Butters Innovation Blog

Strategic Industrial Design Creates Value and Impact

Fri, 23 May 2025 13:04:36 GMT

Highlights from the Design in Innovation Summit, part of LCR's Innovation Investment Fortnight

This May 2025, we brought together over sixty industrial designers, entrepreneurs, ecosystem enablers, academics and innovation experts for the Design in Innovation Summit , part of Liverpool City Region’s Innovation Investment Fortnight . Co-hosted with Innovate UK Business Growth at MTC Liverpool , the event spotlighted the value of strategic industrial design in de-risking and accelerating innovation.

Too much R and not enough D!

Often, innovating businesses are signposted toward academic or tech-based Research & Development providers when what they really need is commercially grounded, human-centred design expertise. And the funding available for product innovation is often focussed on research and technology, rather than impact. Obviously the research-led organisations are part of the story and have a lot to offer, but we wanted to shift the narrative and show that strategic industrial design isn’t just about aesthetics or prototypes; it’s about solving the right problems, for the right people, in the right way - and delivering commercial, environmental or societal impact.

The geographic reach of the attendees (including from London, the South Coast and Bristol) and the feedback after the event highlighted the need for this discussion, and how rare it is that industry professionals gather to discuss this thorny topic. As Megan Foden , Innovation Consultant and Design Lead at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital , put it:

“This session completely reshaped how I think about design in innovation. It showed how inclusive, user-led design can drive creativity, de-risk innovation, and accelerate real-world impact. A brilliant blend of strategy, empathy, and practical tools.”

Bethany Procter , Innovation Specialist at Innovate UK Business Connect "found this summit to be insightful and inspiring. It honestly explored the challenges and triumphs that the design sector encounters, and emphasised design’s undeniable role in successful, ethical and valuable innovation."

Design as Risk Reduction

We heard compelling case studies demonstrating how human-centred design thinking, from the earliest stage of innovation projects, can prevent costly missteps down the line - lead to solutions which are more inclusive, more focused and more commercially viable.

Deborah Dawton , CEO of the Design Business Association , encouraged a rethink of innovation funding priorities:

“Shouldn’t we be encouraging businesses to do D&D — Design and Development — instead of R&D? The current emphasis on research seems to result in it going on for a very long time, and it doesn’t half chew up your cash!”

Barriers to Scaling Innovation

We had honest conversations about the need for stronger and more direct collaboration between designers and the high-profile research and technology organisations that dominate the innovation ecosystem. Whilst the industrial design sector, and the consultancies within it, are small, their impact is huge! Designing successful solutions means much greater economic, environmental and societal impact - it’s a value creator!

But this potential is often overlooked or ignored, reducing the potential of innovation projects. As Megan Foden said, the event had “honest conversations about the real barriers to scaling innovation: unclear routes to design support and related activities from research to testing with real users, and the undervaluing of early-stage design input.”

Bridging the Gap

A key aim of the event was to explore how better connections between industry, intermediaries and commercial design providers can help innovation funding go further - and it was the start of some great conversations. As Fatima Farah , Innovate UK Business Growth put it, “Let us continue to build a design community that does not just talk about innovation but leads it.”

Our CEO, Jonathan Butters , is working on a White Paper on how to connect with the strategic design sector and will be working with Innovate UK’s Innovation and Growth Service to reinforce the value of engaging with the sector.

We’ll also be organising a regular “Innovation Barn Dance” at our new premises in Central Tech , to bring all those involved in the innovation ecosystem together, and increase the gene pool of the Liverpool City Region ’s innovation villages!

Many thanks to our panellists and presenters, who shared so many insights on the day! In order of appearance:

Charlotte Corke , Innovation Consultant, Butters Innovation
Andrew North , Innovate UK Business Growth
Richard Birkin , Innovate UK Business Connect
Jonathan Butters , CEO, Butters Innovation
Deborah Dawton , Chief Executive, Design Business Association
Matt Langford , Founder, People Planet Product
Rachael Curran , Founder, bitbaby
Jonny Marchbank , Founder, Riptide
Jen Fenner , Co-Founder and Managing Director, DefProc Engineering
Alistair Williamson , Managing Director, Lucid

Butters Innovation Wins Innovation Category at LCR Culture and Creativity Awards 2025

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 15:35:08 GMT

Trying to be sensible at the awards ceremony!

