Ted Talk 8 Niels Diffrient rethinks the way we sit down

Diffrient's Ted Talk displayed his life's "romance for design". He grew up with a "romance" for drawing airplanes and building them. Once he chose to study aerodynamics in school, he discovered that he was more into the design of airplanes and not the airflow and mathematical part of airplanes. He then went into design for his profession and put out pieces of this "romance" but he received nothing in return since the nature of his designs were decided by the customer. Diffrient then moved on to another profession of design with furniture, his specificity was chairs. Now, he would focus on how to accommodate the human body and its needs not like the aerodynamics of airplanes. He then made an easily-adjustable chair after many years that would fit almost everyone. The chair was designed without knobs or twists but to be adjustable by simply pulling up or down on the chair, headrest, etc. This creates people to have a fitted chair that helps their work performance level since they are accommodated. 


Diffrient speaks using examples from his early childhood and how he loved to draw airplanes. He also displays his own product that he designed, his accommodating chair. Diffrient actually tested his chair and showed the easiness of its function to the audience. This helped them understand more and how this design fits the function. This made me think of the design chapter in "A Whole New Mind". I thought that things had to fit their function but also be user-friendly and easily able to accommodate all the different people. I also thought that this talk showed how much work is put into the design and function of a product especially a chair! It's much more complicated than at first glance.


This Ted Talk is presented well in storytelling format. Diffrient tells the audience how he loved the "romance" between planes and how they worked. Then he explained his career into design which eventually led to furniture design of a very functional chair. He also uses jokes throughout his speech to bring humor into a usually dry topic which was his life into design and how things work (chairs, "the romance", planes, etc.).


This video exhibits the "romance" between creativity, design, and function. (Again, I think this goes hand-in-hand with the design chapter in "A Whole New Mind."). I think this also presents the idea that you have to understand how an object works before you can creatively design it. This video personally teaches me that many ideas go into designing something before a finished product results. I need to understand more how things work essentially before taking one design over another. (This Ted talk also made me interested in his chair!) Education can benefit from this video because it explains careers may change. Students can learn that if one thing doesn't work out, that there is another profession that is made for them. For the world's perspective I think that designers have a much more difficult task than artists. Designers need a product to have capability and function, while artists have more of a free-range over what they accomplish for their job. The artists can create various things, but, designers must stick to one product and create a commendable design.