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Posted On:
5.3.2012
HBR: Innovating in the Scary Zone

HBR: Innovating in the Scary Zone

Harry West on the best way to innovate
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
3.29.2012

HBR: Three Rules for Innovation Teams

Our business at Continuum is design and innovation (if you've used a Swiffer or pushed a new Target shopping cart, you've encountered us), so naturally we are always looking for ways to innovate how we innovate. Three refinements to our team approach are making a difference: actively managing creative friction; making project rooms the focal point of the work environment; and pushing as much creativity into commercialization as into conceptualization.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
3.27.2012
HxD Conference has designs on smarter healthcare

HxD Conference has designs on smarter healthcare

BOSTON – "We're in a classically disruptive moment right now," said newly-minted U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park, speaking Monday at the Healthcare Experience Design (HxD) conference, "from which more good will come than we can possibly imagine."

The HxD conference, organized by Mad*Pow design agency and Claricode, a developer of medical software, gathered academics, designers, developers and user experience experts – from MIT, Stanford, Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, Siemens, Allscripts and more – for a day-long confab aimed at rethinking the ways design and philosophy could be brought to bear on electronic health records, mHealth apps, medical devices, clinician workflow and the patient experience.

Read the full story here.
Posted On:
3.22.2012
Imagine How Creativity Works

Imagine How Creativity Works

Beethoven would try as many as 70 different versions of a musical phrase before settling on the right one. But other great ideas seem to come out of the blue. Bob Dylan, for example, came up with the lyrics to the chorus for "Like a Rolling Stone" soon after telling his manager that he was creatively exhausted and ready to bail from the music industry. After going to an isolated cabin, Dylan got an uncontrollable urge to write and spilled out his thoughts in dozens of pages — including the lyrics to the iconic song.
Read the full story here.
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Read the full story here.
Posted On:
3.22.2012
Innovation is about arguing, not brainstorming. Here's how to argue productively

Innovation is about arguing, not brainstorming. Here's how to argue productively

Turns out that brainstorming--that go-to approach to generating new ideas since the 1940s--isn’t the golden ticket to innovation after all.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
3.15.2012
The Keys For Keeping Your Brand Relevant In The Post-Occupy Era

The Keys For Keeping Your Brand Relevant In The Post-Occupy Era

For many Americans, the world seems like a markedly different place than it was in 2008. They have experienced a global recession, sweeping changes in technology, and four seasons of Jersey Shore. In the context of all this change, what they want out of this life and what the American dream means for them has changed along with it.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
3.15.2012
Global Practice, Local Experience

Global Practice, Local Experience

Since Gianfranco Zaccai cofounded its Boston office in 1983, Continuum has grown into one of the giants of the design world. The consultancy, which won last year’s National Design Award for product design, has added four offices (in Los Angeles, Milan, Seoul, and Shanghai). In addition to designing some very high-volume consumer goods—if you use a Swiffer, you have Continuum to thank—Zaccai’s team has taken on systemic problems in the fields of social design and health care, including Daktari, a low-cost AIDS testing kit for southern Africa, and the Insulet Omnipod, which helps diabetics administer medication. Recently, Metropolis’s assistant editor, Avinash Rajagopal, spoke to Zaccai about Continuum’s long journey and why he thinks design should model itself on theater.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
2.8.2012
Fast Company: Our Economy Is Mostly Services. But How Do You Design Great Service Experiences?

Fast Company: Our Economy Is Mostly Services. But How Do You Design Great Service Experiences?

Every time you ship a package, withdraw cash from the ATM, or call your health insurance provider, you’re experiencing a service system. We’re a service-focused economy: In 2010, Americans spent more than $7 trillion on services--amounting to 67% of total consumer spending. Service design--choreographing the dynamic interactions between companies and people--cannot only transform a company’s image; it can improve people’s lives. But successful service design is complex and complicated, and many companies get it wrong. At Continuum, we have four rules for designing services with purpose.

 

Read the full story here.
Posted On:
2.1.2012
Usability Is King For Your Product

Usability Is King For Your Product

“Life used to be simpler,” my mom says while making her fourth attempt to update her Windows firmware in order to install Office 2011 on top of Office 2008.

