I love little "niches" like these. So many things in our lives are so filled with "depth" that even extremely observant people will never notice.
Sometimes I just sit back and wonder at what the designers or manufacturers of common things had to deal with.
Perhaps the shape of a mug handle was a point of contention between several people, or the thickness of your desk was the result of a compromise that came from a grueling 4 hour long meeting, or there is an engineer somewhere that is extremely proud of the weeks they spent designing an office chair wheel that won't suck up a cord, or the designer which worked several weekends in a row to completely redesign the shape of the base of a desk lamp so that the regulatory sticker could be placed on the back and not on the front.
It makes me feel better when I feel like I'm wasting time trying out different button shapes and sizes for a stupid menu somewhere deep in an app that nobody will ever really care about.
You should watch some of engineerguy's videos on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/engineerguyvideo/videos. He goes over some of these small details in products and why they are there. It's quite interesting!
I used to work for Denso (who's heavily quoted in this story) in their research lab. I remember my boss telling me that one of the rubber seals in their HVAC system had something like 17 patents to get the characteristics just right (iirc they're the #1 auto HVAC supplier).
I didn't appreciate it then, but I find modern automobiles to be a minor miracle given how many components go into it and the level of detail that goes into designing each one, both individually and so that they all get nicely packaged together.
Funnily enough, I was just thinking the exact opposite this morning - how little design thought must go into some things. It was in relation to the poor user experience I'd just had from the toilets at work. As usual, the poorly designed/configured flush splashed water out of the bowl when I flushed, but I've become adept at jumping back in time. The other more pertinent issue is that the cubicle is so small in relation to the door size that I had a struggle to get out without brushing my coat against the wet splashed bowl. On this issue, I was thinking that it was probably caused by someone just buying some standard sized off-the-shelf components that looked roughly right and whacking them together, e.g. 2m board for sides, and 1m door with toilet protruding 80cm from wall, leaving you 20cm between toilet and open door (note that these are example sizes just to make the point - I didn't actually measure anything). In other words, no-one thought how big the cubicle actually needed to be. I guess there's probably some correlation between design input and cost, i.e. its probably just not worth anyone spending too much time thinking about that sort of thing.
In a related vein, back when I was a product manager, I was always struck by how many customers came through who were the #1 manufacturer of toilet seats or plastic milk bottles or whatever in the United States.
>Sometimes I just sit back and wonder at what the designers or manufacturers of common things had to deal with.
I do the same, and probably the one item that I've thought about more often than others is, hilariously, those novelty testicles they sell to attach to your car's trailer hitch. Between design, materials, manufacture, distribution...just how much work goes into truck nuts?
On the other hand, a lot of decisions are taken on the spot. Really, an astonishing amount. Of course the higher the volume of the product is, and the harder it is to change, the more effort is put into decisions, and there's seemingly no upper limit to how much effort managers are willing to allocate.
Wow, always wondered about that. Also sounds like one of those harebrained inventions from the early industrial age: "Tired of your windows getting dirty? Just rotate them at high speed and whoosh the dirt goes!"
Interesting read. There really is a lot of thought that goes into these things. Bought a set of silicone/rubber wipers the other day. They were covered in a very fine gray dust which at first seemed to be like spray paint.
So without thinking I started to "clean" them. Half way through it came to me there was too much of the stuff to be by accident and there was no marketing reason for it to be light gray.
Couldn't think of what to google at first? Painted wipers? Dusty wipers? Then I tried graphite powder + wipers because it resembled what a ground up pencil might look like. Bingo.
Apparently, it's a lubricant to prevent squeaking, shouldn't be disturbed before being placed on the vehicle. Of course, I had already wiped it almost clean off of one wiper. Felt a bit stupid afterwards.
Coincidentally, I just watched a good movie called "Flash of Genius" on Netflix yesterday. It's a drama based on the true story of Robert Kearns, the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper. Highly recommend it if you liked this article.
> our wiper group includes 15 or 20 people for North America, and globally it would be several hundred people.
Not sure if that is only designers, or includes test people and manufacturing people. The stabilizer flight controls group on the 757 I worked on consisted of maybe 15 engineers and draftsmen. We did the elevator controls and stabilizer trim system. It was a fair amount of machinery, and there was an awful lot that needed to be taken into account. (The stab trim and elevators are flight critical, meaning it's pretty serious business and nobody wants to make a mistake.)
It took about 3 years.
This did not include the "stress" group which double checked the design, nor the testing and manufacturing people.
For reasons unknown to me, the wipers on US military trucks, like the M35, are air operated. They also have a handle you can use to operate them manually if the pneumatic system fails.
