The Extremes Of Product Design

Product design comes in many forms from the useful to the gawd blimey. Firstly, we have the wheel. A result of product design that revolutionised the human race, the wheel enabled transport to progress to the stage where Fred Flintstone was able to pimp his ride. It allowed for transport to take on bigger and more productive roles of moving goods across country and it enabled people to move away from the mother in law with much greater ease. Without the wheel, where would cogs have come from? A derivative of the wheel, cogs are prevalent in all machinery from the humble wristwatch to the engine of the Titanic. Ok, the Titanic may not be such a useful example but you get the picture. The wheel was a good invention and showed us the way product design should be headed. The aim was for useful, productive items that made life easier. So why, I ask you, did someone think it was a good idea for product design to produce the SMS kettle? A kettle with its own phone number that you can text to make sure it boils when you want it to. There is so much mileage in this one, one wonders where to start. Who would want to be the first office saddo to be texting his kettle as he leaves work? Who, among the rest of us, would text our kettle and then spend the journey home stressing about whether or not there was any water in it? Would this kettle find the teabags, make sure the milk wasn't cheesy and rummage for a clean spoon? I doubt it. So, you have to do everything apart from flick the switch. That'll be a teasmade then? Of course, you could always have you phone handy and text your kettle just before the break in Coronation Street. The national grid would be grateful that there wasn't an electrical surge at 7.45 every night but Orange would become clogged due to an overload of text messages being sent out at once. This would lead to the delayed delivery of the said SMS and the lack of tea at commercial break time. Oh, this just wouldn't do. And what happens if that delayed message doesn't get through until later that night? Kettles would be randomly switching themselves on all over the country, dogs would be barking, lights switching on and all hell breaking loose. Surely this goes to show that you can mess with technology too much. And what do these people think we have kids and husbands for if not to send them off to flick the kettle on at convenient moments? A barked order is much cheaper than a 100 pounds kettle. Of course, not everyone has kids or husbands to do their kettle bidding for them. Some people live alone. In that case, would they want to text their kettle or walk from the living room to the kitchen and flick the switch themselves? Sometimes this act can mean the difference between having something to do and enduring another 8.4 seconds of utter boredom. It gives them a sense of purpose and the whole tea making ritual is part of that. To take that away would be tantamount to cruelty. Now invent something from the realms of product design that would fill the kettle, sniff the milk, dust off the teabags and borrow sugar from the neighbours and bring in some biscuits and we may be talking! Hang about, that's what he have husbands for!

About the Author

Invention expert Catherine Harvey looks at the application of product design in products currently on the market. To find out more please visit http://www.applied.uk.com/