Insights

Ami Verhalen, Vice President of Design, and Stefanie Norvaisas, Vice President of Insights and Strategy will be presenting a workshop called "Decision Making and Bias: Your Role in the Design Process and How to Manage It" during the Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA) Women in Design Deep Dive. The virtual event will be held October 6-7.Here's a description of their workshop: "Decision making can be treacherous, particularly in design where selecting options can feel subjective, emotional, and risky. As women design leaders, we’ve been in the places where decisions are being made for over 20 years. We’ve realized that as tough as it was to get a seat at the table that’s not enough—as leaders we need to shepherd our teams to decisions they can feel good about. Born out of our experiences and frustration with the lack of process around decision making, we studied its mechanisms and learned how physical, cognitive, social, and cultural biases affect it. We developed a process that helped us find our voice and enable decisions that stick. In this presentation, we will share lessons we’ve learned as well as tools and methods that will help you effectively design the decision-making process. You will receive a copy of our workbook, “Designing Good Decisions,” to help you take the lessons from our presentation and apply them on the job."IDSA is committed to making this event affordable and accessible to everyone. The event has a "choose your rate" ticket that ranges from $25 to $100, so make sure to reserve your spot.

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've been doing remote research since before COVID-19, but the pandemic gave given us a great opportunity to hone our craft.

STEEPLE analysis is a tool for scanning your external environment. It helps teams understand phenomena and imagine new opportunities.

For our Delve Talks podcast, Dave Franchino and I had the opportunity to interview a dozen people from various industries, all of whom share a common interest, desire and occupation that involves innovation, creativity and culture building. You can find the whole series here.

For our Delve Talks podcast, Dave Franchino and I had the opportunity to interview a dozen people from various industries, all of whom share a common interest, desire and occupation that involves innovation, creativity, and culture building. You can find the whole series here

The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) held its first Deep Dive on sustainable product design. The ensuing conversations revealed a burning need for collaboration between not just designers, but everyone involved in the creation and use of products.

As my beloved country seethes in turmoil over the horrible and unjust killing of George Floyd, I - like everyone I know - have struggled to make sense of a senseless situation, and formulate some sort of coherent comments.

Sometimes having a breakthrough idea is the easy part of innovation. Navigating the organization and turning that idea into reality is often the hardest part. That's why you need design strategy.

(Any Day But) Tuesday… If it was Tuesday, you could guarantee there was no electricity. You couldn’t iron your clothes, watch TV or turn on the lights. You’d do anything to have a portable fan blast air on your face on a crushing summer afternoon, but you couldn’t.

While we're all working in our homes, we thought it would be fun to check in with our team members to see how they're doing and what their new offices and co-workers look like.

I have been spending a fair amount of time thinking about the spectrum of successes and failures related to the open-source maker movement and its contributions to addressing the COVID crisis.

Most products take anywhere from three to ten years to develop from idea to commercialization. But many companies rely on their understanding of consumers today to make decisions for these future products.

While we're all working in our homes, we thought it would be fun to check in with our team members to see how they're doing and what their new offices and co-workers look like.

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.

Translating research into actions is often more art than science. We have found “how might we” questions to be useful tools. Here's how to write one.

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.

The goal: To outfit every health care worker with PAPRs – an amazing piece of equipment used to filter air and inflate a bubble around the wearer’s head to reject any contaminants.

Before starting on an innovation strategy, decide which type you're chasing: Incremental, disruptive, or radical innovation. Each requires 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.

Generating good ideas is usually not the problem. The process of choosing one good idea and getting it through your organization is usually the hard part.