Mastering Communications: The Key to Successful Product Design and Development

The difficulties in exchanging ideas during the product development and design process are often complicated by limitations in language, ego, perception, personalities and a basic understanding of the other person’s intentions. Mastering communications is a vital tool for successful creative work. It took a while for me to appreciate this. When I first began my career as an industrial designer, I thought that the most important skills for a designer to possess were aesthetic, technical and 3D skills. As my career developed, and my experience in these and other areas grew, I began to realize there was another skill that
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Categories: Blog, Industrial Design, Medical Product Design, and Plastic Design.

How to Optimize Design Collaboration for Success

Design is an activity unique to the human species. It’s a creative process requiring a combination of skills exclusive to the domain of humans. These skills are based on our ability to react to our environment with the creation of a tool, device or mechanism. And that enables us to change our lives and environment to better suit our needs. Historically, individuals have developed significant inventions and designs. Today, however, most products are comprised of complex subsystems requiring specialized skills that can only be fulfilled by specialists. Consequently, successful products represent well-managed product design collaboration. These are individuals who cooperatively
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Categories: Blog, Ergonomics, Industrial Design, Medical Product Design, Plastic Design, and Rotational Molding.

Understanding Creativity—the Magical Factor in Product Design

In a broad perspective, design is at the center of humanity and civilization. It’s what defines culture, history and the world we live in. Humans or nature have designed virtually everything around us, and that’s probably why the design factor is often overlooked. But when the design is noticed, it is typically discussed in terms of its function, appearance or ease of use. And all of those factors link to a common baseline that dictates or supports the final design solution. We call it creativity. It is the magical factor that leads to solutions for complex problems and spectacular designs
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Categories: Blog, Industrial Design, Medical Product Design, and Plastic Design.

Plastic Material Selection Panel Discussion with the Experts

Specifying the optimum plastic material selection for a medical device is a critical decision for any designer or engineer. A design must choose the optimum material form the hundreds of thousands of commercially available plastic materials on the market. He or she must make this selection based on dozens of complex design criteria with the certainty that their final decision will satisfy all the product specifications. This panel discussion on plastic material selection was one of the best-attended presentations held at the 2019 MD&D Show in New York’s Jacob Javits Center. Michael Paloian challenged four of the plastics industry’s leaders
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Categories: Blog, Industrial Design, Medical Product Design, Plastic Design, and Rotational Molding.

Aesthetics, Psychology and Perception in Industrial Design

Many companies continually search for designs and images that appeal to the masses. For that perspective, it’s important to look at the interrelationship between aesthetics, psychology and perception in industrial design. Although I am not a psychologist I am deeply involved in design and aesthetics. The products I design must be appealing to my clients as well as their customers. They must communicate a specific image based on a product, its market, and its intended use. Two research psychologists at the University of Berkeley—Steve Palmer and Art Shimamura—conducted extensive research on the psychology of art and aesthetics. Their findings led
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Categories: Blog, Ergonomics, and Industrial Design.

How to Design with Passion and Love It

Isn’t every industrial designer fueled by creative passion? Well…not always. It takes hard work, courage, knowledge, talent and vision to design a product that embodies your personality. Designing with passion means that you are willing to make a bold, creative statement that reflects your sense of taste and appreciation of beauty expressed through your design. You are also willing to run the risk of being rejected, criticized, possibly ridiculed, or laughed that by those commenting on your creation. A rejection of your design is symbolic of a rejection of you as a person and can be hurtful at times. It’s
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Categories: Blog, Ergonomics, Industrial Design, Medical Product Design, Plastic Design, and Rotational Molding.

The One Industrial Design Skill That Can’t Be Taught

There is a unique human quality that, hopefully, is woven into the fabric of the industrial design skill of individuals. To a greater or lesser degree, it provides each individual with the ability to change our environment. I’ve written countless industrial design articles during the past ten years and I realized that one of the most critical elements for great design has rarely been mentioned in any of my articles. The quality I am referring to is imagination. In my experience, the application and enhancement of imaginative skills to creative design solutions can be elusive. It seems that imagination could
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Categories: Blog, Industrial Design, Medical Product Design, Plastic Design, and Uncategorized.

Embracing Your Highly Productive Industrial Design Partners

In industrial design, you always have industrial design partners. Great designs are always created by the collective effort of individuals willing to share their knowledge, creativity, and insight with the dedicated purpose of attaining the elusive perfect design. I have designed more than 300 products and thousands of plastic parts throughout my career. I can confidently say that no product design can be credited exclusively to one person. Every product and project has always included at least one, or frequently several individuals at various stages throughout the process. In any project, designers establish a vision, and they create the pathway
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Categories: Blog, Industrial Design, Plastic Design, and Uncategorized.

Top Ten Most Important Considerations for Outsourcing Medical Design

Outsourcing medical design and development is extremely beneficial if the right design firm is selected. External creative input typically provides an in-house design team with a different perspective, new ideas and specialized expertise.  If the right design firm is chosen, project costs can be more easily controlled, overhead can be reduced, and schedules can be met. Outsourcing also motivates in-house designers and engineers to be more productive on their own projects. The key underlying challenge is identifying the “right” firm or partner. This paper will hopefully provide you with some insightful parameters to consider next time you are selecting a
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Categories: Blog, Industrial Design, Medical Product Design, and Plastic Design.

Creating a Preschool Version of Classic Qdesk Design

by Michael Paloian, President, Integrated Design Systems This project serves as an excellent example of how a vision, cooperation, great communication, and technical expertise can result in successful products. The classic Qdesk design—adapted for a new consumer market—is the focus of this Case Study. Qproducts LLC is a multinational organization dedicated to designing, manufacturing and licensing unique eco-friendly products. Their manufacturing plant is located in Venezuela and its marketing offices in Clearwater Florida. Their flagship product is a one-piece rotationally molded school desk, which was originated by its founder Benedetto Lombardo. He successfully marketed it throughout South America, Mexico, and
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Categories: Blog, Ergonomics, Industrial Design, Plastic Design, and Rotational Molding.