articles
Field notes from the studio.
How we think about strategy, industrial design, engineering, software, computation and visualization — written from practice, not from the content calendar.
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Why good products die in handoffs
The most dangerous moment in a product program isn't a failed test. It's a file transfer.
strategyThe discovery sprint: cheap certainty before expensive tooling
Two to four weeks of structured evidence is the cheapest insurance hardware money can buy.
researchField research beats focus groups for technical products
Technical products fail in context — and context never attends a focus group.
industrial designCMF is engineering: materials that survive year three
Colour, material and finish are lifecycle engineering wearing nice clothes.
human factorsDesigning for gloved hands: beyond the percentile table
The anthropometric table says the handle fits. The double nitrile glove disagrees.
engineeringThe unglamorous distance: design freeze to first article
Programs rarely die at the concept review. They die between freeze and first article.
engineeringSimulation belongs inside the loop, not after the failure
Analysis that arrives after the review isn't engineering. It's a post-mortem with colour plots.
software & hmiDesign the fault state first: HMI for a device's worst day
Products are judged in their worst five minutes. Most interfaces are designed for the demo.
computationalGenerative design that ships starts with constraints
The hard part was never generating options. It's encoding the truth they must obey.
visualizationRender what you can build: product CGI as an honesty test
Every render is a promise someone else has to keep. Accuracy is a brand claim.