Why Some Designs Are Impossible to Improve: Quintessence

some designs don't change much the paperclip the big pen the Cordy keyboard layout and even the PlayStation controller decades and sometimes even centuries pass but these designs barely change at all they're quintessential why do some designs last for decades while other seemingly better Alternatives never catch on this exact question was asked by technology Connections in his video about the Sunbeam toaster check it out you begin by inserting your bread slices into the slots and then it what did that the bread it just went down on its own all you do is place the bread in

the toaster the bread automatically descends down and then it comes back up a few minutes later at the perfect level of dness this is how all toasters should work so why don't all toasters work this way why isn't the Sunbeam toaster the quintessential toaster design that we all know about in order for something to become a quintessential design it has to address at least five key points the first thing is that it needs to be a highquality reliable object I would say that the Sunbeam toaster accomplishes that let's look at the second point though it

needs to be highs scale and very prevalent really popular quintessential designs are usually made in the millions or even billions it's extremely successful and prevalent it sets the standard it just sort of becomes ubiquitous and expected you're unlikely to be able to sell millions of Sunbeam toasters though first of all the toaster cost like $23 in 1949 which was something like onethird of a week salary at the time and even though it's relatively simple the Sunbeam toaster is still a lot more complex to assemble than other toasters every part that you add to a mechanical

assembly is another potential point of failure I've heard mixed reviews about the sunbeams reliability some say it's last of them decades others say it breaks constantly it also only works with specific kinds of bread also the biggest selling point about the Sunbeam is the fact that it's automatic you just put the bread in the slots and it does all the work for you but for most people I'm not sure that's a big enough reason to Shell out onethird of your weekly salary there's value in pushing the lever down yourself it adds just enough Personal Touch

and it also adds some tactile feedback that's kind of nice the Sunbeam toaster is high quality enough to be a quintessential design but it doesn't scale there aren't enough people who are willing to spend so much money on a toaster and the mechanical complexity makes it harder to manufacture millions of units effectively now a regular toaster isn't perfect but it's good enough we learn to live in a world of imperfect things just as we learn to live in a world of imperfect humans the Sunbeam toaster is appealing to a very small audience and that's great

that's okay you shouldn't always cater to the masses look how excited Alec was about the toaster what is happening that's a special thing and the Sunbeam is still a great design but it isn't quintessential designing the process of how something is made is just as important as the design of the object itself the paperclip is a great example of this this design is unb unbelievably effective and the fact that 11 billion of them are sold every year is proof of that but there actually are better paperclip designs out there this paperclip design was patented over

30 years ago it's much stronger and therefore can hold more papers than a standard paperclip it doesn't deform as easily so why isn't this the quintessential paperclip design it comes down to large- scale production the standard paperclip making process is insanely efficient it's just a 4-in wire bent three times using a beautifully simple machine the standard paperclip we all know was never patented but the process for making one was you need a quintessential manufacturing process to support a quintessential design in the manufacturing process every extra step raises the price of the final product another way

to obtain scale and quintessence is to leverage laws patents and copyrights in order to make sure that your design Remains the dominant force in the market this is the mag light flashlight commonly used by law enforcement if you know anything about flashlights you've definitely seen this or maybe you've been an unfortunate soul on the other end of a police interrogation with one of them shining in your face but most people haven't heard of Mag light's cousin the Kell light now the Kell light was made by a different company it's actually the original design and the

mag light came a few years later both designs are very similar to each other though before cell light flashlights were fragile and undependable the Kell light was made of durable aluminum though the sales team would literally Hammer nails with the light to show how durable it was a big part of Kell light sales pitch was that you could hit suspects with the flashlight instead of using a standard police baton very effective use of police budget there two for one deal Maglite adopted a nearly identical design in sales pitch to Kell light so why has Maglite

been selling over 10 million flashlights every year since the 1980s while Kell light is the original innovator and it remains relatively unknown so I'll tell you but first let's talk about Opera the sponsor of today's video it's a great browser that's complet completely customizable have you ever opened up 50 tabs and gotten completely lost and confused Opera automatically groups tabs for you based on what you're doing so you can stay organized it even has chats and messaging services right in your sidebar which keeps your browsing experience nice and tidy I connect WhatsApp telegram Instagram and