The world’s first scalable mattress cleaning machine was designed by Butters Innovation for FRC Group in Liverpool, and has just won a Liverpool City Region Culture and Creativity Award . FRC Group is a charity, and their mission is to alleviate furniture poverty by ensuring households on low income can be provided with beds, appliances, and furniture. Already, the machine has prevented thousands of mattresses being sent to landfill by a multi-stage cleaning process called Ultraclean.

Jonathan Butters helped FRC Group apply for grant funding and his team designed the machine and worked with a number of subcontractors to install it at FRC’s Speke factory. The first machine, named Mattilda, is fully connected to the internet so that it can be monitored during use.

Jonathan said…… “The project is a great example of collaborative, user-focused design. I’m an engineer who also went to art school (can't you tell!!), so my creative background gave me the skills to work with lots of different sorts of specialists and understand what a good innovative solution to the problem might be. Mattilda has also won a national recycling award and is poised to be rolled out across the country. It’s wonderful that a small company like Butters Innovation can have such a large impact on communities and the environment.”

Shout out to LCR Growth Platform!

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 09:55:24 GMT

Delighted to be featured on the region's innovation and growth focused support platform

Growth Platform is the Liverpool City Region's business support service designed to support business leaders to grow and develop. It was established to help strengthen, simplify and coordinate the business landscape for the City Region. Their regular newsletter highlights the latest news, announcements and achievements of the city region - so we're delighted to be featured, sharing our great news story - that we're finalists in the Innovation category for the Liverpool City Region Culture and Creativity Awards.

Everything we do is related to innovation! With our focus on human-centred design processes, we help our clients (small to medium businesses, start-ups and university spin-outs) develop successful manufacturable solutions, devices and machines, and digital platforms - across the med-tech, healthcare, wellbeing, energy, environmental and consumer product sectors. We engage with users and customers, ensuring that whatever is being designed and developed is fit for purpose, usable comfortable, efficient and effective - to increase the likelihood of commercial success. By carefully considering human factors, as well as technical and manufacturing factors, the end result is much more likely to be desirable, feasible and viable. And at the end of the day, that's what innovation is all about.

Breaking Bias for Innovation

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 12:08:37 GMT

Smarter Problem Discovery for Commercially Successful New Products

Rushing to solutions hurts innovation! If we don’t break our in-built biases when seeking to solve a problem, we make poor decisions, set off in a misinformed direction and end up building the wrong thing. The risk of failure is very high!

I’ve worked with so many passionate, clever people, who have spotted a problem and are convinced they know how to solve it. But time and again, there’s been a tendency for these founders, entrepreneurs or business owners to rush towards the solution, without taking a moment to check their assumptions, recognise their in-built biases and dig a little deeper into discovering the real issues from the perspective of everyone impacted by it.

But what do I mean by biases? Well, there’s a long list! There’s “sticking to what you already know” (confirmation bias), thinking you’re more right that you really are (overconfidence bias), sticking with a bad idea because you’ve already put time or money into it (sunk cost fallacy) and being swayed by how a problem is described rather than the facts (framing effect), to name but a few! In short, it’s our natural tendency to think about, perceive and interpret a problem in a particular way. And it’s a very useful mechanism for problem solving - providing a cognitive shortcut to help us interact with the world around us, absorb information and make decisions quickly.

We do it without thinking much of the time: we’re not conscious of the fact that we’re using our personal experiences, cultural influences and societal norms to help us process information rapidly. But when it comes to innovation, and developing new products and services, this “automatic” thinking can be highly flawed or incomplete. It will affect how we recognise problems in the first place (which ones we choose to see or ignore), how we frame a problem (how we describe and approach it), and what options we consider and prioritise when we seek solutions.

The Sinclair C5 is a classic example. Brainchild of its inventor, Sir Clive Sinclair, his passion was to develop a low-cost personal electric vehicle for local transport, errands and short pleasure trips (90% of daily uses of conventional cars, which he rightly considered wasteful and expensive). He drove the design and development, setting out the requirements and focusing on engineering challenges such as its battery power to weight ratio. The only external research carried out was with about 60 families in suburban and town environments, to determine whether the steering handlebar and other controls were correctly positioned. On launch, the lack of a human-centred design process became immediately apparent: using it, people felt unsafe and uncomfortable. It was marketed as an alternative for car drivers and cyclists, but appealed to neither! The product failed and the company went bust within months. Sir Clive’s personal biases had steered the development in a direction which was never going to work, failing to consider or understand the needs and wants of his customers.

