Spotlight. Dyson designs to disrupt

I think using a (traditional) mop is a very odd thing to do. You’re getting the dirt onto the mop and then you’re squeezing it off in a bucket of dirty water and using that thinking it’s supposedly clean, but it isn’t, of course! So you’re only spreading the dirty water across the floor. You might be removing a dirty mark, but you’re leaving the floor rather unsavoury and a bit nasty, because you’ve got a film of water that’s not clean.

With our new innovation in wet cleaning, we have two rollers that get fresh water on them every time they go around. Through transparent jars on the product, you can visually see the dirty water coming up and the clean water going down. In a way, it symbolises what it’s doing for you and you also don’t need to vacuum first. I hope that will make washing floors a joy rather than a foul chore.

I took the decision in the 1960s that I wanted to be both a designer and an engineer. That was partly because I couldn’t really see the difference. You’re engineering a product so why can’t you design it yourself? If I’d been a designer I might have had to design something that someone else had engineered. And I wasn’t the sort of person who liked to be told what to do, so I wanted to create products myself and have total control.

I don’t believe that you engineer a product and then make it look good at the end — to make it attractive and sell it.

In the 1930s America, General Motors and Ford were using people like Harley Earl (an American automotive designer) to create some extraordinary designs, using design as a marketing tool. I found that slightly repulsive. A product should sell because of its engineering and how well it works. I hate the word “intuitive”, but the design should make the engineering of the product and how it works very obvious!

We can’t dictate what people want to do and how they should live their daily lives. We can merely make suggestions. And if people take it up, that’s great. If they don’t, well, at least we tried. I have no control over you. (chuckles) All I could do is try and provide you with the right equipment and make the task enjoyable. That’s my job.

Appliances, traditionally, can be very boring and unapproachable. They appear to have been designed by manufacturers with no enthusiasm for what they were doing. If you look at, say, skateboards or windsurfers, you can visibly see that they were designed by people with love and enthusiasm!

So, I found working with appliances exciting because it was in a boring, unloved area. And I wanted to make them — the vacuum cleaners — loved, rather than hated.

Yes, and I think it will (continue to) change. The world is getting better educated, but at the same time, labour is becoming more expensive. Curiously perhaps, we lead cerebral lives in our work but do physical things in our spare time.

I think vacuuming, cooking and maybe, doing your hair, are things we all do.

Which makes it even more demanding that what we do is good, efficient, uses less energy and is enjoyable to use.

Yes. Interestingly, one of the things that’s been holding us back is that controlling a product is becoming more and more complex. You end up with a remote control that has 12 different instructions on it and within those instructions are other instructions!

So, we can now introduce complex technology which tailors the product for you and how you want to use it, in a way that you couldn’t have envisaged a few years ago. It means that we can be unafraid of using complex tech, but make it relatively easy for you to use it.

Why should you have to learn our particular language on our buttons, instruction manuals and remote controls? That’s just infuriating. But if the product understands what you want to do with it and does it for you in the best possible way, then that’s great!

For example, take our Airwrap. What it does is quite complex and it’s difficult for everybody to understand it. But if you choose a style, it could then do that for you. It understands your style of hair, your length of hair, what style you want, and then adjusts those settings and timings for you. So it’s no longer guesswork. And, you’re not down to the lowest common denominator, you’re getting your own personal specialist in your hands!

That we develop new technology, bravely! Going into the future, for example, we’re developing new battery technology, which is quite a brave thing to do actually.

We’ll go on developing technology to make things simpler, better and more reliable. And, offer something much better for the user even if it means doing something that’s not immediately acceptable. We want to make sure that with design and ergonomics, our products remain a joy to use.

Yes, my father spent five years or so in India. He actually wrote two books — one was published and the other wasn’t. The unpublished one was an Indian alphabet book in which he’d thought of something particularly Indian for each letter. I grew up with that!

And, Indian architecture and how it came about has always fascinated me. And, the palaces! Glorious, aren’t they?