Human-centered product design draws inspiration from real people, real problems and strives to delight and benefit them—ultimately driving sales and aiding marketing efforts, not relying on them.

The purpose of this blog is to save you time and money with our research. We broke down our findings into five main business categories, then four specific receiver sub-categories: BIPOC-owned, Women-Owned, LGBTQ-Owned, Sustainable, and American Made, then gifts for him, for her, for them (gender-neutral), and kids respectively. Most of these vendors sell more than one item, making them all worth a look regardless of who you are shopping for. What's best is they are all small, independent businesses selling their goods and their dreams too. If that doesn't give you the warm and fuzzies, we don't know what will.

Speck Design examines the use of color in industrial design and engineering through the lens of HCD, color theory, color psychology, and science.

In the final blog of our Sustainable Technology series, we focus on the importance of environmental empathy and what designers are actually preserving by developing it. Plus, we look at embracing constraints as a way forward towards more innovative, sustainable design outputs and hope for the future. 

In Part II of our Sustainable Technology blog series, we take a closer look at systems interconnectivity being both the driver of negative consequences from product and technology innovations and a way for designers to shift their thinking to avoid them.

Product and technology innovation is a notoriously double-edged sword, often creating as many negative consequences as it does benefits. In our three-part blog series, we will explore how designers can use The Law of Unintended Consequences and The Gaia Theory as jumping-off points for Systems Thinking as a way to stave off possible perverse environmental consequences from the products they design.