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26/02/2022

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26/02/2022

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26/02/2022

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26/02/2022

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17/01/2022

To appreciate its power, think of design as a drug
The search for some concoction or contraption to improve our performance at work is nothing new. Lawyers, bankers and other professionals have famously used performance-enhancing drugs to gain a competitive advantage.

But the design of a workspace can actually have similar effects on those who create it, consume it or pursue it. And, just like a drug, design can have good and bad effects.

Instead of chemicals, design manipulates space to change behaviour. An increase in the length of a lunch table, for example, can encourage people who did not know one another to interact more.

Read more: The research on hot-desking and activity-based work isn't so positive

Several studies have looked into the association between office design and performance. These aim to understand attributes of the physical environment that can improve cognitive performance in a similar way to how scientists study substances in a quest for a smart pill.

It seems that small open-plan offices support people better than large ones in conducting cognitively demanding tasks.

Just as “smart drugs” have side effects – notably dependence, insomnia, nervousness and anorexia – so too does design, albeit different ones.

One study of activity-based working, which provides people with a choice of settings for various workplace activities, found that, while it may improve interaction and communication within a team, this comes at the potential cost of concentration and privacy.

Aligning beliefs, expectations and workspace
There is, however, a very specific and equally important aspect that designing a drug and designing a workplace have in common – the expectancy hypothesis.

A person’s existing beliefs prompt a response that is in line with their expectations. Inert blue pills are more likely than pink pills to produce a sedative response in patients. This is solely due to the expectations raised by the colour of the capsule.

There is a great deal of pharmacology research showing how strong this response is.

Placebo drugs, for instance, are defined as chemically inactive. But in practice they are far from inert – pills come with a whole bunch of meaning that has an effect.

The opposite of the placebo effect is the nocebo effect – expectation of a negative outcome may lead to the worsening of a symptom. A doctor simply describing what might happen to a patient may actually create outcomes that are different from what would have happened without this information.

Branded placebos have been found to be more effective at alleviating headaches than unbranded ones.

Read more: Designer drugs imitate the 'food effect'

This invites the question: can the brand of a designer impact the performance of a workplace beyond the attributes of the design? We don’t yet know the clinical answer to this question.

The placebo effect has been shown to add 5 to 10 points on a standard IQ test. But can people’s creativity be similar manipulated? We don’t yet know, but this is the subject of my ongoing research into the expectancy hypothesis and workplace design.

We are asking groups to complete a standard creativity test. While the groups will do the test in the same room, one group will be primed with a sign saying the “innovation lab”. Others will be negatively primed with a sign such as “storeroom”. The placebo will just be in a meeting room.

Big Pharma, Big Design, Big Data … and the big gap
This is an area we are just starting to explore, as we collect a bunch of new behavioral data in the workplace – people’s social interactions (e.g. speaking rates in conversation and size of social groups), daily activities (e.g. physical activity and sleep), sense of pride and community, and mobility patterns (e.g. frequency and duration of time spent at various locations), to name a few.

These, however, don’t account for the nocebo or placebo effect. As we develop new ways of collecting data, we should improve the way we analyse it.

What is more, studies of the way illnesses are managed have found that as the rituals imbued in the treatment of ailments are stripped back, so too is the meaning for the patient. This, in turn, diminishes the process and decreases the treatment’s ability to heal.

This notion can be extrapolated to organisations. The way we design the workspace follows how the organisation itself is designed. Measuring the placebo and nocebo effect in design has the potential to further our understanding of the properties of space. And in doing so, we should be able to prescribe better treatments for organisations to work smarter.

17/01/2022

From breast implants to ice cube trays: How silicone took over our kitchens
One of my ice cube trays is a small, yellow novelty tray that, when placed in the freezer, molds water into little duck-shaped pieces of ice.

You’ve probably seen ice cube trays like this in all types of shapes, from airplanes to superhero logos.

While these trays have become commonplace, they symbolize how the material used to make them – silicone – has transformed our kitchens over the past two decades.