Many parts of trucks and buses are air operated. I have a small bus (converted to a little house-on-wheels) and air pressure is needed for the breaks to work, doors to stay closed etc etc. While I can understand why we use it for breaks, when it comes to wipers and doors I feel someone took the idea too far. Fixing any kind of pressure drop is a lot harder than wiring any electrical engine.
I keep hoping someday I'll be fortunate enough to own a classic CJ or military Jeep with (only) hand-operated wipers mounted at the top of the windshield.
Doors, tops, windshield wiper motors...kids don't know how easy they have it these days.
edit: and I suspect the reason they're pneumatic is because they already have air-powered accessories, so that's one fewer motor to break down.
Much of the auto industry is based on buying components like these from one of small group of suppliers. Many are German or Japanese. It has the advantage of making it easier for new comers like Tesla: They can just buy things like wipers from the same companies as everyone else, and focus their engineering efforts on the unique parts.
Something cool I saw recently was that Mercedes has a new wiper system where the water spray/jet system is built into the wipers. So the screen gets sprayed milliseconds before the blade wipes it away.
(The weather is too nice in this video, though, so you can't really see how much of the windscreen it manages to clean - however you can certainly see that it manages to trace out more of an ellipse than a circle.)
That seems so obvious I wonder why it hasn't been done before. I suppose those wipers costs a bit more since it must include some kind of conducts for liquid and multiple hoses(?).
> no two cars seeming to have the same configuration
Have you noticed the rear brakes lights on cars? Absolutely every model of car has a different shape: triangle, concentric circles, polka dot pattern, you name it.
I doubt that anyone is the least bit influenced in their car choice by how cool the brake lights look.
I'd like to think that the car companies avoid making a standardized brake light to put a thorn in the side of after-market parts manufacturers. At least that evil explanation makes economic sense.
In reality, I think that car designers do what they like doing -- making new designs. Even in cases where it makes zero difference to the user. Even in cases where a standardized design would be better for everyone[1].
[1] Because of cost, availability (every garage would stock a standard brake light), detection of the standard rear light pattern by collision avoidance systems.
I doubt that anyone is the least bit influenced in their car choice by how cool the brake lights look.
Of course they are, it's part of the car's styling and car manufacturers spend a lot of money on car design. The shape of the tail lights helps dictate the shape of the car's body.
If you think taillights have no effect on styling, imagine a 1960's Mustang tail light on a modern Tesla:
> I doubt that anyone is the least bit influenced in their car choice by how cool the brake lights look.
Doesn't seem so farfetched to me. For instance, I particularly like the taillights on the latest Honda Civic. A lot of recent BMWs have nice-looking taillights too. And I can recall, as a kid, thinking the taillights on my mom's 1962 Ford Thunderbird were particularly cool, styled as they were to suggest jet engines (at least, that's what they looked like to me at age 7). Oh, and then there were the sequential turn signals on our 1967 Mercury Cougar...
Anyway, taillights are certainly not the only important stylistic element on the car, but I wouldn't dismiss them completely either.
There are literally huge debates about minor things like this in car magazine reviews, followed by tens of thousands of comments on various automotive forums debating the finer aesthetics of different head or tail light designs. It can get downright vitriolic: one person's beautiful is another's fugly.
I found the tail lights to be the first thing anyone spoke of when talking about the car - in person most people said they loved them, online many people hated them except for the base of customers that loved the car. And no amount of performance data would convince them to drive the car - the tail lights were THE deal breaker.
I've had similar debates over he colour of mud flaps I had on my old Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution (they were red, on a metallic orange car). Again, people online in enthusiast forums felt I was mentally ill and they would never drive such a monstrosity, it was just a personal preference for me. The colour for them was the deal breaker. http://www.zercustoms.com/news/images/Mitsubishi/Lancer-Evol...
Just like some won't drive a green car even if it has amazing stats.
The moral is: Most people don't think like engineers, for better or worse.
As explained to me by someone who runs a (large, high-end) panel-shop:
In reality its because "Razor Blade Model". Since you can only get the correct lens/housing from the manufacturer, they can charge what they like. Since your insurance is paying, neither you nor the panel-shop give a fuck about the cost. Extremely high margins for the manufacturers. Same goes for bumpers.
When Porsche made an 'affordable' Boxster with the same headlights as a top-of-the-line 911 the snobs that wanted their 911s to be exclusive were upset.
Take another look at the back of RVs and motorhomes. Those companies will frequently reuse an existing rear light package with just a change in orientation.
about the idea people can spend entire careers design something like a wiper system. industrial and mechanical engineers never cease to amaze me. part of the reason I am a computer engineer is I didn't have the patience and such for those. the amount people in those fields affect every day life is undervalued and underestimated, nearly everything you see, touch, and use, involves those skills.
as for wipers and windshields, damn people clean your windshield weekly at least. being a motorcyclist I tend to spot certain elements about the cars and people I see on my trips and dirty windshields annoy me and many are dirty on the inside more than outside. that affects your safety and others!
