Design Archives - Creative Connectivity

The Class of STEM

I recently wrote an article about various Government and industry initiatives in the UK to recruit more engineers to build our brave new world of net zero. It’s an important subject, as it’s one of the few things that everyone agrees on. It’s very clear that we don’t have enough engineers in the workforce; but we don’t seem to have any credible plan to increase the numbers in the short term.

What was interesting was the discussion that followed that article, which suggested that the class system still has a surprising hold on engineering status, particularly here in Britain. It reminded me of the famous Frost Report “Class” sketch from 1966.

Should Screwfix take over Labour Policy?

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an Energy Minister in possession of a net zero policy, must be in want of a Clean Energy Engineer. Or so thinks Ed Miliband.

Equally, it is a truth universally acknowledged, that an anyone in possession of a dripping tap, must be in want of a plumber. Or so thinks Screwfix.

It’s possible that only one of those two statements is true, but it’s been an odd few weeks, with two very similar policy documents being published about the need to train more engineers for the future of the UK. One from Ed Miliband, highlighting the need for another 420,000 engineers by 2030 to support his Clean Energy Superpower Mission, which he believes will transform the UK. A few days before that announcement, Screwfix – one of the UK’s largest builder’s merchants published a Voice of the Trade skills survey identifying a similar shortfall of 250,000 tradespeople in the same timescale, who they believe are needed to build and maintain our homes and workplaces. Whilst Ed Miliband’s introduction to the Clean Energy Superpower Mission reads like a Government edict from “1984”, exhorting us to “take back control from petrostates” and an end to “union-free zones” in the industry, the Screwfix manifesto is a lot more pragmatic, calling for the Government to make it easier for young people to take up a career in trade through apprenticeships.

What if Moore’s Law is different in China?

Ever since the US started to place an embargo on supplying high tech chips and semiconductor production equipment to China, I’ve wondered what the ultimate effect of that policy would be; in particular, whether it might be self-defeating. We had the first intimation of this last September when Huawei’s launched their Mate 60 Pro phone. It included a new 7nm processor, that appeared to compare favourably with the smaller geometry processors Chinese companies no longer had access to. Last week we saw a second example, with the unveiling of DeepSeek’s R1 AI application, which seems to achieve similar results to ChatGPT, but using a fraction of the power. That came as a bitter blow to the nascent VC funded nuclear industry, which had been angling for a future of fusion and fission powered data centres. It also got Wall Street panicking about whether it might have misjudged the value of AI.

To anyone who has read Michael Rosen’s children’s book, “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt”, this news shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Why can’t the Audio Industry be more inventive?

The audio industry is constantly telling us how great its products are. Their latest wheeze is to push the message that we all need even higher quality. That’s despite the fact that nobody can hear the difference. Unfortunately, the major players so believe their own PR that over the last century they’ve largely missed the fact that there’s more to the listening experience than just extending frequency response. On the few occasions we’ve seen real innovation in audio, it’s almost always come from outside the established audio industry. So how do we put innovation back into audio?

Building Homes for London

London has a housing problem. Over the last eighty years it has failed to build the one million new homes that its growing population needs. As a result, prices have sky-rocketed to the point that a first home costs up to fifteen times a joint salary. On average, it now takes a couple around thirty years to save a deposit to get on the housing ladder. By the time they’ve saved that, they’ll be in their early fifties, which means they’re unlikely to get a mortgage. The dream of owning your own home is exactly that – a dream.

CES, Covid and Product Design

Last year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was the last big technology event to take place before Covid hit. The following month, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was cancelled, heralding in a year in which the traditional platforms for product announcements disappeared. That hasn’t stopped new products appearing, not will it; the design lead times for phones and TVs are at least two to three years, so even next Christmas’ products will have started off before Covid. The design departments for major high-tech companies are a bit like supertankers – they’re difficult to stop or change direction. Where the absence of exhibitions may be more keenly felt is within smaller companies and startups, who typically use these events to gauge interest in their products and visions.