"Friction," says Nordal Åkerman, "is what keeps you from realizing your goals…. It constitutes the divide between dream and reality." The opening remarks of a paper by the American designer Jay Doblin, that he worked on the end of his life echoed something of that perception. He stated: "Designers are frequently frustrated by a recurring phenomenon: consumers who should know better often seem to choose products of inferior design."¹ Yet although Doblin sought with great intelligence to analyse this phenomenon, he never explained it. There is as least a prima facie case for investigating the concepts of friction and inertia in the field of industrial design as a potential means of comprehending this gulf between aims and achievement that is so frequently left unexplored.