So how do we mitigate bias in problem discovery? It’s a fairly simple process!

Seek diverse input - map out and talk to all stakeholders impacted by the problem to learn about their varying perspectives
Validate assumptions - using data or evidence (either existing or do your own research) to confirm or challenge your initial beliefs
Reframe questions - explore multiple ways to describe the problem, so that you don’t scupper your thinking before you’ve even started
Use structured techniques such as open questions, the “5 whys” and empathy mapping to dig deeper and gain greater insights.

If an unbiased (and as we call it, more “human-centred”) approach had been adopted during the development of the C5, research with car drivers and cyclists would have quickly exposed the short-comings in the concept. And this could have been done long before the expensive stage of building engineering prototypes, purely on the basis of sketches and models - a much cheaper and faster way to validate ones assumptions!

Saving time, resources and money, so you tackle the real issue rather than going down a path that’s doomed to fail, is only one of many benefits to unbiased problem discovery. Others include:

Identifying the root causes of problems, not just the symptoms - so it’s much more likely to lead to solutions which address the real problem, leading to long-term results instead of quick fixes.
Encouraging innovation and creativity, opening the door to ground-breaking solutions that wouldn’t emerge from biased or constrained thinking.
Improving perceptions and judgements, leading to better decisions, based on complete, accurate information.
Building inclusivity and empathy by actively seeking input from diverse stakeholders, leading to more equitable solutions.
Promoting sustainable solutions that consider long-term impacts, not just short-term fixes, so they are not only effective but also enduring and ethical.

So how do you do it? At the heart of unbiased problem discovery is curiosity, empathy and a desire to learn from diverse perspectives, backed up by real data and reinforced through continuous reflection, validation and iteration. So it’s essential that you approach it with a mindset, and process, that minimises assumptions, brings in the views and experiences of all stakeholders, and relies on evidence and critical reasoning when making decisions.

In my work, I usually start by mapping out the “value ecosystem” related to the problem space - who are all the stakeholders and what are the value chains between them (who receives products or services, and who pays for them). This helps surface assumptions that should be tackled early on to ensure any solution is going to be viable.

Another key technique is structured questioning, such as the “5 Whys” or using open-ended questions like “Tell me about your experience of…..” This creates a systematic approach to uncovering the full scope of the problem, ensuring that we focus on facts, challenge assumptions, and promote critical thinking.

Data-driven analysis is also essential - we can’t base conclusions on intuition or what we believe is the case - these must be based on evidence! So we seek out, collate and analyse as much existing data as is available, and use surveys, in-depth interviews, focus groups and observations, to fill any gaps - so we can ground our decisions in reality and reduce subjectivity.

This work often leads to the problem being reframed, as it reveals new ways to define it. And in turn, this reframing opens up new avenues for exploration and prevents tunnel vision.

An example was when I worked with a founder who was the Director of Infection Prevention and Control at an NHS Trust, who wished to reduce hospital acquired infections (which cost the NHS at least £1b a year). He believed that the core issue was improving hand hygiene of staff: the standard approach for assessing this was direct observation of staff on wards, which routinely reported 99% compliance. But his instinct was that this was over-optimistic (when an observer is walking around a ward with a clipboard, it's not surprising that everyone washes their hands religiously!)

So we ran a Trust-wide survey of 467 staff from across all staff groupings (doctors, nurses, porters, lab staff etc) to explore their perceptions of hand hygiene compliance:

It was clear that staff agreed on the importance of hand hygiene, and interestingly, they were confident in their own abilities to do this well. But their rating of hand hygiene compliance by all staff in general was much less positive, with only 47% rating it as good/very good. As this is the respondent’s perception based on them observing their colleagues day to day (rather than during an official audit), it is likely to be much closer to reality - confirming the founder’s belief that direct observation yields wildly inaccurate results. And in response to the question about how effective they thought the current method of direct observation is, for assessing and improving staff hand hygiene performance, their view was even more jaded, with only 40% rating it as good/very good. The founder was clearly onto something!

