Philip Remedios, principal and director of design and development, BlackHägen Design
Inventive imaginations drive product innovation. That’s the way Philip Remedios sees it. In the latest PD&D Fireside Chat, the principal and director of design and development at BlackHägen Design questions what America is going to do to safeguard our future as the world's top innovator?
So what’s the problem? According to Philip, we could start here:
- Too much technology is traded overseas for cheap manufacturing and commodity engineering.
- Exciting ideas are thrown by the wayside by clients who lack inventive imagination, or are too risk-adverse to be pioneers in their field.
PD&D Design Daily: How did you get your foot in the engineering door? Where did you get your professional start?
Philip Remedios: I am an industrial designer by profession and degree, although I studied engineering in college and have a solid science background, which is unconventional for an industrial designer.
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I majored in Transportation Design from the Art Center College of Design in California and took on my first full-time job at Volkswagen AG in Germany working in their brand new think-tank studio in Düsseldorf. It wasn't until eight years later, after I transitioned into product design that I was called upon to oversee the total product development cycle.
PD&D: When you joined the company in 2002, how did your experience in medical devices benefit BlackHägen Design?
Remedios: In 2002, BlackHägen Design was at the time what I refer to as a “classical” industrial design firm, taking design briefs from a wide variety of clients in consumer, commercial and medical industries, creating designs and performing light engineering tasks through to tooled parts.
My departing job was vice president of R&D at a large and prominent Californian turn-key product development firm, supervising a staff of 60 designers and engineers. With a focus on medical devices, and with ISO certification, FDA directives and 10 intense years of medical device development under my belt, I was able to bring substantial experience in full-service medical programs to BlackHägen Design.
My partner Sean Hägen was eager to put this new-found resource to work and together we studied and built our capabilities in the critical areas that would establish BlackHägen Design as one of very few firms that do what we do today.
PD&D: What has been the most difficult project you have ever worked on? Why?
Remedios: While we handle challenging projects continuously, our greatest challenge is almost always executing a quality deliverable constrained by schedule and budget.
We are always expected to be the experts in what we do and to do everything correct the very first time. My most challenging project at BlackHägen Design was probably the portable Vision Screener that we developed for Titmus Optical, a Bacou-Dalloz company. If you compare our new design with the incumbent product, you will be amazed at what we were able to do in only eight months, including the many design and utility patents that we established for Titmus.
In this case, not only were the schedule and budget extremely limited, but the client's expectations for innovation and problem solving set the bar very high, including creating many first time features in this industry, such as LCD optical shutters and stepless optical alignment for progressive lens screening.
We had to excel in research, human factors, graphical user-interface, aesthetics, mechanical, optical and systems design in order to complete this project. As a measure of the innovation we achieved, the number of patent claims on this product line drove one of the five longest patent-pending periods in U.S. history.
PD&D: What drives product innovation more: capital investment or an inventive imagination? Why?
Philip Remedios: While it is certain that one needs both resources to do a spectacular job, I would have to put my vote with inventive imagination, and not just in ourselves, but also in our clients.
We have so often seen wonderfully exciting ideas thrown by the wayside by clients who lack this critical quality, or are too risk-adverse to be pioneers in their field.
As consultants, we ultimately have to sell our ideas and innovation back to the client who then makes the final decision on which direction to proceed with development. I suspect that if you were to ask a corporate manager the same question, he/she may feel able to buy the innovation with sufficient capital and endeavor, but the fundamental requirement is still there for the decision maker to have real vision and trust in the process and with the design team.
PD&D: When you’re stuck or have a question during a project, where do you go to find answers?
Remedios: As industrial designers, we are trained to think laterally rather than hierarchically (like engineers are trained to do). When truly stuck, it is often best to leave the issue unresolved than to force an early compromise, and move onto another area or even another project.
The solution often comes to us at unexpected times or from unexpected individuals. Therefore, conducting brainstorming sessions with other team members, and sometimes even outside resources, often uncovers an entirely different way to solve the problem. Benchmarking products from other industries and applications can also add value to the problem-solving process.
PD&D: What are you currently working on?
Remedios: Amongst other programs, we are developing and optimizing ruggedized hand-held computers such as palm-top and tablets, which insist on outstanding human-factors, robust mechanical engineering in addition to intuitive control interfaces. These projects require intensive user-research in the field for the outdoor commercial and military applications.
PD&D: What is BlackHägen Design’s specialty?
Remedios: BlackHägen Design's core competence is conducting vital end-user research that then drives design requirements and subsequent product conceptualization.
While many firms advertise this specialty, very few are able to perform both the research and design synthesis at a high level of competence. BlackHägen Design has worked tirelessly with Fortune 50 clients such as Johnson & Johnson, Baxter Healthcare and Philips Medical for many years to hone this skill-set into a seamless process.
PD&D: Looking at the current state of the industry, what keeps you up at night?
Remedios: With so much technology being traded overseas in return for cheap manufacturing and commodity engineering, what will we do as a nation to safeguard our future as the world's top innovator?
And while our robust domestic market still drives product categories, a day will come when our consumers will not have the same voice, and the economic pendulum will swing elsewhere. These two critical issues must be seriously considered at national and educational levels before U.S. industry experiences the same massive brain-drain that plagued Britain in the last century.
BlackHägen Design (BH) is a cross disciplinary, strategic research and product design firm, supporting start-up through Fortune 50 companies. With an emphasis on user research, innovation and product definition, BH offers a unique and proven Discovery and Development process. This systematic methodology for creating innovation has yielded over 100 patents for our clients in the last decade, and driven remarkable success stories in multiple marketplaces.
BH has played a critical role in client efforts to minimize failure modes associated with operator error through intuitive user interface design. By utilizing interactive models and effective research techniques in global ethnographic studies, BH has maximized the usability of many different products and electro-mechanical systems, while enhancing procedural protocols and delivering innovative designs that create competitive advantages for our clients. Further, our streamlined and well-proven product development methodology emphasizes real-time collaboration between all stakeholders, ensuring an end-result that is both relevant to the end-customer and appropriate for the intended manufacturer.
For more information visit www.blackhagendesign.com or e-mail info@blackhagendesign.com.