Niels Diffrient,
FIDSA - September 18, 2001
I must confess that it is interesting to hear what some of my old IDSA buddies have been up to. As for me, I have essentially been pursuing the same idea for the last 20 years since leaving the Dreyfuss office. Everyone told me I was crazy to leave a going concern, give up my partnership and move out of NYC. And, I confess, to being somewhat concerned myself because my idea was to not be a consultant any longer or to take any clients with me. Instead I have pursued the same goal ever-since, and, that was to invent products in which I could see a clear advancement in usefulness to people. Of course, since I planned to not only come up with the product idea but to also do the human factor studies as well as the engineering, prototyping and the visual development and production preparation, it has to be in an area that was not too technically complex, such as electronics. Hence, I chose commercial furniture because of it's being a rather advanced aesthetic field, but also, I thought I could handle all the development.
Another part of my plan was to not have any stuff to speak of. So, I have restricted myself to one helper. The rest of what I need I get from other free-spirited individuals who are the best at what they do as anyone else I know of. This includes a machine shop, production development, advanced computer developer and a handful of others. Of course, in this scenario, it's not possible to do a great many products, since the type of designs I do are most likely multiple item systems and relatively complex in terms of mechanics action, unique materials and as advanced in human factors concepts as I can make them.
The most recent product I have done is the "Freedom" chair for the Humanscale Corporation, which you may have seen at the IDSA meeting in Boston. Since the company that is producing this product is very advanced in their thinking (just as I would think), it has been a very satisfying development without too much compromise. I look forward to doing more products with them, which, with diligence and some luck, may be on the market in the coming years.