What does it actually sound like when someone can tell you, precisely, why their work matters?

In this compilation of Why Design, fourteen hardware founders, designers, and engineers answer that question, not with a mission statement, but with the specific moment it became true for them: a phone call, a diaper emergency, a chant they refused to join, a sketch a surgeon recognised overnight, a research grant into safety on public transport, a young designer finally seeing herself represented.

This is not a highlight reel of ambition. It is a collection of the moments where mission stopped being declared and started being lived, including the discomfort of staying yourself inside an institution that wants you to become it, and the daily discipline of sustaining purpose once the launch is long over.

Join the Why Design community → teamkodu.com/whydesign

What You'll Learn

📞 Why a phone call from a hospital bed told one founder her product was finally real

🔋 Why 28 million UK homes have never been designed for by the home battery industry

🤖 Why automation grew one company from 2,000 to 22,000 employees instead of shrinking it

🚻 How a diaper emergency in a piercing shop became the origin story of a company

🚆 What a research grant and a masters course have to do with safety for women and girls on public transport

🎤 Why one executive chanted his own name instead of his employer's, in front of 400 people

🧭 Why the future you set out loud is, according to one investor, the future you actually get

Memorable Quotes

"I want to try again."

"I am Bob. I am Bob."

"The future that you set is the now that you get."

"Use our expertise for good."

"I will be the last person to get money."

"If we stop developing hardware, we're ghosts."

Links & Connect

Béa Fertility: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E1

Automata: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E2

Tympany Medical: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E3

Windfall Energy: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E4

Fieldwork Robotics: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E5

Koroyd: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E6

Phil Stauton: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E7

Instrument Industries: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E8

Flush-Locks: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E9

Bob Schwartz: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E10

Longbow Motors: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E11

iF Design ifdesign.com: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E12

Bill Liao: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E13

PARK: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E14

PENSA: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E15

Studio Fynn: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E16

Priestman Goode: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E19

Studio Wood: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E18

Kohler Mira: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E19

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube & Amazon - https://whydesign.club/

👥 Join the Why Design community - https://teamkodu.com/whydesign/

📸 Follow @whydesign on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/why.design_/

📸 Follow @_whydesign on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@_whydesign

📸 Follow @kodurecruitment on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kodurecruitment/

🔗 Follow Chris Whyte on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrchriswhyte/

fourteen guests across fourteen episodes.

All of them are building something in the physical world.

Most of them can tell you in very precise terms who they are building

it for and what's wrong they are trying to write.

This is the WHY Design Mission and Purpose Compilation.

And don't get me wrong, those were incredibly impactful moments,

but this I think was the moment for me that it became so very real because

we had someone who who

had a horrible experience and cared enough about what

we were doing to call us from the hospital bed the day after her surgery

and say to us, I wanna try again though.

I I am going to try again with Beia and

And I just thought, my God. I it I think two things hit home

for me in that moment was the gravity of the thing that we were doing.

~ you know, you just sort of always I always used to say,

we're changing lives, we're changing people's lives.

And and it feels like such an airy,

fairy and ~ sort of like blithe thing to say.

And of course, you know, be you're helping people conceive,

you know, yeah, their lives are changing,

but

In this moment it had never felt more true to me that this woman this brilliant,

brilliant woman i you know, ectopics are high risk,

right? She had emergency surgery,

she's down a fallooping tube that impacts your fertility,

and yet here she is saying, I'm gonna try again and I just thought,

My goodness, we've really built something here.

The wrong that started it all.

Most of the products on this show exist because someone looked at

the world and decided that the way things were just was not acceptable.

For guests on the specific wrong their product is trying to right.

And people without money to just struggle alone.

~

and take chances. And that really like plucked at that.

Well, hang on a second. That's not fair.

~ sort of desire. And ~ and then yeah,

creating a company where I was able to build a team and and start creating that sort

of culture. Yeah.

And it was ~ the early days were really,

really fun. Really hard, but really fun.

