Deconstructing Product Design

FuBar Functional Utility Bar

David Richardson and Stanley Tools, 2006

1. It is said that when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. The genius of the FuBar is the recognition that this age-old maxim is no longer true for modern construction workers. For this user group, when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like something to demolish — those now customarily armed with nail guns use their hammers for demolition. The challenge then becomes actualizing this new understanding in the redesign of a product that hasn’t significantly changed in hundreds of years. Joe Martone, Stanley product designer, comments, “We wanted to make it look aggressive, almost medieval, so that nobody would mistake it for an ordinary ...