It basically tracks the temperature of water as you heat it. All the way from ice through it’s melting point (0°C) up to and through it’s boiling point (100°C). Ha, like you didn’t know that.

What I want to discuss is the point at the top of the graph there where the water turns into steam, where it boils. I remember the lesson where we drew this graph. I don’t really know why although I think perhaps that it’s because of that point at the top of the graph. What we found was that as you heat the water consistently the temperature increases, also consistently, up to a point (100°C) and at that point the temperature stops increasing. The reason it stops is because although you’re applying heat to the water the energy of that heat is no longer being used to raise the temperature but to convert the liquid into steam. They call it a phase transition and it requires energy. You can see in the graph there that it takes quite a lot of energy because it takes quite a while for the temperature to start increasing again.

Right so where are we? We’re heating water. Good because kettles is what I really want to talk about. With your kettle you heat water and this happens using electricity which is forced through a wire which is resistant to having electricity forced through it, and because of the way of the world works this resistance causes the wire to heat up (think of it as angry at the imposition) and this heats your water.

That’s not the only thing kettles do. Most kettles nowadays perform the neat trick of turning themselves off again after the water is boiled. This saves the element from getting too angry (furious?) and stops the whole process before all the water has turned to steam so you’ve got some left to drink.

I wasn’t sure how kettles did this so I looked it up. It turns out they use a thing called a bimetallic strip. This is something else I learned about in school (oh, the british education system). Basically this is a small strip made of two types of metal, one on one side and the other on the other. The trick is that one metal is more susceptible to heating up than the other meaning it expands more causing the strip to curl as one side gets longer faster than the other.

This is very handy when it comes to turning things off when they get hot. Basically you set up your strip in such a way as it trips a switch when it gets hot and you’ve got a self-turn-offing kettle. Woot!

Can you see the problem yet? Right here’s the thing. Most kettles are set up in such a way as their bimetallic strip is heated by steam. This steam is created as the water boils and so it a pretty good indicator that the water is boiling, and is therefore a pretty good indicator that the kettle should now be turned off. But wait! Why are we using the kettle in the first place? To heat water. Our goal here is hot water not steam. Think back to the graph. After the water reached 100C the energy we’re adding is being used only to create steam. So when it comes to the kettle all of that extra energy is being used for no other purpose than to turn the kettle off. It’s not making our water any hotter because it’s already as hot as water can get.

So some questions:

Is there any reason you know of that when making tea or coffee or another hot-style drink we actually need the water to have reached boiling point beforehand? Would water that has reached say 95°C not work or be wrong in some way?

Secondly is there not some way that we could create a mechanism for turning kettles off when the water temperature gets to 95°C? How much might that add to manufacturing costs? Might that cost be acceptable to consumers both on economical and environmental grounds?

Finally has this blatantly already been covered, done, dusted and succeeded or failed, or is on the point of breakthrough, or something in some way that I haven’t heard of and therefore I’m either totally behind the times or simply just mildly irrelevant?

I’m obviously worried that perhaps I’ve missed something fundamental here which renders this whole argument pointless, but as it stands there’s something tantalisingly promising to my mind about the idea of saving all that energy (which as I’ve found out recently is quite a lot) simply by not having kettles across the world have to be on for as long.

Answers on a postcard (or in the comments) please.

It’s all very exciting and a doddle to set up – although I did spend a good ten minutes in confusion because I thought it said ‘press down the button’ (but which button, which!?!?) when it actually said ‘press the down button’ (aaah the one pointing down).  Before you know it you’re away and you’ve got a little reading of what you’re current using in Watts.  Per second? Per hour? I’m not actually sure but it’s a number, it goes up, it goes down, that’s what really matters here right?

First you run around turning things off and on. That’s fun for a while and quite interesting when you realise which appliances use the most electricity and which use less. You may already feel like you’ve got a sense of what’s what but I guarantee there’ll be something which you didn’t quite expect (or more to the point hadn’t really spent any time really thinking about).

For me it was the kettle. Our monitor had sat around the 2-300 Watts and went up and down a little based on lights and the computer screen then we stuck the kettle on for a brew and the damn thing shot up to 2500 Watts (that’s 2 Kilowatts to you scientists). Man alive! That’s like ten times as much! (I said). I always had a vague idea that heat and light were the biggest users (as opposed to … well computers and stereos) but I never realised how great the difference.

