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As an industrial designer at Plexus Corp., Olivier Currat works with both marketing and engineering teams to execute product vision, but also overcome any gaps that may exist between these two capabilities. I think it’s my role. He will share strategies for closing those gaps at his IME West session on Tuesday, February 7th at 2:30pm. We connect vision and reality through user-centered design. ”
“This story is about why there is some kind of fundamental gap between the vision behind building the user experience and the desire to meet the user’s needs, and how to address it in the early concept development stages. and the gap between everything that goes into molding, assembling, packaging, shipping and manufacturing a product,” he says. design news.
Currat describes his role as principal industrial designer as “not just creating designs. Our role and responsibility is to facilitate that transition and fill the gaps that exist.”
Plexus is a contract manufacturer that partners with OEM manufacturers to bring complex products to market through design and development, supply chain solutions, new product introduction, manufacturing and maintenance services. This gives Currat a unique perspective. “It’s unlike the vast majority of industrial designers who work in design agencies or on the front end of big companies that own brands and make their own products. Medical device design has seen many challenges in bridging the gap where industrial design traditionally engages clients and counterparts on the front end. not, but often [it’s about] Willingness or ability to actually accept constraints and move the development process forward. It’s hard to do that as a designer. I’ve worked in places like that for a long time, so I had a hard time doing so too.
“We have engineering services to support manufacturing, and we are at the forefront of everything Plexus does when it comes to services that engineer products. , is very much involved in the whole process, whether it’s in-house or a manufacturer like ours, when design agencies send us a ton of design work and say, “Hey, this is done, let’s build it.” So, in practice, a lot of work is done to maintain the design intent or to achieve it as best as possible. made. “
Currat shares some examples of specific processes and tools designers can use to be successful in this space. He also explores what it takes to be a balanced designer working in the medical field.
Invitation of engineers
He also wants engineers to come to his sessions. “A lot of times you’re given a set of parameters about the timeline: ‘We need to market this at this point, and we need to do all these things.’ It can be overwhelming, right? On the flip side, two years after he was handed over to engineering, something that looked like the original idea came back, and marketing his team struggling to figure out why did this burn. I feel But what they thought they were trying to do just doesn’t work.
“Having had enough experience discussing design with clients, I know there is real frustration and disappointment in marketing when a design deviates from what was intended,” continues Currat. “I think a lot of times designers think that the assumption is that they should be at the top of their engineering and not change anything. When meeting early, it’s important to set realistic expectations about what is possible and possible, especially since the costs are high.”
For example, according to Currat, marketing may be happy with a designer’s rendering, but “often the designer doesn’t want the metal part they want to extrude to make sense for the volume they’re working with. have not noticed.”
But “when I talk about embracing constraints, that doesn’t mean you can’t do these things,” he says. Some designers are afraid to do that because they think it stifles their creativity, but I think that’s where I get to the point where I become a balanced designer. And in the medical field, the high usability and complexity of those devices is critical to integrating them in a meaningful way.”
Currat will also talk about the benefits of cross-functional teams. He acknowledges that there are often barriers between engineering and other professionals on product development teams, but they should be torn down. “I don’t think it means getting the whole engineering team together and starting early,” he says.
It’s about making sure each team understands each other’s point of view. “What marketing cares about is very empirical and cannot be reduced just because it is abstract. It’s very valuable,” he says.
Additionally, marketing must understand the responsibilities of engineering. “Engineers are going to make a lot of decisions about process and tooling, robustness and material selection. How well can you make it? How efficient can you make it? Being able to make sense of the experience going on gives even engineers the ability to create elegant solutions, what I would call elegant engineering.”
Currat believes these early engagements with engineers are often overlooked. “Designers think engineering has this role, and they can just give these inputs and do whatever they need to do, right?”
But the product experience “includes not only the product and how users interact with it, but also the mechanics and how they work. I believe we need a marketing team that can find the right balance of what we want in engineering.”
Currat believes his session may be of particular interest to system engineers. “These are engineers who are concerned about the system as a whole and how subsystems interact and work together. We have a lot of synergies in our work and the reason I like partnering with them is because they can be more abstract so that decisions can be made even when things are not clearly defined. If you define it too quickly, you miss the chance, and if you don’t put any parameters in place, it’s easy to get lost.”
He says system engineers should be part of these cross-functional teams. “They should be the frontrunners, especially early on. If there are engineers that should be involved from the beginning, such as user definition and early definition of what the product should be, they should definitely be there. prize.”
Currat will also be on standby during the show at the Plexus Corp. booth (#2715), answering questions and continuing conversations started during the session. They highlight some of the products they’ve been working on, including ones that align directly with their user-centered design stories and sessions.
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