Stuart Karten Design
Encyclopedia
Karten Design is a Los Angeles-based industrial design
consultancy that assists companies in multiple stages of product development, from customer research and concept generation through product engineering and production. SKD works in the fields of consumer electronics
, medical instrumentation, housewares, business products, toys, sporting equipment and transportation design.
In 2008, Karten Design was one of five industrial design firms profiled in Fast Company's
Masters of Design series. In 2009, Stuart Karten began writing for Fast Company's website as an expert design blogger. The firm celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2009 with the launch of an online retrospective that highlighted past work and notable company events.
, Hitachi
, Kawasaki
, and Cardinal Health
, and designed inaugural product lines for several start-up companies, including Jabra
and Cardiac Science. Recognizable designs including the Zon hearing aid, which won the 2008 People's Design Award
from the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum
. Other notable projects include:
,Red Dot design award, Appliance Design Excellence in Design Awards, CES Innovations Award
, and the International Design Excellence Award
.
The firm’s proprietary design research process, ModeMapping
, which uses a unique form of information design to organize, communicate and analyze research findings, received an IDEA Award in 2006. Stuart Karten has presented ModeMapping at the Rhode Island School of Design
Center for Design and Business in 2006, the IIT Institute of Design
Design Research Conference in 2007, and the A+D Museum's Design Process and Innovation Symposium in 2008.
Karten Design has received much recognition in the field of medical design. Its Clarion Speech Processor for Advanced Bionics – part of a cochlear implant for patients with severe hearing damage – received a Medical Design Excellence Award in 1998. In 2004, Stuart Karten was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the Medical Device Industry by MD&DI Magazine.
The firm was recognized by the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
in 2008 as the recipient of the prestigious People's Design Award
, presented for excellence in the design of the Zon hearing aid for Starkey. The award was presented to Stuart Karten at the Cooper-Hewitt's 9th annual National Design Awards gala in New York on October 23, 2008 by Padma Lakshmi
, host of Bravo's Top Chef
.
In 2009, Fast Company
published an online feature on the evolution and design of hearing aids. The article focused on the SKD's longtime partnership with Starkey, and the development of the S Series.
featured one of Karten Design's conceptual art projects, Epidermits, as part of the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition in 2008. The epidermit was described as an interactive pet of the future "spawned from a skin-and-hair-cell culture grown from a human cheek swab." It was subsequently posted on Wired.com as "The Scariest Toy Concept Ever."
Industrial design
Industrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
consultancy that assists companies in multiple stages of product development, from customer research and concept generation through product engineering and production. SKD works in the fields of consumer electronics
Consumer electronics
Consumer electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, most often in entertainment, communications and office productivity. Radio broadcasting in the early 20th century brought the first major consumer product, the broadcast receiver...
, medical instrumentation, housewares, business products, toys, sporting equipment and transportation design.
History
Founded by Stuart Karten in 1984, the firm now has a staff of 25 design researchers, industrial designers, and mechanical engineers.In 2008, Karten Design was one of five industrial design firms profiled in Fast Company's
Fast Company (magazine)
Fast Company is a full-color business magazine that releases 10 issues per year and reports on topics including innovation, digital media, technology, change management, leadership, design, and social responsibility...
Masters of Design series. In 2009, Stuart Karten began writing for Fast Company's website as an expert design blogger. The firm celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2009 with the launch of an online retrospective that highlighted past work and notable company events.
Clients and Products
Karten Design has worked with industry leaders such as SamsungSamsung
The Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea...
, Hitachi
Hitachi
Hitachi is a multinational corporation specializing in high-technology.Hitachi may also refer to:*Hitachi, Ibaraki, Japan*Hitachi province, former province of Japan*Prince Hitachi and Princess Hitachi, members of the Japanese imperial family...
, Kawasaki
Kawasaki Heavy Industries
is an international corporation based in Japan. It has headquarters in both Chūō-ku, Kobe and Minato, Tokyo.The company is named after its founder Shōzō Kawasaki and has no connection with the city of Kawasaki, Kanagawa....