It really does make you think about just flicking the thing back on to reboil some water you know has boiled 5 mins before.

The next thing was the kitchen lights. We’ve got a load of little halogen ones which sit under the units and shine down on the surfaces in a most pleasing manner. They’re bright and well placed give the kitchen a cool kind of feel. There’s also a single 60 watt bulb in the centre of the room on a separate switch. This isn’t that bright and it’s permanently behind your head so you’re always casting a shadow on everything you’re doing. Guess which of these two lighting options I always, always choose and guess which also uses about 10 times as much electricity.

Damn it!

There’s a few things I’d change about the monitor. Firstly the Watts  number (the only one that matters) is relegated to a small position within the screen, competing for attention with the time (why?), the current temperature (really? I heat the house with gas),  and a couple of info type things telling you how much electricity you used yesterday (a bar chart for night, day and evening) and per day average. It also tries to tell you how much it’d cost you if you continued to use at this level for a day or a month. This is pretty pointless because the level is always changing so it doesn’t really tell me anything more meaningful than the Watts (which as I’ve said is just really a number to me but is also, strangely, enough).

Better I think just to stick the Watts amount in bigger numbers bold and central. Get rid of the time and temp (I have a clock on the wall, don’t you know) and as for the graphs and extra info there’s not enough space to do it properly so don’t bother. The Watts is everything really. Even though it’s just a number and I have no way really interpret it meaningfully that’s fine. It’s like a computer game, it’s your score. It goes up and down and that’s  all you need to know.

My suggestion would be to use the funky wirelessness and send this data to your computer (or straight to the web) at which point all the daily, monthly usage stuff (and costs) could be presented in wonderful technicolour an those who wished to could leap in.

The reason I think this is because after the initial fun and games and the first phase of learning what’s happened is a settling down in the way I use it. It’s faded into the background a bit and is less interesting. What I do though  is check it. Every so often as I wander through the room or if I’m just about to leave the house I’ll give it a quick glance to see what it’s on. And sure enough if it looks high I’ll have a quick scoot around to check I’ve turned everything off. More often than not I’ve left a light on somewhere or perhaps the video (ahem PVR!) is on standby and not entirely off so I flick ‘em off and watch the level settle back down to normal. I’ve got only vague idea of what that normal is but it’s enough.

In short the best use for something like this is very much like the clock on the wall. It needs to be something you can simply glance at. Not something that needs a lot of attention or thought. Just a quick indicator.

It’s hasn’t stopped me using the kettle or my wonderful kitchen lights but I’m sure it just being there has reduced the amount of electricity we’ve used and for the environment and my bank balance that’s got to be a good thing.

I attended TEDx Leeds at the Rose Bowl last Thursday night. It was a very interesting evening with an impressive array of speakers and a good format for the night. Interspersing live speakers with TED videos provided a nice kind of variety and of course being TED the videos were of such good quality the only worry was whether the flesh’n'blood guys would be able to keep up the standard.

They did in spades.

So thought provoking and inspiring they were that I decided I couldn’t let the whole thing pass without writing a little something about my thoughts. I have to mention too, I made copious notes for the following on my Android phone (Gmail app) in Leeds station and on the train back home. However as I neared my destination I was asked for my ticket. Whilst I was fumbling my thumb knocked the touch screen in the ‘Discard Message’ area and without an ‘Are you sure?’ I lost the lot.

I don’t know what that says about the Android OS but do know I found some pretty choice phrases for it at the time.

Dr Norman Lewis

Lewis’s thesis is that innovation is on the fall. Businesses no longer are willing to fund it in the same way as they used to. Things like “The Business Case” and Return On Investment are uppermost in the mind and are leading to a risk aversion within business which is stopping the kind of free innovation which has often brought about the most useful, if unexpected, advances in technology. Innovation has become a buzz word which can be attached to anything often as a replacement for  action. All this I completely agree with and I was highly entertained and inspired by the clarity and passion with which Lewis delivered it.

