Design for Repair
By Derrick Mead
()
About this ebook
Related to Design for Repair
Related ebooks
Materials and Innovative Product Development: Using Common Sense Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNimble: Thinking Creatively in the Digital Age Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Design Research Through Practice: From the Lab, Field, and Showroom Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Thoughts on Interaction Design Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Design Integrations: Research and Collaboration Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaterials and Design: The Art and Science of Material Selection in Product Design Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsContextual Design: Design for Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Creativity in Engineering: Novel Solutions to Complex Problems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How Designers Think: The Design Process Demystified Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Materials Experience: Fundamentals of Materials and Design Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enchanted Objects: Innovation, Design, and the Future of Technology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Materials Experience 2: Expanding Territories of Materials and Design Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDesign Languages Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCreating Things That Matter: The Art and Science of Innovations That Last Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Dark matter and trojan horses. A strategic design vocabulary. Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Few Minutes of Design: 52 Activities to Spark Your Creativity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIsa Genzken: Sculpture as World Receiver Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow Design Makes the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Swedish Design: An Ethnography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSecrets of Good Design for Artists, Artisans and Crafters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Arts and Crafts Movement Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPerformative Materials in Architecture and Design Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Theory of Craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Drawing in the Design Process: Characterising Industrial and Educational Practice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsiPad Design Lab - Basic: Storytelling in the Age of the Tablet Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Things Start to Think: Integrating Digital Technology into the Fabric of Our Lives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Critical design in Japan: Material culture, luxury, and the avant-garde Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChoosing Craft: The Artist's Viewpoint Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Design For You
Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Expressive Digital Painting in Procreate Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Designer's Dictionary of Color Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Architecture 101: From Frank Gehry to Ziggurats, an Essential Guide to Building Styles and Materials Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Bohemians Handbook: Come Home to Good Vibes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elements of Style: Designing a Home & a Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Victorian Lady's Guide to Fashion and Beauty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ogilvy on Advertising in the Digital Age Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Feck Perfuction: Dangerous Ideas on the Business of Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hand Lettering on the iPad with Procreate: Ideas and Lessons for Modern and Vintage Lettering Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bazooka Joe and His Gang Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lettering Alphabets & Artwork: Inspiring Ideas & Techniques for 60 Hand-Lettering Styles Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Picture This: How Pictures Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crochet: Fun & Easy Patterns For Beginners Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Become An Exceptional Designer: Effective Colour Selection For You And Your Client Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Graphic Design Rules: 365 Essential Design Dos and Don'ts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5101 Midjourney Prompt Secrets Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lolita - The Story of a Cover Girl: Vladimir Nabokov's Novel in Art and Design Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Brush Pen Lettering: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Learning Decorative Scripts and Creating Inspired Styles Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Live Beautiful Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Down to Earth: Laid-back Interiors for Modern Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Line Color Form: The Language of Art and Design Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Signs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Design for Repair
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Design for Repair - Derrick Mead
Introduction
Repair is a design constraint, an outcome of product design, and a practical activity performed—or not—on designed objects. The knowledge and understanding required to design things well is similar to the knowledge and understanding required to fix those things effectively, but in practice, these shared capacities get applied to very different ends. Both agents, the designer and the repairer, seek to solve similar problems from opposing starting points, with different limitations. Holistic, empathic thinking is key from either vantage: empathy for the user, as well as the object. Designing a product creates an archetype which is then reproduced ad infinitum; repair is necessarily a one-to-one exchange, focused on a specific designed object. Design is speculative, multitudinous, and detached: one designer, to many objects, to many users. Repair is concrete, singular, and inherently personal, in these terms of fixer, user, and object: one to one to one.[1]
Product design is engaged with ideals, creating the best solution possible within physical and abstract constraints, like budgets, or aesthetic sensibilities: the most good for the largest number, frequently at the lowest possible overall cost. Repair is mired in the morbidity of extant things and, rather than seeking improvement, most often focuses squarely on good enough, or getting back to normal,
the designed-for functionality that preceded mishap. Instead of looking out into blue sky and seeing something that wasn’t there before, repairers must look deeply into something that’s right in front of them and figure out what to change, replace, or strengthen in order to return it—a toaster, for example—back to service.
Asking designers, technicians, and engineers about repair abstractly—or, more precisely, asking professionals concerned with the functioning of objects to consider repair as an ideal—has frequently led to confusion from parties on both sides of the design/repair divide. A question like Why aren’t durable goods designed specifically for easy repair?
incurs the same skeptical look from designers as What would you change about the things you work on, to make them easier to fix?
gets from tradespeople. The polarity of this spectrum, with designers on one end, products (and users) in the middle, and repairers on the other end, makes for real difficulty in communicating vital information about what people want and need from their belongings under less-than-ideal circumstances, how they actually use them, and finally—most important, here—what happens when things break.
Investigating repair in the abstract took me from the suburban labs of Underwriters Laboratories to the offices of mechanical engineers at Consumer Reports, from dingy appliance repair shops in Brooklyn to gleaming technical training institutes in midtown Manhattan, from landfills on Labor Day to Macy’s 34th Street on Black Friday, and finally, to the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. I spoke with working designers and technicians, graduate students and their professors, product marketing managers and customer service representatives, salespeople and junk haulers.
In searching for a specific object on which to focus my investigation, the common kitchen toaster came up again and again. As it turned out, Bill Moggridge, the late director of the Cooper Hewitt, and Bob Della Valle, principal engineer for cooking appliances at Underwriters Laboratories, both designed toasters early in their careers. Derek Brine, an instructor at