At university, one of the final projects was designing a regional aircraft.
In aircraft design, there is one huge question that lies at the front end: “What’s it for?”
What kind of aircraft do we want to build?
For a regional aircraft in Australia, we have a certain group of runway lengths, and desired baggage allowances. We also have average passenger heights and weights, which influence seat placing and ceiling heights….
Of course, there are a bunch more axis that we need to look at when we design the thing.
But at the end of the day, many of them are mutually exclusive. We can’t have standing head room for all, and a huge baggage allowance, and a high number of passengers, and a light-weight plane with a short wingspan, and low fuel usage…
We need to choose a couple, and let go of many.
In all of our projects and work, we need to choose.
“What is it for?”
This sounds broad, but as we see with the aircraft (and anything else we design), it really needs to be specific, or else we end up with something vague, or worse, that doesn’t fly…
What is the exact purpose? Who do you want to please with this and how do you want us to feel when we use it or engage with it? How do you want to move? What is the tone you will use?
Design thinking sounds like it’s something for someone else to use sometimes.
In reality though, it’s for all of us to practice, and is a way for us to bring intent into each thing that we do.
