Simone Giertz went big on YouTube making terrible robots. Now she has a new mission

Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman.

Simone Giertz started her career on YouTube building what she called “shitty robots”—deliberately flawed contraptions that made people laugh. But over the years, she’s evolved into a different kind of inventor. Now she tackles everyday problems through creative engineering. My personal favorite addresses a universal problem: You know those clothes that are too clean to put in the hamper but too dirty to hang in the closet? If they don’t end up on the floor, they’re liable to go on a chair, right? Simone recently created a gorgeous chair that’s designed to actually hold those garments on purpose, then subtly stow them away when you’re tidying up for company. Simone’s ethos is all about questioning why we use certain objects the way we do—and realizing that anyone can make up a new thing to make their lives a little better.

We recently got to chat with Simone about the benefits of bringing an outsider mindset to science and technology. Here’s her conversation with SciAm newsletter editor Emma Gometz.

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Simone Giertz: My name is Simone Giertz. I am from Stockholm, Sweden. And uh my job is that I am an inventor and YouTuber.

Gometz: What are you excited about what you’re doing right now in this phase of, uh, Simone Giertz?

Giertz: First of all, I’m excited for this helicopter to pass. There you go. It’s been 10 years, or we’re going on 11 years, and I think the thing I’m most excited about is that I, I feel like I’m in a completely new chapter of my career. I mean, I came up on the Internet building, like, robot comedy—I mean, the technical term is shitty robots, but you can beep that. And it was such a fun age and era to, to go through.

And then I kind of got tired of it and was like, “What do I do next?” And I was really interested in product design, and I started a product business and got into manufacturing, and it’s just been so cool to feel like I get to have this other chapter of my career that feels as big and important as that did.

Gometz: That’s lovely. Um, and what has you excited generally—like, right now as a creator, like, maybe not that you’re doing but that you’re seeing people do and that’s inspiring?

Giertz: It feels like the world is our build oyster in a lot of ways. Like, there are so many new tools that are coming on the market; I just got this really cool UV [ultraviolet] printer, so I can print really complex, uh, things, and that has me really excited. I think anything that kind of expands my world of making is, is really cool, and I think also it’s just so fun to see everybody storytelling on the Internet.

Gometz: Yeah.

Giertz: I can hate on my, my Internet feeds as much as I want, but there’s also just so many incredibly talented, creative people out there, and I think that there’s just a lot to be inspired by that other people are doing. People are doing more random stuff than ever before.

Gometz: Yes, very true.

Giertz: I want to think, at least

Gometz: I feel like at least I’m seeing a lot more random stuff that people are doing than ever before.

Giertz: Yeah. And I think, like, the Internet has given us a, a stage for random stuff and, uh, a purpose for random stuff, in a way. It’s just a really fun time to have a whimsical brain.

Gometz: That’s great. Um, and to kind of, like, dig a little deeper into that, like, what do you love about that process of invention and coming up with these things?

Giertz: The thing I love about inventing things is that there’s nothing that I know that is equal parts as humbling and empowering as trying to bring an idea to life. Like, there’s nothing that will make me feel as beaten down and at the same time as incredibly powerful and, like, a wizard, um, as, as having an idea and being like, “How do I bring this to life?”

And I just think it’s so cool to have a sketch on paper and then, when you’re actually able to hold the object in your hand, like, that is magic. I mean, it’s high-effort magic, but it’s still magic.

Gometz: Definitely. Um, I was looking at some interviews that you did, uh, online, and I thought there was an interesting thing you said about how, when you were starting out, you were working at an electronics company in San Francisco, and that context just didn’t feel right for you. Could you tell me a little bit more about, like, what you meant by that and, like, how you found your way to where you are and, and liking what you do?

Giertz: I think so much about finding yourself has to do with finding the context in which your weaknesses are strengths. And I experience that a lot in work. So I remember I had a government job, and I kept on telling myself that, like, “okay, I need to be okay with that things are moving really slowly. Like, I need to not just, like, bop around constantly. I need to be fine with that.” And then I was like, “Or maybe I should find a job where it’s a benefit that I can handle a lot of change and uncertainty.” Um, and I had that the same at, at the electronics company. It was, it was such a fun job, um, but I had a hard time getting excited about other people’s ideas and other people’s products.

