Engineering

Are usability and innovation inherently at odds? Here are three ways to resolve the tension.

To be successful and safe, automated systems need to work as a team with a human partner.

Remember the Coolest Cooler? The most popular Kickstarter product of all time when it launched in 2018, the connected cooler was a perfect example of what happens when a hardware startup underestimates development and manufacturing costs.

One of the most frequent questions we hear from entrepreneurs is about the design cycle and how long it will take to develop an idea into a real product or product prototype.

The more it’s studied, the clearer it becomes that stress is the crucial, unseen factor in nearly any health-related situation.

When it comes to prototyping for the purposes of user research, how to build is determined by what you’re building.

We’ve compiled some essentials for product designers and companies who want to get started developing their own sustainable product design process.

Delve’s Philadelphia studio hosted an inspiring evening as part of the annual Design Philadelphia festival: the JeffSolves MedTech Pitch Night.

To fight startup failure, practice product testing early and often.

We see startups encountering the same set of roadblocks over and over again. Here are the three biggest sore spots and our advice on how to get around them.

This tendency to want to innovate around every single aspect of a product stems from passion for the product and its mission. But while passion is indispensable, it needs to be tempered with rational thinking.

I’ve always wanted to make a product of my own — something small I could manage — and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. I decided to design a Raspberry Pi case that’s functional, affordable, quirky, and fun.

Having done all the research and scaled the considerable Kickstarter learning curve, I wanted to compile what I found to be the most useful resources.

The biggest pitfall for aspiring hardware entrepreneurs isn’t the funding part; it’s the hardware part and clearing the production hurdles.

53% of digital health apps are uninstalled within 30 days of download. How can you design a consumer wellness app that engages and retains users?

Entrepreneurs going into hardware face a hefty learning curve, and missteps can end up costing them later in development.

Silicon Valley really speaks to us as interaction designers, user researchers, a mechanical engineers, and software engineers. There have been many times we wanted to jump into the screen and right the ship.

Aging consumers are an ideal market, with plenty of free time and unprecedented disposable income. We should get serious about age-aware design and tech for older adults.

Headless provisioning is part of the unboxing experience — specifically, it’s the part when a user connects the device to the Internet for the first time. Unfortunately this process is often confusing for users.

Why do we regularly transform our usability lab into a kitchen, hospital room, garage, bathroom, living room? It’s not because we’re filming a movie.

Now that everything from phones to automatic sprinkler systems have functionality that requires an internet connection, most of our clients’ products need some kind of communications rig. Most often, that means a radio frequency antenna.

The world is better when healthcare meets people where they are. As the home evolves into a central hub of healthcare, how can we design for it in a way that delivers safe and effective healthcare for all?

ICUs need a more integrated source of relevant information to help physicians make better decisions and fewer mistakes.

Outsourcing your engineering needs can be the answer—if you do it right.

Prototyping for user research is a major consideration of product development and one that often confuses, because it’s not an exact science. There’s always a question of what to test and when, and there’s no one “right answer.”

Utilizing this role to its fullest could minimize project risk and speed your product to market.

Research enables you to make good decisions throughout new product development, speeding up product development and creating a product that resonates with users. Here’s what research-driven NPD looks like.

Successful hardware innovators need confidence, foresight, and consideration to do something genuinely innovative.

People are now more willing to share personal health information online. What’s the responsibility of digital marketers in the health and pharmaceutical space?

We will test a part, remove material, then test it again, and iterate that process until it eventually breaks. At that point, we know just how thin, light, or inexpensive a part can be.

Sometimes the simplest designs are the most difficult to get right. Here's how we approach the design of a low-information-density user interface.

In many areas of healthcare where AI has great potential, use of the technology is still in its infancy. In these realms where it’s slower to catch on, a common obstacle to adoption is lack of trust.

A few months ago, we discussed three UX trends reshaping medical product design. Here’s how to incorporate them into your device UX efforts.

Our engineers have designed a better tolerance analysis tool that makes doing tolerance stacks a joy. Download it here for free.

We use Parametric CAD to design the majority of a wide range of new products. Here are some of the problems it helps us solve quickly and capably.

Inside every electronic device sold today – whether it’s a coffee maker, phone, automobile, or Mars Rover – is an embedded solution, or a combination of hardware and software that makes the thing run.