I don’t correct her, but I don’t believe her either. As far as I can tell, life has always been complicated; and certainly as long as my mother has been alive, there has been incredibly sophisticated technology in the world. (When she was my age, people were landing on the moon. Nothing simple about it.) What I do believe, though, is that life used to be more usable. What’s different now is that complex technology has become so freakin’ cheap that it seems free to include “one more” feature in your product. The unforeseen cost, of course, is that those extra features hurt usability.

But we know all this. There is plenty of literature on the subject, and good usability is table stakes for a modern product. If your product isn’t usable, your business is in a dangerous position. Maybe you can get by in the short term by boasting your killer feature set; but the fact is that if people can’t figure out how to use your bells and whistles, you’re going to feel it on your bottom line sooner or later.

Read the full story here.
Posted On:
1.30.2012

CEO Harry West profiled in New York Times

CEO Harry West on defining your company's future in New York Times "Corner Office"column
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
1.16.2012

Zoontechnica: The Designer's Paradox

There is without question a growing desire among designers to apply our skills towards ameliorating global problems of health, education, inequality, and the environment.

Read the full story here.
Posted On:
1.11.2012

HBR: The Trouble With Treating Patients as Consumers

To be a patient today is to be treated as a consumer. But treating patients as typical proactive, in control, well-informed consumers can backfire.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
1.6.2012

Continuum Wins National Design Award

Ubiquity has its rewards. Thursday, the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum will announce the 2011 National Design Award winners.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
12.14.2011

Watch this Years Winner of the 2011 Smithsonian-Cooper Hewit National Design Award

The Product Design Award is given to an individual or firm for exceptional work in the design of consumer goods, technology, or home and office furnishings.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
11.18.2011
Fast Company: Your Frontline Employees Are Your Brand. How Do You Hire The Right Ones?

Fast Company: Your Frontline Employees Are Your Brand. How Do You Hire The Right Ones?

Frontline employees--the people behind the counter, on the phone, in the cloud, and walking the floor--possess a large measure of control over the customer experience. Their actions determine whether a customer becomes a brand evangelist or detractor. Understanding how best to motivate these employees--and designing processes and strategies to ensure that they’re empowered, energized, and personally vested--is at the core of delivering standout service and creating a compelling brand experience. Here are four critical areas to consider when creating a standout experience.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
10.21.2011
美学CEO：用设计思考，用美学管理

美学CEO：用设计思考，用美学管理

The Power of Design, the CEO of Aesthetics. The author shares Continuum’s innovation practice along with other important innovators. Continuum is illustrated as the company that helped seeded P&G’s innovation culture. An excellent design book, by the well-known designer Hans, it has created a lot of buzz in Taiwan and is endorsed by key influencers, such as chairman of Acer. (Chinese Only)
Read the full story here.
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Read the full story here.
Posted On:
10.7.2011
The Five Biggest Ideas On The Future Of Health Care Design

The Five Biggest Ideas On The Future Of Health Care Design

Every year, the biggest ideas in health care are presented at the Mayo Clinic’s Transform conference in Rochester, Minnesota. I was there this year to present a pre-conference workshop with a Continuum colleague on everyday creativity, and another pair of Continuum designers gave a main-stage talk entitled, “Patient Centricity: A design identity crisis.” Also on the lineup were John Hockenberry and Roger Martin, bigwigs from J+J and GE Healthcare, and practitioners from the top-tier design and innovation firms. Many cutting-edge ideas were presented, along with some spirited debate on the hot topics of delivering care and the role of technology.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
9.29.2011
Design Experts Talk Culture

Design Experts Talk Culture

How does product design from one part of the world transfer across borders and cultures? What challenges do designers face when working with foreign clients? Design students from local universities, along with other Beijing residents, explored how innovation flows in a global marketplace at a discussion Wednesday afternoon between two leading industrial designers from the West who have worked extensively in China.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
9.14.2011

Michelle Obama Honors Continuum

Michelle Obama is teaming up with TV’s Tim Gunn to honor some of the nation’s top designers — including the Boston-based design consultancy Continuum — at the White House.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
9.9.2011
The Time is Now for Concentrates

The Time is Now for Concentrates

Today, concentrates are poised for a renaissance. Engineers, scientists, and designers are refashioning concentrates for the 21st century, focusing on new benefits that going waterless can provide consumers. What does a winning experience look like to the modern day consumer? It’s not as simple as pushing the same old frozen OJ.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
9.9.2011
Shopping Cart Advances Keep Rolling

