On June 29th, the Industrial Design Day was celebrated for the tenth time. On this day in 2007, the International Association of Industrial Designers was founded. These are specialists who work on the aesthetic features of various devices and industrial pieces. At SUSU, a huge amount of technology is created, including teaching equipment, for external appearance of which there are special requirements. Director of the Academic Equipment and Technology Research and Development Institute, Georgiy Kalyagin, told us about this.
— How in-demand is industrial design at this time?
— Industrial design is absolutely in demand at this moment, and this field should develop. Beauty has always ruled the world, and it should be in everything. This is a universal characteristic which should apply not only to people, but also to machines. It is tied to the functional capabilities of modern equipment, which must comply with the vision of this beauty, reflect the internal content. For example, Russian machines won’t be in-demand in either the internal or external market if the automobiles don’t match the requirements of modern design, even if they are executed to a modern level. We have just entered the market of South East Asia, and to move further and enter the Western market, we need to be independent; have our own vision and technology for presentation. The Ural Automobile Plant, which earlier created huge machines, now creates quite attractive automobiles. The Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant is at the beginner stage in this area, but either way, it is noticeable that people understand that this needs to be worked on.
— Is the field of industrial design present at SUSU?
— The initiator of training in the field of industrial design in our university is the Department of Design and Visual Arts of the Institute of Architecture and Construction. About half a year ago, Associate Professor of the Department, Dmitriy Gennadyevich Chernykh, addressed the Academic Equipment and Technology Research and Development Institute with the idea about the necessity of developing this field, and we, of course, supported his initiative. A number of SUSU students complete internships at the Ural Institute of Design. Two students are working there on website design. One more student is working in the design and construction bureau on the design of an electric race car, because the strength and power of a fast car should also be shown on the outside. We hope that next year, this electric race car will amaze us not only with its technical characteristics, but also with the beauty of its lines.
— Why did it become necessary for the Academic Equipment and Technology Research and Development Institute and the Institute of Architecture and Construction to work together?
— Life always pushes you towards development. If there are people with initiative who wish to create, and they have organizations and institutions which can support their ideas, then the system begins to move. That’s how it turned out with the initiative of Dmitriy Gennadyevich Chernykh and our Research and Development Institute. We create teaching equipment and also take into account design requirements, but before this we didn’t have any specialists who could approach this issue professionally.
— Do students make any contributions to the development of industrial design at SUSU?
— At this time, students majoring in engineering are mostly involved in design, installation, and commissioning of products. But now we are beginning to attract students to industrial design, especially to internships at the Ural Institute of Design, which I mentioned before. I think that when student and teacher exchange is established with this university, the development of industrial design will become more active.
— What should teaching equipment be like in terms of design so that students were comfortable working with it?
— Comfort is a specialty of ergonomics – students working with equipment should find the work space comfortable, and should be able to reach all of the elements with their hands. It is no less important that color and structure of the information field should reflect the content of a problem being studied. Equipment should be created out of a nice material, but also have “durability against students” – it should be impossible to break or tear anything. Simultaneously, manufacture of these things should be inexpensive and should comply with the latest technologies which support ecological safety and electrical safety. Overall, industrial design is a combination of ergonomics and the functional beauty which involves comfort at the workplace and in taking in information.
— What teaching equipment is being manufactured at the Academic Equipment and Technology Research and Development Institute right now?
— I could list thousands of items here. General objective is production of training simulators. Right now, there are around 400 of them. They are 3D images which are created with the help of a virtual reality headset and gloves; with the gloves, you can participate in the process of manufacturing, set the input parameters in order to see how the output parameters change, up to simulation of emergency situations. For the Volzhsky Pipe Plant, we produce training simulators for hot rolling chains of pipes; for Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works – a training simulator for combined heat and power plants. We are working on robotized devices, robots, and robotized manufacturing lines.