Insights

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.

To say we’re living in turbulent times right now is an understatement. I won’t belabor repeating the news or all the facets of uncertainty. With that, I write this hoping all who read it are as safe and healthy as can be and that you are finding things to be grateful for even when that seems impossible.

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.

Before starting on an innovation strategy, decide which type you're chasing: Incremental, disruptive, and radical innovation each require a unique approach.

The Badger Shield has shown that a distributed supply chain can create massive quantities of effective and cost-effective personal protective equipment (PPE) in a short time. Can this model translate to the developing world if COVID-19 cases start to rise in African, SE Asian and Latin American urban centers?

When in-person research needs to shift, try these remote research methods. All have yielded great insights for us at various stages of product design.

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.

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.

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.

This video was recorded in November 2019 during an After Hours presentation in our Madison office. Read Stefanie Norvaisas' article on decision making.

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.

Apparently, unicorns just went extinct in Silicon Valley. That’s sad news for the small group of tech entrepreneurs who hope to cash in on the latest gold rush and build a company with a $1 billion-plus valuation.

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.

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.

Forecasting and backcasting provide a framework for disruptive innovation by establishing a solid structure to support big, strategic thinking.

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.

Two separate semesters, two office locations, and two roles later, my experiences at Delve could not have been more diverse or outstanding.

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.

How will you decide today what to design for 2030? Strategists look to megatrends to predict consumer behavior and futureproof strategy.

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

This article is part two of a series about the advantages of an improvisation (improv) mindset on workplace teams. Read part one here.

This article is part one of a two-part series about the advantages of an improvisation mindset on workplace teams.

I, for one, am pretty excited that Elon Musk is bringing his 1980s sci-fi movie dreams to life.