Shopping Cart Advances Keep Rolling

Target hired Boston-based Design Continuum to rethink the shopping cart — a big deal in an industry that typically buys generic carts from manufacturers. The result is a good example of engineered mobility. It's made of lightweight recyclable material, with interchangeable plastic parts. Rust isn't a concern, repairs are easy, and scanning cart contents is a breeze. Even the color, Target's trademark cheery tomato red, now plays a starring role.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
8.31.2011

MDDI: Delivering Optimism from Hospital to Home

The healthcare landscape is rapidly changing. Care is being transferred out of the hospital and more of the burden is pushed onto patients and their family caregivers as a result. Device manufacturers will continue to see the transformation of the home environment into a hospital of one.
 
What does a hospital of one mean? Simply put, medical devices designed for in-hospital settings are being thrust into the inexperienced hands of the everyday consumer. There’s an urgent need for these point-of-care (POC) medical devices to be functional for a growing body of consumers. No longer being operated by healthcare professionals, POC medical devices must be appropriate for consumer use—less clinical, more approachable, and easier to operate.
So what does this all mean for healthcare companies, patients, and a new generation of family caregivers? This article discusses five key principles that medical device manufacturers should keep in mind as they consider how to design solutions that make long-term medical conditions a smaller part of life.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
8.25.2011

IBD: Turn out Tiptop Work

Peak performance. Leading firms go the distance to achieve it. How to aim a little higher.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
8.25.2011

Fast Company: Preserve Toothbrush

If you replace your toothbrush every three months, as the American Dental Association suggests, that's four toothbrushes a year. Multiply that by every man, woman and child in America, and that's a staggering 1.25B (with a B!) toothbrushes a year.
With numbers like that, Preserve, the eco-friendly products company, saw an opportunity. They'd been making toothbrushes, sold through Target and Whole Foods, from recycled yogurt cups since 1997. Why not devise a way to recycle those grubby, bristle-blasted sticks of plastic? They enlisted the design firm Continuum to find come up with the strategy. The result: a Mail-back Pack that protects the toothbrush when it's new, then doubles as a return envelope when the user is done.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
8.1.2011
WSJ: The Engineer of Everyday Products

WSJ: The Engineer of Everyday Products

Gianfranco Zaccai profiled in the Wall Street Journal, he shares Continuum's process and approach to finding the right idea.
Read the full story here.
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Read the full story here.
Posted On:
7.31.2011
T&L Investigates Holiday Inn's Makeover

T&L Investigates Holiday Inn's Makeover

The social hub, which will transform lobbies into combination coffeehouses, mini-marts, pubs, and video arcades, presided over by 21st-century innkeepers who will coordinate check-ins, mix drinks, and service Wii consoles. “Everyone else has designed the ground floor to focus on breakfast, and after that it’s a void,” says Craig LaRosa, the man in the trench coat. “This is different.”
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
7.12.2011

collaborazione con ISTAO organizzano un seminario sul tema:

4 Luglio 2011, CONFINDUSTRIA PESAROA collaborazione con ISTAO organizzano un seminario sul tema: "Le nuove frontiere dell'innovazione"
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
7.11.2011

Continuum Honored with Seven International Design Excellence Awards Read more: http://www.dexigner.

Continuum has received seven International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) from the Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA). The IDEAs were awarded to Continuum for the company's work with Mindray, the Herman Miller Compass system, Daktari Diagnostics, Preserve's Mail-Back Pack, the Herman Miller Compass research, the Leverage Freedom LFC Sport Chair and the Oreck Edge vacuum.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
7.6.2011

Prototyping China: Living in Beta by Chris Hosmer

Continuum has been doing work in China for 15 years, mostly focused on China as a consumer market. Our multinational clients have been betting on China' emerging consumers as a key to their companies' growth agendas since the early 1990s. But working with China as a client market had been sporadic. A few years ago, we decided it was time for Continuum to begin a deliberate expansion into the mainland.

