James Dyson Workshop

Dyson - the 'perfect example' universities love to use when talking about design. So our university ran a workshop with the James Dyson Foundation for an afternoon last week.

Being totally honest wasn't really looking forward to it I'm not the biggest Dyson fan. I just get the feeling they're still snobby about that time they got one over on Hoover and they can now do no wrong. Which is far from the truth!

While the Dyson representatives were giving us a presentation on their design process and showing off their triumphs I couldn't help but think they were glossing over all their failures.

I can't think one one guest speaker I've heard in the past 3 years at uni that hasn't spoke about their failures and the lessons they learned from them, they were all totally honest with us as most of us are aspiring entrepreneurs. Mistakes and failures are how you learn!

So, the Dyson washing machine - Fail!

Where to start? Ugly? Over priced? Unable to function?

Instead of fixing the problems Dyson stopped production claiming the market was not ready for this kind of product.

The Dyson Airblade - Fun, but fail!

Once the water is ultra-hygienically, super-fastly removed from your hands where does it go? A nice wee puddle on the floor causing a major safety issue that's where. Admitting there is a problem seems harder than fixing the problem itself.

Maybe I'm just bitter because my Dyson vacuum cleaner broke not long after we purchased it and they made me sit through a full presentation on the thorough testing they need to go through to avoid such problems. Now when I say my vacuum broke it wasn't an electrical problem or anything to do with the inside mechanics. The hose fell off. The head fell off. The attachments broke. By the end of it's life the poor thing was covered in Duct tape.

Don't get me wrong the thinking behind all these ideas are incredible and the products could be amazing if they just admitted they were wrong and released a new version that tackled these issues.

So after the presentation we were split into groups and given a brief;

Design a product powered by air that solves a problem. Use Dyson parts and cardboard.

Each group got a different theme and our was games & entertainment. Eventually after some brainstorming, debating, sketching and a a few more heated debates we came up with a product that could be attached to a wheelchair to help disabled children play football. The product was hand operated and pushed air through a pump to move the ball which was on the ground.

My favorite part of the workshop was prototyping the idea. I love looking at technologies, products and mechanisms and trying to use them in different ways so sitting with two huge boxes of miscellaneous Dyson parts was heaven. After some trial and error we made a prototype that functioned reasonably well and presented it to the rest of the workshop.