Engineering in the Media (III) – Full Metal Alchemist

Well, I’ve covered material depicting a North American perspective, so I suppose it’s time I go over to the other side of the world and see how engineers are depicted there. I figure that a European/Australian media would be somewhat similar to what is seen over here, so I’ll take a look at Asian media, more specifically, Manga and Anime (Japanese comics and cartoons respectively).

These mediums have their own fair share of crazy characters and themes, ranging from fights with fantasy monsters to Intergalactic spaceships to high school themed dramas. One of the few series I can recall that actually had an engineer in it is titled “Full Metal Alchemist”.

The world that the characters live in, Amestris, is a parallel one from our own, where alchemy, as a science, triumphed over science as we know it today (though their version of alchemy is just slightly short of magic in our terms). At a glance, it appears that they’re able to make things out of this air, or shoot fireballs and stones at will. However, what they’re actually doing is reconstructing matter at the molecular level, with the assistance of “Transmutation circles” (see picture below), which is the basis behind the fundamental law in alchemy, the law of equivalent exchange – “to obtain, something of equal value must be lost”.

A Transmutation Circle

Essentially, what they have is a much more advanced (and cooler) form of chemistry than we do.

Although alchemy plays a huge role in this world, engineers have not been completely made obsolete. One character by the name of Winry works as an automail engineer. Basically put, automail is an advanced prosthetic limb (the limb is hooked up to the user’s nervous system so they can use it like an actual limb) made of a steel like material. Winry is capable of both making and repairing automail, in addition to having a knack for machinery in general. In short, she’s a mechanical engineer.

Winry Rockbell from Full Metal Alchemist

Yet again “science” is glorified to be much more interesting, and advanced as engineering is (not to say engineering is many times more difficult than science, but each have their own respective pros and cons).

The only element of engineering covered in the series is automail, and it seems like it’s downplayed to being similar to repairing a car. I’m not sure about the people in this other world, but having to reconnect all the nerves in someone’s arm is no easy feat. I suppose it wouldn’t make good entertainment to watch the protagonist scream in pain for several hours during the operation, but given the difficulty in the line of work, a little more credit would be nice. Not to say that rearranging all the molecules of an object is easy either, but from what is shown, it gives the impression that by doing some research, clapping your hands together, and placing them on a intricately drawn circle (see video below for examples) is much more difficult than working with automail (of course being able to draw out this circle takes a bit of knowledge and skill on it’s own, it still doesn’t seem like that complex of an art).



Also, because of the utility of alchemy (one can repair a broken radio say so long as all the parts are present), engineering is further seen as useless as alchemy can probably do it much better. This element can especially be seen when the protagonist is brought into our world (more specifically to Germany in the years leading up to the Second World War), as the impression that is given is that he has been sent back to a more primitive time.

This isn’t to say that Full Metal Alchemist isn’t a good series – I would have to say it’s one of my favourites. However, it would be nice if the engineering material in the series was given a little more credit than it has gotten. As I have only seen the anime, I don’t quite know what the situation is like in the magna – this would be a good excuse as any to start reading it. =D

Google vs. Apple, Data vs. Vision?

A week ago, Professor Foster had a lecture where he talked about Google’s visual designer Douglas Bowman leaving the company in order to join Twitter because Google’s engineers focus on things like tests for 41 shades of blue [1].

The argument is related to that of form and function. Should engineers adhere to data and rules, or are gut decisions the seeds of good design? This argument is hotly debated among designers. It appears in architecture, automobiles, and even in evolution where every feature in an organism exists due to function instead of form.

The Wainwright building, built so that the shape of the building is based on function instead of form. A large amount of space is saved in the design. It is also arguably an eyesore.

Professor Foster then mentioned on how Google’s engineers are acting like applied scientists, and that us engsci’s should steer clear of the data oriented design style. I have to disagree; I feel that Google is definitely on the right track and that gut feeling should be overruled by data. Why? I have 2 points to justify my claim:

1. Google attracts users through functionality, while Apple is riding on popularity, not design

Google currently ranks as the world’s top search engine. It has evolved from the little search engine that could to what it is now while similar search engines like MSN Search and Yahoo were left in the dust. Clearly, Google is doing something right. Upon closer examination, Google’s products are clearly not the most beautiful, yet they rank high in functionality. From the simplicity to the intuitive layout, users can navigate the software with ease.