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Posted On:
6.16.2011

Chairman Gianfranco Zaccai speaks at Officine Italiane Innovazione

On June 10th Gianfranco Zaccai was invited at the first meeting of Officine Italiane Innovazione (OII). The meeting was attended by about fifty small companies, hosted by ComoNExT, a Science & Technology Park in Lomazzo, near Como Lake.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
6.9.2011

Boston Globe: Designs of All Kinds

The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, has awarded three of its Annual National Design Awards to a trio of local designers, including the Cambridge type designer who will take home the museum’s coveted Lifetime Achievement Award and a Newton company behind the well-known household helper the Swiffer and an array of other products.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
6.1.2011

New York Times: Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards

Now in their 12th year, the National Design Awards recognize outstanding contributions across disciplines.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
5.25.2011

Fast Company: What Wayne Gretzky Can Teach Us About Fixing Our Health-Care System

In my last post on Co.Design, I wrote about how mandatory implementation of electronic medical records (EMRs) technology is forcing highly skilled physicians out of practice. The trend is primarily affecting the older generation of physicians, who didn’t grow up with computers. These doctors aren’t used to interacting with a big screen between them and their patients, and the technology hasn’t been designed to be user friendly.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
5.10.2011
New Room at the Holiday Inn

New Room at the Holiday Inn

Months ago, in a secluded warehouse outside of Boston, a crack team of designers from firms Continuum and ai3 assembled a top-secret prototype that would, according to internal data, change the Holiday Inn brand forever. It was an advanced, new kind of “environment”—one where guests could more easily connect. The consultants used 800 slabs of foam core to build it, then spent weeks analyzing foot-traffic patterns. What could this revolutionary, futuristic space possibly be?
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
4.25.2011

Fast Company: In Our Information Age, Secrecy is Sexy. How Can Brands Create an Aura of Mystery?

Knowledge was once power, but these days knowledge is expected.

We live in a culture of oversharing. We broadcast our every thought, opinion, and move as Facebook updates or tweets. There’s tremendous pride in being the first of your friends to post a good link or to start a popular thread. This information has value; it's become a new form of currency traded over sites like YouTube, Yelp, and on countless blogs. When someone is the first to share a new restaurant, pop-up store, video or blog, they build "social wealth." For those lacking in real currency, the Internet offers rich rewards--anyone can achieve a new type of influential status as being "in the know."

Read the full story here.
Posted On:
4.22.2011

Fast Company:What We've Lost With Anonymous Designs Like The Kindle

By: Harry West

Emily Dickinson is disturbing me. It seems that whenever I pick up my Kindle, there she is staring back at me. And when I think of the thousands of other readers with the identical Kindle and the identical screen saver I feel diminished. I have nothing against Emily Dickinson, but I am reading David Mitchell. The different covers of the books I used to read, with their different typefaces, designs, and colors, added to the richness of my life and connected me to others. I want to show off what I am reading; it is one of the ways I express myself.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
4.13.2011

Fast Company: Women Dominate the Global Market

Here's what works (and what doesn't) when selling to this large, but surprisingly often ignored group of consumers.

Women are the next global emerging market.

Their economic power is truly revolutionary, representing the largest market opportunity in the world. Just look at the numbers: Women control 65 percent of global spending and more than 80 percent of U.S. spending. By 2014, the World Bank predicts that the global income of women will grow by more than $5 trillion. In both emerging markets and developed nations, women’s power of influence extends well beyond the traditional roles of family and education to government, business, and the environment.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
4.5.2011

Pool Magazine: The Design of Human Capital

By: Anna Muoio
A woman walks out of her home and through the fields of her village to the nearby well. She steps to the edge and holding her two small children in her arms, jumps in. 
 
A woman drenches her body in kerosene and sets herself aflame. It takes two days to die from the burns covering her body.
 
Dozens of stories like this, painful in their stark detail and testament of human desperation, surfaced one after the other last fall, from the state of Andhra Pradesh in India, as women who had slipped into a cycle of debt from microloans that they could not repay resorted to suicide as the only perceived way out of their personal financial crises.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
4.1.2011
Fast Company: How Design Thinking Can Help Prevent Another Mortgage Bubble

Fast Company: How Design Thinking Can Help Prevent Another Mortgage Bubble

Three years after the financial meltdown, housing prices are still in free fall while foreclosures keep rising. Many American homeowners, burned by the home-buying system, are defaulting on their mortgages, taking the hit to their credit rating and walking away from homes that may have lost more than two-thirds of their value.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
4.1.2011

