Rebecca Frisch interviewed Tom Dair, co-founder and President of Smart Design, one of the leading design studios in the USA today. Here is the PDF "The Story of Smart Design" and a summary.

We started out as industrial designers, but it's pretty hard to do product development unless you're understanding an interactive experience like how somebody would be working a product or going through a series of steps with a product, and all these products are really about brand - the 3 dimensional incarnation of the brand - how does the brand communicate itself through the product and through the usage, the interactions that people have with it?

Our focus is on designing for people in their everyday lives. When we started, [high-end European design was in fashion] we were designing pots and pans basically, casseroles that you put in your oven, that sold for $9-10, things that were found in every K-Mart, Macy's and early on we realized, for us it was more fulfilling to design for everyday consumers. You didn't necessarily have to create something that's expensive or museum-quality, to create good design. Smart designed Corningware French White cookware 25 years ago and it remains Corningware's best selling line today.