So yeah, Windfall Energy is a company.

We're we're building ~ a home energy product,

battery that's aimed for people who live in flats and small homes

and people renting, which is about half the homes in UK.

So there's twenty eight million homes in the UK and about half are either flats,

renters, small homes, people for whom solar panels,

they don't have a roof, they don't have space for a big ~ Tesla power wall

or something. Just the the kind of

tr it's probably too early to say traditional home energy products,

but the the incumbent stuff just doesn't work.

~ and those people kind of be left behind.

If you you hear about ~ kind of octopus homes where the people have no bills.

And but in order to get there,

you need to have a big enough house to have solar and and kind of some sort

of energy infrastructure built in.

You need to be able to afford it.

I mean that's typically solar and batteries in a bigger house could cost

ten grand plus. And so if you're in a flat ~ living in the city,

that's just not gonna happen. ~ and the result of that is just bills going

up and a lot of people are kind of stuck.

So we thought, what can we make a product for those people?

So factory for half the the country that's been left behind.

~ and typically home batteries,

so people think of a Tesla power wall,

they're primarily designed to take excess solar

power when you're not using it.

So that means you need solar panels.

And again, only about five percent of homes in the UK have solar panels.

So effectively that means all home batteries are kind of aimed at those five percent

of people. Which again is kind of crazy that that's almost like

the mainstream market. It's just that tiny little niche.

So we thought how can we open this up a bit more and make a battery for everyone.

I've I've worked in lots of businesses where they've implemented automation

And the business has grown. I when I joined Eccardo,

it was two thousand employees.

We developed ~ a a big automation stack and ~ it grew to t when I left

it was twenty two thousand people.

So I don't know how many it's grown to now,

but ~ that that's the opposite story.

And I I worked in the underground construction industry where nobody wants

to work underground in the dark,

~ and it and the safety record

~ isn't great. So it's quite dangerous.

~ quite a dangerous environment.

So if you remove people from those horrible environments and those horrible jobs

and those unsafe jobs, then ~ I think it's the right thing to do.

~ and with the fruit fruit harvesting,

~ our biggest client is and our biggest pull and the biggest pain in

the industry is in Australia where people don't want to pick.

They so they can't get the labour.

So they're flying them over from all over the world.

Which has got a terrible carbon footprint as well.

And ~ they're they're having to house them on the farm.

And ~ so ~ we're not we're not putting people out of jobs.

We're trying to ~ I guess what we're trying to do is ~ stop ~ raspberries being like

ten pounds a punnet or fundamentally like some of the things that we've done.

You know, there's there's a customer we have where we're automating

the sampling of cancer biopsies and this then creates a DNA profile.

of that person to do like targeted cancer treatment and therapy.

So we're working on things that can potentially like save people's lives

or at least give them back more time and and try and like manage their cancer.

But it's also things like drug discovery.

So this the like one one one of the things we were involved with

was well naturally drug discovery,

one of the first implementations we did was in covet testing,

you know, to or PCR test that everyone was doing down at

the University of Southampton.

And this is before I joined, but the the they had ~

ball together some stuff w which was then automating like the the the t

I think I think it was PCR testing for for all the COVID samples.

But then it can also be used for drug discovery so you know vaccine development

you know maybe you know how amazing would it be if our system was then used

on something that was like a cure for cancer ~ and that kind of thing.

But then it's now moving into a space where,

you know, with AI, AI is being leveraged in like the drug discovery space as well.

So it's really and then if you've worn a you know you've got like

essentially millions of models that these things are looking at in terms

of what what a treatment could be.

And you can then test that with automation like faster,

what do you do manually? So I I think for me there's got to be like

two two things that are excited about a project.

Is like one, what impact can I have?

And that was definitely there.

I was given the freedom to operate.

And then two is like, is the thing I'm working on,

do I believe in it? Then and I really did.

So like it just ticks both of those boxes.

And our latest campaign is about

looking into safety for women and girls on ~ on public transport.

