News

For over five years, Tactile has partnered with Panasonic Avionics to develop passenger concepts for the Airline Passenger Experience Expo (APEX)–an annual show where airlines and airline partners come together to unveil the latest and greatest technology and products. At the recent APEX 2016 show in Singapore, we helped Panasonic demonstrate how advancements in bio authentication, identity, object recognition, AR and 3D audio can improve and change the passenger experience. To learn more about Panasonic’s innovations that were displayed at the show, read APEX’s post-show insights here. It was an incredible event and we’re so proud to have worked with Panasonic on envisioning the future.

The Genie Z60 wins Construction Equipment’s Top 100 New Products of 2016 Award. We’re proud and honored to have worked with Genie on this product. Read more about our collaboration with Genie in designing the visual brand language across a family of products. Congratulations to the Genie team!

At Tactile relationships matter most to us. Last year our close collaboration with Shift Labs resulted in designing the DripAssist. The DripAssist improves the accuracy of IV medication administration with simple-to-use read measurements. An innovation to help shape the future, the DripAssist was thoughtfully designed in line with Shift Labs’ mission to provide well-designed medical devices for fast-growing healthcare sectors, everywhere from specialty health care in the US to clinical care in emerging markets. Winner of a 2015 IDEA Silver Award, the DripAssist recently was honored in Popular Science’s 2016 Best of What’s New in Health Innovations. Congratulations to our friends at Shift Labs!

It’s almost here! Tactile’s 8th annual Halloween party is October 29 in South Lake Union. It’s an event to remember where the Seattle design community and friends come together to celebrate the scariest night of the year. Hope to see you there! Email us for more details.

As Tactile has grown, our team has expanded to accommodate new projects and deepening relationships with partner clients. We recently brought on two new additions to the team: Christoffer Hart, user experience (UX) designer, and Taylor Thomas, industrial designer.

Christoffer adds support to our growing UX team. “The marriage between industrial and UX design is one of the reasons why I came here,” Christoffer says. “To a certain extent, the disciplines merge in many ways. The benefit is a different form of empathy you create for the user. I think those two varying perspectives on the same thing is really valuable. You get really amazing projects out of that.”

Taylor is looking forward to working on projects that rely on deeply understanding both the client and consumer: “It gets me really excited about it to think about the fact that I could be working on something that’s actually going to make a change. I came from … a product development firm, but a very different environment,” she says. “They’re about 30 engineers and three designers. I’m really excited to be in this environment—to be back in a place that just lives and breathes design. It’s exciting, it’s exhilarating.”

Three of Tactile’s designers (Jonah Griffith, Adam Weisgerber, and Carson Massie) partnered with their alma mater, Western Washington University (WWU), to mentor students in the school’s industrial design program.

The students were given an open-ended prompt: Design something that would move a single person from one place to another, as an alternative to other typical methods like cars or bikes.

Students identified three initial directions they could take their concepts, then created sketches. They broke into teams to complete research, where they met the Tactile team for the first time. Adam, Jonah, and Carson critiqued the concepts and suggested to each student which path to take, given the time available and the idea itself. During the meeting the students presented their research findings. “That’s typical of what we do in our projects at Tactile,” Jonah says. “We’ll try to research enough to understand the market, doing competitive research and usability research.”

After students chose their initial idea, the Tactile team met with them over the span of two months at different intervals to review their progress and provide mentorship. Jonah describes their goals this way: “What we really wanted them to get out of the project was a portfolio piece—or learn how to build a portfolio piece. A big part of that is having a concise and easy-to-understand story at the end. We told them, ‘Try to have a real story behind it, whatever idea that you’re trying to get across.’”

Professors want to make sure that students see what it’s really like out in the professional world. When students visited the Tactile offices, they were able to get a sense of the professional industrial design world waiting for them after graduation.

“We shared with them the work that we do,” says Adam. “The goal is to strengthen and broaden the network of industry designers in our local area, especially so there’s some sort of networking between students and professionals.”

“It feels good to have a chance to give back a little bit to students, because we were once students,” he says. “It allowed them to have a chance to maybe have a leg up; to offer our experiences to them, so that it may be easier for them when they’re trying to get a job.”

Our friends at Shift Labs are going places: Tech Crunch reported that Shift has officially launched out of the venerable Y Combinator this Spring as “the Nest of medical devices.” Tactile collaborated with Beth, Koji and the founding team on the DripAssist infusion pump last year, and we’re excited to see them continue to disrupt the medical device model within emerging markets.

We’re thrilled to have Carson back again after a brief stint at Tactile in the Fall—and after she completed her South American travels. She is a versatile industrial designer with great insight into user personas and appropriate form. Learn more about Carson and her passions.

This month’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit isn’t just for motorheads—it also provides plenty of inspiration for designers who look to the automotive world for trends in colors, materials and finishes. A few of our industrial designers attended the 2015 show and shared their observations.

First, satin/matte paint is back again (see above). It seemed like most manufacturers were showing at least one car in a satin finish, and they all drew a lot of hands-on attention. This year, wheels were in polished metal—not chrome—which felt both fresh and futuristic. It made cars look like they were concepts, even if they weren’t, and the polished trend showed up everywhere.

Every “performance” car seemed to use exposed carbon fiber on interiors, exteriors, and everywhere else. Even if it wasn’t exposed, as expected, carbon fiber was a big part of the build story for the performance cars. The Ford GT was a great example: Their use of carbon fiber looked integrated into the design, with a unique matte gray finish, and completely necessary to the overall visual effect.

A few more observations from an exciting show:

• The majority of personality of the cars was expressed in the headlights and taillights this year (though Audi kicked this off a few years ago). A lot of design attention was on micro details you might only see if you were crouched down inspecting the headlights.
• Accent stitching was everywhere, especially on high performance cars.
• Matte black racing stripes and decals were prevalent, particularly among American muscle cars.
• BMW took some interesting CMF risks with their electric cars. They mixed several different textures, including some raw materials, and the result worked pretty well.
  Ford’s performance line featured a unique blue (shifting from green to purple), ceramic white accents and matte black/medium gray striping and accents—very cohesive.

We’re pleased to announce that our President, Josh Kornfeld, will serve on the jury of this year’s International Design Excellence Awards. It’s the 35th anniversary of the awards, and winners will be celebrated at this year’s IDSA International Conference in August. The jury is led this year by the UW’s Matthew Marzynski.