Like, creative ownership means a lot to me, and, and you can, you can put whatever value you want on that, of, like, “Oh, maybe I have a big ego.” But instead of beating myself up about that, it’s like, embrace it and make the context in which that is a strength. And when there’s something that I have creative ownership of, I just kick into high gear in a different way.

And, uh, I, I had a hard time getting that enthusiastic when working for somebody else’s business.

Gometz: That makes sense. And kind of along that line, something else that you’ve spoken about is creative integrity and, you know, being a content creator, knowing that growth is a part of it, and views, and da, da, da, but then also making things that feel true to you. Like, I wonder about, like, how you balance those things and, and what—how you would define creative integrity.

Giertz: For me, creative integrity is making sure that I am proud of the things I’m putting out and that I’m, at the core, creating things for myself, and then it’s my job to find an audience who likes those things as well. So instead of trying to, like, cater to an audience or to a customer base, I’m like, “Okay, this is something I think is awesome. Uh, let’s try to find the people who also find—think that that is awesome.”

I think navigating that and still staying true to what you wanna do is, is really important. And that’s part of why I stopped building robots, because it didn’t feel right anymore, I felt like I had to fake my enthusiasm.

Gometz: Why did it turn out that way?

Giertz: I learned how to build things on YouTube. Like, I don’t have a degree of any sort and, uh, definitely did not study robotics in school. I came at it from a very, like, hands-up kind of way of, like, “I don’t know how to do this; I’m just gonna build machines.” And I think, as my skills grew, I started to feel like I was kind of beating myself down a bit. I was, like, making myself smaller and dumber than I actually am. So I feel like I outgrew that shtick. Also just getting older, you know? It’s like we’re, we’re having these long careers on the Internet, and of course, the thing that feels really right when you’re 26 isn’t gonna feel really right when you’re 36.

Um, and I think also something that played into it was that I, I went through really severe health problems. I had a brain tumor, and I went through brain surgery, and that was a period that was very severe. I mean, as much as there was a lot of humor in that as well, um, I didn’t necessarily feel like making myself to a clown on the Internet. I, I felt ready to actually stand by the things I was building and not be like, “Oh, my God, this sucks so much. Ha ha, look how silly I am.” Um, and that is really scary. Like, it’s really scary to be like, “Hey, I made something that I think is actually good.” It was the natural progression for me and for me to feel like what I was doing online was, was aligned with who I actually am.

Gometz: I’m curious about your relationship to this kind of self-taught nature that you have and, we’re a science publication, so, so many of the things that we’re asking people are about, you know, their relationship to traditional science and academia. Um, what would you say is your relationship to that institution? And, like, would you call yourself a science communicator at all? And … I, I don’t know.

Giertz: I—I mean, growing up, I really wanted to be a biologist. Like, I wanted to study animal behavior. That was my big dream. Um, and I think it could have worked out, but I think the rigidity of scientific institutions maybe wouldn’t have been super conducive. Like, I think I would have gotten very frustrated of, like, “Why can’t I just do it? Why do I have to wait for approvals and funds and, and, and things like that?”

Um, I think in terms of science communication, I’ve always thought of my videos as thoroughly uneducational. Like, I don’t teach anybody anything really. It’s not a how-to guide. It’s not like, “Okay, let’s learn about this mechanism or this engineering phenomenon.”

Um, but I think what you maybe could see them as is, as much as I hate the word, inspirational. If you learn these skills, this is what you could do, and I’m hoping that what I’m showing is a different example of engineering than most people are used to.

Gometz: Yeah. Could you speak a little bit more about that kind of, like, idea-to-finished-product process? Like what, what makes your process unique?

Giertz: What makes my process unique is how much I struggle, I think. [Laughs.] I don’t know. I, I call it flailing forward ’cause I feel like I’m just like, “Ah, how do I do this?” Um, but usually the way it starts is that I have an idea that I’m interested in, and that can be a problem or an object that I’m interested in exploring, and then I put it on my list of ideas, and I let it fester there for a little bit and then start sketching. And usually I’m gonna spend a couple of weeks, um, turning it into a project for YouTube.

And then, at the end of that, if I think that the project has product potential, or if I see that the audience reaction is really positive, um, I can pass it over to the, uh, design for manufacturing team and the product team—so basically be like, “Okay, let’s explore, uh, designing this for manufacturing and making sure, um, that we can manufacture it at scale.”

