I think the whole thing that Jamie [Hyneman] and I have in working together is that we are constantly simplifying each other's designs, and we both appreciate that the quickest and the dirtiest solution is usually the most elegant, the least expensive, and the fastest.
The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components are those that aren't there.
A lot of what we are doing is getting design out of the way.
The design of each element should be thought out in order to be easy to make and easy to repair.
At the most basic level, prioritizing design also represents a practical consideration. It's far easier to design first and engineer later.
As a designer, the mission with which we have been charged is simple: providing space at the right cost.
The themes in WordPress drive a lot of design trends. It democratizes design... You make a theme, and suddenly it's on hundreds and thousands of sites.
Industrial design keeps the customer happy, his client in the black and the designer busy.
Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and the aesthete unoffended.
Study after study shows that the very best designers produce structures that are faster, smaller, simpler, clearer, and produced with less effort. The differences between the great and the average approach an order of magnitude.
Received wisdom is that if you spend time up front getting the design right, you avoid costs later. But the longer you spend getting the design right, the more your upfront costs are, and the longer it takes for the software to start earning.
All the reasons that have made software so successful are beginning to happen with hardware. So much can be done so quickly, prototyped so rapidly, and the costs are so low.
I'm usually able to reuse at least 50 percent of the clients' furniture. Most times, I'll just clean it up, make it look like new, and that's the best way to save money.
The only thing I learned from the architecture is keep the bathroom and the kitchen near each other, so you don't have to run pipes all over the place.
The book is a unit and is such a brilliant ergonomic unit.
...Simplifications have had a much greater long-range scientific impact than individual feats of ingenuity. The opportunity for simplification is very encouraging, because in all examples that come to mind the simple and elegant systems tend to be easier and faster to design and get right, more efficient in execution, and much more reliable than the more contrived contraptions that have to be debugged into some degree of acceptability....Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated.
