Author Archive

MADISON, WISCONSIN – Design Concepts, Inc., an award-winning innovation and design consultancy headquartered in Madison, WI, has expanded the firm’s ability to respond to clients’ product and service design needs with the addition of Seng Weiland to the business development unit. Weiland joins Design Concepts as a strategic account manager for Wisconsin and the Midwestern region.

Within her role at Design Concepts, Seng will share the firm’s process and wide range of capabilities with industry leaders in medical, consumer and commercial industries located in Wisconsin and throughout the area.

Seng brings to the firm more than a decade of experience in client management in human resources consulting, digital marketing and online media industries. Prior to joining Design Concepts, Weiland worked with Integrated Marketing Think Tank, Tarsus Group and Drake Beam Morin. She has a Master of Arts degree in organizational leadership from DePaul University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in advertising and public relations from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Rainer Schnabel, director of product development at Design Concepts, shares, “We are very pleased to welcome Seng to the firm. Seng brings a wonderful background of experience in account management and will extend our tradition of outstanding customer service to our growing list of clients.”

About Design Concepts: Design Concepts, Inc. is an innovation and design consultancy with more than 45 years of experience providing product and service expertise spanning strategy, research, design, human factors, engineering and prototyping. www.design-concepts.com

Didn’t attend this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES)? Attended but too overwhelmed by the crowd to focus? ipad lost its power and you couldn’t take notes or photos? Not to worry! Chris Harris, industrial designer at Design Concepts, was there! He’ll take you through the show and point out all the biggest trends and latest ideas in the attached pdf.

It’s CES with Chris! Enjoy!

Dave Franchino, president and principal of Design Concepts, will be headed back to the classroom February 1-3 to speak with Stanford University students about product design and management. Dave will share his experiences, as both a product developer and leader of an innovation firm, with students enrolled in two engineering courses. An alum of Stanford, Dave was also invited to join the conversation at the University’s design forum and a manufacturing roundtable where he’ll meet with area manufacturing leaders as well as design students.

Looking forward to great conversations with old friends and new, not to mention warmer weather.

Over the years, working styles have changed and so has the working office. From the trends of secluded private offices to vast cube farms, businesses have continually sought to create more productive work environments. Our own workspace is a testament to changing office designs.

We moved into our 22,000-square-foot facility almost 12 years ago. In 2000, the cube farm reigned supreme. Very large individual spaces with six-foot partitions and an intricate maze of cubes filled with deep table-top desks formed the backbone of our office. At the time, our cube farm was the latest-and-greatest – both attractive and functional.

Twelve years later, our needs have definitely changed. For starters, we’ve grown from 20 to 57 employees. With this wide breadth of in-house talent, our solutions are now created by multi-disciplinary teams more than a single individual – teams that need space to collaborate. And, just as importantly, our brand has evolved and heightened our need for a clean office aesthetic that matches our visual brand identity.

Early in 2011, we made the decision to tackle an office redesign. We ran the project just as we do our client projects. We identified goals and continually aligned expectations. We researched user needs and established opportunity areas. We completed contextual research and surveyed the competitive landscape. We collaborated with designers (interior, this time) to find creative solutions. This iterative process fine tuned our concepts and identified the good, the bad, and the beautiful.

On December 30, 2011, we finished updating our space to give our staff an opportunity to better meet our clients’ needs. Our new space allows for a variety of working styles, makes room for new staff members as we continue to grow, and gives a dramatic update to our aesthetic. It also adds light, increases mobility, reduces noise, improves collaboration, demonstrates respect for privacy and a little bit more.

We feel as it we’ve moved from black-and-white to technicolor. We hope to have a chance to take you on a tour of the new space and show you what we mean. But until then, a picture will have to speak a thousand words.

Design Concepts is a proud sponsor of the the LifeScience Alley Conference & Expo 2011. The The 10th Annual Conference, which brings together leaders in the medical device community, will be held Wednesday, December 7th, at the Minneapolis Convention Center, Minneapolis, MN. Registration begins at 7:00 am.

This year, we’re pleased to have an booth in the exhibit hall and invite you to stop by and learn more about who we are, what we do and how we help companies achieve business success through product and service design and strategy. Rainer Schnabel, director of product development, and Rick Stein, strategic account manager, will be on hand at the company’s exhibit, booth 301, on the exhibition floor. We’re looking forward to seeing many of our longtime colleagues and clients from the medical device community and meeting new ones, as well.

See you at the LifeScience Alley Conference & Expo!