, and Cardinal Health
Cardinal Health
Cardinal Health, Inc., is a Fortune 500 health care services company based in Dublin, Ohio. Cardinal Health specializes in health care supply chain services, providing pharmaceuticals and medical products to more than 40,000 locations each day. The company is also a manufacturer of medical and...
, and designed inaugural product lines for several start-up companies, including Jabra
Jabra
Jabra develops, manufactures and markets wireless and corded headsets for mobile phone users, contact centres and office-based users. It is owned by . The Jabra subsidiary is based in Nashua, New Hampshire.-History:...
and Cardiac Science. Recognizable designs including the Zon hearing aid, which won the 2008 People's Design Award
National Design Awards
The National Design Awards, founded in 2000, is funded and awarded by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. There are seven official design categories, and three additional awards...
from the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
Cooper–Hewitt, National Design Museum, a subsidiary of the Smithsonian Institution, is the United States' national museum of design history and contemporary design and the only museum in the U.S. whose collection is solely focused on contemporary and historic design...
. Other notable projects include:
- S Series with Sweep Technology - the S Series is the first hearing aid that uses the same touch technology as the iPod, so that users can adjust volume and change modes with the sweep of a finger. It designed for Starkey Laboratories, who introduced the device in late 2009.
- Zon - Also designed for Starkey, the Zon hearing aid debuted in 2008. Small and sleek, it was targeted specifically at style-conscious older adults who were reluctant to adopt traditional hearing aids because of their bulky size and unattractive appearance.
- SimpleDrive and the (re)drive - eco-friendly external hard drives that were designed for Fabrik (now Hitachi) and released in 2008. The 500 GB SimpleTech (re)drive introduces new sustainable materials to Fabrik's product line and the SimpleTech SimpleDrive makes steps toward improved sustainability by using the materials and manufacturing processes already in place at the company.
- LifeBook A Series Notebook for FujitsuFujitsuis a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues....
that was recognized by Appliance Design Magazine as "an elegant, yet value-priced laptop computer designed specifically for a targeted segment of conservative-minded, home-based technology users in the U.S"
- VG Pocket Caplet and VG Pocket Tablet for Performance Designed Products
- Jabra FreeSpeak BT-200JabraJabra develops, manufactures and markets wireless and corded headsets for mobile phone users, contact centres and office-based users. It is owned by . The Jabra subsidiary is based in Nashua, New Hampshire.-History:...
: a wireless mobile phone headset, which according to a Jabra press release was the "world's best-selling Bluetooth headset" in 2005.
- G3 automated external defibrillatorAutomated external defibrillatorAn automated external defibrillator or AED is a portable electronic device that automatically diagnoses the potentially life threatening cardiac arrhythmias of ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia in a patient, and is able to treat them through defibrillation, the application of...
for Cardiac Science - CoolGard 3000 for Alsius
- Jobclock for Exaktime
- a Time Empowerment Research study for Johnson ControlsJohnson ControlsJohnson Controls, Inc. is a company, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. It was founded in 1885 by professor Warren S. Johnson, inventor of the first electric room thermostat....
Awards and recognitions
Since 1984, Karten Design has received national and international design awards, including the Spark Award, Good Design Award, iF product design awardIF product design award
The iF Product Design Award was introduced in 1954 and is annually conferred by the iF International Forum Design. Every year the iF attracts more than 2,000 product entries from around 37 nations, which are judged by renowned experts, with the best of them receiving an iF seal of outstanding...
,Red Dot design award, Appliance Design Excellence in Design Awards, CES Innovations Award
Consumer Electronics Show
The International Consumer Electronics Show is a major technology-related trade show held each January in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Not open to the public, the Consumer Electronics Association-sponsored show typically hosts previews of products and new...
, and the International Design Excellence Award
Industrial Design Excellence Awards
The International Design Excellence Awards is an award program previously co-sponsored by BusinessWeek magazine, and in 2010 Fast Company magazine and the Industrial Designers Society of America...
.