Space Race

Lewis made a comparison with another time in history, a period of real innovation from which we’re still reaping benefit. This was the space race, particularly as encourage and promoted by JFK. He quoted Kennedy’s “not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard” and bemoaned the fact that that kind of visionary leadership seems missing in today’s western politics. However, whilst giving it a quick mention Lewis didn’t really dwell on the political context and in doing so I feel he missed a key point in a discussion of why that huge amount of innovation took place, and a key reason for why it’s not happening in that way today.

After the talk Lewis took questions and someone (please let me know if you know who I’ll stick a name in) asked whether it was a case of Democracy not being conducive to that kind of level of organised innovation. He suggested that the Kennedy regime in this instance was acting more like a dictatorship and that perhaps it is only within authoritarian regimes that these ‘big projects’ can be forced through.  It was an interesting question I could see what he meant. My own feeling is that it’s not so much a question of Democracy as such but more one of competition.

Competition

At the time it was politically imperative to the U.S. Government to be seen to beat the Soviet regime in any endeavour which they were both involved. This wasn’t simply about military superiority of competing nations (although that obviously played a huge part, particularly in getting the approval of the people) but more than this, it was about proving capitalism was a more successful system than communism. In that context ‘because it is hard’ could be seen as a piece of spin for a decision that had already been made as well as a galvanising piece of visionary rhetoric. Kennedy played to the America’s self-image as a hard working frontiersmen, but the fact that the country was prepared to spend such vast sums in pursuit of a victory is testament as much to the fear of communism than it is to leadership or belief in innovation.

So to the comparison with today. There simply isn’t the same idealogical competition present Even with the emergence and huge growth of China, the threat (or opportunity) seems always to be couched in economic terms and within the context of a capitalist world. China as it ascends is no longer expected to initiate a domino effect as much as simply join in. It doesn’t pose the same ideological threat.

But wait, I’m saying that we’re missing competition because we’re all capitalists now? Surely capitalism is all about competition. Why is that not driving innovation? Lewis gave us the answer from his own experience. Within big businesses there is a shrinking away, a risk aversion, a fear of waste and of lack of return. Why is this? What’s gone wrong that such a competitive environment as for example the mobile industry isn’t driving companies towards innovation but away from it?

Wonderfully the next speaker gave us a clue.

Charles Cecil

Charles Cecil provided an excellent counterpoint between his two more reflective companions. A builder as much as a thinker, the things he has done seemed to have a immediately tangible quality which certainly resonated with the audience. He told the history of computer games development. Having grown up with many of these computers not to mention a lot of the games and game publishers it was a strange and yet hugely satisfying experience to hear the story of those things told by a true originator and insider.

Sure it was long on story and shorter on ideas but I was entirely willing to forgive that for such an interesting and impressive story from such a likeable speaker. Certain facts (the 10,000 fold increase in game development costs) stood out and a certain screen-shot (of the US Gold game Out Run) generated a gasp that was part recognition and part awe. Sufficed to say the subject matter seemed tailored to generate a good response from this audience.

Audience

Apart form the history Cecil’s big idea was to do with engagement with audiences. He looked back at the early days putting up home made stalls at trade fairs where the audience was ‘just like us’ and then told tales of publishing exec’s who either wished they were really in film or were actually proud to have never played the very games they were selling. You could hear the frustration as Cecil recounted the process by which publishers would put out rubbish on the back of some film tie-in or big brand endorsement and how things like testing were sidelined or kept to a minimum by people who knew the product would probably sell anyway.

I loved it. I was there. I bought some of that rubbish!

OK. So this is where I link back to Lewis. You see what Cecil was describing here was a process where companies once they have found a way of making money aren’t necessarily driven to innovate. In Cecil’s case it was American publishers pumping out games like Hudson Hawk, but looking at the problem in a wider context you can see that in some cases if quick profits are the goal then it actually does make sense to produce cheap, mostly cloned products and to simply apply a veneer of newness via marketing.

This to me is something like the same problem that Lewis was raging against. The fact that businesses can end up regarding things like innovation, improvement and even just quality as an inefficient way to make money. This is of course wrong but before I go on about that I’d better tell you about the final speaker.

