Consumer Products

Even great designs fail when manufacturability gets overlooked. Learn eight principles every designer should apply to reduce risk, avoid waste, and ensure your product is ready for real-world production. Need a broader strategy? Download our white paper on building resilient product development pipelines.

Early-stage product innovation is full of ambiguity. This article shows how to bring structure to that uncertainty—so your team can identify the right opportunity, align faster, and reduce downstream risk. Learn practical methods for clarifying vague challenges—and why that clarity is essential for successful product development.

Launching a product is just the beginning. In this article, you’ll learn why lasting innovation depends on how you plan for what comes next—from evolving user needs to version 2 improvements and system-level decisions. If your team is thinking past the launch, this article offers strategic considerations for sustaining momentum—and making smarter product decisions over time.

At Delve, our design philosophy seeks emotional outcomes through rational thinking. As with all things, our slant remains pragmatic as we gain more experience with multisensory design.

We're committed to sharing our favorite design principles. Here is part 3 from Delve's strategists, researchers, designers, and engineers.

Here are ten more of our favorite design principles, explained.

These are principles we’ve been curious about at some point during the course of our careers, and we thought others might be interested in learning more about them, too.

What could biology possibly have to teach engineers and designers?

Remember the Coolest Cooler? The most popular Kickstarter product of all time when it launched in 2018, the connected cooler was a perfect example of what happens when a hardware startup underestimates development and manufacturing costs.

Brands that push their products mostly via ad campaigns, websites, and packaging are missing an important opportunity: the point of connection.

We see startups encountering the same set of roadblocks over and over again. Here are the three biggest sore spots and our advice on how to get around them.

We’ve noticed a common thread running through all our work—research, strategy, mechanical and electrical engineering, industrial and interaction design—we make the complex simple.

Entrepreneurs going into hardware face a hefty learning curve, and missteps can end up costing them later in development.

Silicon Valley really speaks to us as interaction designers, user researchers, a mechanical engineers, and software engineers. There have been many times we wanted to jump into the screen and right the ship.

More and more, people are conditioned to interact with their objects. Products developed according to a siloed industrial design process have little chance of fulfilling these new expectations.

As the products we use every day become increasingly complex, the art of user onboarding has taken on greater significance. But there’s more to consider than simply front-loading your product with all the information your users might need to know.

How do you create an in-car interface that is engaging, exciting, easy to use, and doesn’t distract the driver?

Aging consumers are an ideal market, with plenty of free time and unprecedented disposable income. We should get serious about age-aware design and tech for older adults.

Headless provisioning is part of the unboxing experience — specifically, it’s the part when a user connects the device to the Internet for the first time. Unfortunately this process is often confusing for users.

Once upon a time, branding was good for companies but not so good for consumers. That’s no longer the story.

The real opportunity is to allow people to make their own meaning for the brand through their own unique experiences with it.

If your brand helps consumers solve a problem or achieve a goal as only your brand can, you have a product experience that will create a brand evangelist.

The most glaring difference between a smartphone and other UI-centric products is that a smartphone as a device doesn’t consider specific context of use. Here are some scenarios where smartphone patterns might not work.

Want your product to “look, feel, and act like an iPhone"? You can rely on some fundamental design principles that are universal to all mobile device experiences — many of which are informed by the ubiquity of smartphone and tablet devices.

We’ve identified technologies that will cause big and small shifts in the next few years and looked at how they are changing the practice of interaction design.

Moments of inspiration aren’t unusual at all; practically any product innovation you can name has benefited from several. And if they seem to happen out of the blue, it’s because that genius was primed.

We’re passionate advocates for user research and the critical role it plays in product design. But not all research is equal.

Brainstorming can be very effective - if we don’t get lazy. At Delve, We subscribe to the notion of “more brain; less storm.”

The short answer: Empathic design makes us better designers.

The clarinet led me to an exciting music career. Along the way, the clarinet also taught me six user experience design lessons.

Why do we regularly transform our usability lab into a kitchen, hospital room, garage, bathroom, living room? It’s not because we’re filming a movie.

Now that everything from phones to automatic sprinkler systems have functionality that requires an internet connection, most of our clients’ products need some kind of communications rig. Most often, that means a radio frequency antenna.

Whether I’m validating a medical device or working on the next big thing in VR technology, I always rely on five anthropological principles.

Outsourcing your engineering needs can be the answer—if you do it right.

People often think of brand consistency as it relates to advertising and communications. But it’s just as important for designers of products to consider brand consistency when creating a new design.

