Be Inclusive

Only about 19% of professional industrial designers in the United States are women.

How do you design better products for women? Our female researchers, designers & engineers compiled seven principles for individuals and companies to consider.

Leadership diversity matters because having different perspectives and experiences drives innovation and helps companies to design better products. This is even more important when it comes to medical devices, where patients’ health and lives are at stake.

Designers have a responsibility to design a world that all want to live in. Here are three principles that can help us navigate the complexities of design decision-making and truly achieve design success.

What comes before and after you walk in your users' shoes? We distill empathic design into six principles for easy adoption.

Ami Verhalen, Vice President of Design, and Stefanie Norvaisas, Vice President of Insights and Strategy will be presenting a workshop called "Decision Making and Bias: Your Role in the Design Process and How to Manage It" during the Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA) Women in Design Deep Dive. The virtual event will be held October 6-7.Here's a description of their workshop: "Decision making can be treacherous, particularly in design where selecting options can feel subjective, emotional, and risky. As women design leaders, we’ve been in the places where decisions are being made for over 20 years. We’ve realized that as tough as it was to get a seat at the table that’s not enough—as leaders we need to shepherd our teams to decisions they can feel good about. Born out of our experiences and frustration with the lack of process around decision making, we studied its mechanisms and learned how physical, cognitive, social, and cultural biases affect it. We developed a process that helped us find our voice and enable decisions that stick. In this presentation, we will share lessons we’ve learned as well as tools and methods that will help you effectively design the decision-making process. You will receive a copy of our workbook, “Designing Good Decisions,” to help you take the lessons from our presentation and apply them on the job."IDSA is committed to making this event affordable and accessible to everyone. The event has a "choose your rate" ticket that ranges from $25 to $100, so make sure to reserve your spot.

As my beloved country seethes in turmoil over the horrible and unjust killing of George Floyd, I - like everyone I know - have struggled to make sense of a senseless situation, and formulate some sort of coherent comments.

VR is an extremely powerful storytelling tool and powerful stories are fueled by giving people a sense empathy. More empathy is better for everyone.

Let’s suppose, hypothetically speaking of course, that a product exhibited at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) could be used to cause severe bodily harm with a weapon to another human.

Though we work in the service industry for larger corporations on a day-to-day basis, some of my favorite opportunities come in the form of community work.

Our world is in flux. We are all aware of this. As designers, it’s helpful to step back and consider our role in shaping our rapidly emerging future.

Accessible, also called assistive, designs that consider the needs of the disabled are often adopted more widely as others find new uses for them.

We recently met with the adaptive sports experts at No Limits Kids Fitness to choose one of several design approaches for our hand cycle.

In late 2014, Design Concepts worked with No Limits Kids Fitness to launch an Indiegogo campaign to help us build a prototype of an adjustable hand cycle that grows with kids with physical disabilities.