Musings with Niels Diffrient

September 2005

How did you become an ergonimics expert?
People connect me with human factors, or ergonomics, but I don’t consider myself an expert in this field. I’m committed to making sure that my products fit and adapt to the people who are going to use them. Therefore, I’m a very committed user of all the data and experience that grows out of ergonomics. I know because I’ve published in the field, it’s assumed I’m some kind of academic who has a concentration in human factors, but I remain a designer.

You did put out a three-volume publication on human factors that’s a standard reference for many designers, I can see you might be considered a professional in the field.
Well, yes, but I should explain that. The publication is called Human Scale, which also incidentally is the name of a company that is currently producing my furniture designs. Anyway, the motivation for the publication was not to be a researcher uncovering data, but to take existing data and put it into a useable form.

Human Scale is sort of a circular slide rule. You turn a wheel inside an enclosure and it references data appropriate to the person you’re curious about. Though human factors engineers considered the capabilities of people, they never applied the same rules to their own publications. In other words, the human factors publications were not very well human factored. Human Scale was a good ergonomic design for presenting the data we used everyday out of complex textbooks.

How important was Human Scale for design and ergonomics?
It certainly didn’t equal The DaVinci Code in numbers but it was one of the longest running publications of MIT Press, and I have talked to many designers who used it as a daily reference.

After a while, you internalize not just the data, but the attitude that drives the data. That’s when, of course, it becomes valuable to you as a designer, when it’s a part of your subconscious and your fundamental thinking about design.

Do you think ergonomics has become part of every designer's thinking these days?
Everybody practices ergonomics, the designers, engineers, production people, the purchaser. When they make a cursory judgment that a chair is comfortable, they’re making an overt ergonomic choice. The only problem with it is that it’s accidental rather than studied. This is particularly prevalent right now, when virtually every office chair is called ergonomic. Clearly, some of them are not.

How does the average person actually know which is which? They don’t. This begins to touch on one of the complications of the field of design: that it is so broadly based on visual aesthetics; that people are sold on something just by the way it looks.

Don’t you design things based on the way they look?
Absolutely. But I do it on the basis of having thoroughly studied how the item should work.

Looks come second?
I wouldn’t say that. Let me back up…I had spent 25 years designing as a consultant and I felt there was something more available. Partly out of naiveté and partly out of curiosity, I decided I would take the approach of assuming professional responsibility for what I designed, and get reliable measures on what was needed and how it actually performed.

Uniting all these approaches with the aesthetic aspect has the potential to be aesthetic as well. A product we enjoy, or that is very accommodating, has a sensory quality parallel to the sensory quality of how it looks. They go together.

What’s an example of an item with these qualities?
An umbrella, for instance, has no star designer’s name attached to it as its inventor, and is not consciously designed, but you get a benefit from it. It’s a most enjoyable double action device that stores nicely, can be carried well, and then becomes, when it’s open, quite a flamboyant form.

An English saddle is an absolutely beautiful thing. It ranks very highly on the scale of the best chairs I’ve ever seen, and yet, you don’t know who the designer is. It’s an evolution. It’s a design with out designers and yet extremely satisfying in every way.

This kind of product points the way to how most every product should be. They should operate totally on an aesthetic level, but the aesthetics should apply not just to the way it looks, but to the way it works and how sympathetic it is to human use.

You hear designers who do stylish furniture say it’s very comfortable, but how do they know that? What tests have they run to prove something is comfortable? Have they looked into it technically? Of course, the answer is no. It’s an attitude they carry that they understand comfort, but they don’t. They can’t prove comfort one way or the other.

This is the theme I’ve been pursuing. I document, test and, to the best of my ability, prove comfort standards in office chairs, for instance. But how does the average person get a greater awareness of it? That would take some effort. But the number one thing that one could always ask is: Does it really satisfy the function, or are you being seduced by its appearance?

What kind of furniture do you have in your home?
I have designs from people I’ve known and many of the people I’d been inspired by in my youth. You know the Bauhaus and their great movement towards what they called functional design and new modernism for the era, back in the 30s and even the 20s. All that stuff was very thrilling to me and I have designs in my living room by the masters of that period.

