Industrial designer Niels Diffrient used probes to measure the contours of the human body (1) in order to design airplane seats for American Airlines (2). The office chair (3) is a sketch by Diffrient of a chair meant to fit the body—and look elegant.
Credit: Technology Review

24 Years Ago in TR

The Engineer and the Artist

  • May 2007
  • By Nate Nickerson

Industrial design has long depended on strange bedfellows.

   

In this special design issue, two truths seem to emerge. First, in order to make great things, technology companies must practice collaboration. Bill Moggridge, a cofounder of the design consultancy Ideo, implores us, "Put together a team with a great engineer, a crazy designer, a good businessperson, and a good human-factors scientist or psychologist of some kind, and put them in a room and get them to try to work together" (see Q&A). Second, behind companies with well-designed products are leaders who care deeply about design. No company exemplifies that better than Apple, as Daniel Turner reports (see "Different").

For the February/March 1983 TR, Ralph Caplan, a former editor of Industrial Design, wrote "Designers and Engineers: Strange but Essential Bedfellows," in which he asserted the importance of those same two truths.

 

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