Here’s another Director’s Commentary tale, this time from the design and build team behind the Honda Ridgeline Baja racer. 

Don’t let the gearhead nature of this particular commentary put you off — this is a story about attention to detail, iteration, and evidence-based management.  To create a successful race car, you have to execute a design which won’t be let down by trivial logistics ( failing due to a cheap, trivial part), but which also hews to a winning overall point of view ( balancing the weight which comes with reliability with the conflicting need for agility and speed).  Holding opposing constraints in mind, making choices – that sounds like design thinking for strategy to me.

Here’s a cool bit of detailed design thinking which might not be insignificant were it to be needed:

When done properly, the
seat attachment points are part of the rollcage, not welded to the
truck’s floor. This way, the seats can’t tear loose from the floor in
case of a severe accident or rollover. The occupants and their seats
stay inside the cage.

And of course, there’s some serious unabashed gearhead gnarlyness at work here.  Check out this elegant rollcage creeping forward over the front strut towers, and those gorgeous welds:

And this is what informed intuition – a critical part of design thinking – looks like in action:

Hey Dennis, how cool is this?  😎

I once heard the great Sara Little Turnbull tell my group of student design engineers at Stanford that the way to become a great designer someday was to be a great reader today.

As you can imagine, I liked what she was saying.

I also like this article titled "C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success", though I wonder if it doesn’t confuse correlation with causation.  I think rich folks have big libraries for reading because they’re rich, not the other way around (your local library is a more eco-friendly way to enjoy the literary works of mankind).  But reading is certainly a fine way to understand the world, to develop critical thinking skills, and — perhaps most important of all — to grow one’s ability to recognize patterns in information.  That’s a key design thinking skill.  In that vein, I particularly like this quote in the article from Sidney Harman:

I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers.  Poets are our original systems thinkers.  They look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand.

I’m going to need to read up a bit on that.

This latest Director’s Commentary on metacool is truly meta: it’s a designer being interviewed about what it means to design with simplicity in mind.  In this simply awesome interview, NPR’s Ira Flatow talks to Professor John Maeda about The Laws of Simplicity.

I truly appreciate any opportunity I get to listen to Professor Maeda talk about his approach to the process of designing things.  My favorite law of simplicty is Law 5: Differences.  This law can be stated as follows:

Simplicity and complexity need each other

Actually, that’s a big, fat lie on my part.  If I put on my professional hat, then my favorite law of simplicity is actually Law 7: Emotion, which is:

More emotions are better than less

If you decide to take a listen to Maeda’s interview, you’ll hear him talk about why desirability can make even a complex, cultish device such as the iPhone seem simple.  Wanting something makes it easier to use.  Think about that one next time you’re dealing with the Internal Revenue Service.  I’m a big believer in starting and ending with desirability when it comes to designing for success in the marketplace, so you can see why I like Law 7.

By the way, he wrote a wonderful book about the subject, too.  I highly recommend it.

Phil Patton has a nice story in the New York Times about the increasing recognition by the automobile industry that green cars more red, if you want them to be desired by a broad market:

Once Frumpy, Green Cars Start Showing Some Flash

"Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your
style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won’t keep
reading your work. I learned the importance of rhythm from music — and
mainly from jazz. Next comes melody — which, in literature, means the
appropriate arrangement of the words to match the rhythm. If the way
the words fit the rhythm is smooth and beautiful, you can’t ask for
anything more. Next is harmony — the internal mental sounds that
support the words. Then comes the part I like best: free improvisation.
Through some special channel, the story comes welling out freely from
inside. All I have to do is get into the flow. Finally comes what may
be the most important thing: that high you experience upon completing a
work — upon ending your “performance” and feeling you have succeeded in
reaching a place that is new and meaningful. And if all goes well, you
get to share that sense of elevation with your readers (your audience).
That is a marvelous culmination that can be achieved in no other way.

Practically everything I know about writing, then, I learned from music."

– Haruki Murakami

The incredible, audacious, 1971 Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.8 racing car by AMG

It’s red.

The 24 Hours of Le Mans race is on!  If you’re a motorsports fan, it doesn’t get much better than the complex brew of strategy, technology, and teamwork necessary to win a day-long endurance race.  It’s fascinating stuff — Le Mans is to auto racing fan what Wagner’s Ring Cycle is to opera buffs.

Le Mans is still relevant even if you loathe racing.  Last year Audi made history by winning the race with leading-edge diesel technology, a racing first.  This year Peugeot joins the diesel fray with their wicked-looking 908.  Diesel is not the ultimate answer to the environmental challenges facing us today, but it is a more efficient alternative to traditional gasoline technology.  What Audi and Peugeot are doing at Le Mans is all about creating a more attractive story around clean diesel motors so that they become more desirable to the general populace.  It’s a good example of trying to make green more red.

"The way I produce a chicken is an extension of my worldview.  You can
learn more about that by seeing what’s on my bookshelf than having me
fill out a whole bunch of forms."
— Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, as quoted in The Omnivore’s Dilemma

The Audi RS4, as piloted by one David E. Davis, Jr., along the beautiful string of roads which make up the California Mille.  In my book, Mr. Davis is the biggest voice to hit American literature since Twain, or Hemingway — or perhaps even both — and here he takes us on a wonderful video journey about cars, landscape, friendship, and memories of winding roads and the cars that need them.  As you hear him playing that sonorous V-8 up through the gears, it’s hard to disagree with his belief that "… God does not charge us for hours spent driving before breakfast."

Myself, I quite fancy the RS4.  It’s one amazing piece of engineering.  A bit thirsty and heavy, yes, but if thought of as a four-door 911, it makes more sense.

But forget Porsche.  Audi is the new BMW.  Close the cubicle door, turn up the volume on your laptop, watch DED, Jr. drive those roads again, and you’ll see why I think that’s the case.  Audi is on fire.

Winding Road video:  2007 California Mille, June 2007