Insights

Our experts do a lot of thinking. Here's the latest to unlock your potential.
Goodbye Industrial
Goodbye Industrial, Hello Design
I’d prefer to never say words Industrial Designer again.
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The Sociocultural Megatrends Transforming Healthcare
We've examined key sociocultural megatrends through a lens of medical and wellness consumer experience to single out four profound shifts in the field.
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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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How to Use “Mapping” To Determine the Design of Your Controls
Good mapping makes products easier and more intuitive to use. Done well, it can create a powerful connection between a product and its users.
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My business is going to the dogs…
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.
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Hearts in San Francisco
We moved into our new office on 11th Street in May 2018 and although the “new car smell” may have faded, we are still enamored and eager to share it with visitors and clients. The studio has grown with the addition of Ryan Braunstein, Shiz Kobara, and Tyler Toy, a very talented triad who have infused the team with their energy and enthusiasm.
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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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SXSW Wrap-up: Moving the needle & our cheese
Looking back on our four days in Austin, we were struck by a common message spoken and implied by the many purpose-driven speakers we listened to. Here it is: Find an organizing principle for your company, your project, product or community to move the needle.
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SXSW Day Three: New reality
We may need an innovacation after this! But no chance... the talks and exhibits are still going strong.
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SXSW Day Two: Place and community building in a hyper-connected global economy
Today at SXSW we dug into the concept of place. Below is a quick look into what we saw, heard and thought.
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SXSW 2019: First Impressions
Jesse Darley and I arrived Friday evening and walked the streets of Austin. We were immediately immersed in all things SXSW. There were music, crowds, exhibits, lines, homeless, clubbers, diners, all of it.
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Tips for Mentoring Women, from Women
Leadership diversity matters because having different perspectives and experiences drives innovation and helps companies to design better products. This is even more important when it comes to medical devices, where patients’ health and lives are at stake.
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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. We picked two competitors – the Roomba from iRobot that created the category and the Pure Clean knockoff.
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Observations from HIMSS 2019
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.
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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Reducing Medical Device Risk with Usability Testing: The Why, the How, and the Who
Medical devices are commonly recalled due to usability issues that can be prevented with proper usability testing during the development lifecycle.
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What Does 'Hierarchy of Needs' Mean To Product Designers?
How can product designers apply Maslow's theory of human motivation to their work? A design won't succeed if it doesn't meet users' most basic needs.
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The power of failure
A very common mantra in product development and specifically Design Thinking is to “fail early and often.”
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What's “indecent” at CES?
Let’s suppose, hypothetically speaking of course, that a product exhibited at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) could be used to cause severe bodily harm with a weapon to another human.
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What’s a ‘Nudge’ in Product Design?
Nudge is a concept rooted in behavioral science that describes how minor changes in product design can markedly affect individual behavior.
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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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2018 Year in Review
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?
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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.
12 Article Verhalen Humancentered @2X
The business of empathy: Designing like your customers are human
If you are innovating by practicing customer-centered design, it may be the reason you aren’t getting the results you need.
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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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[Design] community service
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.
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Design That Clicks: The Art and Science of Tactile Feedback
A click is a universally recognized cue that an action is complete. Seeing is believing, but feeling is knowing. Here's how to get the right sound and feel.
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What’s your story?
Talking about yourself can be difficult.
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Five Global Megatrends Reshaping Product Design
Doing user research now won't help you design for 2028. Trend analysis will. Design strategists turn to it to predict consumers' future behavior.