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to oper for sponsoring this video use my link below to download Opera today okay so back to the video why is Maglite sold 300 million flashlights while Kell light the original original innovator remains unknown first Maglite introduced an adjustable focus light beam which was a significant Innovation even though it sometimes created a big black hole in the middle of the beam despite its flaws Maglite is still considered the quintessential flashlight design of the 20th century but what truly distinguished them was its aggressive legal strategy because Maglite is a pretty good flashlight many people tried to

copy their design from 1986 to 1989 Maglite spent $17 million on lawsuits to protect its designs that was over three times its advertising budget the Real Genius of their approach came after winning one lawsuit in the mid 80s against major retail chains like Sears and Kmart who were selling imported copies of their design as part of their settlement Maglite required these stores to purchase five real mag flashlights for every fake knockoff they sold solidifying their market dominance the founder Tony Maga even sued his own stepsons when they tried to start their own flashlight company they

wanted to address the Maglite black hole issue even though they succeeded in improving the design a jury awarded Maga $1.2 million for lost business and damages due to his stepson's alleged theft of Maglite research this put his stepsons out of business and basically Maglite just sued all the competition out of existence maglight also became standard issue police force equipment for decades partly due to Tony mag's connections he often rubs shoulders with US president Ronald Reagan and George Bush Senor which may have helped secure those big law enforcement contracts although it's hard to say for sure

the fact that it was a decent flashlight for the time helped a lot too you could hold it under your arm allowing you to keep both hands free which can be important as an officer but I think the main reason the flashlight was successful with law enforcement is simply because it's really big and intimidating if you're holding one of these things you just feel really safe and in control it's also very intimidating from the other end but lawsuits can only hold off Innovation for so long competitors eventually made a better product for a lower price

this flashlight is still used by law enforcement today although they tend to opt for other brands that improved on its shortcomings Maglite is a prime example of how intellectual property protection and strategic relationships can secure market dominance and establish a product as a quintessential design all quintessential designs set new standards in the realm of video games design evolves quickly if you look at the PlayStation 1 console versus the PlayStation 5 one looks like an early 9s novelty as you expect and the other looks like it was designed by architect zaha Hadid but if you look

at Gaming controllers the layout of the buttons and the overall form factor really hasn't changed much so why do consoles look and function completely different while the controllers have remained the same early designs were diverse from the Sega sg1000 with its blocky body to the Atari Jaguar doing whatever the heck that is the real game Cher was the 1986 Nintendo controller which set a new standard it had the directional pad on the left menu buttons in the center and action buttons on the right this layout became the blueprint for future designs establishing a template that

made your console controllers more or less follow to this day but it was the PlayStation controller that added Wings in depth to make the design more ergonomic and then in 1997 Sony introduced these two thumb sticks they helped Gamers more easily navigate 3D worlds that were becoming more common as video game Graphics in rooved this was the final addition to the modern controller as we know it today the rise of the PlayStation controller also coincided with the Surge and console sales of the PlayStation 2 the bestselling console of all time Sony PlayStation 2 will be

the biggest thing to come along since TV was invented the controller naturally followed suit even the Xbox controller and the switch controllers follow a similar pattern how many other consumer electronics can say they have the same basic form factor even after 30 years the list is pretty short now that's not to say that other companies didn't try to improve the PlayStation controller Nintendo's motion controlled Wii remote is the most well-known example but it never really set a new standard to be clear it's not that the PlayStation controller is the best design it definitely isn't at

least not for everything it's not ideal for firstperson shooter games a mouse is actually a lot easier to aim with and the hitbox controller is arguably better for many fighting games so why is it still the quintessential design well when it comes to Gaming controllers tiny changes make a huge difference in how the device feels you're making very precise inputs that need to be perfectly timed moving buttons even a millimeter or two completely changes the feel because players are so used to pressing the same buttons over and over again for thousands of hours it's a

very constraining design problem on top of that people's hands come in all sorts of different sizes and shapes controller designs basically have to accommodate the smallest 5% of hands up to the largest 95% so you need a design that people are used to and it needs to be comfortable for people with giant hands tiny hands and everything in between there's just not a lot of design flexibility but probably the biggest reason is that it's just what gamers are used to now you see this Everywhere by the way even on your keyboard the cordi keyboard layout

