The Big Idea
of Design

A while ago I gave a speech on design and social responsibility to an audience of business people in Korea. While I walked on stage in front of the 3,000 or so people in attendance, the theme from the movie Chariots of Fire filled the hall. The music was as haunting and moving as ever and the audience seemed to be enjoying it. When the piece finished, I stepped up to the microphone and said, "Now, this is how the same piece of music would sound if we all had walkmans on." I put on a pair of headphones and switched on my tape player. There was absolute silence and the room was thick with tension.

This, I explained, demonstrates how the walkman is a product that goes against the idea of music.

It sounds like a paradox, but that's what happens when you examine how some products relate to the original idea they were created to serve.

In this series of six articles, I'll be exploring many different artifacts and measuring them against the purest, simplest ideas that gave birth to them. There is a Big Idea at the root of every product, and creating products with the Big Idea in mind is the only way of returning to artifacts that serve humanity. Design has a tremendous influence on the way we live our lives, and the way we develop as a society. This endows designers with a considerable amount of power; if we as designers have that power, we must use it responsibly.

As for my statement that the walkman is a product that goes against the idea of music. (I say "walkman," but I mean any portable tape player based on the Sony Walkman concept) it's not really so outrageous when you measure this product against the Big Idea of music. Music is many things to many people, but we can safely say that for most of us the idea of music is to express and share emotions among an audience through the transmission of sound.

What is wonderful about music is that it creates a relationship between the artist--the composer and the performer--and the audience. It is a shared emotion that many people can enjoy together, so it also creates a momentary relationship between members of the audience.

The walkman, on the other hand, avoids shared sound and in essence pumps the music into the brain. This takes music out of its social context and makes it a solitary experience.

You might argue that the walkman is socially responsible because somebody can listen to music in your presence without disturbing you. This is the most telling argument of all. The operative phrase here is "in your presence." If the person is in your presence, why in the world should they be listening to music in isolation? Music, in its true character, presents the opportunity to socialize; the walkman invites the opportunity to avoid socializing.

But the walkman is in many ways an enormously successful product. How else could a large number of people listen to different educational tapes in the same room at the same time? Now joggers can listen to Mozart while they work out. Most of all, the walkman is a great financial success, with massive popularity throughout the world. The walkman is designed for successful manufacturing, shipping, marketing and retailing; it is compact, lightweight and not too expensive. But this success comes at a price - the potential loss of the shared experience of music.

The social impact of products such as the automobile, the telephone and the personal computer is obvious. But the seemingly innocuous products, such as the walkman, the frozen pizza and the coffee maker, to name a few, also influence the way we relate to one another.

I have created a chart with four headings through which we can examine products and designs. On one end is the Product, on the other end is the Big Idea, and in between are the Experience and the Event. Let's take another product, an automatic coffee maker, and assess it according the headings on the chart.

Product	Experience	Event	The Big Idea
			Roasting the coffee bean , grinding it and extracting its flavour by means of hot water for the purpose of savouring the experience in the company of others as a digestif or special offering.
Form	Taste of Coffe	Table
Function	Shape of Cup	Chair
Interface	Sugar Bowl	The Place
Graphics	TeaSpoon	TheTime
Hardware	Fresh Water	Any Food
Power	Temperature	Ambient Noise
Footprint	Coffee Beans	Other People
Noise Level	Grinder	Conversation
	The Grind	Reading
	Milk
	Coffee Pot

All over the world right now, designers, marketing people and executives in corporations that manufacture kitchen appliances are hard at work developing next year's automatic coffee makers. Some are probably considering a carafe with a chrome finish, or grey as an alternative to a white plastic housing. Others are considering more technical features like timers and ways of making coffee faster. For inspiration, they look to this year's coffee makers, and maybe even a couple of last year's coffee makers. All their thoughts are centred on the product. The result will be a new line of coffee makers which do pretty much what all the other coffee makers have done: heat water and filter it through ground roasted coffee beans.

But what is a coffee maker? Let's look away from the product and consider where the coffee maker fits into our lives. The Experience of coffee consists of many things, such as the taste of the coffee, the shape of the cup, the sugar bowl, the use of fresh water, the coffee beans, the grinder and so forth.

The Experience takes place within the context of the Event. The Event consists of the table, the chair, the room, the time of day, other people and so on - the environment in which you experience the coffee.

The Event takes place within the context of the Big Idea, or the original idea of coffee: roasting the coffee beans, grinding them and extracting the flavour with water for the purpose of savouring the experience in the company of others as a digestif or special offering. The presence of other people is an essential part of this picture. And without this original idea, the automatic coffee maker would never exist.

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