Fantastic Industrial Design Case Study: Creating a Custom Orthotic, Fast, with Formlabs

Here’s a great piece of design, executed in a hurry. Unfortunately the designer never names himself, so we have no idea who he is or how to link back to him.

The anonymous designer was visited by a colleague, who had recently injured his hand and was wearing an uncomfortable orthotic.

The designer resolved to design and produce a better one, custom-fit to the colleague’s hand. Said colleague wouldn’t be in town for long, so the job was done in a rush. The SnugFit 3D scanning app, orthotic design software caleld Spentys and Formlabs SLA and SLS printers all played a crucial role.

While we generally seek out printed case studies, this one was presented on video only, and is roughly two minutes long:

Nice work! If anyone knows who the designer is, please comment so we can link back to him.

Designing Healthcare Access with Empathy and Innovation

The WE app, a 2025 Honoree in the Core77 Design Awards, represents a thoughtful exploration of how design can mediate between vulnerable users and complex systems. Developed by QIMU Design, with designers Shuting Jiang and Tianyue Wu, the project asks what it means to create tools that do more than solve functional problems—they create trust, dignity, and belonging.

The design team began with a fundamental insight: immigrant women navigating healthcare in a new country often encounter not one but multiple layers of friction. Language, cultural expectations, and opaque bureaucracies intertwine, producing not just logistical hurdles but emotional strain. Rather than attempting to “fix” users’ abilities, Jiang and Wu reframed the challenge as a systemic design problem. How could technology serve as a bridge without replacing the human relationships that make healthcare meaningful?

The answer emerged in a hybrid model. WE’s AI assistant provides translations optimized for medical contexts, but more importantly, it frames information in ways that empower decision-making. At the same time, the platform offers in-person companions who accompany women to appointments, ensuring that empathy and reassurance are not sacrificed in the pursuit of efficiency. This pairing illustrates a critical design insight: tools alone rarely resolve vulnerability; it is the thoughtful choreography of digital and human touchpoints that makes an experience supportive.

This app helps women navigate healthcare when they don’t speak the language of their providers.

Through research and iterative testing, QIMU Design refined features such as simplified insurance comparisons and multilingual community forums. These are not flashy add-ons but carefully considered responses to real user needs. What makes WE compelling from a design perspective is its refusal to separate usability from dignity. Each interaction—whether reading policy options or entering a waiting room—was treated as an opportunity to reduce anxiety and build confidence. In doing so, Jiang and Wu show how design can operate not just at the level of interface, but at the level of systems and emotions. WE is less a product than a case study in how empathetic design can reimagine access to care for those most often left at its margins.

See all the outstanding Apps & Platforms honorees from the 2025 Core77 Design Awards here.

If you’re developing an innovative app, product, service, or space, we invite you to showcase your work in the 2026 Core77 Design Awards—Call for Entry opens January 2026.

An Interactive Public Bench with User-Adjustable Seating

This ADP Bench (Adults Don’t Play) is by Copenhagen-based architecture/design firm Spacon.

Designed for public spaces, it provides user-adjustable seating for people of various heights.

Alternatively, the seats can also be used as table-height surfaces.

The bench is in production by Danish furniture manufacturer +Halle, which holds annual “briefings:” Brainstorming sessions for designers and architects, built around a different theme each time, with the intent of exploring public behavior in common spaces. This year’s briefing, from which the ADP emerged, was “Playing.”

“We had the chance to study playing from a social scientific standpoint, immerse ourselves in the mental triggers that surround the theme and share those in critical discussions with our peers. Having the feedback from the other skilled designers (Philippe Malouin and Raw-Edges) was a designer-to-designer dialogue we had longed for,” Svend Jacob Pedersen, Founding Partner, Spacon, reflects.

Subtle play

The starting point for the ADP bench is interaction and, ultimately, personal ownership of a piece of furniture in the public realm. But interestingly, the research began elsewhere. In the urge or compulsion to find symmetry or align objects that are chaotic or misaligned, we hear Pedersen:
“We struggled with the theme at first. Asking ourselves, how do you contribute with something valuable in this category? To answer this question, we examined the engaging characteristics of symmetry,” says Pedersen, and continues, “We looked at toys, particularly a box of Lego, and the attraction to organise the chaos and take personal ownership of the order created. That’s the fundament. A businessman in a public space playing with a bench seat is built on that same theory. Proving that interaction with the world empowers.”

Align the groove

Across the ADP Bench is a graphic element that speaks volumes without ever shouting. A quiet, but distinct graphic, speaking to the instinctual behaviour of wanting to adjust the seats to form a straight line.