And then, once we’re ready to sell it to customers, then I can take it back to the YouTube channel and be like, “Hey, you can buy it now.” But usually that’s like two years later, so everybody has forgotten about it at that point.

Gometz: I think the thing I wanna know about is how you take delight from the science and engineering aspects of your work.

Giertz: The main thing that I take delight from is that I can abuse the tools in ways that people in other contexts can’t. Like, there’s such a disregard for, uh, both engineering and scientific principles, and there are a lot of creative liberties that I can take ’cause I’m just doing it in my backyard.

Um, so I think that is probably one of the things. But I, I think it’s…. There’s just something that is so delightful about being able to apply things in ways that other people wouldn’t. I remember when I worked at that electronics company in San Francisco, like, the electrical engineers there, to me, were like superheroes because they held all the secrets and the things that I wanted to learn, and I was like, “Oh, my God, you can build anything. Like, what are you using these skills for?” And they’re like, “Eh.” And I think that is the thing that really delights me is, is being able to take these skills and apply them in ways that people don’t expect.

Gometz: Yeah. It—would you say that, like, most of how you gained this experience was just through trial and error, like figuring it out on your own?

Giertz: For sure. It’s just throwing the kitchen sink at it and being incredibly frustrated. And I think if there’s anything that people might take away from my videos [it] is that when you’re going off-road in the sense that, like, you’re building without a manual, it’s really messy, and it’s not pretty.

Like, I feel like a lot of other people’s build videos are incredibly pretty and thoughtful, and everything joins perfectly. And I feel like, for me, it’s such a process of, of frustration and jubilation. And, um, yeah, it’s, it’s really…. There’s nothing clean about it.

Gometz: Yeah. I, and I think there might be benefits to that maybe in terms of, like, you learning or something. Would you say there are?

Giertz: Yeah, ’cause it’s, it’s all about building that resilience, the, kind of, grit to keep on trying. I think about this a lot in terms of how I wanna be as a person, both in my work but also in my personal life, is that the hardest material in the world is diamonds, but it’s not the strongest material in the world or the toughest material in the world because if you hit a diamond with a hammer, it will shatter.

Instead the toughest material in the world is something like a rubber because it’ll deform and it’ll bounce back, and I really aspire to be rubber. It’s like, “Yeah, I’m soft, and I will take impact, and I’ll get beaten up, but I won’t shatter. I’ll bounce back, and I’ll figure out a way to adapt and to reshape and to, uh, to kind of overcome all the problems that life throws at me.”

Gometz: Yeah. That’s fantastic. What have been some of the challenges that you have overcome? Like, has gatekeeping been a thing? Has being a public persona been a thing? Like, what are, what are the challenges that have, kind of, you’ve had to get around?

Giertz: I think overall, life has been incredibly kind to me. I’ve been so lucky in that, like, I was raised in a really amazing family with very supportive parents. The Internet has been weirdly kind to me. Like, I have the nicest comment sections of, of any place I’ve seen. I think the challenges that I’ve had have mostly been internal, and one of those was that I, I used to struggle with really severe performance anxiety.

Gometz: Like, for your videos? Or …

Giertz: No, for grades in school. So I was, like, completely—if I got a B on a test, I would cry. I was so mortified of, of, of failing or of not performing. I still have, like, going bowling with friends is one of my biggest nightmares because I get such bad performance anxiety, and I’ll be like, “What if I make a fool out of myself?”

And I think that, like, navigating around that has been really tricky, but—and like, learning how to forgive myself for being imperfect has been really tricky. And I think one of the mantras that I’ve adopted is, like, I’m so proud of myself for trying, and whenever I do something that didn’t really go my way or if I go bowling with friends or if I, if I do this thing, I’m like, “You know what? The big failure would be if I was too scared to try, and I’m so proud of myself for trying.” I think that has probably been one of the biggest, like, mental hurdles to overcome. And now I think of it like I—the way I phrased it the other day is that I’m a Ravenclaw who’s letting herself be in her Hufflepuff era.

Gometz: Hmm. Yeah.

Giertz: [Laughs.] Where I’m like …

Gometz: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Laughs.]

Giertz: I’m definitely, like, Ravenclaw, but I’m like, “You know what? I don’t wanna do that. I’m just gonna be in my, in, in my Hufflepuff self and, um, dillydally in the workshop.” So …

Gometz: A Ravenclaw that’s gone to therapy. [Laughs.]

