Electrical & Software Engineering
Our experts do a lot of thinking. Here's the latest to unlock your potential.
Concept FMEA for Engineering During the Fuzzy Front-End of Development
The “fuzzy front end” of product development can pose some unique challenges for engineers.
Read more
A Cost-Effective Approach for Authenticating Consumables
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.
Read more
How to Design a Medical Device as Safe as an MRI and as Intuitive as a Nest
Medical device manufacturers need to design for a new kind of user. This has big implications not just for the devices they design but also for how they do business.
Read more
A Better Way to Develop A Medical Device with Digital and Physical Elements (Part 2 of 2)
We’ve been experimenting with a new methodology for designing medical devices with hardware/software interactions. Here’s what a new, holistic development process might look like.
Read more
Biggest Innovations in 2022 That Influenced Product Design
A coffee pod system without a plastic pod. Headphones that read your mind. A touch-sensitive prosthetic hand. Check out the biggest innovations to influence product design in 2022.
Read more
Off-the-Shelf or Custom Embedded Display for Your Digital-Physical Product?
Learn about the 5 important factors to consider when deciding between an off-the-shelf or custom embedded display for your digital interface.
Read more
15 Biggest Innovations of 2021 to Influence Product Design
We asked our staff to nominate the biggest innovations of the past 12 months that will have an influence on product design.
Read more
CES 2021: Transportation tech promises a cleaner, safer future
The vehicle expo area of CES has been one of the most exciting parts of the trade show in recent years.
Read more
CES 2021: 5G starts revealing its potential
At CES in 2019, Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg gave the opening keynote address about the upcoming advantages of 5G.
Read more
CES 2021: Home is where everything is
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.
Read more
Transforming engineering
The list of industries experiencing huge disruption fueled by “technology” is growing by the day.
Read more
The 6 tests to tell if you should buy or design that component
More often than not, designing your cool new product relies on some new widget. You’re not sure if you should design your own or buy one from a supplier. What if there was a straightforward way to decide?
Read more
How you can help design succeed
Over the years, there have been designers still young in their careers that have come to me looking for advice and ideas of what to do next. They’ve all told me their tales of woe about how design is just not respected or understood where they work. And this, of course, coincides with their (and design’s) struggle to find a solid footing within the organization.
Read more
CES never fails to entertain
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.
Read more
From Digital to Digital-Physical Product Design
Teach yourself to become a multilingual digital-physical product design practitioner using five simple strategies.
Read more
CES 2020: Day two
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.
Read more
CES 2020: Day one cool stuff
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.
Read more
CES 2020: Day one
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.
Read more
Dave’s 2019 Year in Review
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.
Read more
13 Biggest Innovations of 2019 To Influence Product Design
Robots unleashed; the emergence of hearables; sustainable plastics and processes — we weigh in the biggest innovations of 2019 to influence product design.
Read more
Innovative Technology To Combat Climate Change: Our 7 Favorite Solutions
A list of emerging, innovative technology being developed to reduce carbon, geoengineer the environment, and improve battery efficiency and cooling tech.
Read more
Virtual empathy
A few months back, I wrote a short blog post about the power of VR and using it within the design process.
Read more
Our DIY Split-Flap Display: An Adventure in Inefficient Nostalgia
We weren't setting out to invent something radically different, but we wanted to prove to ourselves that we could make our own split-flap display.
Read more
Running effective engineering design reviews
The term design review can have a lot of different meanings depending on the context in which it is used.
Read more
2018 Year in Review: Service Design
Here’s my list of “a few-of-the-mostly-best innovations from the last year or so.”
Read more
Why is the Roomba so expensive? Why are the knock-offs so cheap?
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. We picked two competitors – the Roomba from iRobot that created the category and the Pure Clean knockoff.
Read more
To infinity and beyond
What’s a bigger number, the total number of atoms in Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s body or the total number of microprocessor clock cycles since the dawn of time?
