• Question: Hello, how did you plan for the start of making your invention?

    Asked by Emma#_#Emma to Hilly, Lee, Liz, Tadhg, Yasmin on 17 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Liz Meddings

      Liz Meddings answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      I don’t invent things. I use other people’s in the right combination to make low energy, comfy buildings. The first step is to understand the client’s brief for a project – what’s important to them, what can’t we do and what can we do.

    • Photo: Tadhg O'Donovan

      Tadhg O'Donovan answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      Invention is actually very different to engineering – but I see where you’re coming from. I often work with inventors how have great ideas and it is my job to make them a reality. I guess this question is about the design process? Most people think of drawings when they thing of design – and yes that is part of it. But the early stages of a design process are more about calculations and theory. We need to know how strong the material needs to be, or how fast the mechanism will go, how heavy it will be, how much power it will need….etc etc. Once we know that…then we can begin to think about drawings

      I think there is an inventor inside every engineer…:)

    • Photo: Yasmin Ali

      Yasmin Ali answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      Hello! I suppose I ‘invented’ the book shelf in my house! I was out one day, and I saw some wooden boxes being used as chairs in an outdoor restaurant, so I asked where they got them from… a few months later I managed to track them down and get some, and I had to work out how to arrange 10 big wooden boxes on top of each other so they don’t fall over!

      I don’t do much inventing in my job, we apply well established technologies because we need to be 100% sure that things will work.

    • Photo: Lee Margetts

      Lee Margetts answered on 24 Jun 2015:

      I had a great “project management” professor at University. His style and philosophy reminded me of the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”.

      ” … Close your eyes, breathe deeply and imagine you have your invention in front of you. Work backwards in your mind and try and see the steps you took to get to the invention. What did you need to do and what problems did you have to solve?”

      Once you’ve completed your journey backwards, sit down and write a plan for how to make your invention, working from where you are now to where you want to be.

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