Innovative design and its principles : a geometric approach to a

development of products of use.

DISCIPLINE – SPECIFIC INTRODUCTION BY

Dr. ATHANASIOS KOUZELIS, 0RDINARY PROFESSOR
T. E. I. OF ATHENS

Our inquiries concerning the emergence of innovations are as much past as the history of our
material production itself. Since the era human beings draw a practical usability from the forms of
physical and material objects,it became also apparent that their act was a pioneering innovative
step forwards to our modern values of welfare.

Innovations conceived as praxeological facts are constituting an upset in any form of prevailing
usability,because they are bearing a new aspect ofit, which entails a higher value in compare to its
former estate. Therefore every innovation engages our creativity in order to achieve a
replacement among existing and pursued terms of what we use to call objectified material wealth.

According to valid politic-economical approaches the value of use of any commodity is independent
of its attributes as a thing. This fact is owed to the reason that the value of use can be realised
only by human beings without any precaution to exchange it as a commodity. Namely, it is
constituted as a treaty among things and human beings. Therefore any kind of value of use is
additive to our welfare’s material content and its societal form can be initiated only by our
individual, or collective, action which operates this value in the reality.

David Pye has clarified the meaning of use or usability of every produced thing by esteeming that
anyobject gets its own value of use solely by the outcome of our interaction with it as a
preoccupational operation. It takes place rather as a matter of verifying the existence of use, as
well as a contradiction to the absence of the object one may act upon. According to his point of
view, David Pye has noted that the ‘raison d’etre’ of any use is not the shape of the object one acts
upon, or its physical attributes, but the means that these properties become exploited within the
human activities. So, because of this reason the form of a usable product can not follow at any
time its function, as emphatically predicted the functionalistic design theory, but in practice what
it refers is essentially the upset purpose of its use (as shown in practice a cargo lift and a lever
carry out the same function, but they possess a different form due to their specific pursue).

Our notion about a product’s use has been and still continues to be objective (object-centric). In
our activities we approach an action of work by attributing its object of use, in which one acts
upon, a substantiation, that namely identifies what we actually mean whenever we say ‘a knife cuts’
or ‘an automobile transports’ and so on, without taking in consideration the person who set the
object in action, or activate it, in order to perform a specific activity. Thus, it becomes obvious
that an object of use possess all those properties which can bring about a useful outcome to its
proprietor, specially thereto his organic power or ability lacks the possibility to achieve it
satisfactory.
In the most known cases of innovations the usability of a product concerns tools and equipment to
carry out a work or activity. In the absolute immobility the value of use of a product becomes in
practice worthless. For this reason the form of use can not constitute a value by itself in the
domains of human activity, because it derives from an estate of objective entity. The geometric
attributes of any use can not also be substantially determined, due to a quantitative and qualitative
diversity they offer to their proprietor. During all the historic stages of the development of the
human material production, the main morphologies which attributed the products, as products of
use, have been designed in a such a way, so that the product’s value of usability and its potentiality
could be apparent as a physical estate to any of its user.

The rationalisation of the human activity categories which were undertaken by the functionalist
designers during the era of industrial expansion at the fields of everyday life (1935-1955)
followed up a historic necessity to determine in accordance to a ‘minimum existenz’ the shapes of
objects of use at a highest possible geometric precision. Every research and empirical deduction
was focused on the level of an action’s practice and a series of experimentations with people
acting, under economised and prescribed spatial circumstances, were paraded for the sake of the
functionalist designers. Within the strict frame of the time course these experimentations led in
turn to morphological and volumetric considerations that finally caused a minimizing of needed
organic power and an energy saving at many cases of human activity.

After the end of the functionalist era the associated with usability researches followed
theoretical models that simplified the reality ofevery day life. Many researchers presumed
technical and physical terms which cause a diverse occurrence for the human activity. They
depicted its qualitative attributes as a matter of programming and monitoring of objects of use in
order to attain an estate of effectiveness on them. In this scope the contribution of the
technology of a minimal energy consumption after the decade of 1980 became a revelation for the
organisation of usability. According to the aforementioned technology the form of use, seen as a
physical object, influenced any means of regulating the human activity, so that the needed energy
consumption could be diminished in accordance to the demanded effective outcome. In many cases
a kinetic aesthetic approach of the usability emerged as a regulative factor so that a more saved
energy in a lesser mass of material consumption should replace any functionalistic product of use.

