Latest articles

Article

How Small Manufacturers Can Thrive in a Shifting Industry

The manufacturing industry is a system that’s incredibly difficult to navigate. Engineers are continuously trying to wade their way through the complex landscape of manufacturing capabilities to find the right partner to bring their product to market. One of the biggest challenges here is that the best manufacturing partners are often: hard to find (you […]

Article

Rolling with the Punches: Jabber on Designing Toys for Kids

Here in the Bay Area we probably have the greatest concentration of electronic gadgets, and the people who make them, this side of the planet. That can be a problem when it comes to parenting—even if you hide all your devices under your sofa, your kids will still come home raving about their best friend’s […]

Article

How to Create a Product Requirements Document

Here at Mindtribe, I regularly meet with teams excited to turn their fledgling product concept into a physical reality. Teams come in all shapes and sizes—both startups and big companies, with varying levels of experience and states of clarity around their product concept. My job is to understand their vision and help them transform it […]

Article

The Fundamentals of Hardware Assembly Design

Designing parts for efficient product assembly is a primary hardware development consideration. Even if labor costs are a relatively small percentage of the final selling price, problems in assembly can generate tremendous costs, incur production delays, and result in suboptimal part quality. Since the largest financial impact in hardware development comes during the production phase […]

Article

Brave New Breathable World: The Story Behind a Smarter, Sleeker Air Quality Sensor

Remember the clunky, brick-sized, beige-colored cell phones the 1980’s used to carry around? That’s what today’s environmental sensors remind Will Hubbard of. Will is the COO and co-founder of ChemiSense, a new player in the environmental sensor space that’s working on an air quality sensor that’s smarter, sleeker, and cheaper. And definitely not beige. It all started in […]

Article

How to Make a Daft Punk Helmet

Inspiration It all started back in 1995, when I listened to the song Da Funk by Daft Punk. As a European, I had a lot of exposure to Daft Punk music, and after Discovery (2001), it became shall we say…an obsession. 🙂 I stumbled upon this YouTube video on how to make a Daft Punk helmet a while back, […]

Article

Tips for 3D Printing Jewelery Designs

Modern jewelry design can greatly benefit from advances in 3D printing technology. 3D printing can help you reduce material costs, iterate on your jewelry designs more quickly, and assess more accurate models to ultimately make more better pieces. The two main ways we recommend jewelery designers leverage 3D printing technology are: 3D print models of […]

Article

Hardware and Pancakes with Nebia

At our recent Pancakes + Hardware event, Gabe Parisi-Amon, CTO at Nebia, shared product development insights on the wildly popular shower head that caught fire on Kickstarter. The pancakes were also a hit (but thankfully not on fire) and engineers had a great opportunity to connect with Gabe and his Co-founder Phil since Nebia is hiring. Read on for […]

Article

How to Use 3D Printing to Design Furniture

Additive manufacturing has revolutionized the way we prototype products—new ideas can take shape in a matter of hours. While large-scale 3D printing is becomingly increasingly possible, the technology is still most commonly used to develop consumer products on a smaller scale. However, this shouldn’t stop you from thinking big when it comes to using additive […]

Article

Compensation Guidelines for Industrial Design Consultants

Industrial Design consulting work is a great way to maintain personal flexibility and build a wide variety of skills, but it can be hard to know how to get started. Of the many things to learn along the way, figuring out how much to charge for your work is a good place to start. Here’s a […]