Interview with Adam Ruppert – IDSA

Project Industrial Designer - Crown Equipment Corporation

Mr Ruppert, what inspired you to create this product and what was the intention behind it?

Our goal was to provide our customers a product with a continued heritage of robustness, safety, and stability, while injecting other characteristics such as agility, operator flexibility, and command for productivity.  The intention was to out-innovate our competition by leveraging the foundation of the TSP 6000 single-upright mast.

What does being awarded with the “red dot: best of the best” mean to you?

It is our compensation for meeting the design challenges and the endless hours spent getting the product right.  Complacency is never an option for our lift trucks.

What particular challenges do you think designers have to face these days?

Balancing the engineering, ergonomics, and aesthetics while continuing to promote environmentally sound solutions that solve problems. “ It looks nice” is not a good enough reason anymore, there has to be sound logic and innovation at the core of the product’s design.

As a designer, what would you still like to accomplish in the future?

As an industrial designer, I would like to influence and expand the thoughts of generations to come.  I would like to involve more individuals and groups in the ways industrial designers practice our profession.

What do you think is the economic significance of design?

I think advancements in civilization would stop in time without the influence of design. Everyone has an internal nature of trying to “design” something better.