Apple, however, uses a different strategy. Their products are clearly the forefront of design, moulded by the hands of someone considered to be a God among large numbers of people. However, apple has clearly filled a peculiar niche. If you look at other companies who tried similar strategies, such as Sony’s Vaio or Dell’s Adamo in the laptop department, they are clearly not doing as well as apple while their products can still be considered well designed. Why? The difference here is reputation. Apple can get away with lacking features or functionality in their products (ie: no radio) because they have a “cool” factor on their side. Yet ask a person about a company like Dell and their mind immediately jumps to poor reliability. In other words, function is valued before form when popularity points are not counted.

Whether a design will be popular cannot be quantified by Engineers. Instead, engineers should focus on what is concrete and guaranteed to satisfy users, and that is functional design decisions that are well justified.

2. Human decisions are flawed and cannot supersede data

Professor Foster said that gut feelings should be a valid design decision, while data should be used merely as a guideline to decisions. Professor Foster brought up an excellent refute to this claim in another recent lecture. He mentioned antennas that were used in space were designed by old people with an incredible knack in finding the correct antenna shape. However, even the best gut designs were completely outmatched by antenna’s designed by genetic algorithms, which are able to produce very close to mathematically optimal solutions to extremely hard problems. In this example, human intuition is easily crushed by a machine.

It is arguable that data can be skewed or can be made invalid through the measurement itself, yet is also arguable that humans can be biased, experts can be overconfident, and that gut feeling is unjustifiable in court.

Evolution is based on function. A giraffe has a long neck not because it makes it pretty and unique, but because it allows it to eat leaves from tall trees.

Going back to the 41 shades of blue, it can be seen that humans cannot comprehend the complexity of some problems, and gut decisions will ultimately fail to data:

“A designer, Jamie Divine, had picked out a blue that everyone on his team liked. But a product manager tested a different color with users and found they were more likely to click on the toolbar if it was painted a greener shade.  As trivial as color choices might seem, clicks are a key part of Google’s revenue stream, and anything that enhances clicks means more money.” [2]

 

Now I may just be a first year engineer student, yet looking at user responses to blog posts relating to Douglas Bowman’s leave shows some consumer opinions:

It is obvious that asking an Apple fanboy would produce different answers, but then again, fanboy’s are attracted to Apple’s popularity. I am not saying that Professor Foster might have been biased in his lecture, but he does own quite a few Apple products.

PS: I would have to say Blogger is a Google product that is horrible in functionality. My editing screen is horribly small, the HTML does not do what I want it to do, loading images one at a time is a chore, and text gets constantly messed up. I could also do with some spell check feature so that I do not have to type everything up in Word first. Perhaps all these features are hidden around here somewhere, but a user shouldn't be digging for solutions. Google docs has simular problems with text layout and organization. A good idea would be to have the ability to move all blog posts and comments and everything from one blog provider to another, because if there was another blogging site that has better UI and moving there doesn't mean starting over or messing up people's RSS feeds, then I would be so in on the idea. 

 

[1] http://i.gizmodo.com/5181402/googles-design-problem-all-data-no-vision

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/business/01marissa.html?_r=1

Can an Engineer Believe in God?

Recently, in Bahen, I have noticed (and instantly thereafter became enraged at) some signs posing the question "Can an Engineer Believe in God?"

Bahen is utterly plastered with pro-religion posters (for reasons unknown to me, no other building appears to have contracted this infection) but on the whole, the posters themselves are relatively harmless- and rarely thought provoking. But can an engineer believe in God? I thought that it would be relevant to the topics discussed in this blog to give my answer to the question. In this post, I hope to convince you that the religious engineer is no engineer at all.

Engineers are practical people. They look at facts and the rules, and they question them. Engineers don't just "hope" that structures will stand- they test, they inquire, they fully understand the inner workings of the problems before putting their trust in their solutions. These are the fundamental principles of engineering. In many cases, the difference between a working and failed design is the difference between life and death, so an engineer can't trust anything but verifiable, reproducible, scientific evidence.

