News

Tactile is a proud sponsor of IDSA’s International Design Conference (IDC), which goes live this week September 17-18 for a 24-hour global virtual event. With a great lineup of speakers, workshops, and other engaging virtual activities, we’re excited to listen and participate in the design dialogue. Visit the IDC event page to learn more.

At Tactile we believe great tools cultivate meaningful experiences that can improve our working and living conditions. But in order to do our very best work, we have to overcome cognitive bias. To help with this challenge, we tackle every project with a foundation of empathy—it’s at the core of who we are and what we do. Continue to follow us to learn more about how we seek to grow and improve our work.

UX plays a critical role in product development, yet it means a lot of things to a lot of people. At Tactile, UX design means caring about another person’s product experience, holistically. We approach product challenges in a balanced way, applying both physical and digital UX expertise. This allows us to build enjoyable experiences where functionality and beauty come together, focused on people — because that’s what we think great UX is about. To learn more about our unique approach to physical and digital design solutions, click HERE.

Earlier this month, ecobee launched its all-new SmartCamera with voice control and SmartSensor for doors and windows. Building upon the success of their "squircle" design language, ecobee reached out to Tactile to help find the right shape for a home monitoring camera with Alexa Built-in. Both the SmartCamera and SmartSensor for doors and windows connect seamlessly to other ecobee products. Offered as standalones or included in a home monitoring bundle, both products put ecobee's attention to detail on display. For the SmartCamera, the refinements include a glass front, a front-facing speaker grill, and a magnetic stand. Congrats to our friends at ecobee!

The founder of Clarisonic, Dr. Robb Akridge, breaks new ground in starting his new company, Opulus Beauty Labs, where they're launching an innovative system delivering high potency beauty treatments that are freshly activated on demand. The first of its kind, the patented system is comprised of the Opulus Activator™ and single-dose Opoule™ Treatments—a product duo that optimizes the most powerful active ingredients by removing the constraints of conventional packaging, formulation, and thinking. From the very beginning of product inception, Opulus partnered with Tactile to help define user needs, envision the customer journey, exploring brand and product strategy, and product design of the Opulus Activator™ and Opoule™. Tactile worked with engineering and marketing teams to ensure design intent was upheld to production. We’re honored to be a part of the original design collaboration. Congrats to our partners at Opulus Beauty Labs!

The A'Design Awards recently announced this year's 2020 winners and Tactile was awarded platinum for Milwaukee Redstick Digital Level and gold for Tektronix 5 Series MSO. Founded in 2010, the A’Design Awards is an international awards program highlighting the best designs, design concepts, and design-oriented products across a wide range of categories. Click Milwaukee or Tektronix to revisit these case studies. We’re honored to be a part of these awards and congratulations to all the winners. Big kudos to Milwaukee, Tektronix, and the design teams!

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, it continues to be a challenge procuring additional medical supplies and equipment—particularly ventilators to help critical care patients suffering from the virus. Tactile recently partnered with AirMid Critical Care Products, Inc. to quickly develop a safe and low-cost ventilator concept that could fill a void in the current market. The concept is built upon AirMid’s existing technology and includes an additional air control mechanism to provide similar benefits of a mechanical ventilator at hospitals. And just announced last week, AirMid won a U.S. Army contest, xTech COVID-19 Ventilator Challenge, where they were awarded $100K for further research. We’re so excited about AirMid’s win and honored to have been a part of a design collaboration that will impact the lives during this unprecedented medical crisis. Congrats AirMid!

Tactile recently teamed up with Naked Prosthetics to help create a design language for a new finger prosthetic device. The new GripLock Finger™ provides seamless aesthetics, improved grip stability, prevents scratch damage to sensitive surfaces and objects, and a break strength of over 200 lbs. Naked Prosthetics wants to improve the lives of those living with digit amputation by offering fully articulating, high-quality prosthetics, aiming to restore the ability to perform everyday tasks. We’re proud to have partnered with an innovative company that keeps pushing boundaries to provide industry-leading products for their customers. Congrats to Naked Prosthetics!

Tactile had the opportunity to help Genie design a handheld, portable diagnostic device, enabling service technicians to select settings, perform calibrations, and provide full error code readings for simple diagnosing and troubleshooting. The Genie Tech Pro Link was a great chance to showcase our wholistic design services approach spanning industrial design, user experience design, and mechanical engineering. To learn more about this project, click HERE.

Join us in Boston for drinks! Our studio in Boston is co-hosting a happy hour with IDSA Boston to bring the local design community together to mingle and kick off the New Year. So if you're around, stop by and say hello! But first, please visit Eventbrite to register and purchase tickets. Hope to see you there!