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Best Practices for Designing Surgical Robotics

In the world of surgical device development, identifying needs first and testing concepts second is the key to user adoption and gaining a competitive advantage. This approach serves as the foundation to innovating smartly, along with quick, efficient, and robust methods of concepting. At Kablooe Design, we include Design thinking early on in the process, which minimizes rework and aids in hitting cost and schedule targets.
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You Don’t Get Harmony When Everyone Sings the Same Note

We live in a world of specialists. Nobody sings the same note, right? Our corporations are filled with the special engineer of this or that. In the world of product development we might have human factors specialists, user experience specialists, manufacturing engineering specialists, and so on. We apparently have everyone singing a different note.
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Should Form Follow Function? How Aesthetics Impact Medical Device Design

Should form follow function, or should function follow form? You can think of this hotly debated question as the design world's chicken or the egg scenario. If you ask 100 architects, engineers, and product designers, you're likely to get a pretty split room, and therein lies the problem.
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Why You Need to Design with Misuse in Mind

If to err is human, then to assume everyone will use a product exactly as it was intended is one of the most human things you can do. It doesn't matter how smart we think we are. Eventually, we're going to make a mistake. Whether that's due to human error, a poorly designed product, or some combination of the two, the sooner you accept that use error is inevitable, the sooner you can attempt to counteract it.
Three men play instruments indoors: one on a cajón drum, one on a drum set, and one on a trombone. They are surrounded by chairs and instruments, with a sign reading "YOU'RE A BAND!" in the background.

Kablooe Celebrates 30 Years of Innovation!

What do Google, Tesla, and Amazon all have in common? No, besides the fact that they all basically print money these days. The answer is that none of these companies have been in business as long as Kablooe Design. That’s right, this year we’re celebrating our 30th year of existence, and truth be told, it hasn’t really sunk in yet.
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What Goes Around Comes Around

I have always loved working on devices that are going to have a positive impact on people’s lives, and out of our 30 years of medtech development work, this was one of those golden opportunities. At the time I was developing the technology, it never crossed my mind that someday I would be the recipient of its benefits.
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Shorten Your Medical Device Development Timeline Using These 3 Design Research Strategies

Design research can shorten the development process by making your FDA submission quicker and easier. Plus, you are making it more robust by doing the work now as opposed to later. Too many people wait until later in the process for this work and end up guessing on things or adding “filler” to their required usability data, which oftentimes the FDA can easily sniff out and flag. But by then it takes more time and money.
Two trainers for today’s session are shown: Tom KraMer, President & CEO of Kablooe Design, and Mitch Maiman, President, Intelligent Product Solutions. Both are smiling in black-and-white portraits with their names and titles below.

Failing Your Preclinical is a Success

Tests in your product development cycle represent key milestones to success. Getting a product to market is difficult whether you are a struggling startup or an established original equipment manufacturer (OEM). Understanding some of the tools available on the front end of product development will help you avoid downstream problems, before they become time and money wasters. Preclinical testing is not always viewed this way, but really is one such tool. Designing for learning from studies instead of succeeding in them will help you consider issues such as how people interact with your device so that the product is used correctly—every single time. This is “Successful Failure” thinking. It may include building in safe guards that prevent misuse, especially important with devices used in life and death environments.
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