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to design something that may or may not be in the

color green.

It's about redesigning every single aspect, from

sourcing materials, to designing, to production,

to shipping, and then eventually designing a way

that those products can be disposed of responsibly.

That's a mammoth task, so it's no wonder

designers and manufacturers

are finding it so difficult.

If one's really honest with oneself, most of what you

design ends up in a landfill somewhere.

And l'm pretty sure most of the products that l've

designed in my career,

most instances of the millions of things that have

been produced are probably in landfills today.

That isn't something I was conscious of when l

started working as a designer, it didn't even really

occur to me because it didn't really occur

to us as a society, I think.

Now, to be a designer, you have to take that into

consideration, because we have to think about

these complex systems in which our products exist.

If the shelf life of a high-tech object is less than 11

months, it should all be 1 00%%% disposable.

You know, my laptop should be made of cardboard,

or my mobile phone could be a piece of cardboard,

or it could be made out of something like sugar

cane or some bio-plastic, etc.

Why on earth does anything have to be built to be

permanent?

If I think about my admiration for Eames, it was an

admiration for his ability to identify

the qualities of new materials which could be used

to create new objects. But nobody worried about

whether fiberglass was going to cause disease, or

be difficult to dispose of.

Life was a little bit simpler for him, in that regard. He

could just think about using the materials

for their best design attributes.

But now, we have to face this idea that what we do

is not just the way we create some

individual design.

It's what happens afterwards, when we've finished

our design and people have used it.

So this sort of "cradle to cradle" concept.

One of my very first projects was to design a

toothbrush, a kids' toothbrush.

Brushes at that time typically were just a stick with

bristles at the end, which was pretty boring.

So we introduced other materials to it and we made

the handle thick.

And in the end it became a really successful

product. But my boss,

maybe half a year after we

launched the brush, went on vacation...

the idea was to go to the most remote beach. And

the way Paul tells the story is

the next morning he steps out of the tent and he

wants to go the pristine beach,

whales frolicking and all perfect, and what does he

stumble over:
. it's our toothbrush.

And it's there, and it's this brush, it's covered in

barnacles, the plastic is faded,

the bristles are worn. This brush, within months of

the product being launched, had been used up,

had been discarded, and found its way in the

Pacific. So even though it's a little, small object,

it creates a big piece of landfill that apparently goes

just about everywhere.

Let's go ahead and start defining some of the

challenges and some of the questions we might be

asking ourselves. Is there any toothbrush that we'd

actually feel comfortable washing up on the beach?

So much of the toothbrush does not need to be

disposed of, right? You put the bristles

in your mouth, the rest of it is all cleanable material.

Why are we tossing this stuff out every time?

There could be the greatest handle in the world,

because if you only use one handle in your lifetime

you could make it out of sterling silver, it could be

this heirloom and then you just replace the heads.

I think also the solution of the toothbrush assumes

the only approach to oral care,

or one of the main approaches to oral care is

through the toothbrush.

What is we didn't need toothbrushes?

What could it be?

When I first started the company, the role of the

industrial designer was primarily about the

aesthetics, or the cleverness around function, but it

was always as a minor piece...

the company was in charge of the major piece, and

we were hired guns to complete some aspect.

The question is actually not "What's the new

toothbrush?" but "What's the future of oral care?"

A fortune cookie with floss inside?

As we grew it became clear that companies were

happy for us to do more and more

of the actual design of the overall product.

I don't know, l'm really just enamored with the idea

of doing teeth cleaning at NASCAR.

I kind of think of it as they do analytical thinking and

we do this kind of innovative or design thinking

where we're more focused on user-centered ideas,

stuff that will resonate with the people who

are going to actually use the product. We come in

from the point of view of,

"What do people value, what are their needs?"

And it just results in different products.

You get these things, and you break them apart and

it's like a wishbone.

The big design challenge here is there's a lot of

things we care about and

cleaning our teeth is probably not high on that list.

I think the wishbone is nice, but it should take the

real shape of a wishbone.

Design thinking is a way to systematically be

innovative. You know how some people make lists,

designers make what I call mind maps, where they

keep going further and further.

Something leads to something else, which leads...

And as you're branching out you're getting to new

ground, where your mind

has never taken you before. And that's where

interesting design stuff happens, in my mind.

When I came into design,

designers would be at their drawing

boards, one, and they'd work at the

drawing boards. They would maybe

have some magazines and things to

Iook at to inspire them. One of the things that I did

when I came was drag people out of the studio

into the environment, and put designers in the

position of looking at people,

and going through the steps that other people were

going through as a source of inspiration.

It's really about trying to make an empathic

connection with people in their context.

Is that Helvetica?

It's not Helvetica, no.

So that as designers we're picking up on the

vibration of what they're about,

and being able somehow to identify with that, and

have that spur our

creative thinking and creative response.

Technology, and things you keep, things you love,

things that get better with time.

Cool.

I think today, I see my role as a designer to help

define what we should be creating for people,

and the output is not necessarily obviously a

design, it's not obviously a product.

Recently we designed a new banking service for

one of the big banks here in America.

And there are two and a half million people using

that savings account today.

So we're not just giving form to the thing that has

been created.

I think that what designers will do in the future is to

become the reference point for policymakers,

for anybody who wants to create a link between

something that highfaluting and hard to translate,

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