Diagnosing problems in failing products that have already been released for manufacturing can be a tricky business.

You’d be surprised how many startups come to us with excellent connected device concepts that have failed under routine, predictable environmental stresses.

Features that would be impossible to pull off using conventional manufacturing methods are made feasible with 3D printing.

When offshore manufacturing works well, it can be fast, cost-efficient, and deliver good quality. But often speed, price, or quality is sacrificed without the right vendor, relationship, and process.

Using leading-edge parts comes with risks. You may have a great, even disruptive, product to debut, but realistically it needs to get to market before someone else beats you to it.

A couple of weeks ago I did a shop presentation to share techniques I’ve developed for making models come together in a more professional way.

The huge number of unsecured IoT devices currently connected to the internet make DDoS attacks it all too easy. There are measures you can take to make sure yours is better protected.

Our team relies on the Pugh Matrix to simplify complex decisions in medical device development. Learn how it works and download our customizable template for free.

Figuring out just how much sealing products will need is part of the design process.

In its infancy, CFD was complicated, expensive, and challenging—so it was only employed for complex projects like bridges and the space shuttle. Today, engineers use it to optimize everyday products that incorporate the flow of air, gas, and fluids.

Here are some of the harshest environments you might come across as a product designer or engineer and the ruggedized solutions and products that stand up to them.

Product design and manufacturing are always more challenging when the wet stuff is involved.

Wireless updates are good for manufacturers and users who are worried about security concerns. But for product designers, they require extra planning.

Medical device companies can boost usability by adopting these consumer product development practices.

At Delve, we believe that mobile, voice, and “interfaceless” applications should consider accessibility before the first line of code is written or the first wireframe is constructed.

While a final product may appear to stand on its own, it’s actually buoyed by tiers of development. These include rounds of prototyping and testing.

Launching nine to 12 months late can cost a project up to 50 percent of its potential revenues. Here’s how we reduce technical risks to keep connected device development on track.

Creating a connected device is a bit like making a movie: it has a beginning, middle, and end; challenges to overcome; and an ultimately victorious hero, the user.

Today we have the ability to set up and interact with a VR-simulated prototype. As the technology continues to grow more accessible, can leverage it for product design, easily translating to faster turnaround and cheaper development costs.

There are an infinite number of ways to write the software for an embedded system. How do you decide which way is the right way?

You've grasped the basic anatomy of an IoT device, identified how you’ll connect with and begin to communicate with the cloud, and selected a cloud service provider. It’s time to get prototyping.

Make sure your provider uses a well-known and secure method for communicating.

When you’re designing a connected device, there’s a lot of testing you can do before you get to the production-grade prototype. Here are a few examples of different fidelity levels of prototypes you can use to test early on in your IoT product development.

Delve has long been a go-to shop for creating rugged, mission-critical products. The communications equipment required for IoT devices adds an extra twist.

Why should you invest in a usable user interface?

Where does your organization stand on the Usability Maturity Ladder—from 'usability as king' to 'usability as a burden'?

Connecting a device to the Internet adds layers of complexity.

Few inventions have had as significant an impact on our daily lives as the safety razor.

In art, an unfinished work remains unfinished. In design, an unfinished work opens up possibilities for the user.

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.

If Delve were a product to be opened up and analyzed, you’d find a lot of creative, dedicated, skillful people inside.

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 Pareto Principle is a great tool for project teams when they’re trying to decide where to focus their energy and efforts.

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.

The acceleration of tech, and especially the mobile revolution, has deeply impacted both the consumer and medical device industries.

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.

Users often go rogue, using products in ways they weren’t designed to be used. Design for misuse is a way to counteract this.

These four steps for repeatable technical innovation have proven trustworthy for us on project after project.

Creating product requirements can seem like a straightforward task, but it has plenty of potential pitfalls.

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.

Given the maze of use cases and associated certifications, designing an IoT medical device may take longer and cost more than you expect. Take the shortest path to a completed project by considering four factors.

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?

Often, users don’t know why they made a mistake. Human Factors researches use the art of Root Cause Probing to uncover what went wrong.

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.

Affordance is the relationship between what something looks like and how it’s used. The user should be able to figure out how to use something just by looking at it.

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.

The “fuzzy front end” of product development can pose some unique challenges for engineers.

The Delve team explores AI’s place in our product development process.

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.

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.

