There is a trend that cuts through the industrial design world (you can see a new instance of it pop online every few hours) - the idea that the regular market economy is missing the boat on some GENIUS idea that involves recycling / underlooked materials / sustainability, and that this genius idea can also drastically cut costs.
I happen to love the Lego-block nature of cargo containers, and while doing research on them first stumbled into this pattern: it seems that every third design major comes up with the idea to use cargo containers as cheap pre-fab houses. Well, it turns out that while cargo containers are relatively cheap, they're really not all that good for housing - they're too small, they're uninsulated, they need as much (or more) build out on the inside as a regular house, they're harder to put windows into, etc.
The same sort of pattern appears with all sorts of other materials: people get the idea that left over offcuts of wood at house construction sites can be laminated into tables or bathtubs, that asphalt shingles and be ground up and used as a flex fuel, that cardboard can be folded into bicycles, that what the third world really needs is a cheap laptop with a hand-crank on the side, etc.
All of these schemes fail in similar ways:
* they ignore the huge amounts of evolved-in wisdom that long-held solutions have
* they ignore production costs
* they ignore labor costs (the "Earthship" underground house plans are great...but they implicitly assume that a thousand hours of labor swinging a sledgehammer is free)
* they ignore the costs of ancillary features (brakes on a bike, insulation on a house)
* they pretend that some materials are "green" and others are "anti-green".
* they often assume a superior attitude to people in the third world, assuming that first world design students have better ideas than millions of third world people who actually know what resources are available and what features are desirable.
Steel bicycles have a TON of evolved cleverness in them. They are the end result of a fierce evolutionary winnowing.
If you're ever tempted to announce to the world that everything that's gone before has been mistaken and you've got a solution for other people that's a ton better, take a moment and think through all the OTHER criteria that these people might consider relevant. You may have come up with a wonderful new idea (it happens!), but chances are that there are good reasons that the idea has not already been adopted.
Also serious ethical problem of targeting such solutions for third world problems is that such products are not really intended to be produced in it.
Real third world bicycle is same as first world but with hand made steel frame, because frames are most overpriced components:
http://i.imgur.com/qpw0a.jpg
People use bicycles for decades and can afford to buy or exchange it by parts ever in third world countries. If such conventional bike cost 100 dollars and can last 20 years then cardboard bike must last at least 4 years to be competitive. And people with unstable income prefer long lasting solutions because there is probability that there will be no money in future to buy replacement.
Sorry, but that bike is stupid and you are wrong about the frames being overpriced.
[1] is a bike designed by people who know what they are doing for 3rd world conditions. It has evolved over years to something that will last 20 years easily in Africa and can be serviced by people on the ground there with no special infrastructure.
the result is a robust bicycle engineered specifically for rural African terrain and load requirements. Branded the World Bicycle Relief Buffalo Bicycle, it is designed, tested and assembled in Africa with close attention to end-user feedback and rigorous quality control.... Furthermore, World Bicycle Relief Buffalo Bicycles are compatible with locally available spare parts, ensuring that with proper maintenance they will last for years.
The frames are mass produced in Asia (I assume China) and I'd be surprised if they are more than $10 each (based on priced of frames available on AliBaba).
If you are interested in this then http://worldbicyclerelief.org/ does a pretty good job of not only distributing bikes but making sure they train mechanics and providing tools etc to avoid reliance on external parties.
> If such conventional bike cost 100 dollars and can last 20 years then [$20] cardboard bike must last at least 4 years to be competitive.
No. We're talking about poor people. A $20 bike that lasts less than 4 years is much more attractive for many people than a $100 bike that lasts 20 years because they don't have $100 to spend on a bike.
> And people with unstable income prefer long lasting solutions because there is probability that there will be no money in future to buy replacement.
Prefer? Sure, but I think you're overlooking the fact that poor people often can't afford that luxury (sometimes due to their own poor decision making resulting in a vicious cycle but that's still the reality).
This isn't really on topic, but that bike with the rebar frame looks really awesome and is a really neat design --- looks a lot more sturdy/reasonably priced (if it's $100 total) than a cardboard bike.
In general, I totally agree with you. The epitome of this was a recent design for a folding bicycle that didn't have any way to pedal it. I'm starting to think that for anyone to call themselves an industrial designer, they should be required to get an ME degree, and actually see how products work and are manufactured. Your design school degree means nothing to me.
I do disagree with this though:
that what the third world really needs is a cheap laptop with a hand-crank on the side, etc.
Cheap and widely available computing devices can do a lot to raise literacy and technical skill across the world. BTW, the latest iteration from the OLPC project just uses solar charging.
I also think there is still room to apply 1st world design techniques to 3rd world problems.
I've been quite intrigued by some of the projects I've seen, such as the cylindrical water container that can easily be pulled with a rope, or some of the other water purification devices which can be made with local materials.
There are some other projects than can help turn a mobile phone into a medical diagnosis tool. I'd like to see more things like that.
> Cheap and widely available computing devices can do a lot to raise literacy and technical skill across the world.