The principles of religion are exactly perpendicular to those of an engineer. If the fundamental tenant of engineering is questioning and understanding, the fundamental tenant of religion is faith. Faith is belief in the absence of evidence. Faith is the statement that "no matter what, I'll believe it."

Religion cannot be in the mind of an engineer, first and foremost, because it is an open statement of closed-mindedness. "You can't challenge my beliefs," says the religious engineer. "I will always believe, no matter what." This philosophy of arrogance and immunity to logical discussion is exactly what puts lives in danger when important work is at hand, and is exactly the opposite of an engineering mindset.

It is irrelevant whether this philosophy of arrogance and immunity to logic is confined to the spiritual aspects of an engineer's life- the presence of the dichotomy is a dangerous thing to play with. Which philosophy is the "right" one if they contradict? It is silly and illogical to think that different aspects of life require different, fundamentally contradictory mindsets. Imagine the day that religious thinking manages to pervade into engineering, buildings will be held up by nothing more than "the hand of god-" rather than the careful and rigorously logical calculations of a real engineer.

Now, some religious people actually think that they have carefully weighed the evidence for their religion and their faith is based on that evidence. But as any engineer knows, anecdotal, wishy-washy, "feelings-based" evidence is never strong enough to support ANY claim. Would you build a bridge based upon a single measurement made on a single piece of wood? Of course not! A true engineer requires repeatable, indisputable, time-tested and independently verified evidence before he puts his trust in something.

The fact is- not a single part of our vast, indisputable, time tested, and independently verified knowledge of the universe requires a creator or a god (unless you're an evolution denier[1], aka someone who hasn't read much). Any scientific tests on religion, for example, on the efficacy of prayer, have come up empty-handed. To trust in a god is to turn your back on the whole methodology of engineering.

I don't know about you, but I sure as hell hope that the people I trust to make the world run on time checked their superstitions at the door a long time ago.

[1] There are more historians that deny the holocaust[2] than scientists that deny evolution.
[2] Nested footnotes!

Design Decisions (III) - The (history of the) Telephone

Earlier today, I was reading an article for my history class today, which was talking about the history of the telephone industry. To summarize the article, it starts off by talking about how the industry originally thought of the phone more as a tool for businessmen and marketed it as such. They emphasized how helpful it could be when it came to planning, as well as keeping in contact with the office while away on a vacation. They also saw social conversations as “’frivolous’ and ‘unnecessary’[1]”, and even changed their system to deter this kind of usage, such as changing payment from an annual flat rate to a metered system. After several decades of this, the companies decided to accept the social uses of their services, and started to change their marketing techniques to reflect this.

The obstacles faced by the phone companies reminded me of a question repeatedly asked in class - what is a good design? Sure, we can go on gut feeling, or even use a matrix to decide for us, but ultimately, what determines what a good design is? If one were to ask anyone in the western world about the phone, most would say it’s a pretty useful, well designed piece of technology. However, if phone companies continued their marketing strategy as they did by ignoring the social aspects of their services, they could have very well gone bankrupt. Shouldn't the best designs be at least remotely successful? If so, then why is it that some of the best designs never get off the ground, while other less impressive ones managed to succeed?

During the Engineering Science Education Conference, Hadi Dowlatabadi from UBC gave many examples of great ideas and designs that would help reduce energy usage, yet, many haven't been doing well in the market. Reasons? They included poor marketing, opposition being too strong and shutting down the idea, etc.

All in all, this just shows that regardless of how good a design is, it won’t get really far if it’s poorly managed, or not very marketable. This raises an interesting question – when designing a solution, should the engineer factor in these considerations when designing a solution? Of course a lot of research would be needed to be done to create the necessary metrics to evaluate the how marketable an object is. However, if everyone sticks to the safe side, and designs solutions that everyone has already seen and accepted before, what progress could be made?

I suppose this one's not as focused on comparing/contrasting design decisions, but reading this article brought to light something I didn't seriously consider before when making a design decision. Of course, I would like to think my solutions would be good enough to convince people that my way's the way to go, but it appears that sometimes that's not the way it goes sometimes - it doesn't matter how good you think your design is if no one else agrees with you (espcially the one's you're trying to sell your idea to).

