Hello everyone. Today, we'll continue with the Product Innovations lecture. We did Part 1 earlier, this is now Part 2 and we'll continue with the rest of the innovations in products. Again, just to emphasize what we're focusing on in this class is not only product innovation, but service innovation, business model innovation, brand experience innovation. Innovation to sustainability and of course, overall innovation processes as well. This is a comprehensive innovation framework that I like to keep emphasizing focus on product innovation. In part one, we looked at platforms, aesthetics and price. Today, we will look at materials, we will look at safety and we will look at ergonomics. And then later on in part three, we will look at packaging, graphics, performance and technology. So let's start with the first one which is materials. So when you think of materials for design, materials for products, we're looking specifically at physical tangible devices. There's a whole range of material that are available to designers, engineers, innovators. Some of them can be referred to as polymers and polymers essentially are, is another word for plastic. Beautiful to typically as plastics, essentially polymers. There's two main types of polymers, thermoplastics and thermosets. Thermoplastics are those plastics and we see a whole bunch of them around us, that can be melted and reused, melted and reused. So you can do that with things like, let's say for example, plastic grocery bags, right? Those are typically made from what's called LLDPE Linear low density polyethylene. Polyethylene is a polymer which is a thermal plastic polymer that, after you use all the bags, you can grind them, you can melt them, you can reuse them. Acrylic is another polymer which can also be used in the same way, so there are certain polymers that can be recycled, that can be heated and reused again. Thermosets on the other hand are polymers that cannot do that once they are formed in a certain shape something happens called cross-linking and you cannot let them get back. You find thermosets in used in things like handles for cooking pots you see them in electrical switches etc., so these are two main types of polymers used very often in. In design and innovation, metals another set of materials. So metals are typically classified into ferrous and non ferrous. Ferrous are all those materials that have some amount of iron in them. So steel, cast iron, stainless steel, all these are forms as steel wrought iron, there's a whole range of m metals that are ferrous metals. Anything that has iron in it, because iron is ferrum, are ferrous metals. The non-ferrous metals so aluminium or aluminum, copper, all those are, magnesium, all those are non ferrous metals. So there's another classification of metals, so those are also used quite a bit. In product design, you have a whole range of woods, which come from trees. You have soft woods and hard woods. And the interesting thing here is not all soft woods are soft and not all hard woods are hard. It essentially refers to the type of leaves. So for example, soft woods are those such as things like fir, spruce, all those are called softwoods. Anything that has needles more than broad leaves are referred to as softwoods. And hardwoods are those like oak, maple, all those are the ones that have, birch those are the ones that have broad leaves. So those are the different kinds of woods that are used a lot in furniture. And then composites, now composites is a whole range of, you could have a composite of metals, polymers or woods. For example, what we often refer to us particle board or plywood or medium density fiberboard. That's a form of composite because you have wood, we have some sort of a binding resin that creates that plywood. With polymers, you might have heard the term fiberglass. Fiberglass, essentially, is a polymer combined with some sort of a fiber. It could be glass or it could be carbon fiber, that's a composite of polymers. And then you have metal composites as well. You have metal and some other material that's mixed in with them to create a composite. So, it is some of the kinds of materials that I used and when you come with new product solution, when you come up with innovations. You could see what in server using plastic that everyone uses. I'm going to use metal because it does specific function or I'm going to use wood instead. For example, you can see now there's eyeglasses made out of wood. So that's kind of a new innovation that makes the product look, feel differently than the old ones. So that's one way of thinking of material innovation. Quick example and the reason for thinking of material innovation these are. What I refer to as single use plastic water bottles, so you drink the water and then you toss them. They do get recycled but that's not really good for the environment so thinking of new materials like stainless steel for instance. Which is easy to clean, does not rust, or having sleeves on top of glass bottles. Those could be new materials, or innovations and materials, that could be helpful, from a sustainability perspective. Or things like this, this is a bicycle that's made out of bamboo. Well, not the whole thing, but, if you look at the overall frame, that's made from bamboo. So that's, kind of, an interesting new innovation in materials. So, this is just some examples of How can use materials innovatively? Another thing that you can do in terms of innovation is think of safety. What you see here is a photograph of a vehicle that has just gone through a crash test. So these are situations where there's a and there's a blockade an obstacle at the end of a driveway the car starts. And it rushes into this obstacle and the engineers observe everything about this vehicle. Every second is videotaped from different angles. They examine the product afterwards, they look at what crashes, what gets ruined, what survives, what happens to the seat inside. And then in addition to what happens to the product itself, they also have, or in the photos crash test dummies. So clearly, we can't have real life people sitting in these crash tests, but you have dummies and these are dolls or mannequins, if you will. That have a whole bunch of electronics built in to them, so they can actually capture data. What you see on their heads, these things, they can also give you a sense of distance. So when a crash happens, what you weigh off when it happens is you get your neck. It goes towards it's called a whiplash, so what exactly is happening over here? You can watch that, so you can watch the movements. Clearly, when a crash happens, the body moves forward. What exactly happens, how much does it move, how big does the airbag need to be. All those things can be factored when you do these crashes. So one of the things to think about in terms of innovations is what can a new materials, new technologies, new mechanisms can be use to make products a lot more safer. That's another aspect of innovation. And the other one is ergonomics. So ergonomics essentially is the study of the relationship between the human body and a device. The quote that you see here and the photograph is Henry Dreyfuss, who's often referred to