How James Dyson tricked me into thinking I’d designed the AirBlade Tap.
Now just to be clear, I have never met James Dyson, I don’t know him, but I do like him. My perception of him is largely based on my experience of using the innovative products designed and developed by his company – Dyson. I own one of his distinctive Vacuum cleaners which I am careful not to call by my usual term of ‘a Hoover’. Does anyone actually say ‘I Dysoned the living room’. No, probably not, but if anyone is going to replace Hoover as the general term for a vacuum cleaner, it will likely be Dyson. His drive to improve and reinvent the less glamorous, but no less important everyday technologies is commendable. I also find his passion for simple, highly functional human centred design really inspiring.
For example, when I recently visited 20 Stories, a high-end eatery on the 20th floor of one of Manchester’s many new high-rises. Mid-meal I decided to visit the gents, which has spectacular panoramic views of the city, and in the evening is even more special. As I went to wash my hands and still slightly distracted by the view, I looked down at what can only be described as a large futuristic but very minimal tap, which I had never seen before. The simplicity of the object and my design instincts told me it would be sensor operated and all I need do is place my hands underneath to encourage water to flow out and onto my soapy hands. I wasn’t remotely surprised when this went to plan because this type of tech is pretty common in public bathrooms everywhere. I continued to wash my hands, then quickly scanned the room to locate the hand driers. There didn’t appear to be any, or any paper towels either. As I quietly mutter a four-letter word under my breath and contemplate drying my still dripping hands on my jeans as a last resort – I glance back down at the shiny monolith before me. The tap was large yet minimal with two handlebar-like appendages, which I initially assumed – that like any other standard mixer tap – controlled the temperature.
Suddenly my designer brain kicked in again, and as any designer will tell you, this can be both a blessing and a curse. Designer’s brains are usually hard-wired to see everything as a problem to solve, or an existing solution to critique or admire. This often manifests itself in the form of external questions/rants starting with things like – ‘Why would anyone….?’, or internal questions like – ‘What if it…?’.
“I was initially amazed that I had somehow developed a superpower that enables me to manifest my ideas into reality in real-time, before quickly realising that the genius in the room was Dyson. ”
In this case my initial thought was ‘Wouldn’t be cool if the two appendages had little jets of warm air that dried my hands like a Dyson Air Blade?’. Now this is the genius bit, I had no idea at this point it was a Dyson Tap, nor had I ever seen one before, but for some reason the device had penetrated my cranial defences and planted this genius idea straight into my subconscious mind, leading me (but nobody else) to believe this spark of genius was in some way my idea. So imagine my surprise as I offered up my hands to the device to test my theoretical genius, and two actual jets of warm air propelled themselves from the tap and began to dry my hands, and prompting me to say ’no way’ out loud.
I was initially amazed that I had somehow developed a superpower that enables me to manifest my ideas into reality in real-time, before quickly realising that the genius in the room was Dyson. Their design (note the use of ‘their’ not ‘his’, as I am pretty sure it will be a massive team effort), is so simple and intuitive that it made me instinctively know what the solution was and how to activate it. Without any instructions or demonstration I was subliminally coerced to bend to their will, but this wasn’t witchcraft or the miracle it first appeared to be, rather the perfect marriage of behavioural science and human centred design. It was perfect example of Dyson’s amazing ability to take a product that clearly has a lot of advanced science and technology beneath the surface and create a user experience so functional, intuitive and simple most will think it is the natural or obvious solution. That is unless you are a designer, and understand that simplicity is actually the hardest thing to achieve in design.
I was so intrigued by the experience that I waited around in the toilets for a few minutes (I know how this sounds) to see how the next person reacted when confronted with the same problem. Same result, which now completely erased any notion of the idea being co-conceived by me. I gave the now dry-handed man a knowing look of ‘how cool is that?’. He responded with a look of ‘why are you hanging around in toilets’, but non-the-less I went back to my table with a smile on my face and a story to tell. Because that is what good design does, and often without most people even realising.