Digidesign's ICON sound console unit has become a best seller with record sales documented since its launch.

"We've seen some amazing ICON adoption stories over the past year," says Digidesign ICON sales director Rich Nevens. "In addition to significant sales to industry leaders like Disney, ICON was used to mix the Oscar nominated films Good Night, And Good Luck; Syriana; Hustle and Flow; and The New World - in addition to mixing all of the live music for this year's Grammy Awards. ICON has built a proven track record in a very short time and we're thrilled that Disney has now made it a part of its audio postproduction workflow." Other recent ICON installations include Warner Brothers, Universal Studios, Microsoft Studios, Ascent Media, Dubbing Brothers, Margarita Mix, Post Logic, and Resonate.

The ICON was designed by NewDealDesign LLC of San Francisco and here is their case study sharing how they created a unified design strategy for this complex yet customizable product, bringing interface design, industrial design, an understanding of the specialized user requirements to this bestseller.

Download ICON case study PDF

Thanks to DD intern Rebecca Frisch for creating the case study PDF.

The IDEA Gold award winning Netgear Platinum series was designed by NewDealDesign of San Francisco, CA. Here is their case study of developing the brand's design language across the product line while reducing the overall cost.

Download Netgear Platinum case study PDF

Thanks to DD intern Rebecca Frisch for creating the case study PDF.

The Catalyst award winning Palm Zire was designed by NewDealDesign of San Francisco, CA. Here is their case study of this category creating product.

Download PDF

Thanks to DD intern Rebecca Frisch for creating the case study PDF.

The essential concept for this terracotta home composting unit called The Daily Dump is that is has been concieved as an open source design project. One where you can choose to download the design drawings and arrange to have the product made by your local potter (at least in India). Thus, believes the designer, Poonam Bir Kasturi, the IP is available for all to use, benefiting the individual potters, the environment and the households who begin to hygenically process their compostable waste. The Daily Dump offers a regular maintenance service for a small fee in Bangalore.

A detailed case study of the local, social and larger environmental impact will be available soon.

Introducing the first of our exclusive-for-Design Directory case studies:

How to Design a competitive product for a saturated market environment Download PDF ~ Case study of the HP Pavilion 8580N RPTV by Gad Shaanan, GadShaananDesign

Abstract:

The market for rear projection televisions is highly competitive, saturated and price-driven, and is dominated by consumer electronics giants such as Sony, Samsung and Mitsubishi as well as lesser-known,low priced brands from China. A new entrant in the RPTV market, Hewlett-Packard wanted to introduce a product that would "stand out" from the competition and establish itself as a key player in the category. HP turned to GadShaananDesign (GSD) to address the challenge of creating a form that would convey the message that "HP is the obvious choice".

Herman D'Hooge, innovation strategist in the User-Centered Platform Solutions Division at Intel, explains a user-centered innovation process and how your company can use it to engineer and develop innovative products. D'Hooge also gives an example of a product - China Home Learning PC - that was developed for the Chinese consumer market with this strategy.

This is from Electronics Business Online and a good read. The sections covered by this case study include:

How to foster innovation
Translate process into engineering product requirements
Case study: the China Home Learning PC

And here is the summary:

People-inspired technology innovation increases the likelihood that a product or technology being developed will meet the needs and desires of actual users. As such, it is a risk-reduction technique that starts with understanding the needs and desires of real people and continues with working through an iterative creative process of defining user experiences and then translating that into actionable technical requirements.

Although technologists can simply be handed a technical requirements specification, there is tremendous value in involving engineers and technologists throughout the design process: from user research and observation to working with the user experience developers, because it instills a deeper appreciation of the reasons for designing the product and the resultant technology requirements. Using this process almost always leads to superior technology product solutions.

Electrolux is a global home appliance manufacturer who designs and develops products that are specifically created for particular regions or countries. They're taking the lead in connecting with their customers in a very special way.

