• Question: Will you product adapt our everyday life?

    Asked by kaylsrose to Alex, Chris, Harriet, Jed, Ken on 12 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by abi11.
    • Photo: Alexander Zacheshigriva

      Alexander Zacheshigriva answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      In brief. I wouldn’t say so. Most of the work that I do is on designs that support ships or power stations and both of them have been around for quite some time now. So it is not really new technology that changes the way we live and work. If this is what you mean.

    • Photo: Jed Ramsay

      Jed Ramsay answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      Well if you live in a house that gets flooded, there’s a small chance I could build something nearby to help stop flooding, but other than that the work I do is mostly in keeping the River Thames working well. I’ve not got any ideas up my sleeve to take to Dragon’s Den!!

    • Photo: Ken Gibbs

      Ken Gibbs answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      @kaylsrose: A really fascinating question. Should people adapt to the equipment they are given, or should engineers design products for people the way they prefer to operate ? For me, I think we should start with people and find what they need and how, and then design for that situation.

      The design of the Tara handpump (look at my profile) was done by talking to communities to find what they wanted and what they found bad about existing pumps. We then went away and designed what we thought they meant; made it; then took it back to those communities to see what they thought. Oh dear ! Did they ever tell us when we got it wrong !!!! Based on what they said, we went back to the workshop, modified the pump and took the new version to another community to see how they liked it.

      So, our communities didn’t have to adapt to the pump – rather, the pump had to adapt to the community. It seems to have worked as there are over 1 million of those pumps working around the world today.

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