Within the frame of researches upon replacing the ‘chronic’ (time scheduled) on behalf of the ‘a-
chronic’ (timeless, automatic or instantaneous) use, the terms of usability became
re-determined by a man-machine interface (MMI) technology, which differentiated any case of use
by initiating action categories of a prescribed result. For instance, in these researches the
occasional or repetitive use, as it is with clearing or repairing a tool, had been connoted separately
according to pursued effect, in order to be coordinated to the timeless terms of usability.

The innovative methodology by which the MMI technology proceeded the new usability to the
products of use, has been based on the consideration that a use constitutes always the most
interesting and satisfactory exploitation of a material thing, objected as a technical system. The
man-machine interface works in a such a way that a manual object of use for instance can get
another and more interesting use, as it has happened with products of digital notebooks and hand
watches.
The complete outline of use possibilities that the MMI technology has brought into daylight, has
been updated by the means a user acts upon a product of use’s components in order to achieve a
prescribed effect (considered as input) as well as by the grade of the product of use’s response to
the user’s pursue (considered as an output) under the following presuppositions:

 The logic relationship within the layout of all items which construct the morphology of use
in a product and the functional operation which the object transfers to its user during the
active estate.

 The capability of the technical system to perform a same pursued practical outcome by
alternative methods, so that the product’s usability remains assured.

By employing an electronic comparative analysis of any mechanical, kinetic and comprehensive term
of use, especially in the man-machine interface practice, many technical problems of conventional
machinery have been solved and a more immaterialised reconciliation has been developed in a serial
of new products of use. In this perspective have been invented many conjunctive interface
applications between the restrain human kinetic capability and the superior mechanical actuation,
as well as between the human power’s limited mechanical outcome (some kw in a few seconds) and
the relative constant and of highest force capacity of a machine. Therefore immediate channels of
dialogue and collaboration between the long lasting memory capacity of a human being in the level
of taking decisions (coordination of principles, pursues and strategies) and the giant (enormous),
but short lasting’ mechanical memory’s capacity have been revised, entailing thus all highest
multiple and qualitative problems of uses, in addition to a executive capacity which has been
introduced by the force of telematics in the man-machine interface.

From another point of view the use of shapes in product design practice has been also connected
to the emergence of creative notions, as a result of free hand selection and construction of
geometric and volumetric compositions which can depict solutions of usability with particular
aesthetic value. The use of shapes, as design practice, does not constitute a simple trial to
beautify or better an invented product of use, as for instance suggested Raymond Loewy to its
colleagues, because it is an outcome of the capitalistic need to shine and decorate the commercial
appearance of any commodity’s form, but rather as David Pie has noted it composes a mean to
conceive a product’s usability even as an aesthetic value.

According to Per Mollerup’s design notion an innovation which concerns a new product of use may
derives from synthetic transformations and considerations, expressing not only practical but even
aesthetic attributes as an harmonic or symmetric whole may be. In such synthetic qualitative
relationships one can detect new and unique sensations of form which may be juxtaposed to own
aesthetic knowledge and not necessarily to own practical preference. Thus, the form of any new
product of use, seen as an innovation due to its significant aesthetic value, can be esteemed in
practice under the criterion of its morphological utility. Therefore a reference of any significant
product of use to a morphological symbolism is not a consequence of its satisfactory or utilitarian
attributes, but it rather derives from a unique composition of its shape as a bearer of aesthetic
quality. That’s why the morphological symbolism have been perceived as a culminant act of a form’s
exploitation, because only then the form has reached its full maturity, as a fact of adversity,
which means that the form can not develop itself more, retaining solely the given aesthetic value.
Selection and use of pleasant lines, surfaces and volumes, as well as colour accents and any other
figurative contribution to elegancy have favoured innovations under the scope of developing higher
aesthetic value by shaping a product of use. It is also remarkable a distinction of these elements
of elegancy in comparison to respective attractive because of their geometric and symbolic
characteristics which are decoded from peculiarity on one hand and hedonism on the other hand,
perceived as constants of aesthetic value.

