help us build road, tower, chair, dress, napkins, espresso, etc., till one day, we realize that there’s a physical limitation of mechanical motion: speed, wear&tear, mechanical constraints. Think about a circular knitting machine. There’s an upper limit of how fast the knitting cam can move before the centrifugal force rips the machine itself apart. The needles constantly requires change as they are rubbing agains each other and fibers all the time. As we are building more and more complex things, those constraints becomes more visible.

Now, think of something that’s you may consider made by the most advanced technology. What’s that? Silicon chips. How were they made? Which motion system they use to achieve the high density of transistors that were built at the scale of 5nm? The answer is none. They used light to activate molecules to realize phase transition as the way to build the most complex thing in this world. We build the most sophisticated thing not by moving them around, but by having them to form by themselves, using light as the energy.   

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cosmetics

Fundamentally, I don’t see the difference between an Apple Watch and a pair of fake eyelashes. They both are our need and desire of using artifacts to extend our biological capability: functionally or socially. To compare the process of making a fake eyelash and Apple Watch is like to compare how nature evolves a diatom and a bird. Yes a bird is a more complex organism, but the evolution and function of a diatom is also full of wonder and not trivial. 

The world needs both ornithologist and phycologist.  The world needs technological advancement in those which we consider as tough, as well as those we take for granted. Nothing is simple or superficial when you see it from a lens of curiosity. 

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Originality

Be scientific, be artistic. Don’t be a bullshitter. 

The mysterious world is like a book. everybody reads it, and some people write a review about it. Those are scientists and artist. The thing is, you don’t have to be a scientist nor artist to write your own review. But you do have to read the book. The bullshit happens, when you stop reading the book, and read other people’s review, and write a review about the review. It is OK if you are aware about that. But it is not OK if you think that your review is about the true book. No, there is only one true book, and you can only review it if you read it.

When I look at the community of researchers, I can only keep myself sane by thinking about this analogy. 

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useless research

1. Design cannot be scientifically studied, analyzed and synthesized. 

2. It was, is and will still be a practice rather than theory. 

3. A design that cannot sensually reveal itself is not a design. A design that cannot be validated by the end consumer is not a design. 

4. You don’t just build a system by abandoning what has been done. 

5. And for those who writes about design and acts like they know about design, please put any of those name in your theory and see how do they fit in: Sagemeister, Nendo, Fukasawa, Dyson, Gehry, McQueen, etc. Actually I could just put all the known designers throughout the history on the list.  

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REMEMBER

Academic system rewards mediocre person who follows well the rules

Academic system rewards mediocre person who follows well the rules

Academic system rewards mediocre person who follows well the rules

Academic system rewards mediocre person who follows well the rules

Academic system rewards mediocre person who follows well the rules

Academic system rewards mediocre person who follows well the rules

Academic system rewards mediocre person who follows well the rules

Academic system rewards mediocre person who follows well the rules

Academic system rewards mediocre person who follows well the rules

Academic system rewards mediocre person who follows well the rules

Don’t become either.

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interface?

Sometimes I wonder, do we still have problem of using electronic devices/computers? 

It seems to me that we are still thinking about the issues of interfaces, is just an inertia of assuming that the interfaces are problematic. They are designed by dumb engineer who knows nothing about human factor and therefore they need to corrected by a group of design students. i admit there are some pretty bad communication design in this world but I also have to say that human are elastic. They adapt and quickly form a culture about the new things. and sometimes we need some effort to get what we want. 

Like the argument between pen and keyboard. no one now complains about keyboard is worse than pen as they now can all type much faster than they write. Less and less complains about a mouse is less intuitive than your sketch pen. I saw a group of design student using Adobe Illustrator with trackpad like a pro. Eventually, we will not just seek “efficiency ” of an interface, but “capability”. How would a new thing enable people to be more creative, to make things that are not possible before?

With the current development of AI, I think this will become more obvious in the next few years.    

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some possible PhD thesis idea

from Fiber to Fashion

Tunable materials

materials by design

mesoscale material design

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some note

Sound is always connected with a space, always connected to a shape too.

Design is top down, but construction is bottom up.

how to upgrade the “formware”?

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from machine to material

the automation, intelligence will expand from machine to material field. That tools we need to tame a material will become obsolete because the material can tame themselves. In the future, we dont need another smart iron as the cloth will be straight all the time. the duty of human labor on processing/interacting with material via machine will be replaced by direct manipulation with material.

[transformology]

encoded nature

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