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DtM TED talk: Design for people, not awards

Thu 16 Aug 2012
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Our June talk at TEDxBoston was picked up today by the TED website. Tim's talk highlights the hard lessons learned while working on the NeoNurture Infant Incubator, and how those lessons guided the development of DtM's latest product, Firefly Phototherapy. TED writes: "Timothy Prestero thought he'd designed the perfect incubator for newborns in the developing world -- but his team learned a hard lesson when it failed to go into production. A manifesto on the importance of designing for real-world use, rather than accolades."
TED talk link

Tim and his team made a splash when they created the NeoNurture Infant Incubator, named one of TIME Magazine's "50 Best Inventions of 2010." However, the product wasn't a hit with manufacturers or with hospitals in developing countries and forever remained a prototype. Design That Matters learned an important lesson from the experience--that good design must keep in mind who will procure equipment, who will be using it, as well as the myriad ways it could be used incorrectly. As Timothy says, "There's no such thing as a dumb user; there are only dumb products."

ABOUT TED
TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 25 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. The annual TED Conference invites the world’s leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes.

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