DESIGN杂志对话Continuum设计公司上海总经理柯瑞思


和消费者“生活”在一起
对话Continuum设计公司上海总经理柯瑞思

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Posted On:
3.25.2011

PBS series, Design Squad Nation: Continuum hosts series finale

For the season finale, Design Squad Nation asked kids across the country to recycle, re-use, and re-engineer everyday materials into the next big invention in the 2010 Trash to Treasure contest. Three grand-prize winners visit Boston to work with professional engineers at Continuum, a global innovation and design consultancy, to see their original ideas become real products. 
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
3.2.2011
Fast Company: How We're Botching Our Attempts to Redesign the Healthcare System

Fast Company: How We're Botching Our Attempts to Redesign the Healthcare System

Fixing our floundering healthcare system may be the single most complex design challenge ever. Bad design forced Dr. Bruce Mason*, the clinical director of a large outpatient department at one of the preeminent teaching hospitals in the country, to fire one of the best doctors in his department. The fired doctor, Dr. Davis, didn’t violate the doctor’s code of ethics. He wasn’t old enough to retire. He hadn’t been sued for malpractice. In fact, he was a renowned practitioner.

Read the full story here.
Posted On:
2.16.2011

Mass High Tech: Continuum called on to make med devices more home-friendly

With hospitals, insurers and government agencies backing initiatives to move patients out of hospitals and back home on the fast track, designers and manufacturers of medical devices are facing the challenge of adapting sophisticated medical equipment for the home environment. James D. Wilson, senior industrial designer for design firm Continuum LLC of Newton has been working with various manufacturers to design products such as monitoring equipment and CPAP devices to make them more suitable for what Continuum calls the Hospital of One. Wilson shares his thoughts on the trends in designing home-environment medical devices with Mass High Tech Editor James M. Connolly.

Read the full story here.
Posted On:
2.14.2011
Hope in a Bag

Hope in a Bag

It wasn’t too many years ago that an HIV-positive diagnosis was equivalent to a death sentence. Since then, progress in analysis and treatment has allowed millions to live with the disease, at least in the industrialized West. The situation is starkly different in the developing world. But it’s not because of the price of drugs. “The lifesaving drugs used to treat HIV are no longer too expensive,” says Bill Rodriguez, CEO of Daktari Diagnostics, a two-year-old medical start-up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “But they need to be administered before the disease has progressed too far. And people in remote places rarely have access to the right diagnostics.”
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
2.6.2011
Core 77: Leverage Freedom Chair

Core 77: Leverage Freedom Chair

Most able-bodied folks probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about how people with disabilities navigate the world, particularly in developing countries. However, Amos Winter did, and still does. Winter, a recent PhD graduate from the MIT department of Mechanical Engineering, went to Tanzania as part of his work in 2005. He wanted to understand how people who needed wheelchairs got around and how well current wheelchair technology met peoples' mobility needs. Winter's work was part of an internship with Whirlwind Wheelchair International, a group that designs wheelchairs in developing countries. He learned that people in wheelchairs often just didn't get where they needed to go.

 
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
2.4.2011

IDSA Innovation Magazine: Designing for Emerging Markets

by Anthony Pannozzo

By 2030, according to the World Bank, 93 percent of the global middle class will live in emerging markets. Stop for a moment and think about that. In 20 years, nine out of every 10 people you will be designing for will live in a country that today you probably do not fully understand. With huge debt burdens and a sluggish recovery slowing growth in developed economies, businesses are prioritizing consumers in emerging markets in order to capture a piece of the next wave of expansion.
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Posted On:
1.28.2011

Touchpoint Magazine: The Limits of Patient Centricity - Why Patients Aren't Consumers

By: Gianna Marzilli Ericson and Augusta Meill

The trend towards consumerisation of healthcare has focused on empowering patients through access to information. This makes intuitive sense, mirroring a general trend away from experts as arbiters of knowledge.
 

Read the full story here.
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Posted On:
1.28.2011

Touchpoint Magazine: Digital Service Design: Lessons from the Cloud

By: Monica Bueno and Tiffancy Chu

The cloud might be a little frightening: it’s invisible, allconsuming and, scariest of all, it’s telling you that your business needs to change. There are nuances of Service Design within the digital realm that might not be discernible to the unaided eye. Through years of experience helping clients who have a strong foothold in the physical world to enhance their offerings with digital services, Continuum has discovered several principles you may want to know before you dive into the haze.
Read the full story here.
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Posted On:
1.13.2011

Seven Questions for Gianfranco Zaccai

Gianfranco Zaccai brings to his innovation design a synergy of two cultures: the rational, practical, American approach he grew up in and the more emotional, traditional, Italian perspective that is his heritage.