And so we've been working with

a a woman who has a a research grant,

who's a a kind of rail professional,

and ~ we've spoken at a couple of ~ conferences about the subjects,

started to do our own ~ research.

And set a project that we've run with Central St.

Martin's with their master's course.

And it's about kind of I guess next six to twelve months is about taking that

to the next stage, hopefully sharing some prototypes

and giving a platform to a really important subject.

And, you know, again, kind of what I love about what we do and about working with

transport is, you know, essentially a pillar of

society and you

get to explore really yeah important issues

to improve ~ yes social equity.

And that panel demonstrated how many women there

are in design and how many have lots of ~

energy and enthusiasm and ideas and courage and they just there was a

bit of a common thing where just sometimes couldn't see themselves belonging

in certain places.

And obviously hopefully in teams like mine when you see that there's

a female leader you can see a bit of hope and you can see that

you can belong somewhere. ~ I think because it is male dominated

It just and and not just design.

higher the higher roles,

the higher roles in many other functions,

right? So when you are growing within design

and interacting more cross-functionally,

you are also getting together with mostly male leaders

and there's so much think I've had to learn about how

to present myself in those situations,

how to persuade

How to convince people of things.

And that that's just you it's a lot of effort

and and ~ learnings that ~ might

not attract everyone. and I hope that after a

few years of me and all the many female leaders,

by the way, that do exist in design can have forge a bit of ~

different way of of conflict resolution

or persuasion or pitching ideas and stuff like that that we can then create this

environment where other people feel like they could take part.

The moment the mission became undeniable.

Mission is easy to declare.

These are the moments where it stopped being a statement and became something else.

Undeniable, personal and impossible to walk away from.

So actually one of the key moments for us,

~ we were working with some US based clinicians,

~ and Rory had a bit of a sketch on it on the back of a piece of paper around trying

to access and illuminate the surgical site in a in a better manner.

And the surgeon said, I was only thinking about that last night.

I was like going to sleep thinking,

How on earth do we get more light into the the small spaces in ET ~ so that

we can do the operations better?

So I think, you know.

those kind of aha moments that we're not the only one thinking about this problem.

~ and that what we've seen is validated by the clinician.

It was it was really important point for us very early on.

But the the challenge with you know what happened to us,

we were actually in real life.

We were ~ in Boulder, Colorado.

So we were actually off. it was a Sunday afternoon.

It was very cold outside. We were walking through.

We went to go get we have a newborn.

she's now sixteen months, but at that time she was six months old.

And we were gonna go get our ears pierced.

So we were in Boulder, Colorado,

~ at the ~ piercing shop, and she had a diaper emergency,

and immediately the first thing her and I did,

my wife and I, was started to try to find a restroom to go change her.

What we discovered in about ten minutes time was there was absolutely no access.

We had zero percent ability to find a restroom ~ that was either unlocked or

~ that was clean enough to use.

We we found a public restroom and boulder.

It was completely un and unusable.

there was trash, it was cold, it was dirty,

I mean just filthy. ~ and so we ~ stumbled across two or three good coffee shops

or sandwich shops and all of them had codes on the door that said customers only.

And so as I'm walking to a final stop and I just finally said

I'm gonna buy something ~ here's five bucks.

put the soda and I got the soda,

got the code, we changed the diaper,

we got in the car and I literally said,

I would have been happy to just pay for a restroom.

~ I don't need the soda. This was an emergency.

We had to go in. It wasn't, you know,

this this was a moment to where I didn't need to buy anything.

~ I just needed to go to the restroom.

So that was a moment where I realized we're we have an opportunity.

We we've been to Europe, we've been to Mexico,

you know, traveling and and realized that you know,

it's not apple to charge for a restroom.

We just don't do it here. And now that

We have this interesting lockout situation happening across our cities.

