Tag: fun

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Lego WALL•E


I am stoked that this set is finally going to be produced!  It was announced as the winner of the Lego Ideas competition: WALL•E

I think the Lego ideas platform is a fine example of excellent marketing and design.  It not only involves the user base of Legos but shows that the Lego company and brand cares about its customers and puts an emphasis on interaction and feedback.  It is a way to not only bring to market what people want to see, but also to include folks in the design process.  It is a great example of a crowd-sourcing idea that works very well for all involved.  It is a win-win situation.

I recently listened to the book Brick by Brick by David Robertson and Bill Breen.  It expounds on the details of how Lego almost went bankrupt until it changed its strategy and focused on making people their primary focus.   I enjoyed the book, and it brought many good ideas to the table to learn and implement.  This is partially why I decided to focus more on what I can give my customers rather than get from them.

It is interesting to see how such an amazing company like Lego was in dire straights only about ten years ago.  They sure have made a comeback and have diversified enough to remain interesting to young and old.   I will be purchasing the Lego WALL•E when it comes out!

I am excited by this Lego design and I think it’s an awesome toy.  Many creative minds went into designing the character Walle through sketch, animation, story and now Lego building.

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Honk if parts fall off – Engineered Obsolescence

farm truck bokeh

I was thinking today about how many products seem to be designed with an expiration date.  Engineered obsolescence.

It is good to think about the life cycle of your product when designing, and is very important when it comes down to sourcing materials and marketing the end product.

What I do not like is when a product is purposefully designed to fail when it could perfectly function for far longer if the design were modified.  Popular Mechanics has some good examples in their technology article on the subject.

Whenever something fails I think of how it could have been designed differently.  I am reminded of my first truck in high school.  It was a faded yellow ’77 Toyota Pickup.  I had created an antenna from a coat hanger and was able to pick up hundreds of messy AM stations on the built in am radio.  I had a bumper sticker on the back stating “Honk if parts fall off”.   Ironically I actually lost that half of my bumper while exploring the west desert of Utah.

The truck was perfect for me because it worked just enough to keep me busy fixing it, but not too much of a problem that I would be eager to get rid of it.  This truck was a junker but still worked quite well.  Whenever I think of Toyota I think of a perfect model company to follow in practice and design.  They make their product useful indefinitely through sound and applied engineering.  They focus on quality as their business plan.

I think the direction where most of our economy is headed now is towards more quality and less junk.  The sharing economy has to have products that are designed well to last a lifetime and possibly generations.

There are many products that do require obsolescence – take electronics for instance.  Especially computers.  They need to be updated to match modern technology which doubles every two years.

But when all is said and done the best business plan really is quality.