A Team Effort
Rightly or wrongly, Steve Jobs gets all the credit for the iMac and iPhone.
And who do we think of whenever we see those iconic Braun designs? Dieter Rams, of course.
Similarly, throughout this website I give my dad all the glory for inventing the Visonic Dome.
It was his idea, after all. And he’s the one who took all the risks to make it happen.
But a product is rarely ever the result of just one man.
No matter how visionary or talented you are, your success depends on the team you surround yourself with.
So here’s a list of just a few of the many Visonic Dome team members who helped my dad create his ultrasonic contact lens cleaner.
Peter Müller – Form Factor
Designing something that’s clean and simple isn’t quite as simple as it looks.
Perhaps the Visonic Dome’s most striking feature is that iconic, minimal form. The round shape, the single button. And in large part, that’s thanks to the creative talent of industrial designer Peter Müller and his team at Interform.
When my father invented the world’s first ultrasonic contact lens cleaner in the late 1970s, it was shaped more conventionally, like a box. Later, with the support of CooperVision, his goal was to create a more visually unique product – something that would be instantly recognizable, but easy to use. He worked with Peter Müller, a fellow German immigrant to the Silicon Valley.
Several design ideas were tossed around, but it was the “dome” shape that reminded my father of the human eye, so that’s what stuck.
Over time, the design changed and evolved, generally to further simplify the minimal design. But the underlying shape has remained constant.
Dick Yokota – Mechanical Engineer
In industrial design, a beautiful form is just the first step.
Products have to be usable. Hinges have to open and close. Pieces need to fit together in a cohesive way.
Design prototypes don’t always contain all of these things. So that’s where mechanical engineers fit in.
Mechanical engineers are like translators. They transform the design concept into a physical, functional, producible product.
That’s what Dick Yokota did. He redrew the original Visonic Dome design idea so that a toolmaker could create the necessary molds. Where a designer like Peter creates the aesthetic, an engineer like Dick fills out the details of the mechanical functions into something that can be produced in large numbers.
These days, a lot of this work is done on computers with software. But Dick Yokota is like an old master. Everything was done by hand with pencil and paper.
P.S. Cheung – Electrical Engineer
Over the course of its 15-year production lifetime, my dad was constantly refining and simplifying his design. He was always looking for ways to improve his product.
Towards the end of that run in the early 2000s, he looked to Hong Kong as a way to streamline the production process.
Of course my dad was proud to make his ultrasonic contact lens cleaner in the United States. And I’m happy that we’ll recreate his design in the USA again for the upcoming crowdfunding campaign. But you really can’t overstate the skill and expertise of Chinese production and assembly. Those guys are very good at what they do.
And when it comes to electrical engineering, P.S. Cheung is among the best.
Cheung’s input isn’t anything that you can see from the outside. But what he and his team managed to do was simplify the internal electronics to the point where, even today – more than 20 years later – suppliers are saying that it can’t be improved or updated. Because it’s already perfect.
That’s what you call efficient design!
… And many more!
This is a list that could go on forever. The number of people involved in creating a single product is huge.
My father always believed that developing a successful project starts with a clear vision of what you’re trying to achieve. Then, the key is to assemble a team of experts who can see your vision, too.
In addition to the three listed above, there were experts involved in every step of manufacturing. Think of all the tool makers or the metal dye and stamp designers. And that’s not even mentioning everything involved with assembly.
Additionally, there’s the whole CooperVision development team and the 100+ employees that worked for my dad once he started his own business. Without all of those people, the product wouldn’t exist as it does today.
But the cool thing is, no matter who I reach out to, everyone from the old Visonic Dome team remembers those times fondly. Everyone felt that they were working on something special. It’s a project that they took a lot of personal pride in. They were happy to put their fingerprint on it in any way that they could.