We then asked staff for their views on the founder’s solution idea (a system for giving personal, objective data on their hand hygiene performance in real time), to discover people’s views on its usefulness and acceptability. Perception of its value was encouraging: 73% thought such a system would be useful/very useful. But when asked how comfortable they would be, if it entailed accurately recording and reporting all their hand hygiene opportunities taken (to themselves and their line manager only), the acceptability of this was much less certain, with only 52% saying they would be comfortable/very comfortable with this.

This valuable insight highlighted a key risk to the project, as end-user acceptance would be essential for its adoption. Conversations with staff also made it clear that requiring any change to workflows or patterns of behaviour would present a huge barrier to entry. These learnings allowed us to reframe the problem and rethink the solution, in further consultation with staff. This resulted in a simplified solution design based on RFID sensors in staff badges and receivers placed next to wash stations (so no change to existing workflows was required - staff badges simply had to be reissued for the system to become operational). Individual data was surfaced to each staff member via a mobile app, giving them real time feedback on their performance. And anonymised, aggregated data could be used by team leaders and departments to identify patterns of behaviour and drive improvements on a group-wide basis.

Underpinning all of the above was a fundamentally empathetic approach, where we were driven by a desire to understand and consider the perspectives, needs and emotions of those affected by the problem. There is a concrete benefit in doing this: it helps uncover underlying motivations and challenges that might not be immediately obvious. Crucially, empathy ensures that solutions are human-centered and aligned with real needs - and therefore much more likely to be a long-term success!

If you're embarking on an innovation project, or facing challenges that you're unclear how to solve, book a FREE diagnostic chat to see how I can help!

Charlotte Corke

User-Centred Innovation Facilitator and Startup Advisor

Industrial Designers Exist!

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 15:49:49 GMT

We have an SOC code - 3429/01

The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) is a common classification of occupational information for the UK. Bizarrely, until 2020 the occupations of Product Designer or Industrial Designer did not have their own classification. The result of having an SOC code is that statistics can now be gathered on the occupation and education programmes can use a recognised description of the roles and career paths that their graduates might be able to follow.

The creation of the SOC code took a lot of effort from the trade organisation British Industrial Design Association (formerly BDI), the work being led by Gus Desbarats and Les Stokes . These bureaucratic things might not seem to be important, but it's pretty chaotic without them.

The next mission is to get a Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code for Industrial Design. At the moment all we have is SIC code 74100 Specialised Design Activities.

74100 includes:-

Boot and shoe designing
Lace designing
Jewellery designing
Interior designers
Interior decorator activities
Interior decor design
Graphic designer
Furniture designing
Fashion designing
Costume designing
Clothes designer
Calico printers designing
Textile or wallpaper printing designing

It's the best we have without diving into very niche categories of design activity, but it's not very helpful! Unfortunately government economic data is gathered in reference to SIC codes, so this lack of a specific SIC code means that there is no reliable data to inform policy and highlight the contribution Industrial Designers make to our home and export figures.

What is an Innovation Ecosystem?

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 13:42:58 GMT

You have to be on the ground to see the wood from the trees!

Innovation Ecosystem is popular term at the moment. In my region, there have been mapping exercises to identify the key players, but they usually end up only identifying Universities, Science Parks, Large Research Organisations, Car Manufacturers and A Niche Luxury Product Producer.

It is usual for larger institutions to dominate the discussions about Innovation Ecosystems, become the gatekeepers for funding and then put on events, solely for the purpose of driving SMEs to themselves. This is despite the evidence that they are only part of the story.

In contrast, one recent class IIb invasive medical device project we delivered had this DNA…....

University IP > Grant Funding > Private Sector Partner > Research Organisation > Design > Prototyping > IP Protection > Supply Chain > Tooling > Batch Production > Regulatory Compliance > Product Technical File > Instructions For Use > Verification in Lab > Commercialisation…..

We managed much of the project and did quite a bit of the work ourselves, commissioning other experts when necessary. This is quite typical of how we and other Industrial Design Consultancies can integrate with other knowledge specialists and sub-contractors.

We have a good track record of winning Innovate UK, NIHR and Private Equity Funding for our clients. Despite this, we are very small and agile but have a big impact.

