Engineering
Advice for product innovation, design ,and development
Non-Finito Prototyping: A New Technique for Digital-Physical Product Design
In art, an unfinished work remains unfinished. In design, an unfinished work opens up possibilities for the user.
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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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Ingenious Engineering: Ballpoint Pens
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.
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Applying the Pareto Principle to Product Development
The Pareto Principle is a great tool for project teams when they’re trying to decide where to focus their energy and efforts.
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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 affected 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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How Design for Misuse Creates Safer Products
Design for misuse is less about modifying users' behavior and more about allowing a tool to continue to be functional, given the likelihood of certain behavior.
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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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Our Product Engineers’ Best FEA Simulation Tips
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.
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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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How Root Cause Probing Improves Medical Device Design
Often, users don’t know why they made a mistake, so the art of Root Cause Probing is digging deeper to uncover what went wrong. To do this, human factors researchers have some tried-and-true methods.
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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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How Affordance Makes Medical Devices Safer
Have you ever tried to pull open a door, only to look down and see a sign that says “push”?
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A History of AI in Engineering from the 1970s to Today
With the transformative potential of new AI tools like ChatGPT on everyone’s mind, it’s easy to forget that artificial intelligence has been used in product design and engineering for many years.
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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.
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19 Uses for AI in Product Development
The Delve team explores AI’s place in our product development process.
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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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How the Consumerization of Healthcare is Transforming Medical Device Design
Patients are becoming empowered consumers of healthcare. They bring to medical devices the high expectations formed from their experiences with highly intuitive consumer products—as well as greater risk.
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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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A Better Way to Develop a Medical Device with Digital and Physical Elements (Part 1 of 2)
Next-generation medical devices with hardware/software interactions need a new, holistic development methodology.
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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 Can Data Science and Machine Learning Do for You?
Here are nine examples across different sectors of how data science and machine learning can help unlock the power of your data.
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5 Groundbreaking Health Innovations Powered by Data and Machine Learning
Advances in data science and machine learning are transforming healthcare and public safety. Countless lives will benefit. Here are five inspiring examples.
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COVID-19 At-Home Tests: A Game Changer, But at What Cost?
Home self-testing kits have played a crucial role in managing the spread of COVID-19 in the US, but a steep environmental price is hidden in the societal benefit.
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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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A New, Comprehensive Medical Device Design Process Flowchart
Having trouble deciphering the FDA waterfall diagram process for medical device design and development? You’re not the only one.
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The Role of Human Factors in Product Design
A primer on what, how and when the discipline of human factors is used in the design and development of products.
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Why IoT Data Collection Is Essential To Get Right
IoT data collection impacts data deployment, sensor selection, security, and more. It's at the core of every smart product's user experience — and success.
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Design for Sterilization of Medical Electronics
Learn design techniques to maximize device reliability for common sterilization processes — autoclave, ethylene oxide, and ionizing radiation.
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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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Design for Manufacturing: 7 Things Every Designer Should Know
Designers and engineers share responsibility for design for manufacturing (DFM), or designing products for optimized manufacturing ease and cost.
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Top 5 lessons from Badger Shield project
Badger Shield gave me the opportunity to collaborate with an amazing group of men and women this year – designers, suppliers, manufacturers, and customers. I expect to have built lifelong collaborators and friends through this trial by virus. (For background, read the article in Wired).
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Universal PAPR hood design
Download the hood design and supporting documentation
The Badger Shield team has not rested since Lennon Rodgers, Director of the Grainger Engineering Design Innovation Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, requested help to make face shields for the UW Health System in mid-March. You can read about our effort here.
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PAPR hood for healthcare heroes
Days after receiving their first shipment of Badger Shields from Midwest Prototyping, the University of Wisconsin Hospital sent Lennon Rodgers of the UW-Madison Makerspace a list of their top 10 most critical needs to build up a supply of protective equipment ahead of the anticipated mid-April peak of COVID-19 cases in Dane County. Near the top of this list were Powered Air Purifying Respirators (PAPR) blowers and hoods.
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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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Advanced Design goes to school
Advanced Design is a nonprofit design organization founded in 2016. This group began as a small design sketching workshop at the University of Illinois at Chicago for a handful of students who wanted to further develop their foundational skill set. These students, eager to bring the contagious energy of their workshops to the larger design community, wanted more.
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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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Countdown to MDR: Are You Ready for the New EU Medical Device Regulation?
How does the new EU Medical Device Regulation relate to human factors and usability? It depends if your medical product is existing or new.
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Will it recycle?
Have you ever considered what happens to the materials you put into the recycling bin after they are picked up from your curb?
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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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Designing Military-Grade Products: The What, Why, and How
With the growing demand for rugged design across sectors, product developers need help figuring out when to accommodate military specifications.
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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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Notes on 2/28 Stanford Discussion on Machine Learning
Last night, I attended a pretty cool panel discussion at Stanford’s D-School on “Designing Machine Learning.”
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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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Research realized: Urgency understood
I am fortunate to be working with a great client in the medical equipment industry within a very meaningful product category.
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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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IoT Geolocation: How To Choose the Best Technology for Your Device
Environment, ruggedization, location resolution, and update rate are the framing questions that lead to the right geolocation technology for an IoT device.
