COP Outcome development and evaluation

The design incorporated a urethane block in the ankle joint, the aim being to create a foot with a dexterous ankle and a solid heel (DASH). The industry standard has a solid ankle and cushioned heel (SACH). The original idea was to use the resilient plastic – originally developed for mountain-bike suspension systems – as if it were a torsion bar on a car's suspension, and lever it in different ways.

Eventually, this approach was abandoned. Wayne says the freedom to change part-way through a design project is critical. "An open mind is one of the best things you can have... you have to be really careful to maintain the freedom to push any of it off your bench at any point."

COP Planning for practice

The approach is artisanal, very hands-on. Before the Renaissance artisans made things directly. Ideas may have been sketched on paper or on the materials from which the thing was made, models may have been made, but artisans worked directly with their materials. During the Renaissance, the role of the artisan was split into that of the worker and that of the engineer. Rather than make things directly, engineers began to use drawings to explain their visions to other people who would build them.

(Some of the earliest such drawings were made in the early 15th century by Filippo Brunelleschi , who designed and supervised the building of the great masonry dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. Wishing to prevent his original design for a crane from being pirated, Brunelleschi sent drawings of various components to separate workshops outside the city and assembled the parts when he received them.)

The artisanal/bespoke approach incorporates the application of what Eugene Ferguson terms non-verbal/non-visual knowledge – practical skills and the intuitive "feel" for materials that comes with experience.

There's nothing precious about this approach, Wayne argues. It's simply a way of establishing the first principles of a particular design problem. Most design challenges are ill-defined in their early stages; there are no single "right" answers, merely many better or worse solutions. Developing prototypes is a way of clarifying an idea and bringing it into focus. A working prototype can be modeled and reverse-engineered, detailed and refined for manufacture later.