is not the most effective or fastest way to type the English language other layouts like the dvorac are arguably faster the Cordy keyboard was designed to fix a common problem with early typewriters the type bars these metal arms that hit the paper to print letters would often Jam if certain keys were pressed too close together this setup helped typist to type smoothly without the machine constantly getting stuck but keyboards don't have mechanical typ bars anymore the only reason why other keyboard layouts aren't used is simply because we're just used to the Cordy keyboard layout now

it's the standard it's not worth spending months learning how to type all over again just for a tiny Improvement in speed and it's the same thing with Gaming controllers for a new design to get adopted when one standard is deeply embedded it can't just just be a slight Improvement it needs to be way better to justify making the change eventually a new controller design will set a new standard but it's probably going to be a little while maybe we'll see a change with VR Gaming which has completely different design requirements now up until this point

we've talked about quintessential designs that defined a category of products but there's another level to all this what about designs that completely change culture as we know it let's take a look at one of the most quintessential car designs in history the Ford Model T just kidding that's a Buick this is the actual Model T I mean they look more or less the same right so what makes the Model T the quintessential car for its time and the Buick just another cool looking vintage vehicle well for starters the Model T was less than half the

price at $440 the Buick was $1050 but the secret to its quintessence was in the Design's extreme Simplicity the car was completely stripped down of any unnecessary elements a modern car has over 30 30,000 Parts in pieces a Model T has about a third of that just around 10,000 pieces Ford's Engineers did everything they could to simplify the design they even placed the gas tank higher than the carburetor allowing gravity to feed fuel directly into a valve that way you wouldn't need a fuel pump to siphon gas through the engine they eliminated the fuel pump

just one less part to deal with even the engine and the transmission used the same lubricating oil every single component down to the last Bolt had a specific purpose anything else was taken out now this is important because the fewer Parts there are the less likely anything is to break the car was incredibly reliable for its time and even if it did need repairs it was pretty easy to fix with a few simple hand tools and a basic understanding of mechanics you could keep a Model T running smoothly for decades which some people still do

even today with the Model T the only goal was to be faster than a horse or walking no radio no Comfort nothing else not even safety I boil over a little there you go boiled over a little bit but nobody died just Simplicity and efficiency on all levels the Model T wouldn't have been feasible today because of our obsession with convenience which I have a lot to say about later on but what made it successful then and still quintessential today was how it was about maximum effect in a minimal package and that's the third key

point of quintessential design but there were other things that made the car excellent model T's were made of vadium steel which was an incredibly strong alloy which made the car durable it could also comfortably seat four people which was very rare for a car of its price at the time while the design is paired down the process that allowed for this car to be made so efficiently and cheaply is its absolutely maximalist supply chain and Manufacturing process the company's founder Henry Ford was obsessed with control by 1920 he bought out all of the other shareholders

making him and a few of his family members the sole owner of one of the largest companies in the world he controlled the entire Empire but his obsession with control didn't stop with corporate governance it extended to the way his cars were built remember how I said the process of how an object is made is as important as the object itself this is especially true with the Ford Model T he started by pioneering the factory assembly line now before building a car was this really long process that took 12 or 13 hours to build a

single car Ford's assembly line changed all that reducing the time to just 93 minutes but Ford's drive for efficiency and control didn't just stop at the assembly line as his empire grew it became impossible to coordinate production and shipment so that each component and material would arrive at the right place and at the right time anytime he waited for parts or materials to arrive at his Factory he realized he was wasting time and time is money so at first he tried ordering an extra surplus of Parts ahead of time and then storing them but he

quickly realized that was costly too the storage warehouses were expensive the parts could degrade and transporting the materials to the manufacturing facility wasted time so instead his plan was to control every single aspect of the supply chain he didn't want to rely on any other vendors or suppliers he bought an entire railroad system so that he could quickly move all the components and materials across the production Empire he bought 700,000 Acres of forest to harvest Timber he bought mines to extract ore near Lake Superior he bought a fleet of Great Lakes freighter ships to transport