“When looking at popular culture, internet memes, or viral connotations of symmetry compulsions, we found a picture of a sewer cover with a street line painted across it; the lock just turned a little to create a misalignment. This image communicates directly to the human temptation to want to turn the cover to make it right. And that image was something we ended up translating to a multifunctional bench, in a very direct way,” Pedersen explains.

Hybrid use
The wooden ADP Bench can be seen as an interactive mental trigger and a hybrid set of seats and tables. Mimicking a classic piano stool with a swivel, the ADP Bench can be adjusted to serve as a set of low, standard, or high seats mixed with table height options. Included are, of course, all the measures in between, with endless combinations.

“Every function has a purpose in the ADP bench; at first you might want to sit down alone with a laptop and a coffee, then you might need people sitting next to you, which means you wire all the seats back down and shapeshift the bench,” says Pedersen.
Graphic language
The ADP Bench is a conversation starter, especially with the transformative characteristics of the bench. You may even need to negotiate with the person next to you on how you want to sit.
“The playful tension of the ADP bench brilliantly captures the behaviour around taking ownership of public space. That the ADP bench successfully speaks to the public using a distinct language is a testament to Spacon & X’s ability to establish a contract with the user of the furniture they create. At +Halle, this captures the fundament of being shaped by behaviour,” +Halle reflects.

“In today’s public realm, communication is vital, but it requires that the furniture that has something to say,” Pedersen concludes.

A Low-Tech, Height-Adjustable Wall Lamp Made with a Minimum of Materials

This almost seems like something Ikea would’ve designed in the ’90s, and I don’t mean that in a bad way.

The Suspended Wall Lamp, by Danish design studio Moebe, is a low-tech height-adjustable lamp made with a minimum of materials: Just an oak wall bracket, a stainless steel support wire, a pivoting arm, and a cable with a shade.

The installation is pretty simple:

Simple doesn’t mean inexpensive, however. The lamp runs €350 in the EU, which would equate to USD $411—before tariffs.

The Design Sketches Behind Matthias Pleissnig’s Crazy Furniture Pieces

We’ve covered Matthias Pleissnig’s work before, plenty of times–for good reason. The Rhode-Island-based designer creates positively stunning furniture out of steam-bent domestic hardwoods.

He breaks his furniture into just three categories: “Small”…

…”Medium”…

…and “Large.”

Previously Pleissnig had shown in-studio process shots of his builds, but now he’s made his actual sketches available. And I have to say, they look nothing like what I thought they’d look like:

It’s always incredible to get a glimpse into the mind of a talented designer.

“Each piece I make provokes a feeling of motion and stillness. I am attempting to make work with its own sense of time. Intimate moments where time can move incredibly fast, sweeping by, and yet be serene and contemplative.”

Powered Boxcutter Makes Short Work of Cardboard

Here’s a gamechanging tool for stock workers: The BoxBlayde, a powered boxcutter that slices through even dual-layered cardboard with little effort.

It takes a regular utility knife blade, and the 40W motor oscillates it at the press of a button.

The blade is safely concealed beneath a protuberance that also makes it easy to guide onto the cardboard.

The tool runs on internal rechargeable batteries. A full charge provides around two hours of cutting time.

One bummer is that to change the blades, you need a screwdriver to get the blade housing open.

Here’s a few sketches from when the developers were working out the prototype:

While this isn’t by design, it makes a cool little sound as you use it:

The BoxBlayde runs $100.

Pecadora’s Simple but Elegant Bent Plywood MT Chair

This MT Chair is by Spain-based industrial designers Rafa Peris and David Guilmain, collectively known as Pecadora.

It’s made from just two sheets of plywood; there is no hardware. It can support 200kg (440 lbs) in weight.

The pair don’t mention how the chair was assembled, though they do say its production involves a 5-axis CNC. I assume that’s to trim the edges of the chair into final shape after the two sheets, which surely started out a lot larger, are adhered to one another.

The MT Chair appears to be a statement piece and does not appear to be in production.

Industrial Design Case Study: A Nurse Call System for Hospitals

If you’re designing something as important as the call system used in hospitals by nurses, you’ve got to do heavy end-user research, and make the complicated simple. That’s the approach industrial design consultancy Thrive took with their Voalte Nurse Call Station for client Hillrom.