Empowered healthcare consumers bring to medical devices the high expectations formed from their experiences with highly intuitive consumer products—as well as greater risk.

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.

Next-generation medical devices with hardware-software interactions need a new, holistic development methodology.

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.

Here are nine examples across different sectors of how data science and machine learning can help unlock the power of your data.

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

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.

We opened up wearables from leading companies to see how so much was packed into something so little.

Learn about the 5 important factors to consider when deciding between an off-the-shelf or custom embedded display for your digital interface.

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

Having trouble deciphering the FDA waterfall diagram process for medical device design and development? You’re not the only one.

A primer on what, how and when the discipline of human factors is used in the design and development of products.

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.

Learn design techniques to maximize device reliability for common sterilization processes — autoclave, ethylene oxide, and ionizing radiation.

We’ve compiled some advice for those facing, or anticipating, the semiconductor shortage. These workarounds are useful when facing any kind of hardware part shortage.

“T-shaped” is a term used to describe someone’s knowledge and skills. For those of us in product design, it’s a good shape to be.

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.

The list of industries experiencing huge disruption fueled by “technology” is growing by the day.

When done well, DFM prevents quality issues and eliminates manufacturing waste. It de-risks new product development by preventing the costly scenario of learning about manufacturability issues when you’re about to launch.

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).

We are happy to publish all our design files for the project.

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.

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?

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.

The scope of the Advanced Design workshop was to walk students through the research, ideation, and early prototyping phases of creating a backpack.

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.

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.

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

A list of emerging, innovative technology being developed to reduce carbon, geoengineer the environment, and improve battery efficiency and cooling tech.

How does the new EU Medical Device Regulation relate to human factors and usability? It depends if your medical product is existing or new.

Have you ever considered what happens to the materials you put into the recycling bin after they are picked up from your curb?

VR is an extremely powerful storytelling tool and powerful stories are fueled by giving people a sense empathy. More empathy is better for everyone.

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.

When not orchestrated well, a design review can very quickly turn into an unproductive meeting and send a team spinning with a poorly conceived action item list.

With the growing demand for rugged design across sectors, product developers need help figuring out when to accommodate military specifications.

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

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.

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

Medical devices are commonly recalled due to usability issues that can be prevented with human factors plans and uFMEAs.

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?

There is no short map of an anticipated journey that medics can plan for while transporting a patient out of any building to the ER. Each scenario and response is unique.

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.

Environment, ruggedization, location resolution, and update rate are the framing questions that lead to the right geolocation technology for an IoT device.

From a '90s novelty to an exciting design tool, virtual reality offers client-facing opportunities for design immersion.

Will the E-bike change the way Americans think about cycling?

A recent project with Make-A-Wish gave us the chance to make a meaningful connection with a family, which is a great benefit of product design.

The Tesla Model 3 has a front that upends expectations, and it's not pretty.

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

Engineers constantly balance two roles: the engineer responsible for understanding and mitigating risk, and the product developer considering the ideal customer experience and wanting to delight.

Explore some of the issues that need to be dealt with and acknowledged before a quick-turn electronic prototype can be put into high-volume production.

Electronic devices today are expected to go where they’ve never gone before. Demand is growing for waterproof, rugged consumer and commercial electronic devices.

In the spirit of open source innovation, we are sharing our Tolerance Analysis spreadsheet for mechanical engineers.

The world is changing ... are your design teams changing with the physical/digital times?

In the immediate aftermath of any newsworthy accident, we often hear the words "human error" or "user error".

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?

As more products become software-enabled, our notions of expected performance and life cycle are changing.

Eating utensils require some sophisticated metal fabrication technology.

In medical product design, usability research was too often an afterthought. But you simply can’t expect something to look nice and assume patients and clinicians will know how to use it.

IoT makes sense for industrial applications where there are endless opportunities to monitor and automate.

Quality management systems get a bad rap for slowing down progress and squelching innovation. We developed our own QMS approach to meld rigorous standards and the flexibility to innovate.

Dave Franchino takes a whirlwind tour of a crazy year ... and that includes product design and tech.

The PCA (perception, cognition, action) method recommended by the FDA helps researchers assess and understand why a use error has occurred.

Launching a restaurant is the ultimate personal exercise in user-centered design.

Slowing down and practicing mindfulness in design can lead to better products.

