Electrical & Software Engineering

Product design and manufacturing are always more challenging when the wet stuff is involved.

Wireless updates are good for manufacturers and users who are worried about security concerns. But for product designers, they require extra planning.

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

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.

Launching nine to 12 months late can cost a project up to 50 percent of its potential revenues.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Meet ruggedized IoT devices, the next frontier in extreme product design.

Connecting a device to the Internet adds layers of complexity.

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.

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.

The acceleration of tech, and especially the mobile revolution, has deeply impacted both the consumer and medical device industries.

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.

These four steps for repeatable technical innovation have proven trustworthy for us on project after project.

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

Good product design considers how a product will be used, in what setting, and what the regulations affecting such usage might be.

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?

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.

The “fuzzy front end” of product development can pose some unique challenges for engineers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Learn about the 5 important factors to consider when deciding between an off-the-shelf or custom embedded display for your digital interface.

We asked our staff to nominate the biggest innovations of the past 12 months that will have an influence on product design.

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.

The vehicle expo area of CES has been one of the most exciting parts of the trade show in recent years.

At CES in 2019, Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg gave the opening keynote address about the upcoming advantages of 5G.

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.

The list of industries experiencing huge disruption fueled by “technology” is growing by the day.

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.

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.

Teach yourself to become a multilingual digital-physical product design practitioner using five simple strategies.

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.

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.

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

A list of emerging, innovative technology being developed to reduce carbon, geoengineer the environment, and improve battery efficiency and cooling tech.

The lack of age-awareness in design misses a golden opportunity for using tech to make our golden years better.

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

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.

The term design review can have a lot of different meanings depending on the context in which it is used.

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.

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?

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.

Engineering in the fun takes a willingness to say "yes" to a user-centered vision and mastering the mechanics.

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?

Increasingly, physical products leverage software to enable interesting features and deliver compelling differentiation.

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.

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.

Sure you can make your product "smart." But have you really assessed the desirability of doing so for your users?

Engineering details, manufacturing processes, and material choices can all be used to inspire your own designs and decisions.

I’m a fan of frameworks or techniques that help people understand our complex environment and reduce risk.

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.

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

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).

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.

Design Concepts recently won a Gold Spark Product Award for our industrial design of the Fitlinxx Ampstrip.

Is the IoT feeling overwhelmingly complex? Here's seven rules to extract simplicity from complex IoT product design projects.

I recently attended the O’Reilly Solid Conference in San Francisco, a fascinating few days examining hardware, software and the Internet of Things (IoT).

I’ve spent the week breaking in a spiffy new Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphone. Meh. It’s … fine.

A camera phone walks into a bar. The bartender says, “What is this, a joke?”

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.

Want to experience connected Zen? Grab a Lyft, the ride sharing service fueled by digital transactions.

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.

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.

Using the BioReactor we helped design and manufacture, Dr. Hopkins' team have reached a milestone in developing a process for replacing pediatric heart valves.