"The story of how and why the telephone industry discovered sociability provides a few lessons for understanding the nature of technological diffusion. It suggest that promoters of a technology do not necessarily know or determine its final uses; that they seek problem or "needs" for which their technology is the answer; but that consumers may ultimately determine those uses for the promoters...In promoting technology, vendors are constrained not only by its technical and economic attributes but also by an interpretation of its uses shaped by its and their own histories, a cultural constraint that can be enduring and powerful.[1]"

[1] C. S. Fischer, Touch Someone: The Telephone Industy Discovers Sociability. The Johns Hopkins UNiversity Press, 1988, p. 32-61.

Digital Wristwatch Design Part 2

In this blog post, I will deviate for the second time from Professor Foster’s portfolio bait questions and I will focus on the design of my watch using concepts learned in Praxis. If you were not paying attention last time, I’ll get you up to speed: basically Colin and I want to build our own digital wristwatches, and we are trying to adhere to techniques learned in Praxis to guide our design. The problem we are trying to solve is not on the order of anything useful to society such as improving the TTC or filtering water; it is basically to satisfy our need for a homemade wristwatch. The upside is that we will be able to find which techniques really work (or be able to say with some basis that a technique is rubbish :P ). Now as some of you have seen already, Colin and I are already quite far into the design process. Here are some of our current prototypes:

This is my working prototype. A newer version with less tape is being worked on.

This is a prototype of my prototype.

This is Colin’s prototype. Ignore any comments from him about how I alledgedly "set up" his workspace to make him look bad :P .

So how did we get to our current designs? Well, we did it through the consideration of some important design decisions on things such as the timekeeping device, the display, and the batteries used.

Timekeeping 

The most important component of any clock is the mechanism that keeps the time. In our design of our electronic watch, we considered 3 timekeeping options:

-Create a stable oscillating circuit and use a microcontroller to count the oscillations

-Use a microchip specially made to count time (RTC, or real time clock)

-Use a 555 timer

The designs will be rated by cost, size, power consumption, accuracy, and number of microcontroller pins the design takes up. Now when Colin and I decide on our designs, we didn’t really use a radar graph, but after seeing them in today’s lecture, I thought the data would be much better represented this way.

The oscillating circuit is used as a reference. It seems like it will still be a difficult decision, but it should be noted that size, power consumption, and accuracy are weighted much higher than cost. This makes the RTC the obvious winner.

Display

Another important design decision was the display of the watch. We considered designs by comparing cost, feasibility, power consumption, aesthetics, usability, and size of 3 different designs:

-LCD screen ripped from cell phone

-LED binary display

-LED numeric display

The LED binary display is the reference. In my design, I personally valued usability and feasibility much more than any of the other criteria, which lead me to choosing to use the LED numeric display. Colin weighted the criteria differently, which resulted in him choosing the LED binary display due to cost and aesthetics. I really did want to use the cell phone screen, but until I find more information on its driver, using it is not feasible.

Batteries

The last major design decision Colin and I went through was about batteries. We valued safety, reusability, size, how long it will last (its mAh), and how close it is to 4.5V. We had 3 available options:

-Use 3V total in button cells

-Use 3.7V rechargeable Li-ion

The appropriate voltage and recharge-ability of the Li-ion battery made it much more appealing than the button cell. The safety issue is a result of the tendency for Li-ion batteries to leak/explode. However, given that most cell phones/mp3 players use this type of batteries and the safety circuit the battery contains, the risk is probably minimal. In addition, the safety issue can be alleviated if the Li-ion battery is enclosed in some kind of bag or container.

Conclusion

So what have I learned so far in the design process? Here are some of the tidbits I would like to share. They were mentioned many times before in class, but it went in one ear and out the other.

-Plan ahead and consider all design options before proceeding. Preferably, use some of the design comparison methods that we used in the tutorials. I wasted a lot of time on the oscillating circuit design for timekeeping before realizing that the RTC was a much better design choice.