this ore to his smelting plants to turn the ore into metal car components he purchased 16 coal mines to power these factories and smelting facilities he even bought a glass making facility for the windshields Ford had complete control over his entire manufacturing Empire from harvesting materials to production to assembly it was complete vertical integration it would then be manufactured and turned into a finished car on the Ford assembly lines in only 28 hours Ford's manufacturing Empire could turn this into this isn't that crazy now to be clear this wasn't all good it completely dehumanize the

average worker it's been said that Ford doubled the worker's wages at his Factory and he shortened the work day to 8 hours a day and that might sound good but he only did this because his employees found the work insufferable and soul crushing prior to raising these wag it wasn't uncommon for employees to quit after only a few weeks as if that wasn't bad enough there was a point in time where every Ford Model T even came with an anti-semitic newspaper called the Dearborn independent so yeah Henry Ford wasn't exactly the best guy but in

spite of Henry Ford's questionable Behavior there's no doubt that the Model T completely changed culture for better and For Worse being able to move around whenever you wanted was pretty revolutionary it even completely changed social dynamics I mean before the Model T the way that men and women entered romantic relationships was a lot more formal it was usually supervised by an adult chaperon who was present at all times with the automobile going out on dates without any supervision from parents became a much more common practice young people loved this freedom because you know they could

get busy in the back seat of the car where to miss to the stars and many parents hated it and they called the car the devil wagon but that's really just the beginning before the Model T most people were limited to traveling distances that a horse could cover in a day which was you know maybe 30 m give or take if someone lived 50 m away from you and not near a train route they might as well have lived halfway across the world I was talking to my friend rafie about this and he was saying

that the Model T may have expanded our genetic and cultural diversity you could get outside of your immediate Social Circle or local community and go to a place that's completely alien to you people could meet and form relationships with others from different backgrounds possibly enhancing the genetic robustness of the human species once again it's just a hypothesis but it's fun to think about one thing that definitely is true is that the Model T literally defined American infrastructure and Landscape from traffic laws to City Planning once Americans started using cars there was a need to create

a more robust paved Road system and with paved roads came suburbs the Model T changed everything Henry Ford's need for total control is what made him successful but it's also what led to his downfall Ford wanted to break the British Monopoly on on rubber by making his own rubber Plantation in the middle of the Amazon he called it fordlandia but the plantation was poorly managed and rubber trees were devastated by pests because they were planted too close together plus Ford tried to impose American Customs on the Brazilian workers he literally took a Midwestern town and

just dropped it in the middle of the Amazon thinking it would go fine he forced Brazilian workers to have us diets of canned peaches and oatmeal he even forced them to square dance which is kind of like a weird reflex alcohol was strictly forbidden and he even built houses that looked just like homes you'd see in the midwest which were not suited to the Amazon all sorts of creatures like bats and jaguars were getting into people's homes it was a disaster Ford would even Force the workers to work an 8-hour shift through the hottest part

of the day workers would often just pass out from heat exhaustion fordlandia was a massive failure both financially and as a social experiment hundreds of workers perished from the heat local wildlife and diseases Henry Ford had so much money that fordlandia failing wasn't a big deal for him personally but it was a major failure nonetheless I will eventually do an entire video on people trying to design things for cultures they don't understand it's going to be a really good video so be sure to subscribe so you're notified when I launch that video but anyway for

19 years the Model T never really changed much because Ford was more concerned with offering the same car for cheaper rather than offering something better throughout the 1920s General Motors was offering better cars and range of colors and configurations and the Model T really couldn't compete Ford was about to go out of business but they answer back with the model A which came as a sedan or convertible in a wide variety of options the model a saved the company but for better and for worse it was the Model T that defined the cultural and geographical

landscape of the United States all said and done Ford sold 15 million model T's over the course of about 19 years it was the bestselling vehicle until 19 72 when the Volkswagen Beetle surpassed it the Model T is without question the most influential car of the 20th century because of the car itself and because of what it represents both good and bad the key to achieving that influence as a quintessential design was in how it offered the maximum effect in a minimal package another key component of a quintessential design is whether it's indispensable it needs

