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Your Trash is Recology’s Treasure
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Bike Everywhere Challenge
In May, Tactile hit the road with our bikes and participated in the 2019 Bike Everywhere Challenge. Although we had a small team, we logged over 1,300 miles! Whether it was commuting to/from work or a fun ride on the weekends, we enjoyed getting outdoors. For us, it’s a small step in reducing carbon emissions, a great way to experience the outdoors, and let’s be honest, we shed a few pounds while riding. Way to go team!
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Tactile is Hiring
We’re looking for a Junior Industrial Designer to join our team to help design meaningful physical and digital experiences for influential and emerging brands. If you’re interested in learning more or to apply, click here. Hope to hear from you!
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Tactile Sponsors UW Awards Event
Last month Tactile was honored to sponsor the UW School of Art + Art History + Design’s first Anne Focke Arts Leadership Award event. It was a memorable evening honoring the 2017 award winner Beth Sellars, learning about the School’s recent projects, and raising over $62K to provide funding for their graduate students. The Anne Focke Arts Leadership Award recognizes individuals who pave the way for art, art history, and design to enliven and strengthen the community through their visionary and active leadership. Congratulations to the award winner, Beth Sellars!
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Mwahahaha
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.
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New Hires
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.”
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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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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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Farewell
For the first time, a new year rings in at Tactile without Jared Randall on the team. Bittersweet! Jared was Tactile’s #2 employee after Josh—two RISD graduates working side by side for more than a decade. Jared helped grow the team to where it is today and will always be part of our DNA. He’s moving on to spend more time with his young son and to pursue some long-desired personal projects, which we’re excitedly tracking. We will miss him so but wish Jared the very best. If you have any questions about the transition, please email or call us anytime.