Yes, take a look at them before you go in for an inspection. Lest they tear them and try to gouge you for replacements because they are suddenly streaking.
There is this stuff called "RainX"[1]. You apply it to your windshield and the rain beads off (hydrophobic). You can see really well even in heavy rain without wipers. (My dad used to use it on the family cars last century, and I still use it today).
It works great, though you have to reapply every few months when it wears off. And you can't apply it in the rain, so you have to remember ahead of time....
Actually, you are right. A lot of work has gone into developing hydrophobic coatings for cars (windows and bodywork) however they tend to wear off very quickly and so have never taken off.
Take a look on YouTube, some fun videos of cars going through mud and it not sticking one bit.
Where is the stone age tech? Automotive glass is being constantly improved. Other than being clear and made of some amount of glass, todays windshield is an iphone compared to the telegraphs of 50 years ago. Today's glass no longer shatters, no longer distorts vision, rarely chips and is often even trusted to provide structural support in a crash.
[+] [-] Klathmon|9 years ago|reply
Sometimes I just sit back and wonder at what the designers or manufacturers of common things had to deal with.
Perhaps the shape of a mug handle was a point of contention between several people, or the thickness of your desk was the result of a compromise that came from a grueling 4 hour long meeting, or there is an engineer somewhere that is extremely proud of the weeks they spent designing an office chair wheel that won't suck up a cord, or the designer which worked several weekends in a row to completely redesign the shape of the base of a desk lamp so that the regulatory sticker could be placed on the back and not on the front.
It makes me feel better when I feel like I'm wasting time trying out different button shapes and sizes for a stupid menu somewhere deep in an app that nobody will ever really care about.
[+] [-] madvoid|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkmurakami|9 years ago|reply
(It fit onto one of the openings in the box-like compartment you can see in the left side of the unit http://www.hpaircraft.com/neon/100_2342a.JPG)
I didn't appreciate it then, but I find modern automobiles to be a minor miracle given how many components go into it and the level of detail that goes into designing each one, both individually and so that they all get nicely packaged together.
[+] [-] kchoudhu|9 years ago|reply
http://philpatton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/05/the-coffee-l...
Convenience comes at a price, and only after a great deal of thought.
[+] [-] m-i-l|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] booleandilemma|9 years ago|reply
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectified
[+] [-] ghaff|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamatworknow|9 years ago|reply
I do the same, and probably the one item that I've thought about more often than others is, hilariously, those novelty testicles they sell to attach to your car's trailer hitch. Between design, materials, manufacture, distribution...just how much work goes into truck nuts?
[+] [-] tormeh|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csours|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amai|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tormeh|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3princip|9 years ago|reply
So without thinking I started to "clean" them. Half way through it came to me there was too much of the stuff to be by accident and there was no marketing reason for it to be light gray.
Couldn't think of what to google at first? Painted wipers? Dusty wipers? Then I tried graphite powder + wipers because it resembled what a ground up pencil might look like. Bingo.
Apparently, it's a lubricant to prevent squeaking, shouldn't be disturbed before being placed on the vehicle. Of course, I had already wiped it almost clean off of one wiper. Felt a bit stupid afterwards.
Good news is wipers don't squeak.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jabo|9 years ago|reply
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1054588/
[+] [-] WalterBright|9 years ago|reply
Not sure if that is only designers, or includes test people and manufacturing people. The stabilizer flight controls group on the 757 I worked on consisted of maybe 15 engineers and draftsmen. We did the elevator controls and stabilizer trim system. It was a fair amount of machinery, and there was an awful lot that needed to be taken into account. (The stab trim and elevators are flight critical, meaning it's pretty serious business and nobody wants to make a mistake.)
It took about 3 years.
This did not include the "stress" group which double checked the design, nor the testing and manufacturing people.
[+] [-] tyingq|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Johnythree|9 years ago|reply
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=vacuum+operated+windscree....
The disadvantage was that when you floored the pedal to pass a truck, the wipers stopped working, just when you needed them.
Conversely, when you lifted off the throttle, they flapped insanely fast.
[+] [-] yoavm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] macintux|9 years ago|reply
Doors, tops, windshield wiper motors...kids don't know how easy they have it these days.
edit: and I suspect the reason they're pneumatic is because they already have air-powered accessories, so that's one fewer motor to break down.
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|9 years ago|reply
I know that most people here are from SV where corrosion, snow and potholes don't exist but come on, this one should be obvious.
[+] [-] TorKlingberg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ec109685|9 years ago|reply
Though, given Tesla is still one of the only new auto makers around, it still is imensly hard to compete against the established companies.
