Objects exist for many reasons, but most of them are created for the use to which they can be put. They are a means to an end. They are our tools. Our contemporary tools serve our contemporary lives: cell phones, tablets and laptops, flat screens. When the use is frequent and the outcome critical, we appraise our tools the most carefully.

This is very evident in the building trades, for instance. When you make your living by your screw-gun driver, you will want the best combination of torque, long battery life, low weight, balance and grip that a non-extortionist price will buy. If you only drive a drywall screw now and then, you will probably make your purchasing decision differently.

For those that have a ‘special interest’, the same scrutiny of objects takes place. If you are a fly-fisherman, for instance, you will know a great deal about lines and lures and rods (I don’t). You may even claim that you don’t know anything about design, but given even a small chance, you can hold forth at length on the minutiae of your tackle.

“Professionals” is one way we define or differentiate those that make their living from their specific set of tools (and skills). Chefs, as another example, will care more about the balance of their knives, their weight, their ability to hold an edge and so on, than most of us do. Marketers know this, and there are often ‘professional’ lines of products to complement the regular offerings.

But there are reasons to be cautious here, for tricks can be played. Most of us can be gullible, at least at times. I know I can be, but I’ve learned some things along the way. One early lesson came to me in design school, when a prominent manufacturer of tools came for a show-and-tell. One model of hammer was much more expensive than the others. I asked why, anticipating that it had been made from a better quality of steel. But no, it came from the same forging as all the others. It had just received the most polishing. It was brighter and dearer, but not really better. The benefit to its maker was that it returned the highest profit margin, from those dazzled by shiny things.

Only the people that use tools critically are really able to appraise them. To my mind, one of the biggest problems of design and one of its greatest challenges, is that the people who design (those professionals like me) usually are not really familiar with the tools that they may be called on to design. It’s easy to be arrogant and to think that your (our) specialized training singularly equips us to see and understand. But it may not. Another lesson from my design school involved the design of the handle for a backsaw. I did my research, ergonomic studies, clay models, prototypes etc., just as I had been trained to do, but when I showed the sleek and polished final model to our wood workshop technician, I got my real critique. He, being polite, said gracious things about my efforts, but then said that as far as he was concerned, the rather mundane handle of his old backsaw was hard to improve on (the very handle we had been challenged to improve). He noted that my version, which fit me perfectly, was the wrong size for his much bigger hands. As well, he showed me how he used his saw: like this and like that. The round handle allowed him to adjust his hands position without compromise. The ridges on the turning gave him just the right amount of grip. He used the tool and knew what it should be, in a way that I, as a designer, had little insight into.

I’m often reminded of this lesson when I review the results of industrial design competitions. There are often new designs for tools. It turns out that I may have spent quite a bit of time on the working end of some types of tools and this allows me to make considered judgments on them. There are often deficiencies and anomalies to spot and I suspect that in the categories where I lack experience, the same truths apply. Only the people who really use tools know what is crucial to them. Internet research doesn’t do it.

I think that it would look well on designers to adopt a bit more humility when it comes to tools and to do their research ‘in the field’. There is more to making a good tool than to improving its polish.

Paul Epp is an emeritus professor at OCAD University in Toronto, and former chair of its Industrial Design department.

Value is a word that is worth reflecting on. In fact, it’s more central to our lives than we are generally aware. Usually, we use this word in reference to economics. When it comes to buying or selling things, there is a possibility that cost can be accurately established. The seller determines the price, however arbitrary it might be.

But value remains the possession of the buyer. If something is valuable enough to you, you will try to get it. Conversely, if the value isn’t there, for you, then you pass by. For designers, engaged in the production of things, or even services, this equation is critical. Great attention can be paid to controlling cost and great care can be exercised in determining a price, but if the designer has not created value, then the whole enterprise is futile. And determining what might be valuable to another is an interesting challenge, and a target that is easily missed.

During my work as an educator, I had plenty of opportunities to consider value. In fact, I eventually concluded that teaching is essentially an exercise in the transmission of values. We, the teachers, engage in all sorts of stratagems to convince our students, however subtly, that certain knowledge is valuable, certain facts are valuable, certain skills are valuable. We set up certain things as being good (correct) and others as being less so. We reinforce this with exercises and eventually examinations where we have the opportunity for an ultimate reinforcement of our claims. Seeing it this way makes it feel, to me, as a very weighty responsibility, and I guess it is. The students go on to use their newly acquired distinction of values as a guide for their lives, and eventually, to pass along to others. Whew!