At the Health 2.0 to focus was on how to effectively use the troves of health data we already possess for prevention and better outcomes.

“Do you know a place to get this made?” That’s a question we hear a lot from entrepreneurs looking for a manufacturing solution. It’s actually a very complex question.

The cyber-security scares of today are reminiscent of the Tylenol poisoning scare of the '80s, which led to tamper-resistant packaging.

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

When major utilities accept a standard, you know it’s going to be real.

Increased performance and declining costs will pave the way to new uses and improved system performance for supercapacitors.

A recent Saturday at the Madison Mini Maker Faire reinforces the joy of what we do and how fun it is to turn kids on to STEAM fields.

Listening to, observing, and truly empathizing with healthcare professionals is necessary to deliver new solutions that are user-responsive and empowering.

Sure you can make your product "smart." But have you really assessed the desirability of doing so for your users?

Making the complex simple, or ‘simplexity,’ requires diligence in both iteration (build, test, learn) and designing the system and the details equally well.

One of the best ways for engineers to learn about product design is to carefully examine other products. Engineering details, manufacturing processes, and material choices can all be used to inspire your own designs and decisions.

Using the Decision, Devices, Data, Design and Deployment framework, also known as the 5Ds, can help medical device companies develop connected products.

Delve's Model Shop creates a wide variety of models for concept validation and user testing. Learn more about the types of models we create.

Many of the simplest items we use every day require an amazing amount of effort to produce. Take, for example, the humble toothbrush.

When you have to make something where failure isn’t an option, you better make sure that it will work.

Repairing the complicated carburator of a 1974 MGB convertible is a good reminder that multidisciplinary design produces better products.

What's an important step that many companies skip in setting up their Big Data initiatives? Knowing why they're collecting data in the first place.

Disney fosters a greater sense of fantasy by concealing the mechanisms of personalization.

Delve's industrial design for OneWeb wins an International IDEA award in the social impact category.

Educating tomorrow's engineers will take more focus on teaching creativity, inclusivity, hands-on and team learning without losing site of the fundamentals.

As part of a global weekend service experience challenge, we took the concept of quantified self to new intestinal territory.

A Minimum Viable Product approach to product development can speed things along—if you know what you need to learn.

Smart startups spend on prototypes. Different levels offer different benefits along the process journey — here are six of the most important to make.

The Lend a Handcycle project takes a leap forward with the selection of a scissor-jack design for seat adjustability.

Recent workplace deaths involving robotic arms are a new variant of the dangers that come with using powerful tools.

Progress is being made in our quest to design a fully adjustable hand cycle that can accommodate children with physical disabilities as they grow.

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.

Our industrial design for the AmpStrip, a 24/7 heart rate and activity monitor, recently won a Gold Spark Award.

Is the IoT feeling overwhelmingly complex? Here's seven rules to extract simplicity from complex IoT product design projects.

Connected devices too often rely on a "master operator" framework that ignores the wonderfully messy realities of family life.

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?

We noticed more discussion in general this year of user interface (UI) design, often in the context of smart devices. We anticipate UI becoming a stronger focus in upcoming HFES conferences as it continues to become clear that ineffective UIs represent the highest risk to safety and efficacy.

Want a Sansa or an iPod? Sometimes getting to market first is better than making a better product.

A lesson in visualizing the target and aiming in squash is also a good reminder of how to design products.

The urge to merge technologies can lead to really cool stuff ... and really stupid stuff, too.

LED technology opens up a world of possibilities and some new considerations for product design.

Many SxSW Interactive talks pondered the future of connected devices. What we can address now and how we may bridge the user-experience gap for the future?

Drinking from the fire hose is an understatement.

As the consumer-driven IoT culture, which moves fast and iterates frequently, meets the highly regulated med device industry, designers face new challenges.

Experience design is a field prepared to help healthcare workers effectively use new diagnostic technologies, but it is a pretty wicked problem to tackle.

Using the BioReactor we helped design and manufacture, Dr. Hopkins' team have reached a milestone in developing a process for replacing pediatric heart valves.

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

We recently changed the name of our user interface design team to Interaction Design. The latter encompasses the dynamics of a user’s interaction with a system — including the user’s perceptual, cognitive, and physical interaction with the system, as well as the system’s response to the user.

As the world and its devices have grown more electrical, Delve has followed suit.