[+] [-] petercooper|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] to3m|9 years ago|reply
(The weather is too nice in this video, though, so you can't really see how much of the windscreen it manages to clean - however you can certainly see that it manages to trace out more of an ellipse than a circle.)
[+] [-] johnchristopher|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bboreham|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] costcopizza|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] De_Delph|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frik|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluetomcat|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Neliquat|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alister|9 years ago|reply
Have you noticed the rear brakes lights on cars? Absolutely every model of car has a different shape: triangle, concentric circles, polka dot pattern, you name it.
I doubt that anyone is the least bit influenced in their car choice by how cool the brake lights look.
I'd like to think that the car companies avoid making a standardized brake light to put a thorn in the side of after-market parts manufacturers. At least that evil explanation makes economic sense.
In reality, I think that car designers do what they like doing -- making new designs. Even in cases where it makes zero difference to the user. Even in cases where a standardized design would be better for everyone[1].
[1] Because of cost, availability (every garage would stock a standard brake light), detection of the standard rear light pattern by collision avoidance systems.
[+] [-] Johnny555|9 years ago|reply
Of course they are, it's part of the car's styling and car manufacturers spend a lot of money on car design. The shape of the tail lights helps dictate the shape of the car's body.
If you think taillights have no effect on styling, imagine a 1960's Mustang tail light on a modern Tesla:
http://www.oldcarsguide.com/ford/mustang/images/1968-mustang... http://gas2.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/lighted-t.jpg
[+] [-] ScottBurson|9 years ago|reply
Doesn't seem so farfetched to me. For instance, I particularly like the taillights on the latest Honda Civic. A lot of recent BMWs have nice-looking taillights too. And I can recall, as a kid, thinking the taillights on my mom's 1962 Ford Thunderbird were particularly cool, styled as they were to suggest jet engines (at least, that's what they looked like to me at age 7). Oh, and then there were the sequential turn signals on our 1967 Mercury Cougar...
Anyway, taillights are certainly not the only important stylistic element on the car, but I wouldn't dismiss them completely either.
[+] [-] robin_reala|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kluny|9 years ago|reply
Have you seen the taillights on Dodge Chargers? http://o.aolcdn.com/dims-global/dims3/GLOB/legacy_thumbnail/...
Or on the Mustangs of that generation?
http://www.allfordmustangs.com/forums/attachments/2011-2014-...
I don't know if either of those are enough to influence my buying choices, but I know for sure if I was going to get a late-model muscle car, it wouldn't be a Camaro - http://gmauthority.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/2014-...
[+] [-] parasubvert|9 years ago|reply
A couple years ago I drove a car with very distinctive tail lights (the Mercedes CLA AMG: http://images.caricos.com/m/mercedes-benz/2014_mercedes-benz...
I found the tail lights to be the first thing anyone spoke of when talking about the car - in person most people said they loved them, online many people hated them except for the base of customers that loved the car. And no amount of performance data would convince them to drive the car - the tail lights were THE deal breaker.
I've had similar debates over he colour of mud flaps I had on my old Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution (they were red, on a metallic orange car). Again, people online in enthusiast forums felt I was mentally ill and they would never drive such a monstrosity, it was just a personal preference for me. The colour for them was the deal breaker. http://www.zercustoms.com/news/images/Mitsubishi/Lancer-Evol...
Just like some won't drive a green car even if it has amazing stats.
The moral is: Most people don't think like engineers, for better or worse.
[+] [-] mikro2nd|9 years ago|reply
In reality its because "Razor Blade Model". Since you can only get the correct lens/housing from the manufacturer, they can charge what they like. Since your insurance is paying, neither you nor the panel-shop give a fuck about the cost. Extremely high margins for the manufacturers. Same goes for bumpers.
[+] [-] cardiffspaceman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coredog64|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|9 years ago|reply
as for wipers and windshields, damn people clean your windshield weekly at least. being a motorcyclist I tend to spot certain elements about the cars and people I see on my trips and dirty windshields annoy me and many are dirty on the inside more than outside. that affects your safety and others!
[+] [-] Rapzid|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tiatia|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DigitalJack|9 years ago|reply
I was planning to watch that tonight on Netflix.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1054588/
[+] [-] Overtonwindow|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] interfixus|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acomjean|9 years ago|reply
It works great, though you have to reapply every few months when it wears off. And you can't apply it in the rain, so you have to remember ahead of time....
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain-X
[+] [-] samwillis|9 years ago|reply
Take a look on YouTube, some fun videos of cars going through mud and it not sticking one bit.
Here's one: https://youtu.be/TtntUSP-UeM
[+] [-] sandworm101|9 years ago|reply