Advancing Connected Care

Hillrom partnered with THRIVE to lead the medical product design for the next-generation nurse call system—the Voalte® Nurse Call Station. This advanced system is the central hub of a connected care ecosystem, empowering caregivers to respond to their patients’ before the fall, the cardiac event, and before the code blue. It is the physical face of the new Voalte Platform, which brings together the acquisitions of Voalte and Excel Medical under the Hillrom brand to deliver a single unified approach to care communications technology that is unmatched in the industry.
The Voalte® Nurse Call Station is designed to be modular and deployed throughout the hospital environment at nurse stations, hallways, and patient rooms. It comprises a touch screen, articulating base, and handset to deliver best-in-class ergonomics with a modern and minimal design that embodies the feeling of precision that end-users expect from a best-in-class medical device.

A Vision of the Future

Hillrom, a subsidiary of Baxter International Inc., is a medical technology company offering patient support systems, surgical solutions, and front-line care products since its founding in 1929. Hillrom recognized that nurse call systems were overdue for a leap in modernization with fragmented hospital systems and their disparate solutions, making patient, staff, and even device connections complex and inefficient, negatively impacting patient care.
There are up to 1 million falls in hospitals in the US each year, with an average cost of $13,316 per fall; that’s a $1.3 million increased cost for a 100-bed facility with 179 falls per year. Hillrom’s vision was to build an ecosystem of connected technologies to advance hospital care and enhance patient and caregiver outcomes. Hillrom understood that to bring this vision to life, they needed a seamless ecosystem of digital and physical devices and engaged THRIVE to take a human-centered approach to the medical product design of the Voalte Nurse Call Station, the keystone and central hub of the system.

Time for Change

The team began with extensive in-field research with healthcare professionals to understand their behavior and frustrations with existing nurse call systems. We shadowed Hospital Unit Controllers (HUCs) and Charge Nurses in Pediatric and Rehabilitation units to understand user needs, process flows, desired functionality, work-a-rounds, and any unarticulated needs related to the Hill-Rom Nurse Call Suite. The research informed the development of three experience design principles that informed the overall product design and user experience.

Best in Class Ergonomics

We took a human-centered approach to the Nurse Call Staff Station driven by our in-field insights, focusing on the comfort of Health Unit Coordinators (HUCs) and Charge Nurses, who use the system for up to twelve hours a day on a single shift. The key area of sacrifice was handset comfort, with existing product designs being challenging to hold and uncomfortable on the ear for extended periods. We benchmarked twenty different handsets to determine optimal usability, arriving at an optimal weight range of range 150-200 grams, a 50/50 weight balance between ear and mouth, angled mouth, and earpieces for better face contouring (approx. 15 degrees) with a dished ear cup for improved sound quality, and an hourglass contour to comfortably fit hand sizes from a 5th percentile female to a 95th percentile male.

In mission-critical moments, grasping the handset quickly and easily is vital to HUCs and Charge Nurses. Delivering on this need, we adopted an ‘open C’ configuration to the handset cradle so the handset could be grasped easily from the left or the right side in the center of the handset for optimal balance and control. Hospital environments can be noisy and chaotic, with a multitude of alarms. To ensure caregivers never miss a call, we added a “dome light” to the top edge of the entire unit to provide user-friendly visual notifications as well as auditory ones. The articulating stand enables HUCs and Charge Nurses to operate comfortably from standing and seated positions.

A Modern Medical Visual Language

Hospitals are fighting for business. They need to communicate to patients and families that money has been invested in the right places—that their clinicians and nurses have the best medical-grade equipment money can buy. The Nurse Call Station had to convey precision, efficiency, and excellence at a glance and be fit for purpose, telegraphing that it can deliver in life-and-death situations.

In response, we developed a visual design language called ‘Human Touch’ using softened geometries and subtle, inflated surfaces to humanize the product and make it approachable, friendly, and intuitive, juxtaposed with precise chamfers and edges to communicate precision and accuracy.

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Our research showed that healthcare professionals don’t want flashy, non-functional ornamentation. HUCs and Charge Nurses care most about the data displayed on the screen. So, we removed as much extraneous detail from the viewing surface and the surrounding components as possible, adding a strong sense of localized symmetry to communicate simplicity, purposefulness, and ease of use.
Another critical insight that informed our industrial design approach was that healthcare professionals view overly expressive products with suspicion and gravitate to simple products with a tight, tailored fit that signifies that products are dependably engineered and manufactured when in hospital environments and can withstand their rigorous conditions. We tightly packaged all the nurse station’s components and reduced the overall footprint by removing mass from the phone cradle and articulating base to emphasize the two key interaction areas of the product: the handset and touchscreen. Medical professionals respond positively to products that look like they will fit nicely into their chaotic, crowded, and intense workspaces. We purposely made the station ‘clinical’ with a white and silver CMF to stand out from the other beige and black boxes that inhabit nurse station desktops, telegraphing its importance to clinical workflow.