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VR: From “Dactyl” to practical
I had my first virtual reality (VR) experience at an arcade called Aladin’s Castle located in the Brookfield Square Mall in suburban Milwaukee in 1991.
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Green eggs and electric ham
As far as I can remember cycling has always been a part of my life in some form or another.
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Pushing each other along
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.
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Front ends, air flow, boats and aesthetics
So I promised our marketing department I’d do a blog on our recent adoption of a telemedicine benefit for our employees.
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#InstantGratification
“Wait. Is that it? Did the needle already go in? I can’t believe it!”
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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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Degrees of Sealing: Designing Rugged, Waterproof Enclosures for Electronic Devices
Demand is growing for waterproof, rugged consumer and commercial electronic devices. Ingress Protection (IP), NEMA, and MIL-SPEC are the three main rating systems that indicate a product's level of sealing.
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We are an open book
The only intellectual property Design Concepts “owns” are the brains of our team while they are working on sticky problems for our clients.
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The Shift to Physical-Digital Design Teams ... Are You Ready?
The world is changing ... are your design teams changing with the physical/digital times?
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Designing systems instead of assigning blame
In the immediate aftermath of any newsworthy accident, we often hear the words "human error" or "user error".
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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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Fab Factory: The cutting edge of cutlery
Who needs eating utensils when you have perfectly working hands to rip and tear at the food on your plate and stuff it into your mouth?
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QMS that works for us, our clients
Quality Management Systems (QMS) are used in businesses big and small to help insure that business processes are focused on meeting customer requirements and enhancing client satisfaction.
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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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Using the PCA Method To Assess Use Errors in Medical Usability Testing
The PCA (perception, cognition, action) method recommended by the FDA helps researchers assess and understand why a use error has occurred.
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User-centered design is on the menu
What does it take to run a restaurant?
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Human-centered design ... but even more human.
Now more than ever, society is hungry for simplicity and human connection.
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Health 2.0: Data — how to organize, access, and use it
One of the main focuses of the Health 2.0 conference in Santa Clara, CA this year was on data.
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Cyber security is a new spin on an old problem
When I read the headline that the FDA announced a voluntary recall of 465,000 pacemakers over safety concerns related to security vulnerabilities and the possibility of a device being hacked my first thought was, “I wonder if my Dad's pacemaker is part of this recall?”
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Ingenious Engineering: Dippin' Dots
Putting the freeze on cream and sugar is what it’s all about at Dippin’ Dots.
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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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Do the math!
In a world where we can go from a CAD model to a 3D printed part well within a typical working day, it’s easy to get excited about just how fast one can iterate and explore design alternatives.
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Designing (and making) cool stuff
At Design Concepts, we have a pretty great mission statement: “We design cool stuff to drive business success and make life better.”
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Designing for healthcare part 4: Empathy is the diagnosis
Listening to, observing, and truly empathizing with healthcare professionals is necessary to deliver new solutions that are user-responsive and empowering.
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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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Designing for healthcare part 3: The complexity of simplicity
Making the complex simple, or ‘simplexity,’ requires diligence in both iteration (build, test, learn) and designing the system and the details equally well.
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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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Models and Prototypes 101
Product design is an iterative process. Models are a critical part of that process.
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Ingenious Engineering: Toothbrushes
Even the most simple items we use every day require an amazing amount of effort to produce. Take, for example, the humble toothbrush.
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The role of virtual prototyping in product development
When you have to make a bunch of something or something where failure isn’t an option (a parachute, for instance), you better make sure that you’re making the right thing and that you’re sure it will work.
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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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Answer the big questions before you begin Big Data
I recently attended the first Big Data Wisconsin conference, which was part of Madison’s larger Forward Festival.
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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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Service Experience Jam: Designing cool service sh*$!
Last weekend, we gathered as a multidisciplinary team and headed to Chicago to attend the second annual Service Experience Jam.
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The Core Principles for Creating an MVP
If you’re developing a product, you’ve probably come across the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach.
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The Six Prototypes Every Startup Needs To Make
Smart startups spend on prototypes. Different levels offer different benefits along the process journey — here are six of the most important to make.
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Design approach selected for adjustable hand cycle
We recently met with the adaptive sports experts at No Limits Kids Fitness to choose one of several design approaches for our hand cycle.
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Man and machine
The recent tragedies of workers killed at factories in Germany and India may seem like new phenomena to some because robotic arms were involved, but they’re not.
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Creating a bike that works for all kids
In late 2014, Delve 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.
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What Will Healthcare Look Like in 2065?
We did a thought experiment and traveled 50 years into the future to glimpse the future of healthcare and of the patient's user experience.
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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
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.
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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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Designing Handheld Devices That Don’t Hurt
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?
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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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Experience design and healthcare: Wicked problem and inspiring challenge
Medical diagnostics is where the often unwieldy, slow-moving beast of healthcare collides with mind-blowing, quickly changing advances in technology. It is the behind-the-scenes intersection where healthcare workers interact with equipment, day in and day out, in hospitals, clinics, laboratories and universities. This is where fast and accurate results may mean the difference between someone getting the correct diagnosis and treatment in time and, well, not.
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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.
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Leonardo da Vinci and UX: The Interview
How might Leonardo da Vinci operate as a UX designer in the year 2014? I sent him a time machine and asked him.
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Read our observations on product development and the latest industry trends in our product innovation blog.