Dyson's vacuum cleaners dominated their market after just one year in business, obtaining an impressive 25% market share after just twelve months. Nearly ten years later the company enjoys control of around a third of the market.
Dyson prides itself on its very Bauhaus style philosophy. The approach that 'Form Follows Function' and that something designed to work the best it can will be aesthetically pleasing in its simplicity.? Their website states;
"Design means how something works, not how it looks - the design should evolve from the function. That's why the people at Dyson who design products are called 'engineers"
But did they really dominate the market with a product where form was forced into second place, or did the futuristic and distinctive Dual Cyclone look require more time and designing to make it what it was?
Also, is the Dyson's dominance down to its performance? There have been numerous advertising campaigns boasting its superior suction and long life, but is it really the "super-vacuum" it claims to be? If so, why are new models released? What can they possibly have that is better than the previous models? Is the continued success of the Dyson down to clever marketing, technological advances or just aesthetic redesign - going against their own values?

Currently very text heavy I know. I do intend to add a lot more images soon, but right now the slides looked far too empty so I have temporarily merged them.

Situation, Brief, Specification and Timeplan

After some "constructive criticism" my major project's had a slight re-design. Satisfied now? Took long enough so I thought I might as well theme this blog to match. That's just how co-ordinated I am.


Thoughts?

There are a number of things about this clock that make me regret buying it. The clock’s main function is obviously to display the time; this is done via the LCD display on the front of the clock. The time is displayed in the digital format with the 12 hour clock, but there is no way to tell if it is AM or PM. The two buttons on the front of the clock are “mode” and “set”. The mode button switches between the time and the date (the date only being shown as month and date e.g. 9 24 for the 24^th of September). Using the set button you can adjust the time, date and when the alarm goes off. With only the one button for setting these though you can only go forward in time, meaning if you want to set the alarm to go off 15 minutes earlier you have to go through over 23 hours to set it. Also without an AM/PM indicator it’s pure luck if you actually get the alarm to go off at the right time.

The novelty of the clock is the projector built onto the side. By holding down the button on top the time is projected in lights. The projector is fairly weak, and if you are projecting the time onto a wall some distance away the image becomes extremely blurred and almost unreadable. The projector can be twisted to shine forwards, upwards or backwards. More problems arise from this. Without the light being shone straight onto a wall the time gets a heavy key stone, but worst of all if the projector is angled to face the same direction as the LCD screen the time is projected upside down and back to front, making it completely useless.

The LCD clock runs on 2 different button cells, which are much more difficult to find than the usual AA/AAA etc batteries. They are normally sold in packs of more than one and are generally quite expensive so having two different types just adds to cost. The projector runs of two AA batteries, much easier to find, but a pain having to have a separate power source. Also, if the AA batteries run low there is no other way to see the time in the dark. The battery covers are fixed in place with screws, just making it awkward to replace the already awkward batteries.

Un-surprisingly this clock doesn’t get much use. I’d love to say that in the designing of this product they put form before function, but it doesn’t even look that great, with the most annoying part being that when the projector faces straight up there is around a 1cm gap underneath it, like there is a chunk missing. If it wasn’t for that (and perhaps the orange plastic…) the product could look quite good.