Designers learn a hierarchy of values, whether at school, or just by bumbling along, making mistakes and learning from them. Even though I went to school, most of what I learned I acquired the other way, variously known as the school of hard knocks. And I’m not knocking that school either. One of my favourite observations about teaching (or learning) is that which hurts, teaches (it sounds better in Latin). We value the absence of hurt a lot, and learn to avoid it, if we can. Our mistakes are part of the foundation of the structure we make of our values. And this is one reason that experience is valuable to designers and is a critical component of what makes them valuable to others.

When we design, we are constantly making decisions and we base our decisions on what we consider to be valuable. When I was only teaching part-time and concurrently running a design studio, a former student who was now an employee made the observation that he was learning a lot more working for me and more quickly than when he was a student. And I think that was because he was observing a value structure in action. I would guide his work based on what I considered to be good, or accurate, or valuable, and I would do this quickly and with confidence. A problem with schools is that the work is theoretical. It is different when there are real consequences and there is less room for argument.

A second way we use the word value, is in the realm of philosophy and, in particular, ethical philosophy. Here it is concerned with the right course of action and with regard to the eventual outcomes. Actions are treated a bit like objects, with values attached to them. This may concern the avoidance of pain, or the increase of pleasure, or joy, or peace or any of the other abstracts we value. Values may even be concerned with the benefit to others. Sometimes our ethical structure of values will be described as the underpinnings of our character.

In fact, these two ways of using the word value, or values, are not that dissimilar. We make our decisions based on what we value, what we find to be valuable. Our values are who we are. This may be especially true of teachers and designers, but it holds for all of us regardless. An important reflection of our values is our sense of gratitude. The more we find to be valuable, the more opportunities we have to be grateful. And as I’ve learned, a grateful life is better.

Paul Epp is professor emeritus at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design department.

I think that I shall never see, a poem as lovely as a tree…
— Joyce Kilmer

Actually, a tree is simply an apparatus that facilitates photosynthesis. It puts the little factories, the leaves or the needles, up there out of the way of other things where they can do their job.

The tree itself is the plumbing that supplies those factories with water and its dissolved nutrients, drawing it up out of the ground, and the minimal structure that provides the maximum amount of operation with the minimum amount of material.

Wood is simply a by-product of this obsession of the tree with turning sunlight into oxygen and carbohydrates. This image of plumbing is, I think, quite useful in understanding the nature of the material that we know as wood.

It is a material composed of little tubular cells, attached end-to-end and parallel to each other and oriented along the (mostly vertical) length of the tree and its branches. These little hollow cells are made of cellulose and are bound together with a material known as lignum.

A second type of cell, which is much fewer in number, is oriented at right angles to the primary ones and allow for lateral fluid movement. These are known as rays and are more-or less pronounced, depending on the species, but are often invisible.

Trees grow from their outer perimeter and their tips, adding new layers of material. The active and lively layer is known as the cambium and is just under the protective bark of the tree.

The health of this tissue determines the health of the tree. As the tree grows, the woody tissue converts from active plumbing to the role of more dormant scaffolding structure. It goes from being sapwood (sap being the liquid that moves up and down) to heartwood.

The wood that we value is usually the heart (wood) of the matter. If we intend to use this material for the construction of things, there are a number of important considerations.

One is that wood is, in its natural state, quite wet. It is essentially plumbing, after all.

Once the tree is no longer alive, this moisture will seek equilibrium with its surrounding environment. It dries out. As it dries, the cellulose cells shrink in diameter. Not in length, only in diameter.

To complicate things, the shrinkage is uneven; with approximately twice the shrinkage occurring along the diameter of the tree as occurs along a path radial to the centre of the trunk, although this varies with the species of tree.

This change in the size (and weight) of the material usually needs to be predicted and accommodated by the wood worker. Once the wood’s moisture is in a state of equilibrium with its environment, the change in size stops and the material is stable.

If the drying out occurs too rapidly, the material will likely split. It is usually worth remembering that as the relative humidity of the environment changes with the seasons, the dimensions of the wood will also change. In Canada, this usually means that wood shrinks in the winter and swells in the summer, making doors and drawers stick or loosen and unsecured panels warp.

If solid wood isn’t allowed to change its dimensions, it may split (or burst things) instead. The splitting that occurs during drying is a vulnerability that wood retains.

