At the beginning of this year Vivian Lin and Jarod Beukelman visited CES 2013 and saw many interesting things. There was one trend so wide-spread that it stood out from the rest. Connectedness: the Big theme of CES 2013 Creating a seamless, simple-to-use, network of smart objects was the main aspiration of this year’s Consumer [...]

In the innovation business, we’ve had some spirited discussions about capturing user needs and turning them into opportunities for innovation.  Everyone recognizes the value in listening to the voice of the customer and using this to guide design strategies.  There is, however, disagreement in how literal one should be when following that voice.  Some say firms should [...]

2012 was an extraordinary year at Design Concepts. We’ve added new faces, new capabilities, and a brand new lab to house some of the precision equipment we need to support our engineering team. For those who have visited Design Concepts, you’ve seen or heard about our four confidential work-spaces that live between the design studio / atrium area [...]

Myself and two of my colleagues – Stefanie Norvaisas and Ami Verhalen- co-teach a Design Thinking class in the Center for Brand and Product Management in the Wisconsin School of Business at UW-Madison, and on Tuesday the 11th we held our final class of the semester. We switched things up for this class, hosting the students at the [...]

I recently participated in a Pecha Kucha as part of the Wright Design Series hosted by the Southwest Chapter of AIA Wisconsin. If you are not familiar with Pecha Kucha, it draws its name from the Japanese term for the sound of “chit chat” and is a presentation style with two simple rules: you present [...]