Though it was called functional, what they really were doing was creating a functional style. It was not necessarily very functional. The chairs are, in some cases, notoriously uncomfortable.

Which are uncomfortable?
Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona is the great icon of modern chairs, but it does everything wrong. Everyone falls in love with its appearance without appreciating that it bends your back the wrong way, the seat is way too deep, it’s very hard for people who are old or infirm to get out of, or, for that matter, even get into it.

It’s really a good lesson in what not to do in chairs, but it’s forgiven because its main function was to impress, not to support a body comfortably. With such items, at least the ones I own, I sit in the comfortable chair and look at them, because that’s what they were designed for in the first place.

How did you become a designer?
I’d like to tell you it was a very carefully calculated career move, but it was nothing of the sort. It was totally accidental. The first step that moved me on the path of becoming a designer happened while I was in high school. I happened to go to a technical high school, not by choice, simply because it was the high school nearest my home in Detroit.

The school had a choice of career paths and one of them was aeronautical engineering. I thought, ‘Well I like to draw airplanes, I’ll be an aeronautical engineer.’ I got in the course and nobody ever asked me to draw an airplane. I had to study mathematics and physics and all kinds of shop courses on how to use various materials and processes. Frankly, I thought something was missing.

Then one day in class, another youngster saw me drawing an airplane, and said to me, the prophetic words, ‘You can draw so well you should be in the art department.’ I asked, ‘Why?’ And this young man said, ‘Well, for one thing, there are a lot more girls there.’

Believe it or not, that was the start of my career in art and design. I henceforth finished my studies in art and then used my art portfolio, mainly painting, to get into Cranbrook, where I started as a painter. Then, I saw that people in design and architecture looked to be doing things that were a lot more fun, so I switched again.

Do you still paint?
No, I’ve had enough drawing in my career to get it out of my system.

Do you prefer to design for yourself, making items that you think need to be created, or for companies who request that you do some specific product?
The one thing I wanted to do when I became a single designer, is that I wanted to invent things based on improved performance. For instance, the Freedom chair that is now being made for Humanscale. I had that chair already designed and in prototype form when the president of the company, Bob King, called and said he’d heard my name in connection with the design of chairs and could he come see me. When he came, he talked so knowingly about wanting to do a quality chair that was well founded on ergonomics. The more he talked, the more I realized, he was asking me to design the chair I already had. I wheeled it out and showed it to him. He got very excited about it and said he was interested and wanted to do it.

So when you’re in your home looking at all of your uncomfortable iconic furniture, do you sit in a Freedom chair?
Not in my home, but in the studio. I’m sitting in one right now, and I’m looking at the future chairs. I’ve got two other chair lines beyond the Freedom chair. One of them just came on the market, called the Liberty chair, and the next one is targeted for next year.

What’s that one?
It’s a chair that will be a simplified chair in the sense that it will perform a lot of the same support qualities as Freedom and Liberty but in a simplified way that lets us manufacturer it at a lower cost.

Is it a major drive for you to have products that are accessible to average people?
Absolutely. Value and cost are paramount features of my design. I’m not designing as a prima donna. I consider myself a very commercial product designer. If something doesn’t sell, I’m just as disappointed as if it were ugly. It’s part of the package. I work with corporations that support my work, and I want them to earn a good income from what I’ve designed. That’s where the challenge lies. It’s not the act of the artist who doesn’t care beyond the need to satisfy the artistic urge.

Do you work more in the studio or at home?
Well, my studio is a structure about 100 yards from my home. It’s a nice commute. I share it with my wife Helena Hernmarck, who is a well-known tapestry designer and weaver. She has half the studio and I have the other. It’s a large studio so, fortunately, we both have plenty of room.

What was your relationship with Eero Saarinen like?
I realize that Eero was one of a handful of people I consider the masters, who I really got the most influence form. Eero, and then my former boss, from whom I ended up buying the business, Henry Dreyfuss.

Did the three of you work together?
Henry knew Eero but they didn’t work together. Except in one instance. One of our clients while Henry was still in the business was the John Deere Company. The president of John Deere wanted to do a new headquarters in Moline, Illinois and asked Henry who he should choose as an architect. Henry said, ‘Let me think,’ and then he asked me. Of course, my first choice was Eero. That’s who was suggested. He built the headquarters, and it’s one of the great buildings in America.

