First Principles Design

I started thinking about the story behind the things around me later on in my middle school career. I can't remember what exactly initiated the thoughts, but I remember them eating at me. "Why is this thing like this? Why couldn’t they have done this other thing?" I began contracting the product designers' disease of perpetual criticism of the created environment around me early on.

Simultaneously, I began looking for solutions. I started looking deeper in to the things I thought were designed right and the story behind them. I spent years compiling my thoughts and those of relevant persons in the product design field to guide me in my design pursuits, and I continue to do so. I do this so that I can make things that stand up to my own criticisms. I've found real utility the process and I hope you can too, so I've decided to share some of the key pieces of knowledge I've picked up over the years.

A pervading theme throughout my observations has been that of a first principles approach to creative projects. Elon Musk, Jony Ive, and many other notable creators employ first principles thinking in their work and hold its principles as key to their process. In my opinion, the first of those first principles are:

1.     Your purpose

2.     Your realities

In this article I’ll describe how I believe these can be defined well at the inception of a project in order to produce a better product.

Your Purpose

My experiences have informed me that I need to take the time to define, but more importantly, refine my purpose whenever I set out on a creative path. Why are you creating this object? What are its key functions? Can its functions be achieved in a better way? These questions should shape the core of everything we create. They are its purpose for existing.

It is tempting to jump to the visual and physical creation stage of a project before refining its purpose. The ever-pervasive image of creation, a pen on paper, is often considered the first step to a creative process. It seems that countless creators have stories about how their idea started with a sketch on a coffee shop napkin. Challenging that assumption, however, is the idea that creation doesn't happen when pen hits paper, or when fingers hit a keyboard, or even when tools hit material. It’s the idea that creation occurs mostly in your head. This may seem obvious, but in practice it remains a temptation to begin with paper. It's a quick and easy way to make your idea materialize. It’s satisfying. If you're good at sketching, it's beautiful. Jony Ive (the man behind the design of nearly all of Apple's most notable products) warned of this:

“It didn’t start with drawing, it started with conversations... There are some people who can draw something that’s fundamentally ugly, but draw it—hint at detailing—in such a way that it’s seductive. What we try to do is see beyond our ability to implement, beyond our ability to detail.” [1]

The solution: instead of looking at the tools and skills available to you, look first to your desired result. Talk to your team or just to yourself. Talk about the effects you want this project to have, the most fundamental reasons for its existence. Paint a picture in your head and in your teams' - then use the tools available to you to create the best version of it you can. If you don’t have the tools and skills to do so, create them too. You come out having created the very nearest thing to the purest form of your idea, and with a greater skill set because of it. Compare that to first looking at the tools and skills you already have and hoping they get you somewhere near the general idea you happened to have. I for one am limited in my napkin sketching abilities, and would rather that not inform the very beginning of my project. I believe that when we start with the tools rather than

the idea that the limitations of the tools become the limitations of the idea. In an academic product design environment, it is especially easy to lose sight of the purpose of the products we learn to design. We learn the skills and tools necessary to achieve certain outcomes - and rightfully so - but this makes it incumbent upon us to intentionally maintain the purpose of these skills in our minds. This is perhaps why the introduction to a product development textbook states:

"We no longer prescribe actions; instead, we prescribe outcomes." [2]

Your Realities

Once the purpose is clear, you need to make sure that your knowledge of the field is just as accurate. Elon Musk put it rather bluntly:

“Reason from first principles rather than by analogy... First principles is kind of a physics way of looking at the world, and what that really means is you kind of boil things down to the most fundamental truths and say okay: "What are we sure is true, or sure is possible is true?" and then reason up from there. That takes a lot more mental energy. Somebody could say, and in fact people do, that "Battery packs are really expensive and that’s just the way they'll always be because that’s the way they've been in the past... Historically its cost $600/kwh and so it's not going to be much better than that in the future". So first principles would be to say "Well what are the material constituents of the battery? What is the market value of the material constituents?" So you can say "Okay it’s got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, and some polymers for separation and a steel can." So break that down on a material basis and say "Okay if we bought that on the London metal exchange what would these things cost? Like oh, geez, it's like $80/kwh."** So clearly you just need to think of clever ways to take materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell and you can have batteries that are much cheaper than anyone realizes.“ [3]

 **Elon Musk announced sub $100/kWh battery technology on Sept 22nd, 2020.

Ive echoed similar sentiments:

“It’s so easy to accept and not ask why. You have to reject reason to innovate. You have to say we understand, this is all very reasonable, this is what people believe - but you know what I’m actually gonna ignore you completely... That sort of unreasonable drive drive drive, that decision to ignore expert opinion. That happens every single time we do something that’s new.” [4]

After hearing something enough times and from enough reputable sources, we tend to accept it as fact. A first principles approach accepts no assumptions and drills down to the core of what's involved in the project.

Conclusion

A meaningful, successful product is grounded by a clear purpose and clear realities. Somewhere in the product development process the truth will show its head and the assumptions will no longer hold water, and I think that if these two principles are present in the creative process from its inception that we’ll be much better prepared for that. It could mean the difference between success and failure.

References:

[1] Parker, Ian. Jonathan Ive and the Future of Apple. The New Yorker, 16 Feb. 2016, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-comembid=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter.

[2] "Product Development" https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14899-7 Christopher A. Mattson, Carl D. Sorensen

[3] Rose, Kevin [Kevin Rose]. (2012, Sept 7). Foundation 20 // Elon Musk. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8&t=310s

[4] Rose, Charlie. “Jony Ive, Pt. 3.” Charlie Rose, 3 Sept. 2016, charlierose.com/videos/25285.