For example, in Australia, they have just launched a luxury barbecue designed by fourth generation architect, Jeppe Utzon. His grandfather Jorn Utzon designed the legendary Sydney Opera House. To Electrolux, Utzon's design antecedants were impeccable for the Australian market, plus he was as Scandinavian as the company. Though Jeppe had never designed a product before or even barbecued (Copenhagen is rarely warm enough for outdoor cooking), Electrolux's Asia Pacific design head, Lars Erikson said in today's Australian Age,

"He was here and we had a vision and we talked about taking an Aussie product and injecting it with good Scandinavian design," Erikson says. "As a Scandinavian company, we don't want our products to look Asian or American, we want them to look Scandinavian."

Yet the 'barbie' is an integral part of Aussie culture and the final design, a sleek minimalist piece caused a design sensation. It's marketed as the first 'design inspired' BBQ, retailing at $8900. Here is a PDF of their design vision written by Lars Erikson.

Similarly, for India, Electrolux designed and developed an unusual washing machine, the 'Washy Talky' which instructs the user in three languages - English, Hindi or Tamil. Their rationale for this product demonstrates a deep understanding of how domestic chores are traditionally done in India, and by whom. From their site,

"In the past, middle-class families would have servants to do their laundry for them," explains Marija Borenius, corporate press officer for Electrolux. "Now they are doing it themselves, but they still feel anxious about it, since they don't have a lot of experience with how domestic appliances work."

Washy Talky ends that anxiety by guiding users through the washing process step by step with phrases like, "Add the detergent, close the lid and relax." If the user accidentally leaves the lid open, she will say, "Please close the lid."

Nidhi Malik, assistant manager marketing for Electrolux Kelvinator India, admits that one could always just refer to an owner's manual, but points out that women often prefer not to have to read manuals. "Also, in affluent homes where a maid is washing the clothes," she notes, "a machine that can guide her is a real blessing. Servants relate to Washy Talky as if it were an intelligent maid."

Electolux also runs an international student design competition, the Electrolux Design Lab. Last year's winner, a Singaporean student team developed an ionic clothing cleaning system.

Their combined activities seem like an example of using design to connect with their local markets around the world in relevant ways without losing their core brand identity and vision.

Fortune Magazine says, Design guru Scott Henderson has won numerous awards for his cutting-edge work for companies like Cuisinart, Hewlett-Packard, and OXO International. Today, he's helping design a box to hold diaper rash ointment.
[...]
To gain an edge, smart manufacturers are doing whatever it takes to capture the attention (and aesthetics) of today's chic parents-to-be who are willing -sometimes even eager - to pay top dollar for products that seamlessly blend fashion and function.

"They realize, like so many companies don't, that design is the last great competitive advantage," says Henderson, who has two kids himself, and says that Skip Hop [bags pictured above] is his favorite client.

And not just companies but designers themselves are jumping in the fray with products specially created for young children and infants, starting their own firms like Arizona based Boon who recently got noticed by Target after winning the Innovation award at the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association trade show with the FrogPod shown below.

The Intellicot, created by four men whose final industrial product design project at Britain's Coventry University turned into "a labour of love" is another such story of a company created around a product. It is an aquarium-like creation, with classic wooden bars swapped for a breakout-proof polycarbonate glass wall and features a built-in video camera, connected to a portable monitor, that can be carried around the house.

Other trends showing up in the baby product segment of late include Walmart's entry into organic cotton baby clothes and organic baby foods plus all natural cleaning products. Looks like green is in as well as good looks.

Via the BBC comes news of this house coming up in Southern California built out of scrapped Boeing 747.

"The recycling of the 4.5 million parts of this 'big aluminium can' is seen as an extreme example of sustainable reuse and appropriation. American consumers and industry throw away enough aluminium in a year to rebuild our entire aeroplane commercial fleet every three months."

The Rochester Institute of Technology has been awarded a $465,000 grant by the Henry Luce Foundation for the creation of an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Sustainability.

"We fully expect this program to advance the development of environmentally and socially sound industrial system design while also educating engineers and policy makers around the world on the importance of sustainable principles," adds Nabil Nasr, director of the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies and leader of RIT's Interdisciplinary Design Team for the Ph.D. "The ultimate goal is to produce graduates, at the highest educational level, that are equipped to become leaders in creating a more sustainable society both in their own communities and around the world."

