top of page
Interesting Design Work, Tools & Ideas Worth Sharing
Design Finds is a collection of interesting products, projects, articles and ideas discovered across the wider design world. Each post highlights work that offers something worth noticing, whether through its response to a real user need, its use of materials and technology, or the thinking behind its development. The aim is to give students and curious designers a place to explore new perspectives, discover emerging areas of practice and consider how design can respond to everyday challenges.
Fixing Real Problems With Real People
Fixperts is a learning programme that challenges students to solve a real everyday problem for someone in their community. Working with a Fix Partner, students observe, collaborate, prototype, make and document a useful solution. The approach shows how small design interventions can have meaningful impact, while developing practical skills in empathy, problem-solving, iteration, teamwork and storytelling.
Repairability Is a Product and a System
iFixit’s Repairability resource shows that products are only genuinely repairable when users can access parts, tools, instructions and software as well as the internal components. Kibu’s modular children’s headphones are a strong example because children can assemble, understand, repair and recycle the individual parts. Together, these examples show how repairability can become part of the product experience, encouraging longer use, greater user confidence and more responsibl
Designing Outdoor Gear That Removes Barriers
The North Face Universal Collection rethinks camping equipment through universal design. Co-created with adaptive athletes Vasu Sojitra and Maureen Beck, it includes magnetic closures, tactile cues, oversized loops, adaptable carrying systems and simplified tent setup. The collection shows how designing around disability from the beginning can remove barriers while creating outdoor products that are easier and more intuitive for a much wider range of users.
Understanding Movement Before Building It
The FIRGELLI Mechanisms Library brings together 1,929 animated examples across 40 categories, including linkages, gears, cams, escapements, couplings and motion-conversion systems. It helps users begin with the movement they need and compare how different mechanisms behave before committing to CAD or prototyping. Published by FIRGELLI Automations, the resource combines visual demonstrations with plain-language guidance on force, geometry, wear, backlash, loading and duty cycl
Choosing the Right Manufacturing Process
The informal Manufacturing Methods Database helps designers compare production processes using practical filters such as material, geometry, appearance, speed, design confidence, tooling costs and part costs. Created by hardware collective informal, the resource shows why manufacturing selection should respond to quantity, purpose and project maturity. It is a useful reminder that prototypes and final products may require very different production methods.
Designing Beyond Colour
The Fountain of Technicolour Beads by onebite DESIGN explores how colour-dependent public spaces can exclude people with colour vision deficiency. Created for Clerkenwell Design Week 2026, the installation combines engineered stone, tactile surfaces, seating, wheelchair access and a digital colour-blindness simulator. It shows how accessibility can be built across material, form and interaction, rather than treated as a separate feature or visual afterthought.
Life Café: Designing Tools for Difficult Conversations
Life Café is a facilitated activity kit developed by Lab4Living through Marie Curie’s Design to Care Programme. Using creative prompts and physical artefacts, it helps people discuss what gives life meaning and what good care should look like, particularly around palliative and end-of-life experiences. Co-developed with community participants, it shows how thoughtful design can make sensitive conversations easier to begin and support richer, more inclusive dialogue.
Embrace: Using Material Science to Keep Newborns Warm
The Embrace Infant Warmer uses a reusable phase-change material pack to provide steady warmth to premature and low-birth-weight babies for four to six hours. Designed for low-resource and crisis settings, it combines simple operation, portability and easy cleaning with training and healthcare partnerships. The project shows how material science can become an accessible, locally appropriate product that works around unreliable infrastructure.
When Touch Becomes a Language for Grief
Space for Grief is an immersive installation by interaction designer Eva Barth that explores how touch can communicate emotions when words fall short. Participants squeeze a soft crocheted ball, creating pulses of light that connect with traces left by others. Developed through interviews and repeated physical prototyping, the project shows how simple materials and responsive technology can support reflection, vulnerability, compassion and shared human connection.
Otter: Designing Newborn Care for Unreliable Conditions
The Otter Newborn Warmer shows how healthcare products can be designed for real-world conditions, including unreliable electricity, limited training and infection-control challenges. Developed by Design that Matters, it demonstrates the importance of designing not only for technical performance, but also for cleaning, transport, trust and ease of use in low-resource hospitals.
Learning to Read Product Design Trends
Some Gray Things is a YouTube channel exploring industrial design, interiors and technology through product analysis, trend reports and behind-the-scenes design thinking. Videos examine why products look and work the way they do, helping viewers notice decisions around form, materials, manufacturing and visual language. The channel is created by Gray Dawdy, an industrial designer and mechanical engineer with experience taking products from early concepts through prototyping,
Exploring Manufacturing Through Function
ProductionInspiration is a free search tool containing more than 4,000 production technologies. Rather than beginning with a familiar manufacturing process, users select the function they need to perform, such as joining, cooling, polishing, separating or embedding, and the state of the material involved. The platform was developed by AULIVE, an innovation organisation led by Simon Dewulf that creates systematic tools for product, process and concept development. For students
A Search Engine for Design Inspiration
MoreInspiration is a searchable database containing thousands of innovative products, technologies and design solutions from a wide range of industries. Students can browse examples by sector or filter them according to functions and properties, such as improving ergonomics, reducing material use or combining multiple functions. The platform forms part of AULIVE, an innovation organisation led by CEO Simon Dewulf that develops tools and methods intended to support creativity,
Finding the Right Method for Co-Creation
The Co-Creation Methods Navigator is a free digital tool that helps designers, researchers and facilitators explore almost 700 participatory methods. Users can search and filter methods by their purpose, context and available resources, then begin organising selected activities through an integrated workshop builder. The navigator was created by Dr Danielle M. Agnello, drawing on her research into co-creation and participatory practice. Its development included feedback from
Designing the Conditions for Collaboration
Design toolkits are often treated as supporting materials, but they actively shape how participants communicate, explore ideas and work together. Cards, prompts, blocks and worksheets can make abstract topics tangible while creating a shared language between people with different experiences. The article is written by Sheng-Hung Lee, Assistant Professor of Urban Technology at the University of Michigan and Director of the d-mix lab. Drawing on his design practice and research
Designing Wearables Around Women’s Health
This 2026 report maps women’s health wearables across the body, from smart earrings and neurostimulation headbands to menstrual cups, pelvic-floor devices, pregnancy monitors and menopause cooling systems. The report highlights a significant shift away from wearables designed primarily around male athletes and general fitness. Instead, designers are responding to overlooked needs relating to menstrual health, fertility, pregnancy, pelvic health and menopause. Many concepts co
Redesigning the Community Midwife’s Kit
Nata is a self-contained mobile workstation designed to improve how community midwives transport, organise and use essential equipment during home visits. It combines infant weighing scales, modular organisers, storage compartments and tiered trays within a suitcase-style unit. Developed by Samuel Collins through interviews, observations and iterative feedback with practising midwives, the project responds to three clear needs: reducing physical strain, improving organisation
A Pillow That Turns Emergency Alerts into Touch
Researchers at Nottingham Trent University have developed a smart pillow sleeve that uses vibration to alert Deaf and hard-of-hearing users to nighttime emergencies. The thin electronic textile fits around a standard pillow and connects wirelessly to household alarms and smartphones. Different vibration patterns can communicate fire alarms, burglar alarms and incoming phone calls. What makes this project particularly interesting is that it began with feedback from members of
bottom of page