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Dyson, techno-centric design and social consumption

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Re: Dyson, techno-centric design and social consumption

#71

Post by WrongAssumption »

GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #26
rapnie wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the Nilfisk consumer vacuum cleaners. They used to be frequently seen in Dutch households, nowadays less so. Indestructable. My first confrontation with a 'Dyson Airblade Wash+Dry short hand dryer' was after paying 50ct to enter a newly modernised toilet on a Dutch railway station. I got totally splashed with water blown out of the sink, all over my clothes. Quite embarrassing to walk out a toilet like that.

Culturally, the Dutch expect higher quality at reasonable prices (love to see frugality as part of a national identity!). On the whole, American ad culture has us convinced that we must either suffer with worse tools or spend more on a name brand with increasingly diminishing returns… to say nothing of the conspicuous consumption we’re all nudged/shoved into.

Not sure how America got caught in this crossfire. Dyson is not an American company.

Re: Dyson, techno-centric design and social consumption

#73

Post by dingnuts »

lurking_swe wrote: post #65
Onavo wrote: post #4

Dyson is like the IKEA for household appliances. They are pretty and fancy and somewhat featureful but they never seem to hold up to the truly high end stuff like Sebos/Miele. Those brands will cost you an arm and a leg but they will do exactly what it says on the tin, and nothing more. No gimmicks, just suction.

ikea is where you shop if you want new furniture but can’t afford real furniture. In this context, “real” means made of real wood. And im not judging, i too was a broke college kid at one point. And many people just don’t have the money. But ikea is ANYTHING but fancy. Its super cheap.

Lots of IKEA furniture is real wood, and lots of "expensive" brands are still flat packed particleboard. Ever bought anything from West Elm?

I'm curious where people are buying "real" furniture, even even they spend "real" money. I've had the best luck with the Amish and at estate sales, but that's not super repeatable.

All the major furniture stores like Ashley or whatever are similar in quality and construction to IKEA -- I don't really think the "cheap" reputation is deserved just because IKEA has $10 LACK side tables available.

Re: Dyson, techno-centric design and social consumption

#76

Post by m463 »

IshKebab wrote: post #39

I used to work for Dyson and I think this is quite off in many ways. * The industrial design of Dyson products is generally great. I don't think they poke you or anything like that. They even have nice affordances like all the things you can use being red. Contrast that with my terrible Shark where everything is black. Took me a good few seconds to find the bin release button. It also has an atrocious UX - a slow on/…

> has an atrocious UX - a slow on/off button instead of a trigger

sort of like the humdinger, which I think I wasted my money on trying to replace a dc34

Re: Dyson, techno-centric design and social consumption

#77

Post by seszett »

lurking_swe wrote: post #65
Onavo wrote: post #4

Dyson is like the IKEA for household appliances. They are pretty and fancy and somewhat featureful but they never seem to hold up to the truly high end stuff like Sebos/Miele. Those brands will cost you an arm and a leg but they will do exactly what it says on the tin, and nothing more. No gimmicks, just suction.

ikea is where you shop if you want new furniture but can’t afford real furniture. In this context, “real” means made of real wood. And im not judging, i too was a broke college kid at one point. And many people just don’t have the money. But ikea is ANYTHING but fancy. Its super cheap.

Ikea has every grade of quality from cardboard to solid wood to metal furniture.

I will never understand why there are always such comments saying Ikea furniture is bad quality, or in your case not even "real" furniture, come on, it's like you have never even been in an Ikea store.

Re: Dyson, techno-centric design and social consumption

#78

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

WrongAssumption wrote: post #71
GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Culturally, the Dutch expect higher quality at reasonable prices (love to see frugality as part of a national identity!). On the whole, American ad culture has us convinced that we must either suffer with worse tools or spend more on a name brand with increasingly diminishing returns… to say nothing of the conspicuous consumption we’re all nudged/shoved into.

Not sure how America got caught in this crossfire. Dyson is not an American company.

no, but companies like Dyson that promote conspicuous consumption do very well in the US where they might not otherwise because of those cultural differences.

Re: Dyson, techno-centric design and social consumption

#79

Post by eddythompson80 »

echelon wrote: post #69
detourdog wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The germ spreading of the circulating air always creeps me out.

The particulate aerosolization worries me. In the future we're going to regret breathing bad air. It's the accelerant for so many health problems.

> In the future we're going to regret breathing air. It's the accelerant for so many health problems.

A non-oxygen dependent energy system for the human cell is the only option moving forward. We need to utilize a clean energy source like sunlight and dump that oxygen dependency once and for all. Cyanobacteria was a crutch dependency that helped bootstrap that whole life thing pretty quickly for the demo. We have a proven concept now that we know work. Can we leave the idea to use oxygen back in the GOE era where it belongs now? Building all this complexity on top of a fundamentally flawed bases like oxygen reactivity was the main mistake.

Re: Dyson, techno-centric design and social consumption

#80

Post by lucideng »

IshKebab wrote: post #39

I used to work for Dyson and I think this is quite off in many ways. * The industrial design of Dyson products is generally great. I don't think they poke you or anything like that. They even have nice affordances like all the things you can use being red. Contrast that with my terrible Shark where everything is black. Took me a good few seconds to find the bin release button. It also has an atrocious UX - a slow on/…

As an owner of a Shark, I don't agree. The ergonomics are great, controls/buttons are grey, everything else is red or black, sounds like you just made a poor choice in model and/or colors. Mine is a corded vac and just works. Replaceable, washable filters, switched power, handles egregious amounts of pet hair (Husky) and a lift-away tank. We replaced a cheap Bissel vacuum with the Shark, and the Bissel was great, it was just really hard to clean stairs with it.

I think of a Dyson as more of a status symbol, like the latest Mac Book, a watch collection, or a Porsche. Dyson owners like telling people they have a Dyson. Most people just need things to work well for their use case, be reliable and affordable.

The saying goes... "Fast, reliable or cheap. Pick two."

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