Get Inspired

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 theme of the DMI Madrid 2023 conference was "The Power of Design in Turbulent Times." Here are some reflections on major themes that defined the talks and the conversations throughout.

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.

Microsoft just dissolved their AI Ethics and Society team. What’s a designer to do?

While reviewing the early data from our ongoing research on trends in the medical device industry, three unexpected findings caught our eye.

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

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.

Advances in data science and machine learning are transforming healthcare and public safety. Countless lives will benefit. Here are five inspiring examples.

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

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 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.

Here’s a mind-blowing set of statistics for you: prior to 2020, only 24 percent of healthcare systems offered any form of virtual care.

In early 2020, Abbott Laboratories recognized the need for COVID-19 testing and used their massive resources to ramp up production quickly.

In the spring of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to work apart, Delve’s leadership launched an internal pitch competition.

Since Covid, "water cooler" chats at Delve's three offices are now largely happening on Microsoft Teams, where we're sharing what we're reading and listening to with each other. We're compiling some of the best nuggets into what we're calling an "Inspiration Index," that we'll share on a regular basis. We hope you discover something that will inspire - or at least intrigue - you.

Since Covid, "water cooler" chats at Delve's three offices are now largely happening on Microsoft Teams, where we're sharing what we're reading and listening to with each other. We're compiling some of the best nuggets into what we're calling an "Inspiration Index," that we'll share on a bi-weekly basis. We hope you discover something that will inspire - or at least intrigue - you.

Since Covid, "water cooler" chats at Delve's three offices are now largely happening on Microsoft Teams, where we're sharing what we're reading and listening to with each other. We're compiling some of the best nuggets into what we're calling an "Inspiration Index," that we'll share on a bi-weekly basis. We hope you discover something that will inspire - or at least intrigue - you.

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).

I had a manager who gave me the book “Feedback is a Gift.” At the time, it didn’t feel like much of a gift – mostly because her method for feedback was, well, constant. But her heart was in the right place.

We are told the world has changed, I have heard people talk about the recent past as “the before” in recognition that we are in transition and not going back. I have also heard people talking as if this is a tough time, that we need to buckle down and wait for it to pass.

Since we posted a blog post talking about how the Open Source Face Shield project had started to supply the University of Wisconsin hospitals with this critical personal protection equipment (PPE), our team has had little time to breathe.

We are all feeling a little helpless in the face of COVID-19. We are looking for ways to help. Face shield shortages are putting health workers at risk.

All right, who do I blame for this?

I recently returned from a trip to Burkina Faso, a landlocked country in West Africa that is unknown to most Americans. Those who are familiar with the country know it mostly because of its poverty, corruption, and the high incidence of terrorism and fatal violence.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As a graduate from Stanford, I participate in a fairly active “design” email list originating from the various design programs. The email list allows fellow Stanford alum to post questions or raise topics related to the broader field of innovation and is invariably a fascinating source of trends and introspection.

As a high school junior, I was shown the guts of an implantable defibrillator. That day, I quit my pursuit of a career in medicine to pursue one in medical device design.

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.

I’d prefer to never say words Industrial Designer again.

For a change of pace, I thought I’d peel back the covers on the internal workings of our company and share just a bit of our cultural considerations here in Madison. If you’ve worked with or for us you know we pride ourselves on trying to create a comfortable, fun, engaging but unique culture.

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

Today at SXSW we dug into the concept of place. Below is a quick look into what we saw, heard and thought.

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.

If you want to develop empathy for anyone in the healthcare business, all you have to do is walk the floor at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Conference.

Last night, I attended a pretty cool panel discussion at Stanford’s D-School on “Designing Machine Learning.”

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?

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?

I am fortunate to be working with a great client in the medical equipment industry within a very meaningful product category.

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.

As we find ourselves in the middle of the holiday season, we join with our friends and family in celebrating what we have and share the joy with others by giving.

I’m one of those designers who is always searching for the latest technology or process to help trigger new ideas or new ways of doing things.

Alec Hill, a biomedical engineering grad student from UW-Madison, and Alex Upadhyaya, an Industrial Designer from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, were half of the 2018 summer intern team at Delve.

As far as I can remember cycling has always been a part of my life in some form or another.

The San Francisco team has been enthusiastically involved in the design of our new space

So I promised our marketing department I’d do a blog on our recent adoption of a telemedicine benefit for our employees.

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

I am both inspired and annoyed by the innovation stories that regularly come out of Silicon Valley.

“Wait. Is that it? Did the needle already go in? I can’t believe it!”

One of the special skill sets I love being able to utilize at Design Concepts and for projects at home is sewing.