Clive Grinyer

The Democratisation Of Design started with the superstars of design then swiftly and appropriately pulled the rug from their celestial desingership with the assertion that ‘everyone is a designer now (get used to it)’. Excellent. It’s nice to hear that it’s not just those lucky enough to marry the right footballer (damn, missed my chance) are worthy to merit the title. Grinyer talked about the new world of services and products that involve an ‘experience’ which stretches way beyond their purchase and use. He mentioned how a new expectation of services which are both personalised and personalisable requires a different approach to design.

He also talked about how control of the experience is often spread too thinly across companies. How within the horizontal silo’s of many businesses the experience can be fragmented and degraded by the decisions of the different people involved.

‘Every decision is an act of design’ he said and we nodded.

The only problem with an argument like this is that it risks being too general. In aiming for a deeper truth it renders itself of little practical use. If every decision is an act of design then not only is everyone a designer but they always have been. True maybe, but actually there are still designers who are labelled ‘designers’. What are they? What should they do?

Truth to power

According to Grinyer the designer is the visionary, the communicator and interpreter who can take a look into the future and see how an idea might work when it turns into a reality. This requires skills not only in the quick sketch which can turn around a meeting but also in the understanding of users (or user-based methods of enquiry) and the raft of communication skills which can make that potential reality understandable to those in power. It’s this which is sounds like Grinyer himself is doing now for Cisco (according to a fascinating tale of Yemeni Fisherman).

Speaking truth to power? Yes perhaps but Grinyer seemed to be saying more. By the end of the talk he was suggesting that designers should stop designing and perhaps take some of that power. Designers as the new philosopher-kings? Hoorah!

So where does that leave us. Thoroughly provoked (positively) if you’re me. I haven’t enjoyed hearing three speakers so much in ages and as you can probably guess I’ve been inspired to ramble on quite incessantly.

So…

My conclusions? Well, I suppose I might be seeing my own order in the chaos here, and I’m sure I’ve left out great chunks of the talks (possibly even missed the point occasionally) but the joining thread I found in the evening was this. Both Lewis and Cecil were identifying a problem with the way things are sometimes done in the world and in business. Lewis called it a lack of visionary leadership, Cecil told us more of it’s consequences but personally what I see is an inability of various decision makers to take anything but the a short-term view.

Short-termism

Needing to know business cases, wondering about return on investment in a way which precludes innovation and improvement is basically about prioritising the short-term. Those games publishers probably did know that a lack of innovation would eventually drive away the audience that they currently enjoyed, or that someone (Nintendo?) might come along with a product that would leave them for dead. The fact is they didn’t care because in the short-term the money was rolling in.

In all the time that I spent working in a big business there were very few really bad decisions which didn’t in the end result from short-term thinking. The abuse of users trust in the hope of a quick sale, the abuse of a premium brand in the scrabble for advertising bucks, a lack of investment in the things which everyone knew would make the product better in favour of sticking plasters and ‘quick wins’. This is the drive for efficiency. This is providing for the shareholder’s returns. This is reality in business.

Designers

So what is the answer? I think it lies in what Grinyer told us. What in the end he came around to in terms of what designers should do. ‘Stop designing and take power’ might be a bit confusing at first, more so after the assertion that everyone’s a designer now, but I think what he and Lewis are driving at that what is needed right now is people who can look further into the future, people who can predict and discover what products and services could be like, how things could work, and then with the skills of communication to convince the decision makers that it should be done.

If it isn’t possible to persuade them then you’ve got the wrong decision makers and that’s when the point about having designers in positions of power comes in. It’s only by having people who understand these things making the decisions that the best possible course will be taken. If that means designers having to stop designing and get those positions that’s what should be done.

I was immensely impressed that Lewis could respond to a ‘it’s just talk’ type question by outlining his own  plan of action including going to the party conferences to push his message.

Think long term

Of course long term thinking is an act of faith. By definition it’s hard work at first and the fruits of such labour might be a long time coming. That’s why people need compelling reasons to start or continue to do it. It has to be done though, not just for long-term success and long-term profits but for long-term everything. The destruction of the planet via industry is a classic example of short-termism and I think this is what Lewis was alluding to in his plea for not less but better energy.

So think long-term. It took us from hunter-gatherers to farmers. Maybe, as Lewis hopes, it’ll take us to Mars.