Whipsaw

Designing Products Like They Matter (Because They Do)

By: Gary S. Vasilash

Dan Harden has worked with George Nelson, worked at Henry Dreyfuss Associates, worked for Steve Jobs. And at Whipsaw, he continues working at it: Design.

“The whole reason that I wanted to become a designer is the same thing that drives me today: When I see people struggling with problems, I know that design can solve them.”

That’s Dan Harden. He’s principal and chief designer at Whipsaw Inc. (whipsawinc.com), a studio based in what used to be the San Jose municipal horse stable. A 25-person firm that Harden established in 1999 after serving as the president of frog design.

That’s right. Harden—who graduated from the University of Cincinnati in ’82 and then had a career working with design icon George Nelson, one of the founders of American Modernism; then at Richardson/Smith in the ‘80s when it was a hot shop (it was subsequently bought out by Fitch); and at the legendary Henry Dreyfuss Associates in New York City, a man who says, “I always like to push the limits,” went to frog as creative director in the late ‘80s,where he had the opportunity to work with clients including Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison—explains of what transpired, “In the ‘90s we were doing some great design at frog, but it grew and got to the point where I felt that it was losing its creative edge, and as a really hands-on designer”—he spends about 50% of his time designing—“I wanted my own firm.”

Thus, Whipsaw.

“I guess most people would say that getting a job at frog design was my big break,” Harden says. “But I didn’t view it as a big break then or now.”
In fact, he goes on to say something that is worth paying careful attention to: “I don’t think I’ve had a big break in my career. I think I’ve just been tenacious and have been doing this for a long time. I’ve provided enough solutions so that people began to pay attention.”
Provided enough solutions.

In other words, it is not just where you are that matters, it is what you do. What you accomplish. And how well you accomplish it.

And Harden’s approach is one that is not just about objects in and of themselves: “The product is an enabler for an experience.” And the product is a means to deal with the aforementioned problem, whether it is a baby crying after taking a bottle (so they developed a more natural bottle, the Adiri Natural Nurser, a single overmolded part: a pliable elastomer over a colored polypropylene), or a company trying to come up with a productionized version of a tomography-based retinal scanner (talking of what has become the Optovue retinal scanner that helps ophthalmologists diagnose pre-disease conditions associated with things like glaucoma and retinopathy-degenerative conditions, he says, “When I saw it for the first time it was a 4 x 8-ft piece of plywood with beam splitters and lenses and power supplies and electronics that needed to be coalesced into something the patient wouldn’t be afraid of and could help the doctor’s productivity.”).

“About 50% of our work,” he says, “is consumer based: electronics, housewares, and the like. The other 50% is medical equipment, business equipment, and commercial/industrial goods. In general, we find in consumer products that you need to be a better psychologist, you need to tug at the emotions a little more. So you can be a little more expressive in design, you can take more chances. Consumers want to be delighted with the products they surround themselves with. They want to identify with them and with that identity comes a product personality. It’s OK to make a statement with a consumer product.

“Conversely, especially with industrial and medical products, they must work perfectly and reliably for a long period of time. Personality and product expression must take a backseat to that. If you’re a surveyor out in the field, a contractor using a GPS system, and it starts to rain and freeze, you have to use the system, change the battery, look at the controls, attach it to your computer—and at that point you could care less about what it looks like or what color it is.”

And it is this sense of fit for purposefulness that also informs Harden’s approach to the physical act of realizing products. He not only spends much of his time developing the idea (“I am very user-centered so I find out what’s happening at the end touchpoint. I go though a process of a lot of exploration—sketches, models,; I explore barrier thresholds and go to extremes; finding polarities helps find the magnetic center of the solution”), but also time further along in the development process, dealing with everything from the materials to the molds that may be involved in producing the products (“We go to Asia a lot and sit down with these manufacturing service companies so that we know that they understand our design”).
“Every detail is thought out. There for a reason,” he says. And he provides an example of something that Whipsaw didn’t design that expresses this thoroughness: “A good design, when you take it apart, is beautiful on the inside, too. If you take apart a Porsche engine you’ll see that it is one of the most beautiful things around. And they weren’t exactly concerned about the aesthetics.”

But there they are: the aesthetics are inherent with the good design, even though its purpose is to propel a 911.

“You ask what drives me,” Harden says. “One of the things is that there’s so much bad stuff out there. I’m discouraged by how many disingenuous, crappy products are in the market. Open a SkyMall on an airplane. It’s ridiculous. We can do better than this.”

And so they work at Whipsaw to do it. “We can do better than this.”

Adiri Baby Bottle
In addition to being soft and having a breast-like shape, the Adiri Natural Nurser features a cap with an integrated diaphragm vent so the bottle can breathe, thereby reducing the bubbles that can cause colic.

Pano Logic Zero Client Computer
The Pano Zero Client is a server-based corporate computer. There is no software. No CPU. No memory. But the hardware-only device functions like a PC. According to the folks at Whipsaw, “Because it is a ‘zero client,’ we made it a ‘zero design’: it is a plain 3 x 2-inch zinc box with a mirror finish, causing it to blend into its surroundings.”

Eton TurboDyne Series
When the power is down and you’re in an emergency, functional and intuitive products like the Eton Turbodyne Series are key. These multipurpose tools feature a dynamo crank to provide power.