Prototyping for user research is a major consideration of product development and one that often confuses, because it’s not an exact science. There’s always a question of what to test and when, and there’s no one “right answer.”

Our role as human-centered researchers and designers is to advocate for a decolonized future of design in every decision-making task we take part in.

Design strategists often lead design-thinking workshops for clients using the research they’ve gathered in the field as jumping-off points for innovation.

In a research session, a moderator’s goal is to acquire as much knowledge as possible from potential users of the product based on their experience (or even a lack of experience).

Everyone has his own opinion regarding if and how brainstorming should be done. We use it frequently, but we’ve developed our own technique that is more structured than “stormed.”

What’s the point of doing user research? Why not just design a product based on your own point of view and your anecdotal understanding of people’s needs?

Research enables you to make good decisions throughout new product development, speeding up product development and creating a product that resonates with users. Here’s what research-driven NPD looks like.

Successful hardware innovators need confidence, foresight, and consideration to do something genuinely innovative.

At Delve, we don’t focus on design thinking for its own sake, but rather, on design thinking and doing. What does action-oriented design thinking look like?

There's no such thing as an average user.

To build better products, development teams need to integrate the hardware and software development processes. The design thinking mindset could provide the means to enable this reunification.

Get to know Jenny Westby, design researcher at Delve.

How much agency should a machine be allowed? For both medical devices and cars, the potential to save lives is very real. But the consequences of things going wrong could be catastrophic.

Sometimes the simplest designs are the most difficult to get right. Here's how we approach the design of a low-information-density user interface.

Without the right insights, a new technology is just a solution without a problem. Insights are the answer to tech for tech's sake.

We use Parametric CAD to design the majority of a wide range of new products. Here are some of the problems it helps us solve quickly and capably.

Inside every electronic device sold today – whether it’s a coffee maker, phone, automobile, or Mars Rover – is an embedded solution, or a combination of hardware and software that makes the thing run.

What do ancient farm tools have to do with contemporary gender inequality? According to the Plough Hypothesis, there’s a direct link.

As many as 95% of new products fail. To improve the odds in your favor, put users at the center of the design process and conduct user research early and often.

There are several methodologies available to speed up the development process. Which best fits your needs?

You’d be surprised how many startups come to us with excellent connected device concepts that have failed under routine, predictable environmental stresses.

Designers love to talk about the needs of the user. But what if the end user isn’t the person making the decision to buy your products?

When offshore manufacturing works well, it can be fast, cost-efficient, and deliver good quality. But often speed, price, or quality is sacrificed without the right vendor, relationship, and process.

A question we get often from new clients while drafting industrial design proposals is how many concepts they’ll be reviewing in the early phases of a project.

Using leading-edge parts comes with risks. You may have a great, even disruptive, product to debut, but realistically it needs to get to market before someone else beats you to it.

A couple of weeks ago I did a shop presentation to share techniques I’ve developed for making models come together in a more professional way.

Figuring out just how much sealing products will need is part of the design process.

In its infancy, CFD was complicated, expensive, and challenging—so it was only employed for complex projects like bridges and the space shuttle. Today, engineers use it to optimize everyday products that incorporate the flow of air, gas, and fluids.

Medical device companies can boost usability by adopting these consumer product development practices.

While a final product may appear to stand on its own, it’s actually buoyed by tiers of development. These include rounds of prototyping and testing.

A click is a universally recognized cue that an action is complete. Here's how to get the right sound and feel.

Today we have the ability to set up and interact with a VR-simulated prototype. As the technology continues to grow more accessible, can leverage it for product design, easily translating to faster turnaround and cheaper development costs.

Make sure your provider uses a well-known and secure method for communicating.

When you’re designing a connected device, there’s a lot of testing you can do before you get to the production-grade prototype. Here are a few examples of different fidelity levels of prototypes you can use to test early on in your IoT product development.

Connecting a device to the Internet adds layers of complexity.

Few inventions have had as significant an impact on our daily lives as the safety razor.

A bottom-line approach drives meaningless products. Here are four guidelines for making meaningful wearable tech.

It’s not uncommon for a new client to want to see 20 or 30 concepts during the initial design phase, believing this represents better value.

Regardless of what you're designing, the options you present to users should be simple and straightforward.

Adding a sensor or touchscreen to just about any product has become cheap and straightforward. But it doesn't always make things better for the user.

The ballpoint pen eliminated the need for messy fountain pens and all the problems that came with them. This breakthrough invention forever changed the way we write.

The Pareto Principle is a great tool for project teams when they’re trying to decide where to focus their energy and efforts.