While he may have relied on American practicality in his design innovation of the Swiffer system for Proctor & Gamble, he clearly drew from broad experience and a depth of understanding in his work on Herman Miller’s Compass system.

Read the full story here.
Posted On:
11.22.2010
Fast Company: In Pursuit of the Perfect, We're Overdesigning Our Lives

Fast Company: In Pursuit of the Perfect, We're Overdesigning Our Lives

by Harry West

Looking into the refrigerator in a home in Lima, Peru I realized that I didn't recognize anything. Nothing was labeled: there were no brands. Different types of food were arrayed on plates or in bags. Consumerism had certainly reached this town -- there was a refrigerator, but the reach of consumerism was not as deep as it is in the United States.

Read the full story here.
Posted On:
11.22.2010

News Observer: Tanger modeled innovation, philanthropy

Read the full story here.
Posted On:
11.17.2010
Fast Company: Why Don't Regular Joes Care About Sustainability?

Fast Company: Why Don't Regular Joes Care About Sustainability?

by Harry West

Day by day, there's no visceral sense that we're actually destroying the planet. And that's the biggest problem we face, when it comes to fixing the environment.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
11.15.2010
Fast Company: New Firm Built on

Fast Company: New Firm Built on "Hybrid Thinking" Tackles World's Toughest Design Problems

Continuum Advanced Systems gathers experts in far-flung fields to tackle complex design problems, from Humvee safety to ultra-fast AIDs testing. International design and innovation firm Continuum announced today that it has opened a new division that takes the fuzzy notion of "hybrid thinking" and gives it a desk at the office.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
11.15.2010

Mass High Tech: Continuum Creates Tech Design Division

Continuum Inc. has launched Continuum Advanced Systems, a new division dedicated to the health, medical, government, industrial and consumer sectors.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
10.28.2010

WSJ: Holiday Inn to Turn Bars Into Social Hubs


Read the full story here.
Posted On:
10.22.2010

Design Squad Finalists at Continuum

Last week Continuum's Boston office played host to three finalists from WGBH's Design Squad Trash to Treasure contest. The finalists worked alongside hosts Judy and Adam, and Continuum's Rich Ciccerelli to build working versions of their inventions.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
10.20.2010

Metropolis: The Green Vanguard: H is for Health Care

Just over 40 years ago, Robert Propst checked into the University of Michigan hospital in Ann Arbor for back surgery. During his six-week convalescence, the president of Herman Miller Research Corp. and inventor of the company’s Action Office noticed that the hospital’s inefficient supply, storage, and distribution sys-tems placed unnecessary strain on doctors, nurses, and support staff. Returning to work, he launched a research project and soon produced a solution: Co/Struc, a modular, rail-mounted storage-and-delivery system for hospital clinical areas. Herman Miller introduced it in 1971.
 

Read the full story here.
Posted On:
10.18.2010
Fast Company: Does Democracy Kill Freedom, When it Comes to Design?

Fast Company: Does Democracy Kill Freedom, When it Comes to Design?

by Harry West

I was drinking coffee at a rickety table in a cafe in Madrid yesterday -- there are so many different, small cafés scattered across the city -- and I realized that it was difficult to do this in the U.S. In the land of the free things work better, but the choices are more homogeneous. How did this happen? I fear that we designers are to blame, along with the hardscrabble origins of our young democracy.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
10.1.2010

Innovating for Effectiveness: Lessons From Design Firms

R&D managers seeking to infuse new energy into their innovation processes should look to the recognized superstars of innovation, design firms, for inspiration.
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Posted On:
9.29.2010

Qmed: Omnipod System Can Improve Diabetes Management

Journal Article Concludes That the Omnipod System Can Improve Diabetes Management for People With Type 1 Diabetes Review Published in Diabetes Therapy
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Posted On:
9.9.2010
826 Boston Awarded Grant for Ideas that Matter

826 Boston Awarded Grant for Ideas that Matter


826 Boston was awarded a grant from Sappi Fine Paper for a book of original student writing.
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Posted On:
9.8.2010

Newton Students try their hand at theater design

Designers, Peter Strutt and Bryant Ross recently led a group of Newton North High School students in a design course aimed at teaching the importance of Design Thinking.  Boston.com featured the story recently.
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Posted On:
7.29.2010

Fast Company: Designer of the Swiffer Cleans Up the Modern Hospital

Herman Miller is best known for sleek office chairs and home furnishings. But a large and growing share of their business is in health care. And the company wants to make hospitals every bit as sleek and functional as the best modern office: Sleek, space-saving, with warm wood-grain accents. Goodbye clutter.

