Another SolidWorks employee that got to suffer through my attempt at being a journalist at SolidWorks World 2011 was Rick Chin, Director of Product Innovation. A Mechanical Engineer by education, Rick is another shining star in the SolidWorks Universe. He holds no less than five patents, has worked for McDonnell Douglas and Pratt & Whitney, spent some time with PTC before joining SolidWorks as its 17th overall employee. He then ventured out on his own for a few years before returning to (his senses) SolidWorks in 2006 in his current role. Rick invented eDrawings, FilletXpert and DraftXpert, just to name a few of his great ideas.
As the Director of Product Innovation he spends his time trying to think up new ideas for SolidWorks. However, rather than identifying new technology and building a product around it, Rick prefers to focus on customer frustrations and come up with ways to alleviate them. This doesn’t pertain to features, though. Rick’s job isn’t to fix, say, angle mate issues, it’s to come up with new products that can help various segments of the customer base. Where SolidWorks’ customer base is so diverse, he has to choose a segment and then discover what gets them worked up. By surveying and visiting, he finds the things that don’t just annoy people, but get an intense, vein popping reaction. Why? because he, in particular, and SolidWorks, want you to be emotionally invested in the product. If he solves a minor annoyance, you’ll say “thanks”, and move on. If he gives you a tool that decreases your daily vein popping time, you’re going to be nominating him for the CAD industry equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize, brag to your friends about the wonders of SolidWorks, and name (or re-name) your first born after him. So, in a nutshell, Rick finds a segment, discover what pisses them off, conceptualizes and then delivers the next greatest thing since sliced bread.
How does Rick do this, you ask? Easy. He looks for the “absurdly ideal” solution. He “gives himself permission” to come up with any solution, as impossible or insane as it may be. It’s from there that he can look around and see better where he actually needs to be. He then pares down from impossible to probable, followed by searching for technologies that fit into the probable category. It’s through this process that add-ins like Sustainability are borne. Actually, ‘adopted’ may be a more apt term. Ideally, Rick will be able to find an existing technology that will work rather than to have to develop something in-house. It’s just the nature of the beast. Companies, or individuals, are always coming up with new things which, ultimately, end up out there for public consumption. Why recreate the wheel when you can just modify it to fit your application?
One thing to understand about Rick, and his duties, is that he works off to the side of the main product. While he was involved with Sustainability, nothing he’s worked, or working, on will be in 2012. After the release of Sustainability, he went through another investigative process but nothing came to fruition. After hearing this, I asked him what he was working on now. I was surprised when he answered, on the record.
What, you want to know what’s going on behind the curtain? Well, it’s probably not too Earth-shattering, but he’s investigating new ways for CAD, users and hardware to interact. Somewhere between where we are now, with mice and keyboards and monitors, and ‘Iron Man’. While Rick doesn’t envision a designer waving his or her arms about for 8 hours a day, they’re looking at multi-touch and gesture hardware. The goal is something that will enhance the user experience, while being easy to use, productive and, perhaps most importantly, cost effective. There’s no point in coming up with something that’s going to cost $20,000. Further to the point, the hope is that you’ll be able to stop thinking about the user interface and just do it, that it will become more of a right-brained activity. As of right now, they’ve identified some technologies and are developing prototypes. Some time in the next few years, you may be interfacing with SolidWorks in a completely new, but totally cool way.
Picture stolen from cadfanatic.com
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