We have a focus on commercial outcomes. The following always makes me chuckle -

Research turns money into ideas
Innovation turns ideas into money

Too many of the large Innovation Ecosystem organisations are more suitable for and more experienced in point 1, so it's questionable that they should be the self-appointed gate-keepers.

Rapid prototyping saves ancient Chinese instruments

Sat, 04 Jan 2025 15:19:13 GMT

3D Printed parts save ancient instruments for the oldest Chinese youth orchestra in Europe

We have worked with the Liverpool's Pagoda Chinese Youth Orchestra (PCYO) before. In 2023 we designed and built a complete drum kit using a substantial proportion of bamboo for the Imagine Bamboo is Everywhere community arts project. As part of the delivery team, we won a Liverpool City Region environmental award.

Recently we were shown a number of traditional Chinese instruments that needed spare parts that are, no longer, available. Several four-stringed Pipas, sometimes called a Chinese Lute, needed pegs to secure the strings to the base of the instrument. After some trials we developed the parts in 3D CAD and then built them in ABS plastic on our desktop 3D printer. It was important to ensure that the shapes and materials had equivalent acoustic properties to the originals, and that they were stable with time under load. Also, we had to allow for shrinkage of the polymer during cooling so they would fit snugly in the holes of the Pipa.

This demonstrates that a basic knowledge of 3D CAD and a low-end 3D printer can extend the life of physical objects even if spare parts are no longer available.

Zilan Liao, CEO of Pagoda Arts, said "the parts work well". We are now supplying string bridges for another instrument, a hammer dulcimer, called a Yangqin.

Women Are Poorly Served By Designers

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 15:54:45 GMT

You'd be surprised how many products and systems are designed for men and then translated, often badly, for women

Women are 47% more likely to be severely injured in a car crash, but female test dummies could change this.

Crash test dummies have been used to test car safety since the 1970s, but most of them are modelled on the average man. It is only in the past three years that a crash test dummy, specifically designed around female anatomy, has been available to study the effects of car crashes on women's bodies. Prior to this, the stand-in for women in these tests was a scaled-down male model, which was actually the size of a 12-year-old, girl.

The work done by Dr Astrid Linder has shown that women suffer more and in different ways to men, because their torso rigidity, joint stiffness and organ positions are, obviously, different. The same problem exists in medical device and drug development: to avoid the expense or perceived "complexity" of mixed clinical trials, these are usually conducted exclusively on men and the results extrapolated for women.

This is completely opposite to our vision of user-centred innovation! There is a lot we can and should do as designers to remedy this problem - we would never design for people without them directly being involved. This applies to products and services for women, and those that are used by people with physical and hidden disabilities, and by the elderly.

We have designed public seating for older people , hygiene products for people of the Muslim faith, devices for interventional cardiology and a sea safety system for sailors. None of our team had direct experience of the use cases, so we had to engage with stakeholders and users very early on so we could co-create the requirements and how we could test aspects of the solution as it developed. Often, data was not available, nor accurate anatomical models for the actual people we were designing for, so we have to research and create the data to inform our design process. It's central to our approach and, we believe, essential to ensure the commercial success of any innovation.

Jonathan recently designed a product for Zephyr Ease to help women recover after giving birth through C-Section - a situation which he had no direct experience of. So, how did he go about developing a solution? He'll write a blog about it next month!

Shortlisted for the LCR Culture and Creativity Awards 2025

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 13:56:45 GMT

An innovative way to reduce landfill and get a good night's sleep

Butters Innovation is delighted to announce that we are finalists in the Innovation category for the Liverpool City Region Culture and Creativity Awards . We worked with local charity FRC Group to develop an automated machine that processes mattresses. Developing their own products and machines was new to FRC Group so they commissioned us to deliver the solution.

The machine (first of its type in the world) has been named Mattilda and enables large volumes of mattresses to be given a new and extended life, safe for use. The cleaned mattresses go to alleviate furniture poverty and are used to maintain cleanliness in student residences, social housing and hotels.

The seven stage process ensures pre-owned mattresses, which may have been destined for landfill or broken down into parts for recycling, can be processed to remove:

Odours
Stains
Bacteria
Viruses
Mould
Mildew
Bed bugs and fleas

The mattresses are restored to extremely high cleanliness levels and are as good as new. They are swabbed to certify that they are clean to the necessary standard. This is great news for the environment too. Every mattress which is reused saves 79.5 kg of CO2 which is the equivalent of taking 14 cars off the road for a day.