Convincing discerning consumers to buy a home robot isn't easy. To earn a spot in our homes and our lives, “home bots” (and those designing them) must answer four important questions.

Design efforts to maximize battery run time typically focus on minimizing standby power, but an equal emphasis should be placed on designing for peak power.

Creating product requirements can seem like a straightforward task, but it has plenty of potential pitfalls.

These early attempts at wearable technology were innovative but flawed—and paved the way for the more advanced devices we have today.

As product engineers, we use FEA simulations to develop, test, and refine designs. These best practices allow us to move quickly while keeping simulation results accurate, honest, and affordable.

You’ve vetted your MVP design through low and medium-fidelity prototypes. Now use high-fidelity prototypes to amplify your MVP into a truly compelling offering.

Successfully troubleshooting these problems prior to product launch is in everybody’s best interest, and can be the most rewarding part of a project for an engineer.

I just spent six months researching experiential brand language for a client. Here's what it is, how to create it, and examples of great EBLs from Apple, Airbnb, REI, and, as the title promises, Taylor Swift.

We offer three UX “starter packs” to meet clients where they are. In addition to making product design more accessible, each approach puts user experience (UX) at the heart of the process.

It’s important to prototype and test soft materials at various stages in the product development process.

To develop the best version of your product, have you considered leveraging softer materials?

A multidisciplinary team has the edge in creating innovative, well-rounded solutions that meet the needs of all stakeholders.

Authentication is not appropriate for every product, but there are many applications where it's necessary for the manufacturer, end user, or both. Authenticating your consumables need not break the bank.

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

Not every product design is a home run. Here are 15 products we think could use some design help.

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.

Whenever your needs require you to conduct user research remotely, these strategies will allow you to answer the same fundamental questions as in-person methods.

We opened up wearables from leading companies to see how so much was packed into something so little.

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

How to create a successful product – whether you're designing a product that's physical, digital, or somewhere in between.

Warning: I’m going to criticize and question something beloved by millions of people—stationary exercise bikes.

40-90% of consumers base their buying decisions on color. Learn how to apply user-first design thinking to finding the right color in product design.

More than just compensating for the loss of in-person collaboration, digital whiteboards provide clear benefits, namely reducing barriers between disciplines and fostering more open, dynamic relationships with clients.

A primer on what, how and when the discipline of human factors is used in the design and development of products.

It’s not easy keeping it together under pressure. Yet these little marvels do it every day tens of thousands of times over. Do you know how staples are made?

The JOC method lets you move into ideation confident that you're working from something more than a hunch.

We’ve compiled some advice for those facing, or anticipating, the semiconductor shortage. These workarounds are useful when facing any kind of hardware part shortage.

If your home is your castle, during the pandemic it’s also your office, classroom, coffee shop/restaurant/bar, gym, entertainment venue, spa, and, yeah, that place where you sleep.

While we're all working in our homes, we thought it would be fun to check in with our team members to see how they're doing and what their new offices and co-workers look like.

Most products take anywhere from three to ten years to develop from idea to commercialization. But many companies rely on their understanding of consumers today to make decisions for these future products.

While we're all working in our homes, we thought it would be fun to check in with our team members to see how they're doing and what their new offices and co-workers look like.

Translating research into actions is often more art than science. We have found “how might we” questions to be useful tools. Here's how to write one.

Before starting on an innovation strategy, decide which type you're chasing: Incremental, disruptive, or radical innovation. Each requires a unique approach.

All right, who do I blame for this?

The Consumer Electronics Show always starts the new year off with a bang. It packs roughly 170,000 extra people from around the world into Las Vegas for a seizure-inducing week of stimulation.

The scope of the Advanced Design workshop was to walk students through the research, ideation, and early prototyping phases of creating a backpack.

Our team spent the second day of CES at Tech West, home base for health, wellness, home, wearable and fitness technology. It's also the hub for Eureka Park, where the scrappy startups vie for attention of venture capitalists and potential partners.

Our team spent the second day of CES at Tech West, home base for health, wellness, home, wearable and fitness technology. It's also the hub for Eureka Park, where the scrappy startups vie for attention of venture capitalists and potential partners.

We roamed the massive Las Vegas Convention Center the first day of the Consumer Electronics Show, better known as CES. Here are some additional fun things we saw.

Forecasting and backcasting provide a framework for disruptive innovation by establishing a solid structure to support big, strategic thinking.

We have a team roaming the massive Las Vegas Convention Center today at the Consumer Electronics Show, better known as CES. We'll be adding to this blog post throughout the day as we find cool stuff to share.