-Keep some sort of notebook. I really wanted to jump into the construction phase and I wrote zero documentation on any of my experiments, measurements, and ideas for a large first half of my design process. I later found out this was a huge mistake when I either forgot previous experiment results and had to repeat them or when I had a reoccurring problem but did not know exactly how I fixed the problem previously because I never wrote it down. Now that I have a design notebook, I find that it is much easier to keep track of experimental data and ideas.

Engineering in the Media (II) - Warcraft

So I was playing Dota (A Warcraft III custom game titled "Defense of the Ancients") the other day with some friends on my floor, and I started to notice a bit of a trend with the characters. Although it's a fantasy based game, there are still elements of technology within the make-believe world. Of course, it's not the humans or the elves that are using the technology; they don't need it due to their physical prowess or their abilities with magic. No, it's the midgit races that are "the only ones intelligent enough" to make use of it.

In Azeroth, there are two races that are seen to be the Engineers.

Gnomes:

"The eccentric, often-brilliant Gnomes are one of the most peculiar races of the world. With their obsession for developing radical new technologies and constructing marvels of mind-bending engineering, it's a wonder that any Gnomes have survived to proliferate." [1]

and the Goblins:

"Goblins are small humanoids, crafty and shrewd, bearing an overwhelming interest in commerce and a strong curiosity about mechanical things...Other races universally view goblins as inventors, merchants and, without exception, maniacs. Goblins value technology as a useful aspect of commerce. Some say that their advantage — and their curse — is to be the primary users of technology in a world governed by magic. While dwarves and gnomes share a similar gift, goblin technology is more far-reaching and sinister and makes a larger impact on the natural world. " [2]

Although it's a little concerning how our (engineers) image in the media is that of dorky short people with a knack for machinery, it's interesting how even in a video game, they decpict (of course in an exaggerated way) different approaches to engineering.

One one side, Gnomes tend to plan out their projects in great detail before starting to build a prototype. If they run into problems, they try to figure out what went wrong and tend to tinker around with things to improve them. This results in low failure rates for their devices, but often results in increased costs and occasionally, time. Goblins on the other hand tend to just improvise and invent on the fly. Many times their devices are made just to see what will happen, which results in a large number of strange devices that have no use. Their main motivation is profit, and are impatient when it comes to research. However, as most of their inventions deal with explosives of some sort, many goblin engineers end up blowing up their laboratories, and themselves.

Although the physical traits of an engineer aren't accurately (or at least I hope not) depicted in this game, the range in engineering methodology is, and shows how necessary it is that a balance is found between the two. It regardless of how good a design is, if it's too expensive or takes too long to develop, it will never see the light of day. However, if one is too reckless, then people's lives could be put in danger.

In the end, I suppose this is all just for fun as it's a game. I could try sending in a request to Blizzard Entertainment to create a more accurate engineering race, but I must say, it is quite satisfying and entertaining to be a two foot tall mad genius. =P

[1] World of Warcraft: Races. "Gnomes," Blizzard Entertainment, [Online] Avalible: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/races/gnomes.html [Accessed Mar 18 2009].
[2] WoWWiki. "Goblins," [Online] Avalilble: http://www.wowwiki.com/Goblins [Accessed Mar 18 2009].

Science vs. Engineering

In a lecture a while back, there was a slide about a post from a Female Science Professor and her response to Henry Petroski’s article on science against engineering. The engineer’s argued that science, although important, offered little progress for society while most breakthroughs came through engineers such as flying planes or transatlantic steamships. The scientists, on the other hand, said that engineering is a “plug-and-chug” field, taking assumptions from the past and continuously reapplying them while scientists deal with the unknown. I feel that both sides of the argument offer a convoluted view and do not see the big picture. 

The thing is that engineering and science go hand in hand. You cannot say one is better than the other, because comparing them is like comparing apples and oranges while both have been equally important in advancing technology. In an example, work in the field of lasers has been done through work by scientists, while engineers have allowed for large breakthroughs in the field of electronics. Both have contributed greatly to human advancement.

Apples and oranges are different, yet both delicious, get what I mean?

YC Fung and P. Tong said in Foundations of Solid Mechanics something similar to what I am trying to argue: "Almost all engineers working on new designs find that they do not have all the needed information. Most often, they are limited by insufficient scientific knowledge. Thus they study mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and mechanics. Often they have to add to the sciences relevant to their profession. Thus engineering sciences are born." 

