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New Hires
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WWU ID Junior Projects
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.”
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Into Gear
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.
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Supersketcher
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.
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Clearly Intelligent
We continue our design collaboration with Clarisonic (owned by L’Oreal) with the Smart Profile, a professional-grade sonic cleansing brush. Tactile worked with the engineering and marketing teams to amplify existing brand elements with upgraded materials and thoughtful interaction points.
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Sitting in Motion
Tactile was pleased to take part in a special design effort for the Closing Party of the 2014 Seattle Design Festival. Herman Miller donated 10 Eames rocking chairs (fitting the Design in Motion theme of the festival) for local design firms to customize, then auctioned them off to benefit youth creative organization Sawhorse Revolution. The Tactile design team went for a classic mahatma dot pattern beloved by the Eames’, accented with a gold frame and dark-stained rockers. Our chair went home with the NBBJ Architecture crew—but perhaps we’ll reproduce one to decorate our studio…
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New Kids on the Block
They’re back! Once an intern and a contractor, respectively, ace industrial designers Heman Au and Ben Mabry have joined the Tactile team full–time. They have jumped right into CMF, med–tech and avionics projects with gusto—and we no longer remember life without them. Welcome, Heman and Ben.
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Another win!
We are thrilled to announce that Tactile won two 2013 Bronze International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) from the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). Characteristic of Tactile, the awards celebrate work in diverse disciplines: concept development and usability research for a global health product (Intellectual Ventures Lab’s “Cold Chain” device), and full product redesign for the Liposonix Body Contouring System. They also represent Tactile’s growing engagement in the fields of med–tech and global good—and it seems we’re on a roll. Read more about Liposonix here or Intellectual Ventures here.