As 2019 winds to a close it’s time to make my annual appraisal of some of the more noteworthy products and events shaping world of design and Innovation. And the last year certainly saw its fair share of significant steps and missteps. So, let’s wade in with a few things I’ll remember that helped define 2019 for me.

I’d like to take the time and opportunity to reflect on our experiences at the Madison Mini Maker Faire and talk about each of the wonderful projects our team at Delve has been able to put together to share with the public, while hopefully inspiring young minds to be open and grow.

As I started to think about writing this blog, I realized that it might come off more as an Andy Rooney rant than “Oprah’s favorite things” this year. It feels like there have been more misses than hits.

How will you decide today what to design for 2030? Strategists look to megatrends to predict consumer behavior and futureproof strategy.

Robots unleashed; the emergence of hearables; sustainable plastics and processes — we weigh in the biggest innovations of 2019 to influence product design.

I, for one, am pretty excited that Elon Musk is bringing his 1980s sci-fi movie dreams to life.

Infrastructure has made all of the following innovations possible.

Humans are drawn to anthropomorphic form in product design. Here's how industrial and interaction designers can use this as a tool.

When we spotted our Orbit point-of-sale scanner in photos from the set of the latest Star Trek movie, we were tickled. And then we got to wondering.

With the growing demand for rugged design across sectors, product developers need help figuring out when to accommodate military specifications.

Good mapping makes products easier and more intuitive to use. Done well, it can create a powerful connection between a product and its users.

We asked our San Francisco team to share some thoughts on what that they find thought-provoking, inspiring and uniquely Bay Area.

Here’s my list of “a few-of-the-mostly-best innovations from the last year or so.”

What happens when all the engineers from Delve's three offices gather in Madison? We buy stuff and tear it apart to understand how it is made. Our product of choice? The robotic vacuum.

How can product designers apply Maslow's theory of human motivation to their work? A design won't succeed if it doesn't meet users' most basic needs.

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.

Nudge is a concept rooted in behavioral science that describes how minor changes in product design can markedly affect individual behavior.

The beginning of a new year is a great time for reflection – and what better to reflect on than the last year in design and innovation?

If the numbers don’t add up, great design isn’t sustainable — no matter how thoughtful it is. Design must ultimately serve the needs of the business as well as the user.

E-bikes, solutions for ocean-borne plastic, real-life Babel fish, 3-D printing metal, robot overlords, and more — we weigh in on 2018's biggest innovations.

Video is a great way to share a story with your audience. Learn how our Visual Communications team approaches making a video that breaks through the clutter.

Doing user research now won't help you design for 2028. Trend analysis will. Design strategists turn to it to predict consumers' future behavior.

Will the E-bike change the way Americans think about cycling?

Is a bidet on brand? Our San Francisco team did some research and debating to find out.

We're excited to open a new office in Boston to serve our current East Coast clients and grow our multidisciplinary innovation business.

A recent project with Make-A-Wish gave us the chance to make a meaningful connection with a family, which is a great benefit of product design.

The Tesla Model 3 has a front that upends expectations, and it's not pretty.

Creative Matrix is a brainstorming method that helps structure the necessary "in-between" work between research and ideation. We demonstrated the technique.

Engineers constantly balance two roles: the engineer responsible for understanding and mitigating risk, and the product developer considering the ideal customer experience and wanting to delight.

Explore some of the issues that need to be dealt with and acknowledged before a quick-turn electronic prototype can be put into high-volume production.

Sewing has its own language and rhythm that has surprising uses for prototyping.

Electronic devices today are expected to go where they’ve never gone before. Demand is growing for waterproof, rugged consumer and commercial electronic devices.

Moving 10 people and a 3,000-pound mill in San Francisco is quite the project. But the end result is worth it all.

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.

The increasing sophistication, diversity, and affordability of sensor technology for autonomous cars has rippled into the sports world. Did we see the results in PyeongChang?

Eating utensils require some sophisticated metal fabrication technology.

Launching a restaurant is the ultimate personal exercise in user-centered design.

Slowing down and practicing mindfulness in design can lead to better products.

Our new Model Shop in Madison helps our Prototype Specialists stay organized and protected from harmful dust and vapors.

“Do you know a place to get this made?” That’s a question we hear a lot from entrepreneurs looking for a manufacturing solution. It’s actually a very complex question.

Take a tour of our new Madison home with one of the design leaders behind it.

Design and dodgeball share a reliance on collaboration.

