Electrical & Software Engineering

Advice for product innovation, design, and development
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Wet and Wild: Our Favorite Fluidics Design Challenges
Product design and manufacturing are always more challenging when the wet stuff is involved.
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What Do Over-the-Air Updates Mean For Product Design?
Wireless updates are good for manufacturers and users who are worried about security concerns. But for product designers, they require extra planning.
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Consumer Medical Devices: 5 Design Practices for Usability
Medical device companies can boost usability by adopting these consumer product development practices.
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Making Tech Accessible: How To Bake Accessibility into Software Development
At Delve, we believe that mobile, voice, and “interfaceless” applications should consider accessibility before the first line of code is written or the first wireframe is constructed.
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Don’t Launch Late! Four Ways to Reduce Risk in Connected Device Development
Launching nine to 12 months late can cost a project up to 50 percent of its potential revenues.
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How Making an IoT Product Is Like Making a Movie
Creating a connected device is a bit like making a movie: it has a beginning, middle, and end; challenges to overcome; and an ultimately victorious hero, the user.
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‘Tell, Don’t Ask’ Is a Design Principle for Simplified Embedded Systems
There are an infinite number of ways to write the software for an embedded system. How do you decide which way is the right way?
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On-Ramp To IoT: Prototyping Your Connected Device
You've grasped the basic anatomy of an IoT device, identified how you’ll connect with and begin to communicate with the cloud, and selected a cloud service provider. It’s time to get prototyping.
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On-Ramp To IoT: Selecting a Cloud Provider
Make sure your provider uses a well-known and secure method for communicating.
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On-Ramp To IoT: Getting Connected and 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.
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Rugged IoT: Creative Solutions for Extreme IoT Product Design
Meet ruggedized IoT devices, the next frontier in extreme product design.
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On-Ramp To IoT: Anatomy of a Connected Product
Connecting a device to the Internet adds layers of complexity.
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7 Principles for Designing Great Digital-Physical Products
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.
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Designing Consumer Robotics? Answer These Four Questions First
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.
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3 UX Trends Reshaping Medical Product Design
The acceleration of tech, and especially the mobile revolution, has deeply impacted both the consumer and medical device industries.
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How To Maximize Battery Run Time in Mobile Electronic Devices
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.
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Implement the Vision: Four Steps to Breakthrough Technical Innovation
These four steps for repeatable technical innovation have proven trustworthy for us on project after project.
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A Guide to Developing Better Product Requirements
Creating product requirements can seem like a straightforward task, but it has plenty of potential pitfalls.
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Designing an IoT Medical Device? Four Factors To Consider
Good product design considers how a product will be used, in what setting, and what the regulations affecting such usage might be.
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Design or Buy? 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?
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On-Ramp To Electronic Product Design: Troubleshooting Bugs in Electrical Products
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.
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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.
2023 03 27 Authenticate Consumables HERO
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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What Mini Electronics Are Inside Tiny Wearables?
We opened up wearables from leading companies to see how so much was packed into something so little.
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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.
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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.
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How To Manage Product Development During a Parts Shortage
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Transforming Engineering
The list of industries experiencing huge disruption fueled by “technology” is growing by the day.
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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.
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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.
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From Digital to Digital-Physical Product Design
Teach yourself to become a multilingual digital-physical product design practitioner using five simple strategies.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Four Promising Technologies for Age-Aware Design: Let’s Think Actively About Aging!
The lack of age-awareness in design misses a golden opportunity for using tech to make our golden years better.
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Virtual Empathy
VR is an extremely powerful storytelling tool and powerful stories are fueled by giving people a sense empathy. More empathy is better for everyone.
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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.
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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.
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2018 Year in Review: Service Design
Here’s my list of “a few-of-the-mostly-best innovations from the last year or so.”
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Engineering in the Fun
Engineering in the fun takes a willingness to say "yes" to a user-centered vision and mastering the mechanics.
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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?
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Life cycle considerations in the age of software-enabled products
Increasingly, physical products leverage software to enable interesting features and deliver compelling differentiation.
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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.
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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.
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IoT: Just because you can doesn't mean you should
Sure you can make your product "smart." But have you really assessed the desirability of doing so for your users?
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Six Teardowns That Inspire Design Innovation
Engineering details, manufacturing processes, and material choices can all be used to inspire your own designs and decisions.
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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.
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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.
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UX Takeaways from Disney: Wherever Possible, Make It Personal
Disney fosters a greater sense of fantasy by concealing the mechanisms of personalization.
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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).
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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.
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AmpStrip Design Wins Spark Award
Design Concepts recently won a Gold Spark Product Award for our industrial design of the Fitlinxx Ampstrip.
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Finding simplicity in the complexity of the Internet of Things
Is the IoT feeling overwhelmingly complex? Here's seven rules to extract simplicity from complex IoT product design projects.
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).
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When better isn’t good enough
I’ve spent the week breaking in a spiffy new Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphone. Meh. It’s … fine.
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Combine, separate or connect?
A camera phone walks into a bar. The bartender says, “What is this, a joke?”
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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.
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The Internet of (Disconnected) Things
Want to experience connected Zen? Grab a Lyft, the ride sharing service fueled by digital transactions.
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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.
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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.
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BioReactor Could Have Big Impact on Saving Small Hearts
Using the BioReactor we helped design and manufacture, Dr. Hopkins' team have reached a milestone in developing a process for replacing pediatric heart valves.
"Delve brings strengths that we don't have, which is why I'm looking forward to working with them again."

Vamsee Pamula, Founder & President, Baebies