Maybe yes, maybe no, but what I'm criticizing is the idea that a bunch of pie-in-the-sky academics are going to come up with a better solution than tens of millions of people working in parallel.
The OLPC programs was INSANE. First, there's lots of power in the third world - a hand crank is a crazy idea and makes it look like a toy while adding mechanical complexity. Next, instead of using cheap commodity hardware it designed things from the ground up. Did you know that they were so adamant against using the round wheel that they decided to reinvent it? Ah, excuse me. Not wheel. Firmware. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Firmware_q2d04
The OLPC programs was INSANE. First, there's lots of power in the third world - a hand crank is a crazy idea and makes it look like a toy while adding mechanical complexity.
Well, the hand-crank didn't work out, and they admitted that.
I disagree though that there is a lot of power in the third world. Looked at from an absolute cost as well as a relative-to-income cost, electricity is quite expensive for a large percentage of the world's population. Just look at Pakistan, for example. [1] Its much worse in other parts of the world. A lot of the slums surrounding major cities don't officially exist, so they don't officially get basic services (water, sewage, power) either.
So the OLPC project, rather than rely on cheap off-the-shelf hardware, tried to radically reduce power consumption for the people living effectively off the grid.
They were also concerned about the lack of wired/wireless communications infrastructure in these areas. So that drove the push for wireless peer-to-peer networking, and the need for the networking to run even while the rest of the board is powered down. And that drives a radically different board design, and thereby the BIOS too.
These days, it is feasible to accomplish many of their same goals with tablets, and that's what they've been working on. There was no significant low-power computer market back in 2007 to draw upon. Now there is.
If these third world countries all had decent mobile data infrastructure (at least 2G), and everybody could at least afford a phone or something to access the Internet, then the OLPC project wouldn't be needed. That definitely was not the case in 2007, and is still not the case in 2012 for many parts of the world.
+1. I think cheap commodity hardware and pirated software revolutionized third world more than the fancy OLPC project.
I'm not trying to justify piracy here, but in many cases the academics fail to understand the requirements of developing countries.
> I'm starting to think that for anyone to call themselves an industrial designer, they should be required to get an ME degree, and actually see how products work and are manufactured. Your design school degree means nothing to me.
There is a semi-controversial architect named Peter Eisenman who made a similar claim. His thought was that architecture should only be studied at the graduate level, leaving your undergraduate education for something more practical.
After getting a taste of undergraduate design education, I'm inclined to agree.
Although I agree with your comments on the relevant design projects, I'd like to point out how meaningless engineering degrees can also be (note - I didn't say tend to be). When I was in college my engineering department did a joint class / project with the industrial design majors. I was blown away by how incompetent most of my classmates were compared with many of the industrial design students who seemed to have a much better grasp on how products ended up in the real world. No degree is ever a guarantee that the holder is not a moron.
Shipping containers do however make amazing retail shop fronts. They're all over the place here in Northern Ghana.
Obviously there is still a ton of room for innovation on the industrial design front and it's great to see your focus on how much work actually goes into solutions that scale. That lightning bolt idea you get may be the start of something if you have the persistence to work out the details.
Incidentally this is one of the huge problems with work being done in the developing world - people think they've created a magic bullet idea but don't have the persistence to work out the details and eventually they give up, usually blaming some external factor.
Indeed. In London too. And Googles first data centre innovations. The best thing is they are very cheap especially in a recession when shipping is looking bad. For a few hundred dollars there is no real competition...
> assuming that first world design students have better ideas than millions of third world people who actually know what resources are available and what features are desirable.
I agree with you that this assumption, especially with overzealous design students, can often be false. But (going a little off-topic) I sometimes see this extended here on HN towards the attitude that we don't have any responsibility towards the third world, and the best thing we could do to help them is to stay away. With that I disagree. First worlders have advanced maths and superior computing power which, in many cases, allows for strictly better design given the same materials. Take antennas for an example - there is a whole branch of science built around it that amounts to discovering even more imaginative ways of bending metal rods[0]. I do strongly agree with anonymfus below [1] that we shouldn't hook the third world up to our industry and sell them things they can't hope to produce or maintain, but we do have an enormous amount of knowledge about pretty much everything; knowledge they could use to vastly improve their lives. So I'm all for co-operation between people from both worlds.
[0] - by the way, I find this to be an amazing example of the power of human thought - we're basically bending pieces of scrap metal, turning stuff that was worthless few hundred years ago into something very useful, and quite often expensive.
The feature of these patterns is that they are designed for other people. Nobody would reasonably choose to live in a shipping container if they had better options, and most conventional options are objectively better. Shipping containers have been relatively successful (in comparison with other shipping container dwellings) for student housing - a typology which is traditionally among the most dismal an educated mid-social class person is likely to have experienced for a prolonged period of their life.
Likewise, a cardboard bicycle. There are many circumstances where it is probably preferable to no bicycle, but probably few circumstances where it would be preferable to a typical bicycle constructed in a conventional manner.
Over the long term, the cardboard bicycle is likely to be an increasingly less preferable option as the availablity repairs and the availability of replacement parts becomes a greater concern than initial cost. There's a huge standardized infrastructure of dimensions and components which make the use of bicycles more practical.