The endeavours against symbolism freed the perspective of making innovations by aesthetical
considerations as Piet Hein once tested trying to search significance and remarkableness in the
forms of products of use. By exploiting as means of transformation algebraic equations’ diagrams,
he adapted their curves into the edges of regular rectangular parallelograms, so that peculiar
shapes could emerge as hyper-ellipses of the parallelogram. His mature work upon these
transformations became remarkable due to the sense of modern manner of plasticity which
determined all of his contributions to the product design during the decade of the 1960’s (kitchen-
wares, furniture and table-wares).

In regard to the fact that the figurative elements of any shape can by convention benefit the
sense of originality or attractiveness, as a visual innovation, to its user, generate a value scale of
classified aesthetic completeness. Every product of use’s visual identity gets its own
composition by the assessment, collection and coordination of existing and invented figurative
elements, which in the capitalistic production system are favouring a commercial attractiveness.
On the contrary in the social planed production system these elements depict the total amount of
a gained aesthetic knowledge, so that a product of use becomes verified and discernible as a unity
of originality.

The problems of use solved by elaborating shapes and figurative elementsstill remain a fruitful
practice in the industrial design methodology, due to the extension of its potentiality. Our notions
about using a shape are connected with an activity of exploitation and worth giving to its
completeness, creating thus a use of form as a product of use. In certain cases these activities
take place as alternative approaches to a defective form of use, or are commanded by particular
user categories, as for instance are the handicap or disabled people.

The embedded potentiality of the aforementioned design methodology incited Olavi Linden,
heading the Fiskar’s company design office, to improve the produced scissors’ level of efficiency
and signification. His innovative concept followed the figurative conception of applying the shape
of a cogwheel in the joint point of the reverse cutters, as well as sharpen their edges, in order to
attain a more sophisticated and elegant form, which finally served to develop long series of
successful and effective hand-tools for cutting many kinds of hard or semi-hard materials.

Following a similar methodological course Ulf Hanses created also an innovative device by revolving
a cone top, cut off by an oblique plane, around the perpendicular axis of the circular plane of the
section, in order to attain an easier and more handy form of a tea pot. By his transformation of
the regular cone he facilitated the convenient flowing out of any pot’s liquid content, without
necessitating its user to lift it over the table for this purpose.

The use of invented forms has been also connected to demands about transformation of a shape’s
characteristics, so that they create what we perceive as styling in the modern design
practice. Styling embraces a range of figurative considerations which deduct a form of a
product of use as a post-product of its usability in adjustment to a satisfactory restitution to the
user, as an aesthetic and cultural value. The criteria of this restitution determine also the
innovative content of a form, by initiating a comparison to a sufficient issue of it, for
example in the plane of commerce, as Raymond Loewy suggested once.

By interpreting, according to Gert Selle’s theoretic approach, the utility form in the product
design practice, as a matter of an aesthetic reflection to necessitated or conventional material
needs, it becomes remarkable to note that any innovative use of form is connected with figurative
and geometric solutions. These solutions enable a worth giving to the produced objects of use in
such a way that they constitute a practical capacity by acting upon them with or without the help
of a machine driven power. Within this frame the interpretation of usability follows the dialectic
relationship between a use of form and its responding form of use, as a redirection activity on the
search of higher and more advanced aesthetic and practical values, specially for the sake of our
material and cultural welfare.

Bibliography and references

Burdek Bernhardt, ”Design, Gesichte Theorie und praxis der produktgestaltung”, Birkhäuser, Basel,
1994.
Buur J , Windum J, “MMS Design”, DDC, 2002.
DDK, 2/2001, “Multifunktionalitet”
Johannessen K. “Kunst og Kunstforstaelse”, Univ. forlaget. , Bergen 1978.
Kouzelis A. , “Stoicheia viomechanikou schediasmou ke morphodosias proiontos chresis” , TEI
Athens, 1998.
Loewy Raymond, ”Never leave well enough alone”, J. Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore, 1951.
Lundequist J. , “Norm och modell”, KTH, 1986.
Lundequist J. , “Design och produktutveckling”, Studentlitteratur, 1995.
Monö Rune, “Design for product understanding”, Liber, 1997.
Polanyi M. , Personal Knowledge”, Harper and Row, 1964
Pye D. , “Nature and Aesthetics of Design”, Van Nostrand, 1978
Selle Gert, “Ideologie und Utopie des Design”, Du Mont, 1973.
Selle Gert, “Siebensachen. Ein buch uber die Dinge”, Campus, Frankfurt, 1997.
Zetterlund Chr., Design i informationsåldern”, Raster, 2002.