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I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

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Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#192
post #16

Looks so simple, but I guess that's a sign of good design. I was also surprised something like this didn't exist already. But my first thought was that it will almost certainly be cloned and sold en masse pretty quickly, so I hope she gets enough revenue from it to pay for her time.

> Looks so simple, but I guess that's a sign of good design. I find that this is tends to be the rule, not the exception and it's really reworked how I view things. I've started to almost (more jokingly than seriously) believe that the less novel something appears the more it actually is. The real mark for a good work seems to be "wow, how did you spend so much time on that? It's so fucking obvious" combined with "wh…

I used to embarassingly think that design was merely a matter of aesthetics until I read The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman, which opened my eyes to how much thought goes into seemingly simple things. Really changed the way I look at human-designed objects.

My favorite anecdote due to its simplicity and ubiquity that I never thought about previously was the anecdote about the idea of making top surfaces slanted in public spaces to keep people from placing empty drinking cups and such on top of them. So damn simple and inconspicuous, but so effective and now I see it everywhere!

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#194
post #63

I came across the Kickstarter [1] for this as a Facebook ad and passed over it for all the reasons folks are citing below. Folding hanger? What's the use case? But watching the video, she's really put a lot of thought into this. The system with the paired rod is pretty slick. I love the notches for keeping the hangers spaced. This solves a problem not everyone has (not me, for instance--I have full-size closets), but…

Not the product is the goal, it is the journey.

[deleted]

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#195

I really like her videos but I don't understand how this solves the problem in a better way than any of the obvious alternatives and it kind of bothers me that she doesn't address this at all in the video. All she does is say "there are no folding coat hangers on the market". The simplest thing would be to just get a hanger with a rotating hook and hang it at a ~45 degree angle and I don't see how her solution is bet…

She did address it by browsing quickly through a Google Images page, which indicates what kind of solutions she encountered. Nevertheless, fair question.

She looked for foldable coat hangers, not for a space saving solutions. I guess that's fair if that's what she wanted to achieve, but it would be nice to hear why this is a better solution. Looks nicer is a good enough answer of course.

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#196
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I'm sure she's patented it and amazon wouldn't want to get caught for intellectual property theft so will be diligent about policing sellers. They wouldn't want a bad reputation. And the customs office will destroy any imported product in violation of her patents.

You cannot patent a foldable coat hanger. The only thing she could patent is the specific mechanism she used to enable folding, but I doubt the copycats would use exactly the same design.

But Amazon could patent the concept of "1-click payment"..

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#197
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes and that! Must've been a terrible experience. So yeah, "3 years" is a little click-baity, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do for marketing.

[flagged]

That's not nice.

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#198
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notched rod looks neat, but isn't rifling through the clothes on the rack kind of an essential part of the experience? Can't do that with a notched rod. First time I'm illustrating a comment with stock footage: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/studio-shot-of-hand...

I think the idea is in a large part aimed at van-lifers, so a notched rod could be quite beneficial

There are too few of them to justify the production run costs.

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#199

I really like her videos but I don't understand how this solves the problem in a better way than any of the obvious alternatives and it kind of bothers me that she doesn't address this at all in the video. All she does is say "there are no folding coat hangers on the market". The simplest thing would be to just get a hanger with a rotating hook and hang it at a ~45 degree angle and I don't see how her solution is bet…

At 45 degrees it will probably still take up more space. And if you hang them flat against the wall in multiple rows and columns, it will take longer to find and get the specific item you want. No matter how you look at it, her hangers still seem like an improvement of life, and she will probably sell tons of them, good for her.

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#200

I really like her videos but I don't understand how this solves the problem in a better way than any of the obvious alternatives and it kind of bothers me that she doesn't address this at all in the video. All she does is say "there are no folding coat hangers on the market". The simplest thing would be to just get a hanger with a rotating hook and hang it at a ~45 degree angle and I don't see how her solution is bet…

I you hang them at 45 degree the depth will be reducted by sqrt(2). (about 0.7 x hanger length), and you will lose space on each side. And the more you increase the angle, the more you will lose space on the sides. With this technique, you will reduce the depth to 0.5 x hanger length and not lose space on the side.

Yes, but folding the clothes doubles their thickness, so you can fit fewer hingers on a single rod than traditional hangers.

Also the coat hinger system uses fixed distance between the hingers (due to the slots in the rod) which seems like it would be less efficient: thick sweaters and thin T-shirts take up the same width.

It's actually not clear if the hinger system works all that well if you need to hang a lot of thick clothes; the rack looks pretty crowded in the available pictures.

I guess you would have to try this in practice to see which system works better. I wouldn't be surprised if it boils down to "the 45 degree angle is better, but the coat hinger looks neater".

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