Ben got
us thinking about the big questions in life…. if you put the whole of humanity
into a cone with sides at 45 degree angle, how tall would the cone be and how
long would it take you to walk up it? A question I’m sure we’ve all asked
ourselves many a time.
What Ben
was demonstrating was that as 'Product Design Engineers' we need to be able to apply
our engineering knowledge to make quick estimates to see whether our designs
are feasible or not.
We are
always told to be creative and think creatively without constraints but what Ben
was reminding us of was that sometimes so called 'constraints' are VERY important.
After all, the results of basic engineering calculations can be a deal maker or
breaker for product design: yes you can have the most amazing creative design
for a product in the world but if it turns out to have to stretch the length of
Britain in order to function properly then it’s never going anywhere!
It’s a
bit of a chicken and egg scenario; what comes first? The creativity or the technicalities.
We don’t want to be held back in our innovations with the grey cloud of number
crunching and big chimney sums hanging over our heads, but if we ignore them
completely then it could be that itself that holds the concept back.
It all
made me realise that it doesn’t take long to do a quick sum and get an informed
estimate which could save your whole project and a whole lot of time. We are Product Design ENGINEERS after all.
And if
your still thinking about that humanity cone I’ll save you from the
anticipation; all the humans in the world could be stuffed into a cone that’s around
1km tall which would take about 16 hours to climb! Engineering’s powerful stuff
eh!
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