This guy might be portrayed as a mad scientist, but he is obviously practicing engineering while building his prototype, with important design decisions such as should the brain be in the robot or just be Bluetooth connected, or solving the engineering challenges of even keeping a brain alive.

So what about those “plug-and-chug” engineers? We’ll, looking at an article on Wikipedia about engineers, it seems that the word “engineer” has more than one meaning, one of which involves things like operating machinery or a technician instead of the engineer that professor Foster wants us to be. However, it would be unfair to say that they are not engineers in the same way it would be unfair to say a researcher is not a scientist. Both are necessary in their respective fields to keep society up-to-date and usable and allow it to progress. It would also be unfair to say that all engineers are just technicians or all scientists are just researchers.

So then what makes a great scientist or a great engineer? Looking at the past, great scientists are often also great engineers, such as Leonardo da Vinci, or Nicola Tesla. Their achievements could not have been made without extensive knowledge of science and engineering. However, knowledge of science and engineering is not the only important quality. Great scientists and engineers have a third trait; innovation. From Leonardo’s flying machines to Tesla’s wireless power, these great scientists/engineers were also great inventors, applying their knowledge of science to create something amazing while using engineering to bring their ideas to the physical world. Just like the mad scientist above, their creations were thought of as “crazy” because what they were making never existed. Pushing the boundaries of what can be done is what I think defines a great engineer/scientist, and I think that was what foster was trying to get at in that lecture.

The video above is hilarious, not because we are mostly guys (sorry Angela), but because the caveman used his creation in an innovative way that others would have never thought of.

Design Decisions (II) - N64 vs PSX

I was talking to some friends the other day, and an interesting debate about video games sprung up. The question was whether the Nintendo 64 was more profitable than the PlayStation or not. Although they were both machines that allowed people to play games with them, there were several key design decisions that differentiated the two, which resulted in different levels of success.

A Nintendo 64, followed by a PlayStation

Sony opted for an optical disc format for it's games, while Nintendo stuck with it's ROM cartridges. Nintendo's console was also more technologically advanced than the PlayStation in several respects. Though due to the limited memory in ROM cartridges and texture cache, it was more difficult to produce games in this format. As a result, Sony was able to pump out a lot more games at a cheaper price. However, it was much easier to pirate PlayStation games, and this would have cut into profits significantly.

From what I've seen on forums (after trying to look up statistics on this), the general consensus is that these numbers are not available, or just very difficult to find (though most lean towards Sony due to the number of units sold). Either way, Sony's decision to go for a console that uses optical disks greatly helped it with sales of it's next generation console, the PlayStation 2.

Engineering in the Media (I)- Codename: Kids Next Door

All this stuff with the Zen prototyping, and this talk about engineering in the media reminded me of this kids show called "Codename: Kids Next Door". Basically, the cartoon is about 5 children who are part of this huge secret organization run completely by children, and they complete various missions James Bond style. Of course, every spy needs their arsenal of gadgets, and these kids are no exception. Below are examples of the weaponry used in the series:



Hmm...kinda looks like what was going on in studio recently - grabbing whatever is at hand and making something to solve a problem of some sort, in this case, "high-tech" gadgets. Of course, these objects actually work in the series as it's fiction, but who says that these items couldn't be (albeit strange) prototype for a children toy?

Of course, only a select few of these items are created on the fly in the middle of a fight or in a workshop at headquarters, so the design process is neglected onscreen. There's no doubt that there is an element of engineering in these items, but it appears that the media has once again neglected the engineer (remember, these kids are part of a much larger organization, so any designs could be transferred to other divisions in the association).

Maybe engineers aren't deemed cool enough for television? Perhaps the perception of an engineer is that of a glorified technician, or just builds bridges (*Cough*Civil*cough*)? Maybe I'll find more answers after looking more closely at other examples of how engineers are portrayed - I have a few ideas right now, but I'll save judgment until I get a better idea of what things are like (not to mention I need to start preparing for that biology test later this week).

My best guess right now is that they don't want to encourage the children to take things apart and cause more chaos around the house.