to be an essential design that you would be lost without it's even in the word quint essential the smartphone is the first thing billions of people look at within seconds of waking up every morning it's hard to think of a more indispensable device I think the iPhone is the most quintessential smartphone of them all I know how cliche it is for another designer to be freaking out over Apple but it's hard to think of many other devices that have reshaped cultural norms as profoundly as the iPhone and for the record before you accuse me of

being an apple Fanboy I've never owned an iPhone and I haven't bought an Apple product in like eight or nine years so why focus on the iPhone when the market is flooded with other brands it really comes down to the fact that it became the blueprint for modern smartphone design before the iPhone people were trying all sorts of different form factors but once the iPhone came out the big touchcreen with a single button at the bottom was the standard just look at how every manufacturer scrambled to mimic Apple's design after the iPhone came out it's

all about the touchscreen Apple took the intuitive behavior of touch and made it a foundation of their interface losing the tactility of physical buttons was a gamble even the seat CEO of Microsoft predicted that the iPhone would fail because it didn't have a keyboard $500 fully subsidized with a plan I said that is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard yeah that clip aged like milk I didn't buy my first smartphone until 2019 and transitioning from the T9 texting system where each button

click was really distinct to tapping on this slippery glass screen was really hard for me felt like a cat trying to walk on ice but eventually I did figure it out and so did about 5 billion other smartphone users it's interesting to consider how much quintessential design is driven by users behaviors and interactions for example imagine a computer without the computer mouse or an iPod without the click wheel in the same way the iPhone's touchscreen transformed what was once an ordinary product into an indispensable design Apple wasn't always the first to come up with these

interfaces but they often perfected them another thing that the iPhone tapped into was the need for convenience this need need for convenience is a larger macro Trend you see across society and culture popping up constantly the iPhone epitomizes this transition simplifying complex interactions into simple Taps and swipes food entertainment work and even romantic relationships are contained in one single device but this Simplicity does mask complex underlying technologies that few understand and even fewer question in other words the technology makes decisions for us the convenience comes at a cost we're left consuming without understanding and these

devices designed to serve us slowly take over our ability to decide what we truly need have you ever noticed that almost every single social media app has a function where you can pull the screen down to refresh the feed now when you do that a new batch of content shows up sometimes what you see on the feed makes you angry sometimes you like it sometimes it's boring no matter what it's a little bit random and that's very intentional when things turn out the way we expect the reward center in our brain stays dormant but when

something unexpected happens those same reward centers in our brain absolutely light up it's the same dopamine circuitry triggered by drug use and gambling there really isn't a big difference between pulling a lever down on a slot machine versus pulling the screen down on your smartphone to refresh the feed the smartphone exploits those same reward systems Steve Jobs referred to the computer as a bicycle for the mine but lately smartphones feel more like a slot machine for our psyche it's not uncommon for us to check our phones and swipe up on the feed 85 times a

day the smartphone really sets the standard for what a quintessential design can achieve when it aligns perfectly with larger cultural shifts and habits it's why the smartphone and all of its apps are more than indispensable they're addictive so I know that things are getting a little bit negative here I mean complaining about the Perils of Technology really isn't anything new it goes all the way back to the printing press and more recently in my own lifetime there's been a fuss about video game violence excessive TV watching and how overly sexual music lyrics are shredding the

moral Fabrics of society won't somebody please think of the children most of these concerns turn out to be nothing or at the very least overblown I mean I grew up with all those things and look at me I turned out perfectly fine but I also think it's important to talk about how the smartphone has both positive and negative implications let's talk about some good things though I was talking to my friend Mark who bought the first iPhone he was saying that when the iPhone came out it felt like a piece of alien technology and it

still kind of does it fits perfectly in the hand with its generously curved edges and everything about this design just makes you want to reach out and grab it the Chrome bezel around the screen draws your eye into the display nicely this black plastic piece on the bottom not only creates a nice visual contrast that breaks up the form to make it feel less blocky but the plastic also offers a warmer grippier surface for your palm even though the iPhone is mostly celebrated for the groundbreaking touchscreen it's still a very tactile device in terms of

terms of materials form and finish my main criticism is with the headphone jack at the top it goes really deep into the phone it looks very out of place but besides that this design really is well done Apple's commitment to exceptional design quality goes Way Beyond just usability and Aesthetics it's a testament to their formidable scale and negotiating power with manufacturers to achieve the high standards of quality of the iPhone a company has to order millions of units so they have bargaining power with the manufacturer when you're dangling hundreds of millions of dollars over your

