Building A Better Paper Airplane

The Real Estate Espresso Podcast

Building A Better Paper Airplane

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Building A Better Paper Airplane

Today’s topic is about the art of design and manufacturing, gleaned from my younger years fresh out of university while working at Bell Northern Research. The metaphor we will be using to exemplify this concept is the simple but effective exercise of designing and building a paper airplane.

The Paper Airplane Exercise

The paper airplane exercise was part of an intense week-long company training course in my early career days. Each participant had two-fold tasks; to create a prototype paper airplane with a sheet of paper and document the step by step instructions on another paper. The goal of the paper airplane was simple, fly across the conference room’s breadth. The vibrant energy was infectious as various design ideas buzzed around.

Two Key Deliverables: Prototype and Documentation

The critical point to note here is that we had two deliverables: the physical, paper airplane prototype and, more crucially, the documentation containing instructions to recreate the design. With the limited time of 30 minutes to bring our designs to life, some teams got caught up in the design process, forgetting that the real goal was to create an easily manufacturable design.

The Revelation: Designing for Manufacture

The course’s highlight was the revelation at the end of the assignment. The prototypes we each labored over were handed to another team to reproduce based on the given instructions, and not a look at the prototype itself. The discrepancies between the originally designed prototypes and the manufactured replicas were glaring and the results were startling.

Consistency and Documentation in Design

The results from this exercise opened our eyes to the realization that the essence of our roles as designers and engineers went beyond just coming up with fantastic designs. Our most important deliverable was ensuring our designs could be faithfully replicated consistently and reliably, which depended heavily on the clarity and simplicity of our documentation.

Checklist for Effective Design and Documentation	Description
1. Simple Design	Ensure your design is straightforward and achieves the purpose it’s intended for.
2. Clarity in Documentation	Your documentation should be well-written and clear enough for someone else to understand and implement without any guidance.
3. Time Management	Invest an appropriate amount of time in the design process considering the end goal.
4. Testing	It’s important to test the design to ensure it’s functional.
5. Consistency	Your design should be consistent enough that it can be accurately replicated multiple times using only the documentation.

To this day, this lesson has stuck with me. It has helped me improve my writing skills and become a better engineer. As I apply this knowledge in my current career in real estate, I ensure that designs and plans I receive from architects and consultants are detailed and accurate enough for the construction team to implement without needing to make deductions or estimations that could lead to mistakes on the job. The bottom line is, clarity and simplicity go a long way in creating effective designs, just like building a paper airplane.

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