as the Father of Ergonomics in the Design World. What he said was that, and you could read the quote, that when we come up with a new innovation, a new product that goes out into the world, people put it in there pockets. They sit on it, they look at it, they talk into it. People are actually actively engaged with using their fingers, their bodies, their minds, their eyes, in interacting with the object. It could be individually or in large groups. And then he goes on to explain that because of this very active and very intimate relationship between products and people, we have to think of them very carefully. We have to think of the relationship between the product and the human body as well as the human mind. And that's really important for us to think about and using very interesting, innovating economic solutions you can come up with new designs and new ways of doing this. Now you can take ergonomics and split it into two different types. One, I refer to as Macro-Ergonomics. And the secondary photo is Micro-Ergonomics and as you know these terms, macro and micro are essentially references to scale. So micro are things that happen at a much smaller scale, macro happen at a more larger scale. So let's look at what this actually means. So for example, Macro-Ergonomics could refer to how somebody sits in a chair. What is the relationship between the legs and the back and the head and the chair? So this is what you see. In this case, this chair is the Aeron chair manufactured by the Michigan based company Herman Miller. And it's been several years examining how does a human sit and how does a human body move in a chair and how can we make a chair that is the most comfortable. because we all know from research that sitting for too long in one position is really bad for health. It is very important for you to get up, walk around. We have standing desks now because people have realized that sitting for too long is bad for you. But what Herman Miller has done, he's created a chair and this is one of the first chairs that was offered in a small, medium, and large sizes. Is that they've really designed a chair to fit the human body, right? Which implies the shape, the form, the materials, if you look at the back and the seat, it's one of the first chairs that came out without any cushioning. There is no cushion on this device except for the armrest but the seat and the back are this fabric. And this fabric is tensioned in a specific way, that it allows a really comfortable sitting experience for the user. Another chair that also has Herman Miller's done is called the Embody Chair. It is a whole of adjustments on it. We know that, we are not all the same size, right? Some of us are tall, some of us are short, some of us are heavier, some of us are lighter. Some of us have longer necks, smaller necks, so the human body comes in a whole range of sizes and weights and dimensions. Therefore, the chair should allow you to adjust, right? So in this case, the armrest of this embodied chair go up and down but they also go outside and so you can adjust the armrest. The seats that you see here, this is one of the, probably the only chair that does this, the seat can actually pull out and extend. So if you have longer legs or shorter legs we can do that. Of course, the back reclines, the seat itself, the chairs goes up and down. So there's quite a few ergonomic design solutions in this chair that make it an extremely comfortable chair. That's something that Herman Miller is really well known for doing. There's been an enormous amount of time understanding human factors in ergonomics while designing the products that they do. So what you see here in this diagram is an examination of a workstation, right? So workplace ergonomics is a really important thing, so what you see here in this image is one if you are sitting like this, this is your eye. How do you look at the computer screen, what is the viewing distance? And so therefore, what should be this angle? It's very important to keep in mind it can't be too high, so you shouldn't be looking like that or shouldn't be looking too low. That's not good for your neck, so you need the appropriate viewing angle. The second thing that's important is this angle, so this angle is very important. Another very important angle is between your wrist and your fingers. So if you discover that when you're sitting at your keyboard that your arm, your wrist is like this, that is really bad for you. It can lead to what is known as carpal tunnel syndrome but if it's flat or lower, that's fine. So it's really important to keep in mind so that means that the height of the keyboard, the height of your chair are all really important. So what you see here is all these dimensions are important to consider for the design of the table, design of the chair, the design of the stand on which the monitor sits. These are important things to keep in mind. And then what you see in the diagram on the right, this is the reach of the left arm, the reach of the right arm. So if you have work that needs to be done on something, if you're moving things from here to there keeping it within this range is a good thing, right? So, that's what's important. That's Macro-Ergonomics, thinking at a broadest scale. Micro-Ergonomics comes down to specific things like how do your fingers operate specific things. So this case, there's a smartphone, as we all know that the screen stands with the small so how big are the buttons? How big are the icons? Are they big enough for my finger? Am I going to mistype things and be no? And in many cases these buttons are way too small at the end of things. So, thinking about the sizes of these buttons gets into issues of Micro-Ergonomics. As well, this is a musical instrument, and the size of those holes, the distance of those holes is all an aspect of Micro-Ergonomics. So this is a product that was designed as a meat tenderizer, it was designed by a company called Oxo Good Grip. And what they did was, if you look carefully at the handle itself, you will see a series of lines, right? So these lines, these lines essentially are grooves that are created in the device. And what they do is they create some sort of a soft sensation. And what happens is that you can then use the product for a long time without getting any fatigue or leading up to any friction or causing heat or things of that nature. So this is one of the really, really interesting innovations from an ergonomic perspective and a materials perspective that Oxo Good Grips was involved in. And they have a whole series of products, potato peelers, this meat tenderizer. A whole range of hand held kitchen appliances that have that same sort of design that they've extended because it really works well. So what we looked at today in this section is we looked at materials, we looked at safety, and we looked at ergonomics. So these six are the ones we've looked at so far through part one and part two and in part three, we'll look at packaging, graphics, performance and technology. So in the part two lecture of product innovations, we've covered three more aspects of what you can think about and we cover the rest of them in part three of the presentation, thank you.