HP wins the first Design for Recycling Award. From the announcement made by the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries,

This year ISRI chose to honor a company or individual whose product design has incorporated one or more of the following:

* Reduction in the number of different recyclable materials
* Reduction or elimination of hazardous constituents
* Increased yield of the product's recyclables
* Improvement in the safety of recycling
* Design that allows for easy disassembly for recycling

Here's more information on Green Product Design and how to implement it.

From John Trenouth comes this excellent short deliberation on whether first to market is more advantageous than waiting for something well designed. Here is his post in full,

The oft parroted common wisdom is that to succeed you need to get your thing to market first. I generally skeptical of anything oft parroted. Sure the early bird gets the worm, but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese. Here are a few examples:

* VHS. Worse than betamax on nearly every level. What's a betamax?
* Quicken. At the time of Inuit's 1984 release of Quicken there had already been over 40 commercial software packages for personal finance
* Office. Know anyone who still uses Lotus123, VisiCalc or WordPerfect?
* World of Warcraft.Released at a time when there were countless MMORPGs, most of which also fantasy based, and it left them all in the dust
* Dyson Vacuums. Upstart company is devouring the tired old vacuum cleaner market
* Del.icio.us. Blink.com came first by years, had vastly more users, and more funding, but its long gone now and Del.icio.us is the gold standard for online bookmarking.

I suppose I am just a little biased. As a designer I seek to optimize the user's experience with a product and the value they get from it. But in a true first-to-market context the value is in the raw capabilities the new product's functionality exposes (i'll post on the related basis of competition issue shortly). So, first-to-market scenarios are primarily marketing plays, while best-to-market scenarios are iNPD (engineering, marketing and design) plays.

But if you really are first to market, that means your latent market has lived well enough without your product all these years. So would a few more days or weeks spent on design really be too much to ask?

One argument might be that "we have to ship 1.0 to start realizing revenue, then we'll let the designers do their thing." Of course downstream redesignings are, generally speaking, drastically more costly than upstream design.

Another argument might be "we need to move now and capture market share before our competitors do." Forget the myopia of letting your competitors define your product strategies, but if your competitors are in fact that hot on your heels then now is the time to start redesigning your product, not after you and your competitor both deploy roughly the same product at roughly the same time for roughly the same customers. Competition then becomes a big stalemated game of rock, paper, scissors.

Check out Ari Paparo's post about how his experiences at Blink show how it is more important to get it right than to get there first.

From the PDF of The 25 Most Innovative companies in the world, here are the Top 10 companies, their rankings last year, and the reason Why they are considered Innovative.

Maytag intends to sell Hoover. Apparently, Hoover's market share had fallen dramatically in the last quarter of 2005 and this first mover - the inventor of the vacuum cleaner - has thrown up its hands and given up the fight against Dyson - the upstart entrant in the playing field. This articlefrom the Times Online has some amazing figures for the market share beating taken by Hoover in the 4 years since Dyson entered the US market. I've converted their table of figures into a chart that better demonstrates the plunge,

Consistently across all the news and analysis this weekend is the singular message that this drop in Hoover's market share in just four years, after decades of market leadership, is entirely due to the lack of any consistent strategy of innovation and design. On the other hand, Dyson's iconic status as an industrial design leader, engineering innovator and persistent inventor (over 5000 prototypes alone for the first model James Dyson launched) does not require introduction. Add to this, their award winning new market entry strategy and you have all the ingredients of a winner.

What is amazing is that some ways this entire episode breaks all the rules of conventional business wisdom - vacuum cleaners are commodities in today's market, while every other player in the market competed on price, Dyson walked in not only with an entirely new technology but also pegged his unusual looking (then) product at a price point over 200% higher than the industry average. He was the late entrant in a very mature market with very established players with very well known brands - after all 'hoover' has become a generic term for cleaning up in UK english. Here are the seeds of a case study of disruptive innovation and the strategic use of good design.