And for r I I I understand it as a business owner and I grew up

in the family business. we understand it's it's a cost.

so we know that a non customer using your restroom is a true cost,

right? So but over this period of time we we created this mindset of is it possible?

that's when I started doing the homework and saying,

you know, I think this can be done,

you know, technology

exist in s in forms, not this specific one.

But we knew that we had payment.

We knew that we had locks that could be manufactured to unlock,

right? So we knew that there was a lot of things that existed that could

be combined to each other. Yeah,

there's a lot I mean some of it's it's a useful constraint.

Things like the the first thing we worked out was the

the thread parameters based off some ergonomic data.

Weirdly from an old lecturer from my engineering degree in Sheffield.

around the grip strength of older women.

So we set as a main performance thing we have to have less than four newton meters.

And then also try and capture that so that other studios,

the weird thing as well with this project is designing the design guidelines

for someone else to design a product to your work.

~ So we've had a number of design teams now working on

their own dispenses. I sat in the the front room of a house ~ that had no furniture.

We just bought it when I ~ first started at Timpany and ~ I was on the phone

to Rory and he were talking and I was like,

Hold on, this could go anywhere.

Like this is a an opportunity way beyond EAT surgery.

So the mission really is changing rigid endoscope technology and that

our technology becomes the standard of care for rigid visualisation in surgery.

This episode is sponsored by Vax and TTI Floorcare.

And Kodu, my company, is running the hiring I'm about to describe.

So you know exactly what this is.

This is why I wanted to make it anyway.

I've recruited for Vax for more than 10 years.

Over 50 people, including a VP of engineering and a head of design.

I know that building well. Right now they are rebuilding their

UK engineering and innovation function from the ground up.

Advanced development, design engineering,

and industrial design.

All at once. I've not seen them move at this pace in a decade of working with them.

So I'm going to tell you what is actually happening and you can decide.

Design that exists because someone was being failed.

A product that does not work for the people who need it most is

not a finished product. It is a gap.

Three guests on the design decisions that come from understanding exactly

who the product is failing. And I know that the job of a a good designer is to,

you know, not lean on lived experience and to be able to design for everybody.

I I know that that is supposed to be true,

but we were working with very good

people. And it took a woman to design those instructions for use

to make them understandable for the women who are putting this in their bodies.

Yeah, that's that's a critical point you've hit on there.

So again, home batteries typically now are just a big white box,

kind of like a boiler. They're and they're designed to be in the garage

or just basically tucked away.

~ so but whereas this is could quite likely be in someone's living room

or it's a product that you it's gonna be in your home and you're gonna

be living with it.

So the industrial design and the look and feel is definitely something

we focusing a lot of attention on.

So it needs to look like almost small like a little piece of furniture.

A of people talk about it being a side table or something in your living room.

So it's something that is a completely it's kind of a new a new type

of product really. It's a kind of new paradigm of what a home energy product could

be. But the industrial design look and feel is critical and that we're working with

a a designer called Ben Ben King,

who he's worked previously for yeah.

~ IKEA and Lakeland and kind of more consumer sort of ~ interior type products

rather than we don't want this to be kind of techy and there's a lot

of there are home batteries or or kind of portable camping batteries is quite

a big kind of ~ category of products.

And they're always just very kind of teenage boy bedroom kind of look.

Yeah. And that that's not we're very much not going for that.

This needs to be a a kind of home product that you want

But the the male body and the female body are are actually completely different.

You know, different hormone cycles,

different needs, different this.

It's just simply completely insufficient to take innovation that

was created around men and just shrink it proportionate to body size.

And I'm so glad that we live in a world where at a minimum we're starting

to recognize it, if not fully designed for it.

I think that just allows you to have a little bit more faith in

the industry as well, right? To say,

~ they are

things coming out that are for everybody and and serve as well.

So I want to be part of that. Yeah.

And I think that would that'll feed out,

yeah, because it will be the, you know,

seeing, you know, if there's a,

you know, a young woman that's thinking about studying design and then

she sees that there's product designed for her and for those those problems,

those challenges that she's been s facing and up until this point hasn't been

serviced, you know, if that

inspires someone to think actually there is products for me that I could

dis b be part of. Keeping your purpose when the system pushes back.