In addition to the stresses of drying, this splitting can occur through other means. When we split wood for the fireplace we soon learn that wood only splits along its (original) length. The little plumbing tubes are driven apart.

To deform the cells across their circumference requires a completely different magnitude of effort. We use this characteristic as an essential component of our strategy when we work wood.

A different type of consideration is that trees grow the most in the spring, when they are fresh from their winter repose. Later, in the summer, the growth slows down and changes in character.

The early (spring) wood is usually lighter in colour and thicker in volume. The later (summer) wood is darker and occupies less space.

This contrast between the early and late wood provides a record of the age of the tree and the wood with a visual differentiation that gives it what we call figure. This varies hugely between wood species, with pine, for instance, having little visible figure, with ash having a great deal.

Color variation and the range of less usual structures of the cells contribute to this visual distinctiveness. It is also worth noting that the dimensions of the wood that is available will correspond to their source, the trunks of trees.

Natural, un-jointed, solid wood in sheets four-feet by eight feet, for instance, is not feasible. This is information that is very important to those of use who design for the use of wood.

What I’ve written here is a highly simplified description of a much more complex topic. Even so, I’m often surprised by how it is often not taken into consideration.

Paul Epp is professor emeritus at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair if its Industrial Design department.

When we set out for a destination, and we know our terrain well enough, we may be lucky enough to be able to avail ourselves of a shortcut. There is something very charming and satisfying about this prospect: it’s a bit like a secret and we may even want to keep it that way. In my neighbourhood, I know the back lanes and it gives me a certain pleasure to be able to both leave and return by the back routes, unlike the uninitiated. It is also efficient. We attain our objective with less effort, and more quickly when we use our shortcuts.

When we designers talk about design, we are likely to describe a design process. Sometimes we will even put that into capital letter: DESIGN PROCESS, to underscore its importance. There are almost as many different descriptions of this procedure as there are designers, but we have a common ground. We all move through a series of phases, usually beginning with an exploration, which leads to an understanding and a definition of intent. Ideas are sought, evaluated, developed, prototyped and so on. Decisions get made. And this all will result in some kind of resolution in a communicable form.

The mind expands, then contracts

If we think about this process long enough, we will recognize that there is a pattern of cyclical expansions and contractions. We open our minds, expanding them to embrace as wide a range of possibilities as possible. And then we make decisions, contracting our options as we select the best results. Each set of decisions can set off another round of searching for opportunities, within the newly defined constraints. One tidy description of this is the double-diamond, with the diamond shapes suggesting both the expansion and contraction that we experience as we move through our exercise.

Another level of understanding about what we are doing is that we are shifting, sequentially, from left-brain to right-brain activities. We do one (defining/left) and then we do the opposite (exploring/right). And so we proceed.

An even deeper level of understanding will show us that we may also deviate from this pre-determined formula and use shortcuts. I will use the definition of intuition to describe what I mean by this: the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. Sometimes when we design, we seem to jump ahead and arrive at a tidy conclusion, without all of the intermediate steps.  It’s easiest to describe this as occurring through intuition.

It just feels right

It can feel a bit like magic. It’s as if we received some help from an unseen source. We may even choose not to talk about it, as though we cheated, or were caught out as lazy. But it can also feel very satisfying, just as it does in knowing where the shortcut is.

Culturally, we may have some misgivings about what occurs subconsciously. We tend to privilege that which occurs consciously and rationally. But we also know that what is unseen can also be powerful. Politicians are prone to describe their de-cisions, when the chips are down, as going with their gut feelings. However unattractive the description, we know what they mean. They are trusting their feelings.

I think that it might not be quite as mysterious as it sounds. We prepare our subconscious to both look for and to recognize useful things. We might call this spontaneous activity a form of pattern recognition. When what we are looking for matches up with what we have found, when the shapes correspond, we have a sense of immediate arrival.

I doubt that we are born with much intuition. Rather, I think that it is more likely to be the result of a significant amount of self training. We may not know we are doing it, but if we are interested enough in something, and pay enough attention to it and built up a large enough lexicon (getting to know the terrain), we are more likely to have what is called intuition.

There is danger here, though. All departures from the rational ought to make us a bit nervous. When we leave the well-known path for the scramble through the bushes, we may end up being unpleasantly surprised.

But in design, I think we all tend to take shortcuts when we can. We may not admit it, but we do. And so we should. If we’ve done our work, by paying attention, we’ve earned this option, and it can be very efficient and very satisfying.

Paul Epp is an emeritus professor at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design department.