Silicone was originally invented as an insulating material for high temperature electric motors and would later be commonly used for breast implants. But designers eventually realized that it was an ideal material for a range of household goods.

Mars rovers and … muffin molds?
Design engineers like me love working with silicone because of its durability, flexibility and affordability.

Silicone, also known as polysiloxane, is a polymer – the word scientists use for plastics – that’s known for its rubbery feel.

It also has features that other materials simply don’t have. For example, Mars rovers have silicone parts and coatings because the material is able to withstand extremely high and low temperatures, all while holding its given shape.

Think back to the rubbery silicone ice cube tray. It retains its shape in freezing temperatures but is still flexible enough that it can be twisted to pop out the cubes, without cracking. Then it returns back to its original shape.

There are other flexible polymers that can do this, but they tend to be a bit sticky to the touch – which isn’t the best quality for objects that come into contact with food.

Also, silicones – like most plastics – have low heat conductivity, which means they don’t transfer temperature well. This makes them ideal for muffin forms, loaf pans and Bundt cake pans. You won’t burn your fingers as you’re popping out your baked treats.

If you use silicone bakeware, you won’t burn your fingers as you would with a metal pan. TYNZA
Silicone gets a bad rap
How did this space-age material with incredible properties become a standard material for kitchen products?

It all started with breast implants.

Beginning in the 1970s, silicone was the primary implantable material used for breast implants and other body augmentations. Breast implants used two types of silicone. There was a firm silicone used for the shell and a viscous silicone gel used as the filler.

Safety concerns about silicone breast implants cropped up in the 1980s. Some patients who had received implants complained of fibromyalgia, arthritis and other symptoms. The symptoms seemed to go away when the implants were removed, and people suspected that silicone gel was leaking from the outer shell. This suspicion couldn’t be proven, but the public started to become wary of silicone implants, while the plastic came to viewed as a dangerous material. There wasn’t much of a market for products that used it.

A silicone gel breast implant is shown at a manufacturing facility in Irving, Texas. AP Photo/Donna McWilliam
Yet by this point, chemists and engineers had developed entire catalogs of silicone materials that could withstand a huge range of temperatures, had amazing elasticity and flexibility, and possessed very low thermal conductivity. Importantly, because many were used for breast implants, they had already undergone rigorous safety approvals and certifications. They had also received FDA food-contact certification in the United States.

All that was missing was a vision for how they could be more widely applied, and a public appetite for silicone products.

Perfect for messy kitchen work
In the mid-1990s, I worked in an international design firm that helped companies and startups design new products. One day, two polymer sales technicians came to my workplace with a three-ring binder containing strips of silicone samples.

The strips had been dyed in a wide range of vibrant colors. Some had been molded with different textures, from little bumps to stylish chevron patterns. The samples varied by durometer, a measure of the level of squishiness. Some were translucent, while others were opaque, crystal clear or even filled with glitter.

They told us that they wanted to reboot silicone’s image – to feature it in an array of household products – and asked us for suggestions.

I don’t remember the specifics of what we told them that day. But I wasn’t surprised when, as the years passed, I started seeing more and more silicone being used for kitchen products. It may not have initially been marketed as a silicone product, due to the bad press the material had received. Yet it makes perfect sense for kitchens, which are like mini laboratories – the science and technology centers of a household.

When cooking, we apply extreme heat and extreme cold; transform matter from liquid to solid; and mix, melt, cut, mash and stick.

Silicone makes all of this messy kitchen work much easier.

When you stir biscuit dough, you can grip a silicone mixing bowl much more easily than its slippery porcelain counterpart. The super-sticky dough is easier to clean off a silicone stirring spoonula and a silicone mat, which you can use for rolling out and cutting the rounds. And the bottoms of my biscuits don’t brown as much when using a silicone baking mat.

We know more about silicone now. It is still used in breast implants that are approved by the FDA if the manufacturer agrees to maintain long-term health studies. There is even a brand, Silpat, whose name is a riff on silicone.

I often think about how silicone continues to have a range of important applications, whether it’s in outer space, in motor components or in emergency rooms.

