Responsibility of the designer practice questions.

A designer specifies solid timber for a run of public park benches and is asked to show that responsibility for the origin of the timber has been taken. Which entry in the specification demonstrates this?

• Timber described by the merchant as a natural material
• Timber selected because it is the lowest priced hardwood
• Timber that the supplier states can be recycled after use
• Timber certified by a forest scheme with chain of custody

Answer: Timber certified by a forest scheme with chain of custody

A certification scheme with chain of custody documents traces the timber through every owner back to a managed forest, so it is the only entry that records where and how the tree was felled. Natural, recyclable and cheapest describe the material or the deal, not the source, and none of them can be audited.

A competitor launches a kettle whose outer form is identical to a protected kettle, while the heating element and the switch mechanism inside it are entirely different. Which right is the competitor most likely to have infringed?

• The registered design right in the kettle's appearance
• The patent covering the heating element
• The trade mark under which the kettle is sold
• The copyright in the technical drawings from which the kettle was made

Answer: The registered design right in the kettle's appearance

The single observation that separates the two rights is which feature was copied: appearance copied and function changed points to the registered design, since a patent protects the technical solution and would only be infringed if the mechanism had been reproduced. A trade mark protects the sign, not the shape of the goods.

A designer is asked to release a heated styling tool on a fixed launch date. The tool meets the applicable standard, but the designer's own test data show that the outer barrel reaches a temperature at which two seconds of skin contact causes a burn. Which conflict of responsibilities does releasing it create?

• The duty to the user against the duty to protect the client's intellectual property in the tool
• The duty to comply with the standard against the duty to keep the price competitive
• The duty to the client's launch schedule against the duty of care owed to the user
• The duty to the retailer against the duty to the recycler of the product

Answer: The duty to the client's launch schedule against the duty of care owed to the user

Meeting a standard and being safe are not the same thing: the designer holds evidence of a foreseeable injury, so the commercial obligation to the client now runs against the duty of care to the user. Naming the two duties, rather than judging the decision, is what the question asks for.

A washing machine drum is redesigned as a sealed, glued assembly with the bearings inside it. Assembly time falls, the selling price is unchanged and the bearing failure rate is unchanged. Who carries the cost of this decision, and when?

• The purchaser at the point of sale, because the machine costs more to buy
• The owner at the first bearing failure, because the whole drum must be replaced
• The manufacturer during assembly, because sealed units take longer to fit and align
• The retailer during the guarantee period, because returns become more frequent

Answer: The owner at the first bearing failure, because the whole drum must be replaced

The failure rate and the price are unchanged, so the decision does not move cost to the buyer, the maker or the retailer; it moves it to the moment of repair, where a bearing that once cost a few parts now costs a whole drum. Tracing who pays, and when, is the point of the question.

A designer justifies the blade guard on a household food processor as follows: 'Ten members of the studio team tried it and none of them could touch the blade, so the guard is safe.' Identify the main flaw in this justification.

• The trial used a hand-made prototype rather than a moulded production part
• The participants are not drawn from the user population, which includes children
• The result was recorded by the designer rather than by an outside laboratory
• The trial was carried out before, rather than after, the drawings were signed off

Answer: The participants are not drawn from the user population, which includes children

A guard has to hold against the smallest hands that can foreseeably reach it, and a studio team contains none of them, so the evidence does not cover the case the guard exists for. The other points are procedural details that would not change the conclusion.

A studio has developed a surface treatment and can either keep it as a trade secret or apply for a patent. Both routes are open and both are affordable. Which single piece of information decides between them?

• Whether the treatment can be worked out by analysing a product on sale
• Whether the studio developed the treatment in house or bought it in
• Whether the studio sells in more than one country
• Whether the treatment was described in the studio's internal design report

Answer: Whether the treatment can be worked out by analysing a product on sale

Secrecy protects only what cannot be read off the finished product; if the treatment can be reverse engineered, the secret ends on the day of the first sale and only a patent gives an enforceable right. Change that one fact - make the treatment undetectable in the product - and the secret becomes the stronger route, because it never expires and requires no disclosure.