Lecture by Ben Craven

Today's lectures main point was show the value of rough calculations and estimates. We were given several exercises which were impossible to estimate without logical thinking and some basic understanding of Physics. These calculations give an idea of feasibility of projects and give an idea of in what scale the answers will be. I had a memory that quiet big engineering projects have had fails due to the lack of the estimates and a simple Google research gave a few examples:

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/11/1110mars-climate-observer-report/

http://www.globalprojectstrategy.com/lessons/case.php?id=23

The exercises what we were given seemed hard at the start, for example a practice question was "How many times do you roughly breathe in a year?". When you start to think about this question more in depth it is quiet simple to get an estimate, you only need to test how many times you breathe in a minute and know how many seconds are in minute, how many minutes in hour, how many hours is there in a day etc. The rest is simple maths. Even harder questions like what is the average power density of a human body in certain units is very doable with engineering logic.

I think this sort of exercises should be done in all the engineer/science schools. I believe that you can get a degree in many things with just a good memory and ability to learn by heart which obviously isn't great in a job where your main task is problem solving.

 I felt like I understood how my knowledge and thinking are very applicable even though I often (especially in lectures) feel that I don't know much. The phrase below sums up what is wrong about going to lectures and listening things about maths/engineering.

Documentry: Marc Newson Urban Spaceman

On today's Design and Technology lesson we were shown a documentary on Mark Newson who is a  industrial designer who works in aircraft design, product design, furniture design, jewellery, and clothing. 


I most definitely enjoyed the documentary and realized that even though I have recently been looking into more design,  I should look up more into the stories of famous designers since they can really influence yourself. By this I mean that you can find out about values, ways of working, attitudes etc. what you personally want to or not to have.
Interesting points what Newson made were around design and manufacturing. I can see how just a really well manufactured product can be the biggest element of beautiful design. An example of this is are Apple keyboards. Even the design in a way is quiet simple the keyboard base is made of one solid piece of aluminium, it doesn't have any joints which makes it feel quiet strong. 

I did like a lot of his style of going around to different places to find the best ways of build products. I often feel that people often get quiet limited of how things are done in their countries/cultures. I would like to see myself as designer who would have a quiet various background and knowledge of people, products and cultures.

Marc Newson has also done a lot of design which has been flirting with art. I do think that product design most definitely has an element of art in it but I do personally not like when you kill the functionality in the name of art. If a chair is beautiful it is obviously a plus but if you can't really sit on it why don't you just call it a sculpture? The chair he first designed was quiet interesting as a sculpture but as a chair quiet awful...

If you are interested on the documentary you can watch it for free at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoS71sBKESI

The Demise of Skilled Manufacture - Craig Whittet

On our first Design & Technology lecture we were given a talk about the demise of skilled manufacturing in the UK and the Western Europe. It was a very interesting talk for me since as a foreign I didn't entirely know about the current situation in the United Kingdom. The fact that the pay for skilled manufacturing is very low moves  UK companies abroad, if you give people the choice of doing an easy, good paid job like telemarketing in choice of unrespected low pay manufacturing job you can see what happens.

What personally annoys me a lot is that I know that these companies should and could pay people the money. One good example of the greediness of some organisations are unpaid internships. They get educated students to do work and make profit for them and pay nothing. I am not saying that unqualified students should be paid much but at least the minimum salary. The reason this can continue is the fact that there are students who don't have experience (like me) and have to get it from somewhere.

The low pay of workers isn't the only reason why you can't keep companies in the country, I know for example that in Finland the pay for skilled worker is high but companies move abroad to find cheaper skilled workers. The situation is very hard but what I personally think is that the governments should invest on local companies. This would give the people a chance to buy local products with a reasonable prices which is quiet rare these days.