So each time I take out my rubber ducky ice cube tray and pop out some cubes for my seltzer, it’s a nice reminder of how an extraordinarily complex material can play a little role in day-to-day life.

17/01/2022

Explainer: can you copyright furniture?
Furniture stores are often filled with designs that look similar to others. But is copying furniture legal, and should we feel bad about buying replicas?

Recently, interior designers accused the supermarket Aldi of copying an Australian designer’s stool in the launch of a new range of “luxe” furniture. Some, including the Design Institute of Australia, noted the stool’s similarities to designer Mark Tuckey’s eggcup stool, which retails for more than $550. Aldi withdrew its stool (priced at $69) on the day of the sale, citing quarantine issues and said it was scheduled to return to stores in late August. (There is no suggestion that Aldi has broken the law here).

In general, copying furniture designs that have not been registered in Australia is likely to be legal. This means that, in most circumstances when designers have not registered their work, businesses are able to sell, and Australian consumers are able to purchase, replica furniture without breaking the law.

How designs are protected
A designer of furniture, fashion or any other product will normally start out by creating a 2D drawing of their product. The drawing might be made by hand or using a computer or machine. This initial design is automatically protected under copyright law as an “artistic work”. For most types of artistic works, copyright lasts for the lifetime of the creator plus an additional 70 years.

Furniture designers’ drawings will be protected under copyright automatically. Shutterstock
Copyright law prevents a person from copying someone else’s work if they do not have permission or a legal excuse. Making a 3D reproduction of a 2D artistic work counts as “copying” under law. So a person who makes, for example, a physical 3D chair using a designer’s 2D design of that chair may be infringing copyright of that 2D artistic work.

However, there is an interesting feature of copyright law that applies only to designers. A designer will lose copyright protection in their 2D artistic work if it is “industrially applied”.

“Industrial application” is generally understood to mean that 50 or more copies of the 3D product deriving from the design are made and offered for sale. Any mass commercial production will therefore take the product outside of the scope of copyright law.

However, mass-designed products can be protected by Australia’s designs system. This system protects the visual appearance of a product. Unlike with copyright, designers must register their designs to be protected under law.

For a design to be registered, it must meet certain minimum requirements. Importantly, it must be new and visually distinctive. The novelty of a design is critical to protection. These requirements ensure that ordinary and unremarkable designs are not constrained by intellectual property law, but are free for people to make and sell.

How is this determined? An application for design registration is filed with and assessed by IP Australia, located in Canberra. It usually takes between three and 12 months to process an application, and costs around $300 to apply. Once registered, design protection lasts for five years, with the opportunity to renew registration for a further five years - so 10 years in total.

The designs register is searchable online. Our search did not reveal any designs registered to Mark Tuckey.

Incomplete protection is deliberate
There are important policy reasons why designers are not given complete protection under intellectual property law. For one, it is often difficult to determine what is an original design when aesthetics meets functionality - there are a limited number of ways to design a seat that people will actually want to sit on! Designs protection is limited so that consumers can affordably access practical products.

Designs law tries to balance a designer’s right to protect their product with the public’s right to access. Getting the balance right is tricky, and is likely to be under increasing pressure with the advent of 3D printing for the home.

It is now possible to print replica furniture, and this practice may become more popular as 3D printing technology becomes simultaneously more sophisticated and more widely available. This is likely to raise ongoing questions about the scope of designs protection under copyright and designs law, and whether the law is appropriately tailored to protect designers.

The option of 3D printing your furniture brings about new headaches for copyright. Shutterstock
For Australian designers, the answer may not be stronger legal protection. First, we should ensure that the designs registration system is working effectively. Anecdotal reports suggest that the designs system is underused. We need to make sure that registration is affordable and accessible. Only then will we be in a position to know whether the protection offered by designs registration is enough.

For consumers, the good news is that replica furniture is likely to continue to be available in retail stores. There is certainly nothing illegal about buying replica furniture. Those with the budget to do so, however, may want to consider supporting local Australian designers of furniture and home crafts.

17/01/2022

17/01/2022

17/01/2022