Read more
13 Biggest Product Design Innovations of 2018
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.
Read more
Engineering in the fun
Jonathan Spangler feels like he has played “Folsom Prison Blues” to more audiences than anyone in history.
Read more
Sensors for the Win! How Auto Industry Tech Drives Superior Olympic Athletes
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?
Read more
Life cycle considerations in the age of software-enabled products
Increasingly, physical products leverage software to enable interesting features and deliver compelling differentiation.
Read more
From rockets to fidget spinning: 2017 year in review
The end of a culturally and socially tumultuous 2017 and this year’s Consumer Electronics Show provides a great reason to take stock of the previous year in the world of design.
Read more
Technical summary: Supercapacitors
Rapid invention and evolution in the state-of-the-art have made it difficult to stay versed in the ever-growing variety of components, devices, and technologies that could be used in the design of a product.
Read more
IoT: Just because you can doesn't mean you should
The Internet of Things (IoT) presents an amazing opportunity to make many things better. With over 50 billion devices expected to be connected by 2020, some experts say IoT is bigger than the internet itself!
Read more
Six Teardowns That Inspire Design Innovation
Engineering details, manufacturing processes, and material choices can all be used to inspire your own designs and decisions.
Read more
Using the 5Ds of IoT for medical devices
I’m a fan of frameworks or techniques that help people understand our complex environment and reduce risk.
Read more
Of MGBs and multidisciplinary machines
I was given a personal example of the power of a multidisciplinary approach to innovation a few weekends back when I found myself coincidentally working on very similar parts of cars built in two very different eras.
Read more
OneWeb user terminal and solar array design wins IDEA
Delve, formerly Design Concepts, has been named a winner in the 36th annual International Design Excellence Awards® (IDEA®) conducted by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA).
Read more
The future of engineering
Recently, I was asked by the University of Wisconsin to share
my thoughts on the future of engineering education as the keynote speaker at
their 2016 Engineering Innovation Showcase.
Read more
AmpStrip Design Wins Spark Award
Design Concepts recently won a Gold Spark Product Award for our industrial design of the Fitlinxx Ampstrip.
Read more
Finding simplicity in the complexity of the Internet of Things
The Solid Conference – Hardware, Software & the Internet
of Things (solidcon.com), recently held in San Francisco, is touted as a revolutionary
conference that goes beyond the Internet of Things.
Read more
Designing a Family Internet of Things (FIoT)
I recently attended the O’Reilly Solid Conference in San Francisco, a fascinating few days examining hardware, software and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Read more
When better isn’t good enough
I’ve spent the week breaking in a spiffy new Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphone. Meh. It’s … fine.
Read more
Combine, separate or connect?
A camera phone walks into a bar. The bartender says, “What is this, a joke?”
Read more
A system approach to advanced LED product design
Light emitting diode (LED) technology has developed quickly over the last decade. Once only the familiar red dot indicating power was “on,” LEDs can now replace traditional incandescent and fluorescent lighting as our primary source of illumination.
Read more
The Internet of (Disconnected) Things
Want to experience connected Zen? Grab a Lyft, the ride sharing service fueled by digital transactions.
Read more
Diving into the intensity that is SxSW Interactive
I knew that South by Southwest (SxSW) Interactive has long been a tech magnet, but I felt that connection firsthand when I went to book my flight to Austin from San Francisco.
Read more
Six things to consider as the Internet of Things intersects medical devices
We’re on the verge of a fascinating intersection—perhaps collision—as the world of Internet of Things (IoT) technology begins to deeply encroach into the world of medical device development.
Read more
BioReactor could have big impact on saving small hearts
We recently heard from a valued client of ours and learned some great news. Using the BioReactor we helped design and manufacture, Dr. Richard Hopkins and his team at Children's Mercy Hospital, Kansas City, have been able to reach a major milestone in their development of a process for replacing heart valves in children.
Read more
Read our observations on product development and the latest industry trends in our product innovation blog.