Thinking About Designing a Machine

2020

 

How does a complex creative task evolve in the mind?

 

For an engineer, what happens in the “little grey cells” between the perception of a need and the production of a useful gadget that fulfills it? As a veteran of countless design tasks, it finally occurred to me to reflect on what goes on up there when the warm, creative fog sets in and ideas start to emerge.

 

One corner of your mind seems to have a chalkboard (OK, I’m of an age...) on which you write “Just What are You Trying to Solve?”. Subsequently, you kind of wander through a lifetime’s warehouse of ideas, parts, junk, failures, and successes, gathering stuff by intuition. Over coffee, you look for connections between your collected items suggesting a pathway to success. The process is highly susceptible to interruption by shiny objects, or lunch, or just about anything else. Oddly enough, interruptions often seem to help.

 

An idea finally starts to gain traction, and then you really dig in. Throw math and physics at it, does it survive? You imagine it’s components. What happens if they are reversed, or made bigger? Smaller? This sculpture is a reflection of being in that stage. It’s intense!

 

If all goes well, the idea converges from “notion” to “design”. The more usual case is another loop back through the warehouse. But the hunt is addictive and will go on until you see your creation working. More coffee!