“An instrument that's well designed won't become obsolete. But the tendency is for engineers to design musical instruments, and needless to say, being engineers, they design from the inside out. They design the circuits, and then they put knobs on them. But if a designer expects to design legitimate instruments, he has to design them from the outside in. He has to build the outside of the instrument first. This is what the musician is going to encounter. You cannot become obsolete if you design a legitimate instrument from the outside in”.

- Don Buchla, Keyboard Magazine, December 1982

All of the 1U modules that Don had designed for the 100 Series system follow this grid system. The grid allows for uniform distribution across modules, so each panel is perfectly symmetrical.

While this system is useful for repeat drilling procedures, it introduced other problems that most privileged people are not faced with. Don was very passionately focused on aiding the blind. One of Don’s independent contracts was for RCA (from 1961-1966), aiding the blind with a laser cane that would beep audibly to direct the user. This was almost a decade before the first commercially available laser cane (the Nurion Cane in 1970).

This compassion for blind composers and musicians led Don to work on making each panel for the 200 Series different, so a blind person would not confuse one module for another.