One of the designers leading this sea change is Gianfranco Zaccai, who's better known for designing the Swiffer. Zaccai designed Compass, Herman Miller's newest system, designed specifically for the manic pace of modern healthcare.

 

Read the full story here.
Posted On:
7.14.2010

Gianfranco Zaccai visits the White House

Continuum President and Chief Design Officer Gianfranco Zaccai attended a White House ceremony, hosted by First Lady Michelle Obama, for winners and finalists of the Smithsonian's Copper-Hewitt National Design Awards.  In support of the First Lady's emphasis on arts education, prior to the luncheon, the award winners will serve as the honorary patron for this event.
Read the full story here.
Posted On:
6.21.2010

Beauty Packaging: Brushing up on Green Packaging

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. In the beauty and personal care industry, “green” buzzwords have become commonplace. While talking the talk is easy, actually providing consumers with a 100% recyclable package is certainly not, and brands, marketing agencies, and packaging professionals have been challenged with creating both products and packaging that’s good for the environment—without losing shelf appeal. Consumers today are also more demanding than they’ve ever been, and are increasingly on the lookout for environmentally friendly products. Taking a brand to the next level and making sustainability efforts tangible is something that can set a brand apart, and one has done just that—with toothbrushes.
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6.21.2010

Green Living: Preserve Toothbrush

Preserve, who has been making toothbrushes from recycled yogurt cups since 1997, has partnered with the design firm Continuum, to take their sustainability commitment one step further.

Before working with Continuum, Preserve had been grappling with how to make the toothbrush completely green. After all, how green was this toothbrush though made from recycled yogurt cups, that still ended up in landfill?

 

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6.10.2010

Change Observer: How to Run a Design Firm for Social Change

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5.26.2010

Residential Architect Magazine: Saving Costs in Recessionary Times

The events of the past two years haven’t changed much for the top tier of clients—the wealthiest subset who are true patrons of art and architecture. Fortunately, there always will be people for whom a stated budget is just a suggestion, a number to be cheerfully revised as the possibilities for their dream home unfold. As architects move out of that rarefied realm, however, budgets become more fixed, and in the current economic chill, that condition has spread more broadly. Only a tiny fraction of the population can now say with confidence, “Sure, let’s spend an extra 30 percent on our house.”

 

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2.25.2010

The Boston Globe: Designed in Boston

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1.12.2010

JoongAng Daily: Satisfying customers drives design advances

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1.11.2010

Lodging Hospitality: Crowne Plaza Testing New Look

The fastest growing chain in the U.S. isn’t planning to sit idly by during this industry and economic slowdown. Crowne Plaza, ranked No. 1 in Lodging Hospitality’s top growth chains last year, is in the midst of testing several programs and design initiatives that could help reshape the look and feel of the upscale business-traveler friendly brand.


 

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12.16.2009

Mass High Tech: Regs and new technology shape med devices

Change is in the air on the design side of medical devices. Product design and development firm Continuum in Newton has done much of its work in the medical device field over the past 25 years. Two of its executives, vice president of program development Mark Hanks and vice president of production innovation Tom Merle, shared their thoughts on trends in the sector with Mass High Tech managing editor James M. Connolly.

 

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11.20.2009

Design Observer: Aspen Design Summit

When the International Design Conference in Aspen was launched in 1949 in an obscure former silver-mining town west of Denver, Colorado, the goal was to bring designers and business leaders together to foster understanding of what design could accomplish. Foremost, design was shown to be a strategic force in improving business and cultural interests and enhancing global prosperity.

 

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11.9.2009

The Boston Globe: Top 100 Places to Work

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11.2.2009

Time Magazine: Targus USB Hub named a Best Travel Gadget

Almost every device on the market today can be charged or synched via USB, but most laptops have only two USB ports, and that simply isn't enough. Targus's 4-Port Smart USB Hub expands one port into four, giving users a total of five accessible ports. The silicone cable that connects to your laptop is durable and also serves as a protective cover for the USB ports when it's not in use. One especially cool feature: a one-touch reset button instantaneously restores connectivity to all plugged-in devices without your having to disconnect and reconnect cables. An indicator light notifies you when devices are connected. Good things do come in small packages.

