Why YKK zippers are the brown M&Ms of product design An Article by Josh Centers theprepared.com A ‘pro tip’ for evaluating the quality of a piece of gear is to look at the small details, such as zippers and stitching. Cheap-minded manufacturers will skimp on those details because most people just don’t notice, and even a cheap component will often last past a basic warranty period, so it’s an easy way to increase profits without losing sales or returns. If a designer does bother to invest in quality components, that’s a tried-and-true sign that the overall product is better than the competition. All the way throughThe Cycle of Goodness designdetailsquality
An information service society Society is steadily moving from a material goods society to an information service society. At the time of the American Revolution, say 1780 or so, over 90% of the people were essentially farmers—now farmers are a very small percentage of workers. What will the situation be in 2020? As a guess I would say less than 25% of the people in the civilian workforce will be handling things; the rest will be handling information in some form or other. In making a movie or a tv program you are making not so much a thing, though of course it does have a material form, as you are organizing information. Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn Auditory Hallucinations from Offworld MegafarmsData Farming farming