Design Requirements for a Digital Wristwatch

Lately, Colin and I have been tinkering with microcontrollers and other fancy electronic doodads. We wanted to post an outline of a project and our progress using things we learned in Praxis and since Colin hasn’t done anything since last week when I told him to post it, I’ll do the first one.

So basically, we wanted to create something useable, and what’s more useable than a wristwatch? We will be presenting some requirements for our design and we hope to be able to show some prototypes and working products. In this post, I’ll walk you through some background info on digital wristwatches and why they are important before showing our first draft of requirements.

History

Truly digital watches were made possibly in 1960 by Bolva through the Accutron wristwatch. This watch used a revolutionary time-keeping method, an electronic tuning fork. The watch also boasted transistors instead of mechanical contacts, which improved life expectancy [1]. This watch paved the way for the first truly digital wristwatches.

This is what they used before the first digital wristwatch was made.

The first digital wristwatch prototype was created by the Hamilton Watch Company and Electro-Data in a joint project in 1972. They were inspired from the then-futuristic watches from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey in which they helped to design. It used red LED’s to display time, and it was encased in gold which raised its price to $2,100. After a lot of research, Texas Instruments found out that plastic was a whole lot cheaper than gold, so they brought plastic cased watches costing $20 into the market in 1975. As a result of competition, Pulsar lost $6 million and was soon bought out [2]. Prices soon fell even more, and now you can buy a digital wristwatch at the dollar-store (Ironically, the original pulsar watch has now risen to $18,000 [3]).

“I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

Now LED’s happened to not be the best choice of display. They used up battery life, and therefore most LED watches incorporated some sort of switch that was pressed to display time. Naturally, the men wearing the watches felt they were too macho for this (It's what Colin said) and decided the idea needed to be phased out. Luckily, LCD’s offered the promise of an energy efficient solution, and the first LCD watch was soon unveiled by Seiko in 1973.

After that, technology progressed in leaps and bounds. Companies began shoving as many features into their digital wristwatches as possible such as tiny TV screens, thermometers, dictionaries, phone dialling capabilities, and voice recognition from between 1982 and 1987 [2].

Every engineer should have a tiny TV on their wristwatch for those slow calculus lectures.

And here lies a problem; digital wristwatches are clearly divided in their ability to do everything, and in their competition for simplicity and elegancy from analogue watches. Both poles of the design of a digital wristwatch are valid, but which design to pursue is a difficult design decision. Colin and I have approached this problem in our thought process. Colin felt that he wanted his digital wristwatch design to be simple and elegant, while I wanted mine to be chocked full of functions. We hope that our metrics will be able to include both design decisions as well as any in between.

Simplicity and complexity are both aesthetically pleasing.

Requirements

The watch should have a visible display and should be both aesthetically pleasing and practical.

Display

Visibility: 

The watch should convey information in a clear and concise manor. The time should be visible from at least 30cm away, but the time should not be constantly visible to people 2 classroom seats away to avoid distractions.

The display should also be easy to understand; faster the user can view the time from the watch, the better. 

The watch also needs to be visible at night. 

Information: 

The minimum amount of information allowed is the hours and the minutes. The watch may display more information or compress the minimum information. 

Users should be able to change the time.

Aesthetics

Features: 

Digital watches are in lower demand than analog watches due to their perceived lack of craftsmanship or complexity. Therefore, the more features or functions the watch, the better.

Simplicity: 

Analog watches are aesthetically appealing due to their simplicity. The simpler the watch appear to be, the better. This is defined as the number of visible features and visible user interfaces (displays, buttons). The smaller the number of visible features, the better.

Practicality

Size: 

The size of the wristwatch must not be too small or too large. The dimensions of any side of the watch should not exceed the diameter of the wearer’s wrist, and the watch should not be too tall. The watch should be as small as possible.

Durability: 

The watch needs to be able to withstand a drop from a meter height without damage. This will simulate falling from a pocket. 

The watch should be resistant to rain. 

The battery life of the watch should be as long as possible.

Cost: 

The lower the cost of the watch, the better.

 

[1] http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/time_measurement/1963-306.aspx

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A1006534

[3] http://www.oldpulsars.com/