Putting the freeze on cream and sugar is what it’s all about at Dippin’ Dots.

As we move into our new space, one of the project managers shares the process behind the logistics and emotional side of moving.

Delve's VP of Design Mathieu Turpault reflects on major changes in industrial design in the last 25 years and predicts where it's headed.

Fighting bugs, storms and heat, design camp provides the challenge of putting ideas into interconnected motion.

Consumers have access to a hodgepodge of information on brands that they never had access to before, which makes it tough to control the brand experience.

A product that's beautiful to the eye but feels shoddy in the hand communicates volumes about a brand. Don't forget to design for touch.

When applied appropriately aesthetic design enhances the sophistication, functionality and overall value of a product. Try tuning into the following core aesthetic design trends to inspire your next creation.

The Switch has a lot of great features, but the modular design leads to some clunky compromises. Ultimately, does it matter?

How do we know the difference between a designer handbag and a knockoff?

Products designed for accessibility end up making life better for everyone.

Kickstarter and Indiegogo are littered with cool concepts that never hit the shelves. How can you navigate that chasm between vision and reality?

One of the best ways for engineers to learn about product design is to carefully examine other products. Engineering details, manufacturing processes, and material choices can all be used to inspire your own designs and decisions.

Delve's Model Shop creates a wide variety of models for concept validation and user testing. Learn more about the types of models we create.

Many of the simplest items we use every day require an amazing amount of effort to produce. Take, for example, the humble toothbrush.

I thought 2016's divisiveness seems like a good reason to revisit my "United We Stand" state flags project, tweak some, and make them available to download.

In the history of product innovation, there are famous successes – some arguably driven by new technology, and others that resulted from user research and insights.

When you have to make something where failure isn’t an option, you better make sure that it will work.

Disney fosters a greater sense of fantasy by concealing the mechanisms of personalization.

When we look back on an experience, we craft a narrative based on memory and emotion and the sum of our experiences. The same is true of how we process our experiences with brands.

Thoughtful multi-sensory design transforms the act of opening a perfume pouch into a sensuous expression of luxury.

Have you ever read an article about design trends and wondered, “Where on earth did THAT come from?”

The Lend a Handcycle project takes a leap forward with the selection of a scissor-jack design for seat adjustability.

What are the odds a new product will still be around in two years’ time? And, how do we decide what to design today?

We polled the office on favorite branded interactions and narrowed everyone’s nominations down to 15 brands who do it well. Here’s the list of brands and the interactions we consider to be successful.

An Electrolux from the '50s inspires a head-to-head comparison with a Dyson Animal. Let's just say there are some trade-offs.

International travel offers time to knit...so why not knit an experiment in uncertainty?

Progress is being made in our quest to design a fully adjustable hand cycle that can accommodate children with physical disabilities as they grow.

An energizing day at a Microsoft Accelerator Day for entrepreneurs provides a good reminder that above all, know thy customer.

What's behind the lack of useful thumb-reach and hand-grip data for designers of handheld devices, and how can designers gather their own?

Somewhere between a quick brainstorming session and rounds of frustrating debate, there's typically a sweet spot for naming a product.

LED technology opens up a world of possibilities and some new considerations for product design.

Many SxSW Interactive talks pondered the future of connected devices. What we can address now and how we may bridge the user-experience gap for the future?

A lunchtime decision to brave the midwinter cold led to a lunch that I unsuspectedly evaluated as a new experience.

Want some depression with those Doritos? In a confusing time both socially and economically, advertisers struggle to find the right tone.

At CES 2015, activity trackers were the bandwagon that many companies jumped on. Really? Isn't there something better to do with this technology?

Great board games are designed to foster creativity, collaboration and compromise.

Sometimes we need to embrace our inner Janet Jackson and be the ones in control.

What's in a flange? Well, when it comes to product design, it's the attention to details that can make all the difference.

Technology is making it easier to stay in the home and community you love as you age. That's a wonderful thing.

Instead of a nice story that reads like your favorite episode of This American Life, here’s a few thoughts on things I’ve noticed over the last couple months.

A few months ago, I was able to experience co-creation from the client side of things. I signed up for a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE workshop at Door County Forgeworks.

Making a difference and calling attention to important issues through design is more achievable once designers get over the fact that they're not artists.

We recently changed the name of our user interface design team to Interaction Design. The latter encompasses the dynamics of a user’s interaction with a system — including the user’s perceptual, cognitive, and physical interaction with the system, as well as the system’s response to the user.

If your design requires a photorealistic image to show it is different from prior designs, it may not be innovative enough.