An exploration of how Uncertainty Avoidance influences product design, balancing the need for safety and the drive for innovation across cultures.

Discover how innovations like the Q Collar, RFID trackers, and 3D-printed structures are transforming Super Bowl LVIII and the future of sports with VR fan experiences.

Dive deep into the world of Individualism and Collectivism, exploring how these contrasting cultural dimensions shape product designs that either champion individuality or celebrate communal bonds.

How UCD shapes Healthcare 4.0, bridging digital-physical gaps, meeting regulatory standards, and driving future innovations.

Dive into the transformative potential of Augmented Reality (AR) within industrial design.

To understand extended reality technologies writ large, it is first essential to understand that our physical world is not reality at all.

I am here to tell you: Generative AI is the next big thing. And it isn’t going to take jobs–it is going to make them better

Industry 4.0 innovations are seeing a rise in application in healthcare. They are experiencing a surge of integration into healthcare in response to COVID created. Today they are part of most users' lives–whether they realize it or not and are the de-facto future of medicine, meaning so is UX design. 

As an inquisitive and forward-thinking product design agency, we often find ourselves perusing the online platform to discover creative works to admire and fall in love with.

The Pandemic significantly expedited the integration of Industry 4.0 technologies into Health 4.0. It saved lives but revealed a troubling truth that industry professionals have known for a long time: Healthcare is lagging in UX Design.

The future of machine learning (ML) in product design is exciting and has the potential to revolutionize several industries. Foremost among them is the field of medical devices, which offers seemingly endless opportunities for innovation and an overwhelmingly positive impact on quality of life.

We took time to reflect on our journals from 2022 with the coming new year. Our topics were far-ranging, from human-centered design to equality to sustainability and several subjects in between. The year in review highlighted the fact that the world is in an era of technological acceleration and we are thankful to have been a part of it.

Data suggests there are prolific risks around purpose-driven work like UX Design. Empathy overload, compassion fatigue, and secondary trauma are foremost among them. So-called “selfish work strategies” help designers maintain a work-life balance, an equilibrium that will make them better at both.

Green gifts are holiday gold! They work to offset the heavy emissions of the holiday season, plus when you buy them, you support makers trying to make a difference.

We should care less about greenwashing, not because it's okay but because there is a more nefarious player lurking on the environmental scene. One that is all too conveniently shadowed by what boils down to poorly thought-out or deceptive PR practices.

As any product designer knows, the decisions you make throughout the development process have an incredible impact and far-reaching implications. Nothing could be a better example of this than planned obsolescence. However, it is still a widespread design practice, especially in technology, and it is in direct conflict with the concepts embodied in the circular economy.

In good times and bad, the things we use every day shape our lives and, increasingly, our well-being. This is why, post-Covid, it has become clear--a product designer's mind belongs to crisis. It is an opportunity for us to rethink why things work the way they do and why, at the drop of a hat, they don't. In turn, this reminds us the products we design are ephemeral, but the experiences we design are not.

When we, as people of color, celebrate Juneteenth, yes we celebrate the end of suffering and bondage our forefathers endured. But greater still, we rejoice as patriots of this great nation whose better ideals continually triumph over our darker angels. And for that, we are proud to call this imperfect country home.

Creating transformative products starts with a careful balance of rigorous quantitative user research and empathetic, qualitative user research. While quantitative can be quite obvious, qualitative is a practiced skill of profoundly understanding users' needs, insights, and emotions and knowing how to flush them out.

Though disruptive and tragic, there was a major silver lining in the pandemic--the rise of the eco-consumer. This new cohort is bringing sustainability into the mainstream and is willing to spend more on environmentally ethical products that last.

Artificial intelligence is a transformative technology reshaping our daily interactions with machines, each other, and ourselves. It will soon be as pervasive as the internet, with a profound and unshakeable impact on society.

In our new series, ID Her: Women of Industrial Design, we profile past and present women in industrial design to inspire and guide future women in the industry, starting with Speck's own Dani Nguyen.

Although men and women start pursuing industrial design degrees evenly, only 19% of industrial designers are women. What causes nearly half of the female students to disappear within four years?

In Speck Design's third blog of our White Space: Black Designers Needed series, we look at the compelling reasons design industries (especially product and industrial) need to install more black designers in their ranks. Not surprisingly, it's not just for the warm and fuzzy feeling they get from doing the right thing. It's because diversity pays in dividends.

To find the root causes of MIA black designers, you just have to follow the money. From underfunded public schools--desegregated in name only--to privileged cultural institutions raking in the lion's share of arts donations, the systems are broken for some and working wonders for those who designed them.

It is no secret the design industry desperately needs more black people. In part one of our three-part blog series, Speck Design explores the disproportionately small number of African Americans in the various design verticals and the implications for human-centered design firms that fall short in representation.

COVID-19 rapidly accelerated telehealth adoption, and a full return to in-person care is unlikely. This shift creates opportunities for innovators and HCD designers to revolutionize empathy-based patient care.

Change is difficult, especially when unsolicited, but the pandemic has fostered resilience and innovation in the design industry.

Human-centered product design focuses on solving real problems for real people, driving sales and aiding marketing efforts.

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 series, we explore how systems interconnectivity drives negative consequences from innovations and how designers can 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.

Southpaw-Friendly Product Design Tips from a Lefty Engineer

As the power that designers, programmers, and engineers weld becomes more apparent in a lightning-paced world of AI, app, and algorithm development, it is hard not to notice design ethics lag woefully behind.

I recently attended South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin where the Artificial Intelligence (AI) conversation was in full tilt. At one end of the spectrum, companies are cautiously exploring AI. At the other end, there are companies that have jumped in with both feet. At FutureBrand Speck, our clients sit along the full continuum of the AI spectrum, sometimes from within different business units of the same company.

We refer to "brand" as an organization's personality and "product" as its physical manifestation, encompassing devices, services, and environments. Creating an emotional bond with the brand relies on connected touch points.

At its core, product design is about the users. As designers and engineers, we have tremendous power to influence them — and, therefore, great responsibility. Designing functional features into a product to improve users' lives is the easy part. What takes more rigor and investment is integrating emotions that (fingers-crossed) encourage people to be better human beings.