Why Hasn’t Someone Made One of Those Before?

By Rick Chin

Sitting in a traffic jam on a Los Angeles freeway 20 years ago, Rick Woodbury, president of Commuter Cars Corp., had a seemingly absurd idea. If his car was small enough to weave around stalled traffic, like a motorcycle, he could keep moving. And if it ran on rechargeable electric batteries and could be parked perpendicular to curbs, wouldn’t it be the ideal urban commuter?

Steve Gass, president of SawStop, LLC, asked himself whether a table saw that could sense the difference between cutting wood and cutting a human finger, could stop the blade when it contacts the latter, minimizing saw injuries.

Paul Kateman, founder of MooBella, Inc., had the absurd notion of a machine that makes every single serving of ice cream fresh from non-refrigerated ingredients. Wouldn’t a vending machine that makes a fresh scoop of ice cream in as many varieties as an ice cream shop extend the market reach for ice cream to every corner of the globe?

These “absurdly ideal” solutions, part of the Product Showcase earlier this year at the SolidWorks World Conference, are currently in production. At just 39 inches wide and with a range of up to 200 miles, the manufactured-to-order Tango from Commuter Cars counts George Clooney as one of its owners. SawStop’s new table saw monitors the change in the saw’s electrical signal and stops the saw when a person contacts the blade. MooBella is completing test marketing its revolutionary, flavored-to-order ice cream machine.

While these examples represent uniquely ideal solutions, the process that led to their development can provide benefits for designing any type of product. Designers should invest adequate time upfront in examining as many “absurdly ideal” solutions as possible, regardless of how preposterous, because it can clarify important priorities for a realistic solution. Taking the time to go through this process might not always produce the “absurdly ideal” design, but it can maximize a designer’s chances of exceeding customer expectations. By approaching product design in a less constrained way, designers can generate innovations that truly matter to customers.

After a designer has exhausted the potential for generating new ideas, he or she can use a series of six criteria to determine what aspects, if any, of an ideal solution to pursue. We used these criteria at SolidWorks Corporation to develop  eDrawings, which uses a compact, self-executing file format to package, deliver, and communicate 3D models and 2D engineering drawings from a variety of CAD formats via e-mail. We asked:

1) Does the solution address a problem that matters? 2) Is it truly effective at solving the problem? 3) Is its effectiveness instantly obvious? 4) Is it familiar, comfortable, and easy to adopt? 5) Can we realistically implement it? 6) Is the solution unexpected?

If a concept fits these criteria, the designers certainly have developed a strategic innovation and may even have created something no one has made before.

Rick Chin is the director of product marketing & innovation at SolidWorks Corp. (Concord, MA). Send your feedback about this commentary through e-mail c/o [email protected].