Handles: How Do Companies Decide On The Design?
I originally started thinking about this while contemplating handles. Handles are something we ignore when they fit our hands well, and hate when they don’t. Yet, I cannot find much information on study of handle design. There are specialty handles, like various grips for fencing weapons. There are ergonomic handles for specialty carpenter’s hammers.
But when it comes to the simple round handle on many hand tools, I don’t find much information on the design of those handles.
Then I realized this sort of makes sense. Yes, at one time it might have been possible to go to a local woodturner, explain what a person wanted in weight, balance, size, and so on, and get a good fit for their own preferences.
Now, most handles are mass produced. There’s the occasional shovel, broom, landscaping tool, or gardening tool with wooden handles. But I think they are becoming rarer.
Once a station is set up to mold handles out of resin or plastic, handles can be produced far faster than any woodturner could produce them.
Once that station is set up.
Getting to that point is a long process of decades of scientific and chemical research to create the resins and plastics. And decades of scientific, chemical, thermodynamic, and mechanical research to know how to create the molds, heat the plast or resin up to the correct temperature, inject it, take it out of the mold, and so on .
This is an example of overspecialization. It does what it does, very well. But it can’t be easily changed to anything else without a new mold being made. And there is a long supply chain between the natural precursors of resin or plastic being gathered, and the resin or plastic coming into existence.
On the far end of under specialization, there is a hunk of wood and a knife. Yes, a person probably could make a handle for an implement out of that. It would take quite a while, and probably be fairly crude.
Another example: Writing Programs
Another example is writing programs. Microsoft Word tries to be all things to all people. And it is amazingly annoying and bloated because of that. Scrivener is so specialized, I have tried to use it and like it several times. But it is just a bit too specialized for the more general purpose use I want to use it for. And LaTex is definitely too specialized.