Following the first stage of the work supported by a grant from Made Smarter , we completed the final stage of the work this year with funding from Innovate UK (Launchpad - Advanced Manufacturing - MFA - Liverpool City Region) to design and implement additional drying, flame retardancy spray restoration and cloud-based monitoring. Jonathan Butters , CEO of Butters Innovation , helped FRC Group apply for the funding.

CEO of FRC Group , Shaun Doran , commented:

“We are delighted to introduce our UltraClean Machine . This is the first of its kind and will make such a huge difference in our mission to End Furniture Poverty . Those in need will receive high quality mattresses, and at the same time this will have a positive impact on the environment, as disposal or recycling is not needed. “

The first prototype of the machine won the prestigious MRW National Recycling Awards , the top awards in the recycling and resource management sector.

UKRI funding to develop a product, service or business model

jonathan.butters@butters-innovation.co.uk (Jonathan Butters) — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 15:38:09 GMT

Another round of UKRI "Design Foundations" grant funding is open - and our expertise and decades of relevant experience can help you apply!

Looking to develop a product, service or business model? Our expertise and decades of experience in user-centred design will greatly increase your chance of success, because our people centred, systemic design process ensures that you build the right thing (not just build something right). And UKRI's latest round of "Design Foundations" funding provides grants of up to £80k to fund the work!

We are a North West UK based user-centred innovation consultancy, specialising in business transformation, design thinking and industrial design. We have an extensive track record in working with clever people directly or through initiatives like Made Smarter and KTN Mentoring , and our client list is a Who’s Who of scientific and high tech spin-out companies.

This latest competition from UKRI will provide up to £80k grant funding to help businesses use people-centred and system-aware design methods to lay the foundations for innovative ideas with the potential to deliver significant benefits. These can be ideas for new or significantly improved products, services, places or business models.

We are design experts with decades of relevant experience in designing and developing innovative products, services and businesses which are desirable, feasible and viable. We'd love to help businesses apply for and then engage in these kinds of projects - so please reach out. Full details available on the Innovation Funding Service website, closing date is 15 January 2025.

What’s “design thinking” got to do with my business?

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:32:40 GMT

Charlotte Corke explains that it could be just what you need to unlock innovation and creative problem solving in your organisation.

Are you grappling with inefficiencies and frustrations in your “business as usual” way of doing things?

Wanting to branch out into new markets , or develop a new product or service , but struggling to work out where to start?

Is customer engagement or retention an issue but you’re not sure of how to tackle this?

In all these examples, and many mor e, Design Thinking cou ld be just what you need to unleash the creative problem solving of your team and radically improve your business . It’s a human-centred process, which uses tried and tested tools and techniques, to help you reframe problems, overcome biases and unblock the imagination and innovation of your in-house teams.

And although there's a fair bit of hype around about Design Thinking, it’s really not that complicated. In essence, it’s about:

Ensuring that, when you are working to solve a problem, you first make sure you really understand that problem from all angles, taking into account the views of everyone affected (recognising that their views may be very different from your own)
Not trying to solve it in isolation - good ideas don’t come from divine intervention but are a product of past experiences and knowledge of other solutions, to similar or contrasting problems
Not settling for the first solution that pops to mind but rather, exploring a range of options, digging into them in increasing depth, by collaborative discussion - then prototyping and testing (physical, digital, organisational, or whatever applies to your problem space) with real users or customers - to learn and develop, iteratively moving towards a solution.

Sounds messy, right? Well yes, it can be - but it’s also proven to be great at getting to solutions which are unexpected, delightful, engaging and effective .

I’ve helped many different types of business tackle their knotty problems in this way:

a large, multisite utilities company that needed to improve internal communications and ensure its people were informed and enabled to do a great job
a digital startup that was developing a platform for supply chain management, that needed to unpick its user journeys and make sure their platform enabled users to complete key tasks in an engaging way
a medical device company looking to develop a new product to address a clear problem with multiple possible solutions
another digital startup that was grappling with its value proposition in a complex business-to-business ecosystem that needed to figure where to start in its development journey.

