Tag: new product design

Video Tip: Designing a Football Helmet for Deaf Players

Gallaudet has a history of technological innovation with wide applications.

Shelby Bean could not help but feel a bit jealous. As a deaf football player for four years at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., he called defensive plays with American Sign Language and dealt with other obstacles hearing opponents never need to worry about. Now an assistant coach, he was on the sideline earlier this season for a milestone at a school accustomed to them: The debut of new technology that allows plays to be displayed visually inside quarterback Brandon Washington’s helmet — a welcomed step that happened to coincide with the team’s first win of the season.

Gallaudet has been trying to level the playing field for the Deaf and hard of hearing community for more than a century, reports USA Today (Oct. 31, 2023). The helmet, developed with AT&T 129 years after quarterback Paul Hubbard invented the football huddle, is just the latest example of how the private university has been an incubator for Deaf technology in use around the world. The technology involved in the helmet could help firefighters, construction workers and first responders in noisy situations while giving the deaf and hard of hearing improved access to jobs and everyday activities.

The helmet tech works with the push of a button on a tablet on the sideline. The play is beamed over 5G to a tiny, nearly transparent screen in the quarterback’s helmet. Experts, advocates and those who worked to create the helmet dream of the day the technology is widespread and mainstream, unlike more elaborate visual headsets like Google Glass and Microsoft HoloLens.

Closed captioning is perhaps the most well-known example of a Deaf-led innovation that has found its way into everyday life. Videophones — like the ones that debuted at Gallaudet in 2004 — gave way to FaceTime and similar apps. The hope is the helmet technology is the next one to go big. “It can have so many more benefits outside of the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community that really just makes everyone’s life better,”  said Shelby Bean. “There’s no cap to it. This can go anywhere and everywhere.”

Here is a 2-minute video clip on the story.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Why is developing new products, the topic of Chapter 5 in your Heizer/Render/Munson text, so difficult?
  2. What are some other applications you can think of for this technology?

OM in the News: Pizza Hut Thinks Outside the Square Box

Pizza Hut’s new round box

Consider the pizza box. Not a specific pizza box, because they all pretty much look the same, but all the pizza boxes you might have encountered anytime in the last half century or so. They’re probably some combination of red, white and green, and maybe feature an Italian-looking chef with a swirly mustache. They’re bulky, and you struggle to fit them in your fridge when there are leftovers, or even in your trash can when they’re empty.

The pizza box has been this way for decades, even as cars have gone electric and phones have become pocket-size. Innovation in the pizza-box space has consisted of the addition of those miniature plastic platforms that keep the top of the box from sticking to the cheese below. And so what might seem like a small step — Pizza Hut is trying out a high-tech new design that’s round instead of square — feels like a giant leap for pizza-kind.

The pie chain’s claims about the new box are many, writes The Washington Post (Aug. 22, 2019) Some of its shiny new features are meant to improve its function and use: The round shape means there’s less waste (i.e., it’s better for the environment), and it’s made of sustainably harvested plant fiber. It’s industrially compostable. Less material also means it takes up less space on the shelves of Pizza Hut locations — and in your fridge. They don’t require time-consuming assembling by employees, and they break down easily — you can fold them over multiple times until you have something compact enough to drop into your trash can.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1.  What are the advantages and disadvantages of the new box?
  2. Can students can think of the other products in need of a packaging innovation?

OM in the News: Even Faster Fashion Scares Zara and H&M

Zara and H&M are the world’s two largest fashion retailers. Not by coincidence, they’re also the pioneers of fast fashion. Zara is able to take a coat from design to the sales floor in 25 days, and it can replenish items even more quickly. In the past couple of decades, the two companies have steadily trounced much of their competition, outdoing them on price and speed to claim an ever-larger share of shoppers’ spending. But both are being beat at their own game by even faster competitors.

“British fashion retailers ASOS and Boohoo are now able to conceive, design, produce, and have clothing ready for shoppers on the sales floor quicker than Zara and H&M,” reports QuartzMedia.com (April 6, 2017). ASOS expects sales to grow 30-35% this year. Boohoo predicts sales growth of around 50% for the year.

H&M is aware it’s falling behind, announcing plans recently to invest in and rethink its supply chain. Most of its manufacturing takes place in Asia in order to keep prices down, but it’s considering moving more production closer to Europe, to countries such as Turkey, which would let it get items to stores more quickly. That proximity is key to the speed of its faster rivals. Even Japanese retailer Uniqlo, which emphasizes that it isn’t driven by trends, has acknowledged that it needs to speed up.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. How are supply chains at the heart of this issue?
  2. Why is speed of new product development so important in this industry?

OM in the News: Zara’s Fast Fashion

Zara's identifies trends and quickly moves garments from sketch pads to stores
Zara’s identifies trends and quickly moves garments from sketch pads to stores

A black, high-collar women’s wrap coat, fastened with a metal ring, was just hung out for sale at Zara’s flagship store in NYC. “Customers asked for hardware this season,” the manager said. That kind of feedback can inspire a new style that reaches a Zara store within weeks. This coat took 25 days. The garment’s journey from design workshop in Spain to retail display rack in Manhattan offers an inside look at the fast-fashion model that has made Zara’s parent company the world’s biggest fashion retailer, writes The Wall Street Journal (Dec.7, 2016). 

A designer and pattern maker at the Spanish company’s HQ took 5 days to fashion a prototype of the coat, based on discussions with Zara store managers of what women were seeking. Cutters and seamstresses then worked 13 days to produce 8,000 of the coats. Over the next 6 days they were ironed, labeled, tagged, checked for quality, then trucked to Barcelona’s airport. The next day coats were on a truck to the Fifth Avenue store, to sell for $189.

The company’s ability to respond quickly to customer taste has long been the subject of industry study. One way that Zara’s speeds production is by making most of its garments in Spain. Every creative decision about all Zara garments flows quickly from impromptu discussions at HQ, in a huge open workspace. Designers and commercial staff sit side by side, in contact with Zara store managers around the world. Often, managers fly in, view a mock-up, and help shape product design.

As a result of Zara’s speedy conception and nearby production, it can get new clothes to stores in as fast as 2 weeks, while competitors take several months. “Since the beginning, the idea has been to understand what the customer wants first and then have an integrated manufacturing and logistics system to be able to deliver it to them quickly,” says the CEO.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What are Zara’s core competencies?
  2. Why do other firms take longer to go from design to delivery?