For most of these guests, the mission is their own.

But three of them spent time inside large institutions.

The question they all faced is the same.

How do you stay yourself when the institution wants you to become it?

It was one of my favorite dangerous stories in corporate life.

~

And yes, we we did have this marvelous dinner.

There were four hundred GE executives ~ there and I I was honored

to be invited. It was ~ relatively early in my time at at GE.

they had this motivational speaker who primarily coached professional

baseball teams, major league baseball players.

~ anyway, this gentleman pacing back and forth started ~

you know, into his routine and asked us all to stand and lock arms,

as you said. ~ and he wanted us to solemnly say,

I am G E. I G E. And I'm thinking,

what the hell is this? ~ and you know,

I I s always had this this strong sense of I will give you my head,

heart, and hands all in, but I'm not going to give you my soul.

And so I started to chant, unlike everyone else,

I am Bob.

I am Bob. And the fellows next to me,

they're elbowing me, Shut up, shut up,

you're gonna get fired. And I just kept doing it.

And then the guy on the on the stage heard me.

And he's giving me the stink eye,

you know. and ~ I don't know.

Eventually it ended. But I never moved off of I am Bob.

And ~ I th I really thought I was gonna get in big trouble 'cause there

was some ~ how shall I say, superiors who who heard me as well.

But

And they got it in the end. And ~ anyway,

I took a risk and they still kept me employed.

The future that you set is the now that you get.

So if you commit to and share verbally a future that

you are trying to construct and behave accordingly,

that actually changes who you are in the present.

And

If you design that future well enough,

then you can actually f fill yourself with purpose

and fill others with purpose with you.

And that as far as I'm concerned is how you end up living a life you love.

And you know,

~ my purpose, which has taken many design iterations

Is a world that works for all living things because civilization thrives.

And there's a lot to unpack in that.

I'm not going to unpack it all.

I'm just going to say that we are a long way away from that future,

and it still lights me up every step of progress we make towards it.

So every tree we forest plants,

every time a child learns to code with Raspberry Pi Foundation,

~ every time the drug that SENS Foundation ~ you know spun out.

Has another successful clinical outcome.

These are all moving us forward towards a future where the world works

for all living things because our civilization thrives.

And then Shobani, design led, but innovation led.

I mean, found all these are founder-led companies.

I mean, ~ that's another interesting thing.

And so you have a lot of flexibility.

That's a big difference. Founder led versus,

you know, publicly traded versus,

you know, shareholder of pri for heaven forbid private equity or

Venture backed. I mean, those are very different models.

You know, if you want to make change happen,

don't go to a private equity company.

I mean, that's you know, that's just realistic.

~ no, so I think, you know, I feel really good about the companies that I've been

in where it's not a cost center,

where design was really supported and advocated for.

And Walmart is one of those huge,

huge companies, again, publicly traded but family held.

~

Where they took some real gambles and risks as the largest employer in the world,

second only to the Chinese army.

you know, ninety-eight percent of Americans are within ten miles of Walmart.

I mean, it is a monstrosity. And and they always thought design,

whether it was the store, whether it was the processes for their greeters.

I mean, I it's not my favorite.

I I'm not I'm not trying to advocate that Walmart's like the best corporate citizen

or anything else. I'm not making a judgment call.

I'm just sharing that like.

It was very thoughtful on every level,

whether it was sustainability,

whether it was scholarship programs for their staff,

whether it was, you know, their big,

you know, ~ s like party that they host every year in in Arkansas,

you know, for for shareholders.

I mean, it was design was always at the the forefront.

Well, in everything we do as a company,

I feel very conscious of the privilege that we have to,

you know, we

work with extraordinary companies,

we get to travel and see lots of different experiences in the world.