None of these sound particularly like “design” related projects and yet, Design Thinking was at the heart of devising a credible plan that addressed the full trinity of business success - Desirability, Feasibility and Viability. By allowing their teams to engage in this process, these organisations unlocked their insight, talent and motivation to define and design the changes and developments that were needed.

Are you grappling with a knotty problem? Let’s have an initial chat to see if it’s something we can help you with!

Charlotte Corke

Principal Innovation and Start-up Consultant

UltraClean - a socially and environmentally beneficial project

jonathan.butters@butters-innovation.co.uk (Jonathan Butters) — Thu, 13 May 2021 16:27:50 GMT

7m mattresses were thrown away in the UK in 2017

Meet Mattilda, the first purpose-built machine in the UK to reduce the huge number of mattresses being sent to landfill. Designed to be ten times faster than manual cleaning and connected to the web for remote monitoring. Mattresses are first manually inspected and pre-cleaned with environmentally-friendly detergent, then receive an intensive deep-clean with Steam, Vacuum, Ozone, UVc and 60 degrees of heat to dry them thoroughly.

Bulky Bob’s was created in 2000 by FRC Group , a Liverpool social enterprise and charity. Bulky Bob’s has held the bulky household waste collection service with Liverpool City Council since its creation and also delivers collection services for Oldham and Warrington councils.

Two years ago I was approached to develop a machine for automating the cleaning of used mattresses so that they could be put back into use. Bulky Bob's had already tried doing this manually and could clean one mattress in about 60 minutes, selling the refurbished mattresses through their retail store. The slowest parts of the process involved Ultra-Violet exposure and drying.

After a process of capturing the requirements from all stakeholders - operator, supply-chain, installation, client - we proposed several visual concepts of the possible solutions. I assisted the client in applying for support under the Made Smarter grant programme and we moved into the design phase.

It was important to keep the design to a modular architecture with a certain amount of independence between the key elements. This would help an incremental build and to facilitate modifications to optimise performance in a real-world situation. A standard conveyor system was proposed with a number of enclosures designed for safe access and containment. We commissioned an Ultra Violet system and obtained an Ozone generator.

The Steam Box is driven by an Steam Generator and a vacuum unit. Combined with manual pre-cleaning the machine has greatly increased the speed of mattress cleaning and increased consistency. More machines are to be built and will have a significant impact on reducing our carbon footprint and the amount of bulky materials being sent to landfill.

Click here to see a video of the machine.

Walking in other people's shoes

jonathan.butters@butters-innovation.co.uk (Jonathan Butters) — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 10:40:03 GMT

User-Centred Innovation and Co-Design - How to design for users who are not you

When I studied Industrial Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art in 1986 we did a group project that was designed to encourage us to focus on designing for people with disabilities. It was a very open brief with no particular steer. Very quickly the group started to discuss how you might define "disability". As was common with my peers, we dived into a dictionary and publications (pre-internet) to help establish the meaning of the word. In this case we decided to build our own definition setting out disability as the result of a situation rather than specific to a person. We then set out to remove the disabling conditions in our design project.

It was a fairly naive approach, but I think we all agreed that you can't design for people without engaging with them. That was the learning I took away with me. Ever since I have seen myself as an advocate for end-users and stake-holders in the design work I undertake. Several projects have, at my insistence, had several stages of user-engagement to define the problem, verify the thinking and validate the solution at key points.

I'm sure that a common mode of product, system or service failure is the fact that they have not been developed in partnership with actual users. Now this is difficult, especially when it's an innovation that hasn't previously existed. But experience has demonstrated that people are absolutely key to the development of successful ideas. I have led many user-centred projects and the results and materials gathered during the work is often used by the clients as part of the marketing story, helping early adoption of the innovation.

We are just reaching the end of a 2-year project to create a product to help mums recover from a C-Section birth. No current product exists for the early stages of recovery post-surgery and the advice from NICE is to just wear loose-fitting clothes and "granny pants". My client is from the BAME community and will be launching her innovation first in the Islamic Middle East. My life experience is very limited regarding the stakeholders in this product, so I have consulted extensively with recent mums across a wide spectrum to define the requirements and in verifying aspects of the solution.

So, from working with mums to define where their actual incisions are (standing, bending and sitting), to understanding what parts of their tummies are sore and how long they might wear the product and care for it, we have engaged at every stage with functional physical prototypes. The result is a dignified, low-cost, attractive, comfortable, hygienic and easy-to-manufacture product that will make the first few months after C-Section much more bearable.