 

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10.28.2009

Brand Week: CVS Shoppers Get Green for Going Green

CVS customers looking to help the planet stay green can now earn some green for their eco-conscious efforts. The pharmacy chain, this week, launched its new “GreenBagTag” program. The effort awards eco-friendly shoppers a cash reward for choosing to forgo plastic bags.

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10.23.2009

CNBC: Retailers Paying Customers to Bring Their Own Bags

Retailers are finding that the best way to get consumers to ditch plastic bags and go green is to give them money back.

Target [TGT 54.60 -0.30 (-0.55%)] and CVS [CVS 31.06 -0.17 (-0.54%)] are the latest retailers who are giving discount incentives to customers who bring in their own reusable bag

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9.10.2009

Chronicle: The Art of Innovation

Continuum is featured on Chronicle's "Inventors" segment
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8.11.2009
Fast Company: Colorblind Examines All Shades of Consumer Behavior Beyond Just

Fast Company: Colorblind Examines All Shades of Consumer Behavior Beyond Just "Green"

As a global innovation and design firm with multiple offices that work on a range of consumer and medical products and services, Continuum had long been engaged with the process of making their work more environmentally responsible. But a few years ago they began to get questions from their clients that they couldn't answer. "A lot of clients were coming to us and asking how the consumer felt, wondering how consumers made decisions about sustainability," says Kelly Sherman, design strategist. "We wanted to be an advisor on that conversation and needed a better point of view." In September 2007, Continuum embarked on a year-long research project that could help explain how and why consumers made those sustainable choices. They named the project Colorblind.
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7.7.2009

CMYK: Design for Change

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6.3.2009

MassDevice: Pumped Up

By: Alison Carter

The symptoms had started about three weeks before — feeling constantly tired and thirsty, going to the bathroom frequently and losing a drastic amount of weight.

My doctor told my parents to bring me to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia [2], where I would learn how to adjust my diet and schedule, administer medication and deal with the illness.

I had one roommate during my four-day stay at the hospital. She was tall and thin with dark skin and big, brown eyes, a sweet girl. When we were learning to inject insulin for the first time, she just could not do it and she started crying uncontrollably. I took brief glances at her side of the room and watched as her parents tried calming her down. I never enjoyed getting shots for vaccinations growing up, but I never resisted. When it came time to take a shot of insulin, I never had my parents inject me; I always administered the insulin myself.

That was seven years ago. I'm 19 and leading a remarkably normal life. Most people have no idea I have the disease — until mealtime, when I pull out a syringe and have to explain that I'm not a heroin addict. I just have Type 1 diabetes.
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3.10.2009

Fast Company: Puzzle Piece: The Laptop for Autistic Kids

By Linda Tischler

 
Teaching a child with autism can be an exercise in frustration--for both teacher and child. But designers at the Boston office of the design firm Continuum have developed a teaching aid--still in the concept stage--that could go a long way toward solving some of the problems that currently plague the process.
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2.17.2009

BusinessWeek: The New Humble World Order

By: Harry West

The recession is helping folks get in touch with their priorities. They want products and services that are personal, smaller, and more efficient.

"I meant to do that." In the campy 1980s comedy Pee-wee's Big Adventure, whenever Pee-Wee Herman fell off his bike, he dusted himself off, looked around sheepishly, and said, "I meant to do that."

Well, we just fell off our economic bike. As we try to reconcile our financial capabilities with our material aspirations, something has to give. Can we act like we intended to do this? Baby boomers have a long history of translating their self-interest into a moral imperative: Make love, not war. Greed is good. Show me the money. Change we need. What's next: Proud to be modest?
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1.1.2009

Design Management Review: Colorblind: How Consumers See Green

With the myriad criteria inevitably part of any project, it is not always easy to bring sustainability to the top of the design agenda. Mark Bates and Grant Kristofek share what they have done to lift its profile with their clients. This effort in conjuction with an ongoing research project at their firm suggests that there are significant opportunities to make sustainability a valued factor in consumer decisions.


 

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