Best of Design Matters: James Dyson

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This episode of Design Matters originally appeared in June of 2025

**James Dyson** (0:06)
I mean, I'm a designer and an engineer. I'm not a money man or a manufacturer. I was making a product I loved.
Strange to love vacuum cleaners, but I did and still do.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:21)
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman.
On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, James Dyson talks about his life and some of the groundbreaking products he's designed.

**James Dyson** (0:44)
I wasn't aware that what I was doing was anything unusual or different. I was just doing it my way.

**Debbie Millman** (0:55)
My guest today is someone who has not only changed the way we clean our homes, but how we think about failure, invention and even the air we breathe.
Sir James Dyson is a British inventor, designer, entrepreneur, educator and philanthropist. First known for inventing the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner, James Dyson has built a global company that has reinvented how humans engage in and with technology. Sir James Dyson, welcome to Design Matters.

**James Dyson** (1:27)
Good morning.

**Debbie Millman** (1:29)
You have built a world changing company on the belief that the best ideas come from frustration, failure and relentless tinkering. You transformed not just how we clean our homes, but how we think about design, engineering and the very nature of invention. Sir James, my first question is this. What has mud taught you?
Mud.

**James Dyson** (1:56)
Mud. Mud. Well, not a lot.
I mean, I come across mud on my farms.

**Debbie Millman** (2:03)
Yes. I understand that when you walk, you get a lot of ideas and mud has helped inspire you with new thoughts about how things are made.
We don't have to answer that question. It just came up a lot in a lot of my research.

**James Dyson** (2:18)
Oh, really?

**Debbie Millman** (2:18)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

**James Dyson** (2:20)
Oh, well, I used to slide around on it when I was a child in the creeks of Norfolk.
And I guess it gets trodden into carpets and we have to clear it up, especially when it's dry. And we now clean it off hard floors with our hard floor washing machine, which I can just see behind me. And it turns into dust.

**Debbie Millman** (2:40)
Yeah.

**James Dyson** (2:40)
And we have to deal with dust.

**Debbie Millman** (2:41)
We can just skip that one. I just thought it would be fun to talk about because it came up a few times in my research.

**James Dyson** (2:46)
Oh, really? Yeah.

**Debbie Millman** (2:48)
You grew up in Norfolk, a home where your family grew their own vegetables and collected eggs from your hens. There was no television, not enough heating, no new toys and few, if any, consumer goods. Yet I read that your first memory is of being lowered into a swimming pool by your father who was teaching you how to swim.
What do you think it is about that experience that prompted such a visceral memory?

**James Dyson** (3:16)
Well, I was a very skinny little boy and it was being done while the swimming pool was filling up. So it was filling up full of freezing water. Remember this is Norfolk and there's nothing between me in Norfolk and the Arctic in one direction and Siberia in the other. So it was a pretty chilling experience. I remember that far more than the difficulties of learning to swim. I think I learned to swim very quickly just to get out of the water.

**Debbie Millman** (3:44)
Your dad has been described as a cheerful polymath, who was also a keen photographer. He coached the rugby and hockey teams at your boarding school.
He was also a teacher there of classics and you and your older brother attended the school as well. While at school you studied bassoon. You were part of the combined cadet force and acted in the school plays and design the sets. You were also an athlete and began long-distance running. What first drew you to running?

**James Dyson** (4:18)
As a young child I never walked. I always ran everywhere because I think I was in a hurry. I didn't see any point in walking. It seemed to be a waste of time.
And I then discovered I rather enjoyed it. I don't enjoy it now. I do it now. At the age of 78 I'm still running but I don't enjoy it now. But in those days it wasn't such hard work. It wasn't so painful. It seemed much more natural. I also liked it because I could get out into the countryside on my own, across the heathland and across the sand dunes, along the beaches. So it was a wonderful way to experience and feel the countryside.