Stakeholder engagement is crucial, without it you are designing at people not with people. Designing should centre around users, not sit separately from them. User-Centred design is a great strategy for mitigating risk and reducing failure as well as building engaging stories for marketing the solution.

Lockdown - what's changed?

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 09:42:43 GMT

Busier than ever

Many Industrial Designers (especially those with a few grey hairs) have worked remotely and independently for years. The recent change to home-working for many previously office-based people has meant that many of us seasoned cave-dwellers now have more people around during the day. That has led in my case to actual coffee and tea breaks, lunch and, most importantly, shared insights and the opportunity to talk things through and reflect. I'm convinced this has had an impact on my work and that of my wife and daughters, all who work in different fields. It's akin to having an in-house product test and review community - excellent when User Requirements Specifications and user testing are on the cards.

More scrutiny of my daily mucking-about has also meant that, at the time when I'd normally be chewing the cud of a design conundrum, I have needed to-be-seen-to-be-doing-something. Fortunately, I have avoided the unending stream of Zoom meetings, so the net result has been a complementary set of activities. One of these has been regular live-streamed radio and band broadcasts. A great excuse for buying more records and revisiting the thousands already making our shelves sag. Also, it has led to a design-led critique of my old record decks resulting in the purchase of superior equipment. (Still avoiding fixing the Pianola - my first eBay purchase in 2007.)

The loss of the home during the daytime as my exclusive solitary working domain has meant a list of jobs that need doing and vigilance as to their progress. Not surprisingly the past few months have seen garage door repairs, bedroom refurbishments, window replacements, actual gardening, scientific composting activities plus a whole spate of fixing workshop equipment, computers and appliances.

The skills and knowledge acquired during this period have not been insubstantial: single-phase induction motors and how to fix them, live broadcast over the web, identifying and sourcing spares for things you broke years ago, stereo mic techniques for live jazz transmission, refurbishment of a water-blaster, casework repairs to HP Pavilion laptop, design and construction of fitted bedroom storage units, access tower design and installation, remedial joinery in a conservation area, high-end coffee simulation and batch-brewing fine ales and fruit wines - all vegan-friendly.

As well as all the above, projects have included automated cleaning systems, post surgery underwear, vascular access devices and mentoring for grant recipients of the Knowledge Transfer Network. Basically, it's business-as-usual!

Failure

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 11:40:09 GMT

The most important design consideration

The process of design deals with numerous issues and, when applied appropriately, delivers the ultimate outcomes of optimising opportunity and reducing risks: risk of commercial failure, risk of business failure, risk of in-service product failure, risk of communication failure, risk of component or systems failure.

Failure is usually something designers try to avoid or at least control and manage when running a business, or in the operation of a product or service. However, the simple concept of failure within controlled conditions can provide useful data, knowledge, insight, wisdom and deep learning within a design process.

Understanding failure and what constitutes product or service failure gives the designer foresight as to the issues they need to design out of the solution. Ultimately, designing is a process of elimination. When the designer starts, everything is included, everything is possible. Before the design process starts every mode of failure exists.

The design process should inform robust creative decision making and systematically eliminate potential failures of all types until the solution delivers an acceptable balance of risk of failure and likelihood of success. If creativity is the generation of new ideas or new intellectual property, and innovation is the successful exploitation of new ideas, then design is the process that links creativity and innovation, shaping ideas to become practical and attractive propositions for users through the informed trade-off of opportunity and potential failure.

There is failure, and then there is failure! All stages of the design process benefit from predicting and analysing potential failure. Failure can give rise to insight and even highlight new opportunities. When predictions are too complex or if it is difficult to set out all the assumptions reliably, then practical tests, trials and prototypes can be used to generate data that can be assessed against criteria set out and agreed amongst the interested parties.

Often valuable knowledge can be derived from this approach beyond the original scope of the design project and this can be exploited commercially in the future. Where a new product or service is so innovative and new that limited historical information is available then a slow, soft launch can be used to stealthily capture a market with iterative risk management.

Early adopters can be made to feel privileged and become part of an ongoing open innovation process, translating what might traditionally have been considered failure into insight.

Failure is a dead end, insight lights the way forward.