Interaction Design

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.

Insights from our MD&M Minneapolis panel highlighted the challenges and benefits of merging hardware and software design, emphasizing how an integrated approach can improve patient outcomes and meet the evolving demands of modern healthcare.

We’ve noticed a common thread running through all our work—research, strategy, mechanical and electrical engineering, industrial and interaction design—we make the complex simple.

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?

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.

More and more, people are conditioned to interact with their objects. Products developed according to a siloed industrial design process have little chance of fulfilling these new expectations.

How do you create an in-car interface that is engaging, exciting, easy to use, and doesn’t distract the driver?

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.

We use FigJam to collaborate and share our sketches and early thinking internally and with our clients. Here’s how we do it.

Once upon a time, branding was good for companies but not so good for consumers. That’s no longer the story.

Should you hire industry outsiders to design your new product? Maybe.

In certain industries, a poor user experience isn’t just suboptimal—it's dangerous.

The most glaring difference between a smartphone and other UI-centric products is that a smartphone as a device doesn’t consider specific context of use. Here are some scenarios where smartphone patterns might not work.

Want your product to “look, feel, and act like an iPhone"? You can rely on some fundamental design principles that are universal to all mobile device experiences — many of which are informed by the ubiquity of smartphone and tablet devices.

We’ve identified technologies that will cause big and small shifts in the next few years and looked at how they are changing the practice of interaction design.

We’re passionate advocates for user research and the critical role it plays in product design. But not all research is equal.

The clarinet led me to an exciting music career. Along the way, the clarinet also taught me six user experience design lessons.

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.

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

Diversity on a design team is important for many reasons.

To showcase the advantages of athenahealth's network-enabled healthcare IT service, we created a straightforward performance assessment tool.

There's no such thing as an average user.

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

To build better products, development teams need to integrate the hardware and software development processes. The design thinking mindset could provide the means to enable this reunification.

Only connected devices that connect deeply with their users will have staying power. How do you strategize interaction design for IoT products customers will love?

How much agency should a machine be allowed? For both medical devices and cars, the potential to save lives is very real. But the consequences of things going wrong could be catastrophic.

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.

Several years ago, someone gifted me with Twine, an Internet-connected 2.5 square box that can be “programmed” in plain English, without needing to know how to code.

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.

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.

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?

In a world of “ubiquitous computing,” how might technology communicate information without hijacking a person’s attention?

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.

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.

Today’s users of medical devices expect a consumer-level experience. How can medtech firms make the shift?

A bottom-line approach drives meaningless products. Here are four guidelines for making meaningful wearable tech.

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

Digital-physical workflows help us envision what needs to happen in the digital world and the physical world, as well as where the two need to work together.

Regardless of what you're designing, the options you present to users should be simple and straightforward.

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.

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

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

Interaction designers have spent decades figuring out the best way to build an interface from scratch. A lot of what we know translates well to smart products.

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.

We offer three UX “starter packs” to meet clients where they are. In addition to making product design more accessible, each approach puts user experience (UX) at the heart of the process.

Fresh from our webinar, AI & Medical Device Development, we'd like to share a few takeaways from the discussion.

Touchscreens are now tactile. This may have big implications for medical devices and vehicle infotainment systems, where safety and error-reduction are paramount.

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.

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

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.

How to create a successful product – whether you're designing a product that's physical, digital, or somewhere in between.

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

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

Teach yourself to become a multilingual digital-physical product design practitioner using five simple strategies.

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.

Humans are drawn to anthropomorphic form in product design. Here's how industrial and interaction designers can use this as a tool.

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

Good mapping makes products easier and more intuitive to use. Done well, it can create a powerful connection between a product and its users.

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

Nudge is a concept rooted in behavioral science that describes how minor changes in product design can markedly affect individual behavior.

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?

Our summer interns worked on a very cool project to make a Virtual Reality prototyping tool called PIE. They learned that making PIE isn't that easy.

Designing appliances increasingly involves and interaction design component. How do you integrate this skill into your development process effectively?

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

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

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

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

Julie Norvaisas from LinkedIn stopped by our offices to share tips on how they research User Experience to deliver the best products and services.

Fighting bugs, storms and heat, design camp provides the challenge of putting ideas into interconnected motion.

Consumers have access to a hodgepodge of information on brands that they never had access to before, which makes it tough to control the brand experience.

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

Design Thinking and Lean Startup are two approaches that can co-exist with some creativity and flexibility to create a better result.

Mapping user experiences and systems can help you create more delightful healthcare experiences.

Products designed for accessibility end up making life better for everyone.

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

When we look back on an experience, we craft a narrative based on memory and emotion and the sum of our experiences. The same is true of how we process our experiences with brands.

This presentation provides an overview of user experience design, its origins, some tools and processes and how the practice may evolve in the future.

We polled the office on favorite branded interactions and narrowed everyone’s nominations down to 15 brands who do it well. Here’s the list of brands and the interactions we consider to be successful.

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.

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

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

The worlds of physical and digital product design are on a collision course. Interaction designers should take note.

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

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

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?

The more real something looks and feels, the more likely it is that you’ll receive actionable feedback to validate your design or inform your next iteration.

UX design is maturing and none too soon for the technology challenges and opportunities we face.

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

At CES 2015, activity trackers were the bandwagon that many companies jumped on. Really? Isn't there something better to do with this technology?

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

No need to pick sides. Become a hybrid designer instead.

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.

User interface design patents are more important than ever. Here are tips for designers on how to make the UI patent process work for you.