manufacturer's heads you can more easily insist on precise manufacturing tolerances and Flawless fit and finish even after nearly 20 years the manufacturing quality of this iPhone is better than most consumer electronics available today and that's because the manufacturers know that meeting Apple's exacting standards is challenging but the massive order volumes make it worth it just like the Ford Model T we talked about earlier Apple's ability to push manufacturers to their limits set new industry standards and showcase the incredible results that can be achieved through the power of large scale production the beauty of this device

is the first thing that draws Us in but the interaction is what keeps us hooked the smartphone has become the mediator in literally every aspect of Our Lives from food to relationships to entertainment no device has ever been so allc consuming and indispensable convenience has been a priority for decades things like microwaves instant C coffee and vacuum cleaners marked the First Convenience Revolution it was about making life easier for you the second convenience Revolution marked by the iPhone and social media made it easier to be you these Technologies were convenient means of self-expression according to

Steve Jobs in 1998 the i in iMac and later iPod and iPhone stands for internet individual instruct inform and Inspire while that may have been the initial meaning it's pretty obvious that the I stands for I as in meaning it's all about you as the individual another thing that makes a smartphone indispensable is how it democratized the spread of information in several countries particularly ones in Africa and South Asia a significant portion of the population accesses the internet entirely through smartphones now to be fair most of them are not using an expensive iPhone but they're

probably using a design heavily based on it the smartphone can be used for good things like education or for bad things like misinformation and propaganda campaigns but the democratization of information is undeniable looking forward we're not just in need of smarter phones we need phones with better social skills what we need is a more polite and quiet device it's almost like the smartphone has become too indispensable and we need to take a step back right now several new tech companies are trying to create a more healthy interface with the digital world the rabbit R1 the

daylight computer and the Humane AI pin are all trying to create a viable alternative to the allc consuming smartphone whether there successful or not depends on their ability to maintain the indispensable convenience of a smartphone while also giving users more control over their lives the true innovation in future technologies will not be measured by the speed of processors or the display resolution of screens but by how well they harmonize with the rhythms of our human needs and social conventions the ultimate goal is to create a more thoughtful digital environment with more depth whoever figures this

out will usher in the next revolution in quintessential computing so we've talked about some things that make a design quintessential it needs to have these features but there's another element that we haven't really discussed at all to understand it we need to look at the origin of the word quintessential quintessence is a term borrowed from ancient philosophy originally referred to as The Fifth Element Quint means five earth wind water and fire are the first four elements ether is The Fifth Element it's an invisible ingredient believed to fill the universe beyond the four tangible elements now

modern science has moved beyond the concept of The Ether but the metaphor survives in our language as a way to describe the purest and most essential part of something I was talking to my friend Rafi about this and he was saying that it's poetic how we use the word quintessential it's a word rooted in the Elusive and the intangible but we use it to describe very tangible concrete objects of enduring value quintessential design is about tapping into an emotional resonance that hits us on an almost instinct ual level it's how a simple paperclip a flashlight

or a phone becomes an indispensable part of our lives in a way that's hard to describe in the same way that ancient philosophers and scientists never found the Fifth Element The Fifth Element in design is also kind of a mystery designing things is hard but designing truly great things feels almost impossible this is going to sound extremely cheesy but maybe love for what we create is the quintessential Fifth Element of design sounds even worse when I say it out loud but I think it's true none of these designs would have existed if their creators didn't

really care about what they were making quintessential designs are this lucky blend of creativity empathy and timing they're an almost magical combination of factors that can't be controlled or predicted these quintessential objects remind us that not everything in our increasingly deterministic world can be reduced to predictable formulas here's to the designers engineers and dreamers who remind us that within every creation lies the potential for Magic a reminder that the air we breathe while creating today's wonders could be tomorrow's quintessence I hope you enjoyed this video everyone don't forget to subscribe below consider supporting me on

patreon if you like these videos also I'm writing a book with my friend rafy manasian we're currently on the seventh draft and we'll be publishing it soon click the link in the description below to sign up and get notified when it releases thanks everyone and have a great day