Even the FP-45 Liberator was ultimately deemed impractical for any purpose other than psychological warfare.
I'll try to keep it short, since my thoughts on this subject can easily turn into a long-winded rant. Also, this applies to both industrial design and architecture, as there is a lot of overlap between the two.
1) Practicality vs "creativity"
When you see design projects, such as the cardboard bike, that are clever but completely impractical, design schools and design contests are largely to blame. This is the kind of design that will win you prestigious awards and good grades, but will never actually see production. There is a huge disconnect between the kind of design that most designers want to do, and what they actually make a living doing. As a result, they fetishize these impractical concept pieces.
2) Design education vs professional practice
Most design schools are still teaching (and grading students on) their hand-drafting skills. The number of professional firms that produce finished work entirely by hand is getting smaller and smaller every day, and yet many schools do not teach their students digital design, or do so on a very superficial level. Note: This applies to hand-finished final designs. I believe that hand-sketching is still invaluable in the early stages.
3) Cost of education vs reward
The job market for designers is abysmal. And if you do manage to get a job, you will be paid much less than the rest of your college-educated peers, despite working longer hours and (in the case of architecture) spending longer in school. Design school itself is outrageously expensive, even at state institutions, due to the cost of class materials and the fact that most programs do not leave you with enough free time to hold down a job.
In short, I'm studying computer science now, and couldn't be happier.
I switched majors after a week in architecture school for much the same reasons. It really felt like a strange, cult-like realm: architects feel superior to both engineers and artists, though they do a little bit of both and neither as well as the other.
Wow, I hope you're not in charge of the Earth's innovation budget. Replace "all" with "some" or at most, "many", for starters. But who anointed you the chief decider of what people should try to invent. And how do any of your proclamations apply to this bicycle? You do realize that there are billions of people who use bicycles different from you and me. I really, really don't like this reply.
That's my whole point: good ideas bubble up from the bottom with tens of millions of people using local knowledge and refining and playing with existing ideas: not intellectuals working from the top-down.
>that what the third world really needs is a cheap laptop with a hand-crank on the side
What One Laptop per Child was trying to do was bring education and the internet to third world countries that don't have it. It wasn't a plan to get rich, it was people realizing that a lot of third world problems stem from poor education, and a technical person's solution.
I'm not sure why it failed exactly, but I know that Intel saw the laptop and made a "netbook" based on that concept that was naturally more expensive because it included all the things that OLpC was trying to avoid.
But in all fairness few inventors will tell you their invention is useless. That the guy in the article has apparently re-invented fiberglass construction is not too surprising. Its really cool, you make something out of cardboard, you soak is fiberglass resin (oh I'm sorry a bunch or organic (as in Chemistry) things) and it becomes a rigid structure you can use.
But it is better than an iPhone app that lets destitute people find educational and training opportunities near their location.
Thank you for bringing this up. Too many times now have I seen such articles about seemingly brilliant ideas with little or no thought put into the practicality or implementation difficulties.
In this particular case I question how efficient or economical it is to use cardboard and how ecologically friendly is it (doesnt seem it is if its using cardboard). Also how "waterproof" it would be after a couple of seasons in the rain and sunny weather ?
Every week someone invents a new hubless bike, electronics that can bend 180 degrees in any direction or folding power plugs and switches that ignore the physical fact that behind the wall there is not and endless amount of space
I happen to love the Lego-block nature of cargo containers, and while doing research on them first stumbled into this pattern: it seems that every third design major comes up with the idea to use cargo containers as cheap pre-fab houses. Well, it turns out that while cargo containers are relatively cheap, they're really not all that good for housing - they're too small, they're uninsulated, they need as much (or more) build out on the inside as a regular house, they're harder to put windows into, etc.
The same sort of pattern appears with all sorts of other materials: people get the idea that left over offcuts of wood at house construction sites can be laminated into tables or bathtubs, that asphalt shingles and be ground up and used as a flex fuel, that cardboard can be folded into bicycles, that what the third world really needs is a cheap laptop with a hand-crank on the side, etc.
All of these schemes fail in similar ways:
* they ignore the huge amounts of evolved-in wisdom that long-held solutions have
* they ignore production costs
* they ignore labor costs (the "Earthship" underground house plans are great...but they implicitly assume that a thousand hours of labor swinging a sledgehammer is free)
* they ignore the costs of ancillary features (brakes on a bike, insulation on a house)
* they pretend that some materials are "green" and others are "anti-green".
* they often assume a superior attitude to people in the third world, assuming that first world design students have better ideas than millions of third world people who actually know what resources are available and what features are desirable.
Steel bicycles have a TON of evolved cleverness in them. They are the end result of a fierce evolutionary winnowing.
If you're ever tempted to announce to the world that everything that's gone before has been mistaken and you've got a solution for other people that's a ton better, take a moment and think through all the OTHER criteria that these people might consider relevant. You may have come up with a wonderful new idea (it happens!), but chances are that there are good reasons that the idea has not already been adopted.