The firm’s proprietary design research process, ModeMapping
ModeMapping
ModeMapping is a proprietary research technique developed by Stuart Karten Design , a Los Angeles based industrial design firm. It is a method of interpreting standard consumer research to uncover areas of unmet needs, leading to the creation of products that respond to a wider scope of user...
, which uses a unique form of information design to organize, communicate and analyze research findings, received an IDEA Award in 2006. Stuart Karten has presented ModeMapping at the Rhode Island School of Design
Rhode Island School of Design
Rhode Island School of Design is a fine arts and design college located in Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1877. Located at the base of College Hill, the RISD campus is contiguous with the Brown University campus. The two institutions share social, academic, and community resources and...
Center for Design and Business in 2006, the IIT Institute of Design
IIT Institute of Design
Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology , originally founded as the New Bauhaus, is a graduate school teaching systemic, human-centered design.- History :...
Design Research Conference in 2007, and the A+D Museum's Design Process and Innovation Symposium in 2008.
Karten Design has received much recognition in the field of medical design. Its Clarion Speech Processor for Advanced Bionics – part of a cochlear implant for patients with severe hearing damage – received a Medical Design Excellence Award in 1998. In 2004, Stuart Karten was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the Medical Device Industry by MD&DI Magazine.
The firm was recognized by the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
Cooper–Hewitt, National Design Museum, a subsidiary of the Smithsonian Institution, is the United States' national museum of design history and contemporary design and the only museum in the U.S. whose collection is solely focused on contemporary and historic design...
in 2008 as the recipient of the prestigious People's Design Award
National Design Awards
The National Design Awards, founded in 2000, is funded and awarded by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. There are seven official design categories, and three additional awards...
, presented for excellence in the design of the Zon hearing aid for Starkey. The award was presented to Stuart Karten at the Cooper-Hewitt's 9th annual National Design Awards gala in New York on October 23, 2008 by Padma Lakshmi
Padma Lakshmi
Padma Parvati Lakshmi also Padma, Lady Rushdie is an American cookbook author, actress, model and television host. She has been the host of the US reality television program Top Chef since season two in 2006, for which she received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for...
, host of Bravo's Top Chef
Top Chef
Top Chef is an American reality competition show that airs on the cable television network Bravo, in which chefs compete against each other in culinary challenges. They are judged by a panel of professional chefs and other notables from the food and wine industry with one or more contestants...
.
In 2009, Fast Company
Fast Company (magazine)
Fast Company is a full-color business magazine that releases 10 issues per year and reports on topics including innovation, digital media, technology, change management, leadership, design, and social responsibility...
published an online feature on the evolution and design of hearing aids. The article focused on the SKD's longtime partnership with Starkey, and the development of the S Series.
Epidermits
The Museum of Modern ArtMuseum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
featured one of Karten Design's conceptual art projects, Epidermits, as part of the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition in 2008. The epidermit was described as an interactive pet of the future "spawned from a skin-and-hair-cell culture grown from a human cheek swab." It was subsequently posted on Wired.com as "The Scariest Toy Concept Ever."
Kurrency
In 2009, Karten Design released Kurrency, a conceptual line of chandeliers constructed entirely from bills of different denominations and currencies. The chandeliers also project words such as "Greed" and "Safety Net" on the surface below. Karten was quoted in the press release as saying, “In today’s economy, there is perhaps nothing so beautiful as cold hard cash.”External links
- Karten Design web site
- Karten Design Highlights
- Karten Design's 25th Anniversary Online Retrospective
- Karten Design YouTube Channel
- Dear Stuart on FastCompany.com
- People's Design Award 2008
- BusinessWeek on ModeMapping
- BusinessWeek Q&A: Designer Stuart Karten
- Stuart Karten speaker bio- IIT Institute of Design, Design Research Conference
- Design is Transforming Business: IDSA Los Angeles Chapter
- IDEA Awards Since 2000
- MD&DI Roundtable: Medical Product Design
- Stuart Karten Design-- Zon Hearing Aid
- New York Magazine: Artist Stuart Karten Finally Finds a Use For That Excess Skin You Have Lying Around
- Stuart Karten Design Snap Saver