And I think we have a responsibility to share that experience

by, you know, pushing like ideas,

new ways of thinking, or actually tackling maybe thorny questions

to help

you know, encourage more people to travel by public transport.

but yeah,

using our design thinking to tackle tricky questions,

but also by putting those ideas out into the world to push that public discourse

around an area. So it's less about we own this.

We're just using our expertise and our knowledge to ~

Yeah, to make the world a better place and that might sound sound naive.

~ but that is the intention.

Yeah, use our expertise for yeah,

for for good. What sustains you when it gets hard?

The mission forms once. The work goes on for years.

The final three clips are from founders who know precisely what it takes

to keep going when the gap between where you are and

And where you need to be still feels very large.

And it's interesting. Anytime I'm dealing with a really big fire,

the universe gifts us a positive pregnancy report just to remind us that like you're

doing the right thing. I think I I question the done enough is probably

the biggest thing I do every day when I'm on my computer and either

I haven't had enough emails come through or I don't have enough appointments

in my calendar, or maybe

I didn't go out and actually knock on doors,

you know, and I had four hours and I couldn't have done that this morning.

You know, you questioned should you ~ and if you didn't,

are you doing enough for the people that are waiting on you to get,

you know, enough momentum so they can start making real good money,

right? So, ~ that's the biggest question.

I don't put what I have at stake.

I put what the people on my team have at stake,

right? So I always look at I will be the last person to get money.

~ so if I have, you know,

20 grand, I'm going to make sure that five goes to E,

five goes to E, five goes to E and five goes to to them.

And then maybe if there's anything left over,

you know. And so until we get to that moment,

I got to make sure that these guys,

because that's really where I'm at.

So my time in the day or the even in the week,

like on a Saturday, if I'm off,

off, ~ and I'm at a at a at a park with my daughter,

you know, I'm like, man, could I have done something today?

Should I, should I have done something today?

Or

It's Sunday and nobody's sending me emails,

of course, 'cause nobody's working.

And I'm like, I need somebody to send,

you know, I just need something.

I need an appointment for Monday.

I need, you know, something locked in,

right? So in in not even really about what the appointment is,

but staying active is the most important part of the game.

Someone else that I met that a a hero of mine for sure.

It's a gentleman called Peter Brock.

anyone that's into their cars will probably be aware of him.

He he designed the first ~ Corvette.

he was also the the lead engineer ~ at Shelby.

So he designed the the Shelby Daytona and Cobra.

This guy, he's he's in his nineties now,

and he's he's working with us ~ on a few projects.

And I I was really fortunate enough ~ at the start of this year to spend some time

with him. And by time I mean one of the cars turned up in the US at ten

pm at night and we needed to do a whole load of things to it.

check it and we want we wanted to sort of improve it for the next day.

This man in his nineties ~ stayed up all night until 7 a.m.

the next day. He was underneath the car.

He was lifting things heavier than I probably was at the time.

And it at that age he kept going all through the night and then went

to the event with us the next day.

And he did that because even though all the things he's done,

he says, I'm only actually interested in what I can do next.

Like what's happening next. That's the thing that excites me.

Like I don't I don't look back necessarily on on what's happened there.

And this man has you know, he's in the automotive hall of fame for

all the things he's done. but he looks forward and I think that's probably what what

really keeps us going as well.

~ I wish it didn't filter over into personal life,

Chris, 'cause it would save a lot of money on therapy,

but there we go. So that's it.

Fourteen guests. Each of them is linked below.

If any of this resonated, the full episodes go much further into the work,

the products

and the missions behind them.

Thanks for listening to Why Design.

If this episode gave you some new ideas,

share it with someone in your team who'd find it useful.

And follow the show so you don't miss what's next.

And if you're building a product team or looking for your next challenge

in design or engineering, that's exactly what we do at Codu.

We help companies hire smarter and faster,

and help great talent find work that actually fits.

I'm Chris White, connect with me on LinkedIn and let's keep raising

the bar for design leadership.

Until next time.

Stay curious, stay creative and keep asking why design.