It reminds me also that one of my other masters was Buckminster Fuller. In a similar sense, I am happy to say I was instrumental in getting Fuller his first big dome job, his first on any scale, in about 1950. I had been going to meetings that Fuller held for a small crowd of architects and designers, so I knew about his work. I suggested him for a job that was being done, and he got it.

Those two things will undoubtedly get me into designers’ heaven.

Are there others who have influenced you?
Well yes, but they’re not the type most people would associate with design. One is a man named Alec Issigonis who was the designer of the original Mini automobile, which is, in my view, a prime instance of performance and function guiding design. The other is Isambard Kingdom Brunel, an early English designer/engineer who did some of the first large steamships and railroad lines and tunnels back in the 1800s. There’s Kelly Johsnon, of the Lockheed company, who started what is known as the SkunkWorks, in which they design great airplanes. Or currently, Burt Rutan who did the first spaceship for tourism, one, and also designed the airplanes that flew around the world nonstop.

People like that I consider really full quality designers because they do the whole thing. That’s what I’m interested in. These are designers beyond the average. They are spectacular creators of products that work in every sense and are often very beautiful. These are my heroes. Sorry to inform Ettore Sottsass of that.

What design of yours are you most proud of?
It’s always the latest thing. I’m always pushing to improve things. I’m very proud of the Freedom chair. I think it brought a completely new approach to operating experiences for the user. The Liberty chair takes it a step further and the one I’m just finishing now, will take it a step further still. They don’t look alike but they are incremental advancements.

Any items you would like to design that you haven’t ever worked on?
Clothing. It’s something we all have to put up with and it’s 99% directed by appearance. Yet, there’s a lot of human factors engineering that would make it a great deal more functional, as well as beautiful. That is not a driving force, so it lies in wait for someone. I’d like it to be me, but I don’t know that I’ll ever get around to it.

Just because you’re so busy?
Well, yes. Plus I’m not in that field. I don’t know the ins and outs, the channels of managing and manipulation. An outsider would just waste a lot of motion trying to be noticed. I don’t have a name like Ralph Lauren. Nobody’s going to say, “Designed by Diffrient.” Who’s that? A lot of people select their clothes on the basis of the name attached to it. And that’s something fundamental to the design field. It’s almost more important to get a well-known name than it is to have any design skills.

Star architecture is called ‘starchitecture’—that tells you something too. Designers have often been accused of being stylists, but they’re not nearly the stylists architects are, doing buildings of elaborate form and construction strictly for visual effect. There are many, many competent, qualified architects, but of the ones you hear the most of, it’s often because they do startling, unexpected forms that grab your eye and seduce you interest. Their designs are not necessarily very functional, it’s just that the form is so seductive.

What kind of home do you live in?
I should tell you that when I was in Cranbrook I also studied architecture, so I’ve designed all my own spaces. I’m in an old colonial neighborhood, Ridgefield, CT. On the outside, my house carries a lot of the clues of colonial architecture. Inside, it’s completely modern. I don’t feel like inflicting my personal attitudes on a whole community.

What’s your favorite piece of furniture in your home?
It is a design only rarely known by most people: the only chair designed by both Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen. It’s the winning competition entry for the 1940 Organic Furniture Design Competition run by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It’s a home use chair that can be used as a dining chair or, in another variation, as an easy chair.

The chair was supposed to go into production, but was so advanced in concept and materials that, at the time, it was not possible to make it. It’s a form you would say could have been designed in the last decade. It’s all organic, the seat and back are molded along with the arms as a single form. It’s a little old fashioned looking only in that it’s supported on four wooden legs. The material they used to mold the form was plywood. It was the most advanced material they could think of to get an organic form, but the chair ended up being completely upholstered because the plywood didn’t end up working very well.

It’s a beautiful object, remarkably comfortable, and it exhibits what you might call ‘accidental ergonomics.’ Both Charles and Eero knew what they were doing intuitively. So, if you were the same size as Charles Eames, this chair would fit you to a T.

Has their intuitive use of ergonomics in this chair inspired you?
Yes. Visually, an interesting comparison chair would be the latest chair I’ve designed that’s on the market and the Eames/Sarrinen chair.