On Friday I attended a Lego event for part of the We Love Architecture festival from the British institute of Architecture. Senior design manager at Lego Simon Kent gave a talk on how lego sets end up on the shelf - giving some insight to the concept, design, architecture and testing that products go through before the consumer gets their eager hands on the bricks.
As much as I love how much architectural design goes into the set concept build, I found the process of testing and idea creating even more interesting. A set has a long cycle from birth to shelf; much care and attention goes through each stage. It feels loved, it feels agile, it feels a rather beautiful process.
Lego teaches us to be creative. Sure, build the set you bought from instructions, but the real fun is in creating your own. Workers for Lego will do exactly this on prototypes. Here's the bricks - limit yourself, and see what you can come up with. A jeep can become an aeroplane. An aeroplane can become a boat.
As a creative person, you can sometimes be overwhelmed with what you can create - give yourself limitations and you are exercising creative juices that perhaps have been left to grow a little fat. It's this thinking outside the box that can ignite great things.
One of the great aspects of Lego I have always loved, was the minute detail sets would contain, giving an extra dimension of quirkiness. Perhaps it was the firing canons on the pirate lego ship, the lego sharks in the sea; perhaps it was the garage doors on the fire station I remember enjoying moving up and down; maybe it was the medieval swords and jousting sticks, shields and helmets; or even the little arial on the policeman motorbike...But you could always guarantee these little details made the sets/figures so beautiful captivating.
Simon Kent explained that sets or rather, prototype sets go through rigorous testing phases before designs are finalised - feedback is taken on these kinds of intricate and specific details. Children are asked what they particular like and enjoy. And it is this emotional connection the testing brings, that finalises what is kept in the sets. It is through this, the lego sets have particular emotional attachment - the garage doors I loved on the fire station, resembled the garage doors of our own house I grew up in. It also perhaps explains the at times almost random feel of the sets' details and features. And yet nothing at all is random or not thought through.
Sets will also go through extensive play-testing. Possibly the greatest job in the world for any lego loving child. Here's a set - break it. Lego invite parties of children to enter their office to attempt to play the constructions to destruction. Bricks must withstand excessive play, and even, excessive heat. Once built, test sets are placed in ovens to see if they can withstand the scenario of being left on a window sill for vast periods in the sun. No one wants a melted police station or star wars ship on their living room floor of an evening.
Mention Lego to most people, and they will confess a love. And Lego seem to feed into this in striving to produce a fantastic product for us to love - and a great role model for product creating process. Long may it continue.
Here is an interesting video from Simon Kent discussing the beautiful Space Shuttle Lego set on you tube.
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