Homework #2

        In the TED talk video, "RE-thinking the way we sit down," Neil Diffrient discusses all the factors it takes to have a good model of something so it is usable for what it is made for, and how he got into making designs instead of becoming a jet pilot. Neil in the beginning of the video discussed about how when he was younger he was interested in plains, but he soon realized he was more interested in the way the plains worked and why things were designed that way. He then went to school for Aeronautical Engineering. Finding out early on in the class that they weren't asking him to show designs or his drawings of airplanes he figured out that he wanted to be a designer. This all led him to making designs for chairs, and how to make a design that would comfortably adjust to all different shapes and sizes of people for the chairs. He showed an example to the audience he was talking to of his design for an office chair. Neil made the chairs functions easy and user friendly. He made it so you could adjust the height of the chair depending on how tall someone was, a changeable height head-rest, a changeable height arm-rest, and designed the chair so that you could lounge back in it to allow you to breathe better. Neil said the focus of the chairs design was the importance on how it fit the human body, and what the body needs in a chair. In the same regards to how an airplane needs to be able to be designed correctly for wind. I think that a lot of what someone should focus on when designing a product is hit right on the head when Neil explains all the key points in how he went about his design of the office chair.