Warning: Rant
My husband and I are both left-handed.
There are approximately 708 million left-handers in the world.
Over 9% of people are left-handed.
Apparently these numbers do not meet the threshold for inclusion in product design.
My former Mr. Coffee coffeemaker had ambidextrous functionality. The flap over the water reservoir opened to the back, allowing someone to pour water easily from either side.
My new Mr. Coffee coffeemaker includes a design change. The flap over the water reservoir opens to the left, making it almost impossible for me pour water into it.
I just bought a new electric water kettle. The first time I filled it with water, I guessed at the fill limit because I saw no markings inside.
Then I read the instruction manual that referenced the maximum fill line. What? Turns out, I can only see the fill line markings if I fill the kettle while holding it in my right hand. 🤦♀️
If you are a product designer, you commit design malpractice if you fail to acknowledge the existence of left-handers.
The engineering faculty I work in used to have “Change the World” as a slogan. I never liked it and I’ve just worked out why. It’s because The World is fine. What we need to be doing is changing ourselves so that we fit in with our fully functioning life support system - Earth - learning how to work with the great planetary cycles that keep us alive rather than against them.
Maybe the new engineering slogan should be “Working out how to do better”.
The key point that I think a lot of engineers still don't get is that their job is not about making widgets that get plonked on top of the world. This is about changing the shape of things inside a working system (Planet Earth) to shift how it operates. Those widgets become part of that system - it's like operating on a living human. The engineers of the future mustn't see their job as creating things external to the world. #science#engineering#climate#Earth
Typically, it takes around 10 hours to charge an electric vehicle. Even with fast-charging techniques, you're still looking at a minimum of 30 minutes – and that's if there's an open spot at a charging station.
I've been trying to advance #sustainability since about 2007. I originally have a background in #engineering and #design, and did a PhD about technological substitutes for critical resources. However, #energytransition has been my main focus.
I firmly believe that broadening #democracy is THE key to sustainability.
Trying to get all of the website access that I need before the government shuts down so that I can continue to work on my essential project of certifying spacecraft to carry humans after the government shuts down. 🤦♀️
If you wanted to communicate how a proposed intersection or roadway redesign would look and feel to the public, what would you use?
I'm looking specifically for examples of tools that are fairly easy to use by non-experts and can create realistic renderings suitable for #public engagement.
I just went to check a dimension on some screws that I plan to use on a current project, and when I went to view the product detail to see the drawing with dimensions, it told me I needed to be logged in to view product details.
Since when? Can anyone else confirm this?
If true, what a shitty move that erases a couple decades of good will with engineers everywhere.
This morning, I was watching a video about a very technical subject, and the presenter mentioned several times that they wanted to keep the design “simple” or “as simple as possible” without explaining what that meant.
I find this to be a big problem in #engineering. People always tell us to “just make it simple”. My first question is always “Simple for whom?”
I can make something easy to manufacture but hard to use and vice-versa. There is no universal “simple”, just trade offs.
Why Boeing needs to be run by engineers and not bean counters
Really insightful video about what has gone wrong.
Among the points Casey makes is that Boeing imported Jack Welch's GE management culture.
This has included a focus on short-term profits over engineering, and practises such as stack ranking.
Boeing, as a major defence contractor and (direct and indirect) employer, is too big to fail.
And Casey argues that either the Board or, if they're unwilling, the US government, needs to clear out the senior management and introduce an engineer-led management team:
This week we've got a series of updates for you after being hard at work...
First up is some research we've carried out to help us get the most out of low-powered TV platforms - which we hope will make it easier for us to create high quality user interfaces for our services:
Early in my career I worked for a commercial company that had engineering contracts with the Navy. The level of engineering specifications, design docs, test planning, and testing and retesting was enormous for the projects that I worked on.
Peoples lives were at stake. An the effort was warranted.
When I moved away from government projects into the commercial/consumer world I was shocked at how little, if any, of that effort went into commercial product development.
All of those efforts are used to identify and test boundary conditions, mistaken assumptions, surprising human interactions, and many more things that designers and developers miss initially.
We're starting to hear comments from insiders about design and testing flaws of the OceanGate sub.
Commercial efforts in complex areas like AI, driverless cars, air craft and submersibles are good. But they must be held to the same standard as government efforts, e.g. NASA. Cost control is not an option.
An academic colleague, a bio-engineer who builds artificial heart valves, just said to me that he likes this sort of engineering because it’s about repairing and maintaining existing systems (the human body) rather than just building new widgets. It had never occurred to me that a far better attitude to what engineers are for already exists in the engineering world. I think that all engineers working on anything related to climate should also have this attitude. #engineering#sustainability
My current #SF movie bugbear: Non-rotating #spacecraft with a large rotating section for the human habitat. Bonus points if the habitable part spans both the rotating and non-rotating portions and the crew can move freely between them.
It's an absurdly complex #engineering challenge to build it this way, it introduces an open set of failure modes that would not otherwise exist and there's no good reason for any of it that I can think of.
Instead, rotate the whole ship, and if there are a few things which for some reason must not be rotated (scopes, antennae and cameras, perhaps?) place them in the smallest and simplest possible unpressurised nonrotating segment at the axis.
Seeing the colossal dome of ESO's Extremely Large #Telescope moving for the first time is mind-blowing! 🤯
In this first test engineers used special hydraulic devices to rotate the dome 10 m back and forth at 1 cm/s. Once it's operational it'll move at about 5 km/h with motorised bogies.
Quite impressive, as the skeleton currently weighs ~2500 tons and it'll weigh ~6100 tons when finished!
Mirror mirror on the wall... err, sorry: on ESO's Extremely Large Telescope! The first segments of the primary mirror of the ELT now have a shiny layer of protected silver.
Once fully assembled, the primary mirror will be 39 m wide. It will consist of 798 of these hexagonal segments, working together as a single mirror thanks to a complex system of sensors and positioning actuators with nanometric accuracy.
Fully Charged in Just 6 Minutes – Groundbreaking Technique Could Revolutionize EV Charging (scitechdaily.com)
Typically, it takes around 10 hours to charge an electric vehicle. Even with fast-charging techniques, you're still looking at a minimum of 30 minutes – and that's if there's an open spot at a charging station.