I had the good fortune recently to be offered an email interview with James Dyson, inventor of the now-famous Dyson vacuum cleaner. Since bringing the bagless vac to market, Dyson’s company has gone on to re-image other household stapes, such as the space heater and the bladeless fan. His throughtful responses to several questions made their way onto my Hot Home Products column, but here’s the over-flow of my virtual convo with this fascinating inventor/designer/science activist.
VS: When it comes to re-imaging products, what comes first – an “aha” moment, when you suddenly see it in a new, better-functioning way, and you work back from here — or the realization that there’s a problem with the way it currently functions?
JD: I’m afraid Eureka moments are elusive. Research and development is time consuming, expensive, and filled with failure, but it’s worth it when you get a breakthrough. Thomas Edison famously said ‘I haven’t failed; I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work’.
Dyson engineers take an iterative, approach to developing technology. If it doesn’t work one way, they try another looking beyond existing technology, asking if there’s a better way. But even when you think you’re onto something there are often hundreds of prototypes to build before you get it right.
Some technologies are years in development, and sometimes that research spawns another idea. It was while our engineers were looking at the application of Air knives for an unrelated project that they realised the potential for drying air with high velocity air. After lots of prototyping, the Dyson Airblade hand dryer was made.
VS: You’ve said that you think the next wave of innovation will have to do with making things smaller and cleverer. This seems to be a driving factor in your vacuum designs. When did the notion of the small but mighty ball vacuum first occur to you?
JD: It’s often argued that engineering needs to be ‘green’. The reality is that any good engineer is always thinking about how they can reduce the materials and energy used by their technology. All our machines are built around this notion. You need your technology to do its job first and foremost – but without unnecessarily big motors and lots of excess materials.
The physical size of our machines is also increasingly important. The Japanese for instance have very small homes are like small technology to suit. With this in mind, we’ve developed smaller vacuum cleaners, while maintaining the performance of larger machines.
Nanotechnology is perhaps the most exciting area for future developments. Once the preserve of laboratories and science fiction it’s finding its way into everyday applications like self cleaning glass-thin enough to be seen through but with properties that allow it break down organic dirt when it reacts with sunlight.
VS: Why is conventional design – vacuums with poor suction and clumsy wheel-bases, electric motors with brushes that wear down and emit dust — so slow to change? Why aren’t consumers more demanding about getting well-made, efficient products that last a long time?
JD: I disagree that people aren’t demanding. They can tell you quite quickly what annoys them – whether it’s a vacuum that wheezes, a hand dryer that doesn’t dry or a fan with exposed blades. The difficult part is challenging this. Thinking, I can do it better. And that’s the mindset of an engineer.
Focus groups and market research aren’t a solution; rather it’s for engineers to re-imagine how a problem can be approached. Henry Ford summed this up nicely by commenting that if he had asked people what they wanted; they would have said faster horses. It’s really quite difficult to imagine a different solution.
But as an engineer it’s important to always remember that if your technology doesn’t do its job – or it breaks down after a year or two, people won’t buy from you again. Our approach has always been to invest in research and development (more than £1.5m a week at the moment). Design, test and re-design.
VS: Now that fewer and fewer small repairmen are around to fix the things we break, how important is reliable, responsive customer service, and to what extent does that become important and/or a challenge to a global manufacturer?
JD: By engineering machines that are built to last we ensure that Dyson owners have a long-term relationship with their machine. Dyson machines endure a myriad of durability tests, inflicting years of use in a condensed period of time.
Once it was just me - throwing a DC01 from the steps of my coach house. Today we have specially built facilities to test every possible challenge our technology might face. When you’ve thrown a vacuum cleaner down a set of stairs 2000 times, you can be pretty sure it’s going to last.
But the support we provide to Dyson owners is just as important. Our full size vacuum cleaners all come with 5 year warranties and we provide toll free support 6 days a week in Canada. So if something isn’t working or you have a question about which Dyson is for you, we’re on hand to assist you.
