2 Design Thinking Examples and Class Exercise
This chapter contains examples of successful design and instances in which design failed. It is written entirely by students at NUI Galway.
Separate Taps for Cold and Hot Water
We’ve all used them. One tap is scalding hot, whilst the other is freezing cold. And so, we must make the choice between numbing all sensation in our hands vs. burning them raw in the simple pursuit of personal hygiene. I’ve never understood it. It seems this is mostly a feature specific to Ireland and the UK/commonwealth, which is often a talking point of confusion for tourists and non-natives (rightly so).
Apparently, the reason these separate taps ever came to fruition was that cold water was deemed fit for drinking, but the hot water would not be. Therefore, mixing the two would result in contaminated water. I’d question the sanity of someone who chooses to drink from a bathroom sink, but regardless I don’t think that is enough justification for this flawed design thinking.
One simple (albeit unsightly) retrofitted solution can be seen in Figure 1, as posted by an Irish reddit user.
Thankfully, modern bathroom sink units now almost all have one tap as standard to easily achieve a comfortable, warm temperature. In order to circumvent the mixing of safe and unsafe drinking water, both sources do not mix until they come out of the tap.
However, there are still many examples of this horrible design in public (even here at NUIG). I’ve talked about this with older relatives who tell me the idea is to plug the sink, run both taps, then wash your hands in the collected mixture. To me that seems to defeat the purpose of washing your hands, since you’re essentially bathing them in dirty water. Furthermore, who on earth has time for that? The older generations, apparently. The sooner these double taps are phased-out for good, the better.
By Cian Flaherty
Cattle Crush
A piece of design thinking that I have long been familiar with but only recently considered in this new light is what is commonly referred to as a “cattle crush”. The problem the crush addresses is simple. The average cattle farmer needs to be able to hold a cow in a given position to administer things like medicines, vaccines, artificial insemination, and tests. The problem here, is that a cow, even a young one, is proportionately stronger than a person. To hold one in place past a young age is physically impossible for an individual, and often even multiple people. Previous solutions to this problem have included tying the cow in place, which required getting a rope around one of the cow’s appendages almost as great a challenge as holding it yourself, or sedating the animal, which is dangerous for the animal, expensive and requires a vet’s presence.
The way the cattle crush works is simple. There are two high fences of sorts, just far enough apart for a cow to walk between them, but with no room to move left or right. At the end there is a pair of gates, and a gap in th