Execution is Everything

THRIVE spearheaded all aspects of the mechanical engineering for the Nurse Call Station using our structured ISO 9001 quality management system and design documentation process. This enabled us to meet all regulatory requirements and operate efficiently and effectively with Hillrom’s chosen Contract Manufacturing (CM), engaging them throughout the medical product design process as partners to guarantee design suitability for assembly, servicing, and class-leading performance. Our Design and Engineering team worked iteratively, creating a series of proof-of-concept prototypes that were evaluated by end users and continuously improved throughout the development process.

We used integrated modeling and THRIVE’ moldflow and mechanical finite element analysis simulation capabilities to understand and assess the potential performance of our concepts from early-stage ideation to commercialization. Validating the manufacturability of each component while managing quality control and design aspects to ensure all parts were produced free of defects such as shrinkage, warpage, weld lines, sink marks, and other undesired defects. Our robust design controls and statistical tolerance techniques ensured a seamless transfer of the design intent and fulfillment of all Hillroms requirements. Quality-managed documentation, including CAD data, engineering drawings, assembly instructions, and production specifications, helped guarantee commercialization excellence.

Setting A New Standard

The staff station represents a significant leap in modernizing nurse call systems, providing faster processing power, enhanced audio, and a camera to support video-based communications with patients and caregivers — an industry first. Since the launch of the Voalte Nurse Call System in 2021, the reception from hospitals has been overwhelmingly positive. One hospital reported reduced response times by 80 percent, another reduced falls with injury by 87 percent, and another reported caregivers spending 30 percent more time on direct patient care.
The success of the Hillrom Voalte Nurse Call System has bolstered Hillrom’s reputation as a leading medical device maker and innovator in the connected care category, conveying product leadership, market sensitivity, and high value through sophisticated, well-detailed medical product design. It has positioned Hillrom perfectly to capitalize on the forthcoming projected growth in the nurse call systems market (expected to rise from USD 1.18 billion in 2018 to USD 2.79 billion by 2026) owing to the reduction in the nurse-to-patient ratio.

You can see more of Thrive’s work here.

Core77 Weekly Roundup (9-8-25 to 9-12-25)

Here’s what we looked at this week:

Porsche develops wireless charging for EVs. Drive over a pad, the car lowers itself.

These language-translating earbuds can be shared, and use bone conduction for noisy environments.

Students at ETH Zurich have invented a rotary metal 3D printer that may make space travel cheaper.

A fantastic design feature for accessibility in these Michael Graves Dressers for Pottery Barn.

BMW’s Motorrad Vision CE is a no-helmet-needed electric scooter concept.

Researchers at Northwestern are developing a plastic recycling system that doesn’t require sorting.

Product designer Igor Daemen’s 3D-printed business card embosser.

Nendo’s helically-mated Rassen chopsticks.

Roman Modzelewski’s radical RM58 chair, a revived industrial design classic from Poland.

While foreign factory engineers are arrested, a humanoid robot quietly put in a 20-hour shift at a car factory.

The Dusty FieldPrint is a BIM-driven layout robot that saves time and money.

Why Darth Vader’s head is on the Washington National Cathedral.

More design tricks for tight living spaces: A camper with a sliding bathroom.

Peter Donders’ astonishing handcrafted Walnut Shelly chair.

Design engineer Leigh Aitken is using a robot arm to develop a rotary texturing process.

The Dental Pod is an ultrasonic cleaner for retainers, mouthguards or nightguards.

Amazon’s Zoox, the world’s first purpose-designed robotaxi, launches this week in Vegas.

The RUX 40L: A compact, collapsible waterproof storage bag.

Industrial design case study: Thrive tackles a nurse call system for hospitals.

The RUX 40L: Compact, Collapsible Waterproof Storage

Most outdoor gear container systems, whether bins, bags or hybrids, are rather tall; they appear to be sized using pickup truck bed walls as a height guide.

RUX, the outdoor gear brand started by industrial designer Tony Richardson, produces a flexible, fold-flat outdoor gear container system. They’re a hit with overlanders and travelers, particularly their 70L model, which falls into the tall category of containers.

User feedback, however, prompted Richardson to design an alternative; not everything is going into the bed of a pickup. Thus the company has rolled out the RUX 40L Gear Box.

“Designed with a shorter, carry-on-friendly form factor, it fits where others can’t — from under-seat truck drawers to overhead bins, boat decks, van builds, and ATV racks.”

It also, Richardson reckons, makes a good case for quick access to just a single layer of goods, rather than having to dig through a deeper tote or box.

Like its bigger 70L sibling, it’s completely watertight, and collapses flat when it’s not needed. Check out all of its features below:

It runs $250.