Being a professional who has managed complex projects while simultaneously raising a family and attending graduate school, I felt I was more than prepared for my latest project – finding a new home for our San Francisco team.

This past summer, Design Concepts had the pleasure of working with Lincoln Elementary School on improving their makerspace and program.

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.

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?

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.

Operation Butter is now complete.

What can you learn from dodgeball, you ask?

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?”

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

People who know me well know that I am bit of a podcast junkie.

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

A huge part of a designer’s job is to translate abstract qualities into defining physical attributes and product feature sets.

I recently had an experience that left me thinking about the way in which technology and social media have eroded and blurred the boundaries surrounding our interactions with a company’s products and services.

I have this distinct memory from my childhood: I’m lying on my stomach, propped up on my elbows, cozied up in yellow and orange-ish shag carpet. Dust floats lazily through a sunbeam that peeks through the heavy velour curtains. A clock ticks steadily but softly from the other side of the room. My right hand is rotating the large machined aluminum tuning knob on my grandfather’s hi-fi tuner – back and forth, back and forth.

At Design Concepts, we have a pretty great mission statement: “We design cool stuff to drive business success and make life better.”

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

It can feel like the world is changing at lightning speed and at the same time it can feel like nothing has changed.

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

Even the most simple 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.

After attending the 68th American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC) Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo in Philadelphia last week, I’ve come to a realization – laboratory professionals deserve more love.

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).

As product designers, Design Concepts staff are always looking at the things that surround them with an eye for the exceptional.

There was a lot of talk about the Internet of Things this year at SXSW Interactive 2015. And yes, there were a lot of cool Internet-things.

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.

A neighbor of mine left this stunning post-war (~1950) Electrolux XXX at their curb. I snatched it, immediately hoping to convert it to a table lamp. I was blown away by the industrial design and the workmanship.

Earlier this year, I was on an amazing project that took me to both India and China to visit hospitals and clinics of all sizes and types.

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

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

At Design Concepts, we live and breathe innovation every day. It's our job and our passion.

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?”

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.

Picture this ... You arrive at a business meeting, introduce yourself, sit down, pull out your pen to take some notes, and all of a sudden multiple people in the room start to mock you and make fun of your pen.

There’s a strategic initiative going on at Design Concepts: “Thought Leaders.” Write something. Post something. Tweet something. I’m not much for 144 character blurbs: #whydofolksavoidpersonalinteraction

Hmmm… am I more hungry than unwilling to get cold?

I was recently at the Interaction15 conference put on by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) in San Francisco with my colleagues Ken Soliva and Curt Irwin.

Last year, I wrote a blog post about my impressions of the collective body of Super Bowl ads and what it might tell us about consumer trends.

My job takes me on the road a lot. That means I get to see a lot of cool places and meet tons of people but it also means that I have a lot of airport and airplane downtime.

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.

CES 2015 (Consumer Electronics Show) wasn’t a year for big unveils and shifts in conversation. Everything was smart, everything had an app, and the Internet of Everything was still an overarching promise for the future.

What can I say; I’m a bit of nerd when it comes to board games.

I love to BBQ! I’m not talking a Sunday afternoon burgers on the grill. I’m talking pork shoulder, ribs and brisket. The kind of food you have to cook low and slow for hours over smoke-infused fire.

Living in Wisconsin I find that I need to have a certain mindset to embrace the change of seasons and prepare for the inevitable cold and snow that will eventually blanket the Midwest. Typical annual rituals for me involve putting snow tires on the car, winterizing the lawn mower and digging the snow blower out of the shed.

“Was it you?!?” Al points at the fake political sign stuck in his garden celebrating his 89th birthday. He can’t decide if he’s annoyed or amused. Al hates birthdays and that’s too bad because he’s had a ton of them.

I’m not going to beat around the bush — I’ve known I was on the docket for months now and assumed that some flash of genius worthy of a blog would present itself. But life got busy going into the field for a project, attending a destination wedding in California, and starting my MBA. So 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. (And if you are a TAL fan imagine Ira Glass is reading this and it will totally redeem itself!)

Here at Design Concepts, you’ll sometimes hear the term “co-creation” used on a project. Typically it’s used to refer to a kind of brainstorming activity we undertake with design research participants where we brainstorm together with them, our “users,” to co-create solutions for their needs.

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.

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.

“Dori-toes snack foot!” design strategist Dan Sarbacker announced proudly holding a half-sheet sharpie sketch.

How might Leonardo da Vinci operate as a UX designer in the year 2014? I sent him a time machine and asked him.