Giertz: [Laughs.] Yeah, pretty much. It is like, you know what? It’s okay to do things because they’re fun. Uh, and it doesn’t have to, like, that, that things are, are hard or prestigious doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re more important, and that was the whole mindset that, that led me down this path, and that I have this, like, career that I never imagined that I would get to have. Like, I’m so incredibly lucky, but it’s all because I let myself, um, and I was fortunate enough to be able to let myself, um, just do things because they were fun and because I thought that they were interesting, uh, but without having, like, a, a goal with them necessarily.

Gometz: Something that I really find compelling about the kinds of projects that you’ve been taking on lately, like I was watching the fruit bowl video and the laundry chair, of course. Like, they’re, they’re really solving, like, legitimate problems that people have run into every day. It’s not divided by like, you know, class or whatever. Like, it’s…. They’re, they’re problems that people I feel like didn’t even realize there could be a solution for, but they’re so common. Why is that type of thing really creatively exciting to you to, like, solve those problems?

Giertz: I think I’m a combination of incredibly lazy and incredibly ambitious because there are these little mundane problems where I’m like, yeah, with the fruit bowl, I got frustrated because I always felt like my fruit bowl was too small or too big. And it’s like, yeah, I could just switch out my fruit bowls and have three of them, depending on—but I’m like, “No, I’m gonna spend years, literally years developing this fruit bowl that mechanically changes size depending on how much fruit you have.”

Um, but it’s just such a fun place to be in because it forces you to rethink the things that you take for granted and the objects that you take for granted. Like, it’s so embedded in your brain what a, a bedroom chair looks like or what a coat hanger looks like. And once you start questioning that and being like, “Okay, but how could it be different?” It forces you to use so many parts of your brain and kind of go further back down the design tree. And I think what’s, what’s really cool about that is you realize that all the objects we have around us are mostly just things that people made up, and you can be one of the people that makes those objects up.

Gometz: Yeah. Yeah. Um, the last, like, question that I wrote, that I’ll be asking you right now is, uh, you were saying, you know, there’s kind of inspiration to it. Your, I—your content gives me hope. Do things feel hopeful on your end of the table? Like, does your, does the response to the content make you think, like, “This is great, like, people are interested in learning and, and, and in trying new things, or are we feeling concerned?”

Giertz: I wish I felt more hopeful than I do. I think about it in this way. I used to get into a lot of trouble because I cuss in my videos. Like, it’s never anything that I think is offensive. Like, it’s never anything that’s derogatory. And I think overall my videos are incredibly wholesome.

Gometz: Yeah. [Laughs.]

Giertz: And I think something, something that gives me hope is that you can build a career and be a person that is heard without baiting people’s anger. And I see other content creators who are the same. Like, they’re really, like, as much as we’re fallible and we’re navigating being in an incredibly capitalistic environment, it’s, like, we’re really trying to be good people in very public positions and communicate good values and, uh, good information and everything. And I think that gives me hope that there’s like…. You know, the Internet really rewards the worst of us in a lot of ways, uh, and seeing it also reward really good people gives me hope.

Gometz: That’s great. Um, can you elaborate a little bit on what’s preventing you from reaching this hope peak, uh, that maybe is, you’re struggling with?

Giertz: I mean, the dismantling of scientific institutions is really hard, and all the backsliding and religion taking a center position in policymaking is just wild. Um, yeah. I, I think it feels like we are in a time of incredible potential, and we’re squandering that potential by backsliding. Um, so I think that’s what’s preventing me from being hopeful. But also, you know, we humans are inherently humans, and we ebb and flow in how terrible we are. Um, but I think at the core, um, we mean well, and we deeply care about other beings.

I’m just so grateful for the work that people in science do and for the people in science communication. I think it’s, it can be incredibly disheartening, and especially realizing that people build their own truth. And even if you have evidence-based good science, people are gonna be like, “Nah.” Um, but it’s still so incredibly important. So yeah, thanks everybody who’s weathering the storm that we’re currently in.

Gometz: Amazing.

Giertz: Final word from my dog here.

Gometz: Wow. Scraps is his name?

Giertz: Yes, her name is Scraps. Good job. You did good.

Gometz: She’s great.

Feltman: That’s all for today’s episode. We’ll be back with more on Friday.

Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak and Jeff DelViscio. This episode featured reporting by Emma Gometz and was edited by Alex Sugiura. Marielle Issa and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.

For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. See you next time.