DtM is again partnering with the Olin Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship program.  Meet our team of superstar engineers and business students who are diving into Otter manufacturing and regulatory compliance.

A meditation on unintended consequences in design, specifically when product capabilities exceed our design specifications. 

During this summer’s design sprint, the team pioneered some new prototype fabrication methods.  Learn how you too can create a high-fidelity user interface prototype using cool tools like a laser cutter and a desktop CNC mill!

We’ve just passed a major milestone in the development of the Otter Warmer: the design and fabrication of our alpha prototype, the first iteration to both look like and work like our expectations for the finished product.  It includes two key new features: a numerical user interface and a heating assembly manufactured from a translucent polymer film.

Timothy Prestero from Design that Matters, Gregory Dajer from Medical Technology Transfer and Services (MTTS) and Luciano Moccia from Day One Health have just launched a new partnership to accelerate the development of improved low-cost infant medical devices for low resource countries.

We've just launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the next stage of development of our Otter newborn warmer--and we need your help!

We recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funding for international research, and as campaign rewards we offered collections of some of our favorite research and travel gear.

This summer has been a whirlwind six-week exercise in making a refined prototype on a limited budget and timeline...

This summer we recruited a design team of Autodesk Student Experts to develop an alpha prototype of our Otter Newborn Warmer. 

We would like to recognize the technical experts who have answered countless questions and provided invaluable guidance as we raced through Otter development over the past year.
 

We want to say a quick thank you to our fantastic spring semester student team from Olin’s Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship (ADE) course!

Great products meet the user’s expectations and their circumstances.  Every designer can tell you how understanding user needs requires lots of direct observations and interviews.  DtM has learned that the most valuable feedback requires something more than the standard research toolkit.  This short video explains why we go back to some of our favorite hospitals overseas again and again.  

With bonus footage from Otter testing in Vietnam!

The Kinkajou Microfilm Projector is a teaching tool for nighttime adult literacy courses in rural communities without books or electric lighting.  It was DtM’s very first projected, started back when the company founders were still graduate students at MIT.  It’s been more than a decade since the Kinkajou pilot in rural Mali and what was once cutting edge appropriate technology is probably no longer the best tool for the job.  How did Kinkajou teach us that context-appropriate design is a moving target?

Here it is, all the news that’s fit to print from a very busy year of research, travel and hacking!

On a field research trip in 2012, we met a very sick newborn whose severe jaundice couldn’t be treated with conventional phototherapy.  After two days of treatment with Firefly, baby Khang was out of danger and on his way to perfect health.  His exhausted but happy parents invited us to follow them home from the hospital.  

We just returned to the same village in Vietnam, going door-to-door through the narrow alleys in the hopes of finding the family.  Meeting baby Khang as a four-year-old was a powerful reminder of why DtM exists.

Ever since Firefly entered production in 2012, DtM partner MTTS has continued to iterate and improve upon the original design.  The latest model Firefly has taken a huge leap in clinical intensity: 50% brighter intensity from above the baby, and almost double the intensity from below.
Learn how we validate phototherapy intensity, and what brighter lights means for treating jaundiced newborns and for the design of our Otter newborn warmer!

A team of students from Olin and Babson College brought the Otter Warmer prototype back to Vietnam this month for additional user-testing and a detailed manufacturing review.  They returned with even more confidence about key design decisions, and ideas on how to significantly reduce the product cost.
DtM really wants to know: how many Vietnamese iced coffees did it take before they experienced arrhythmia, and is there such thing as too much pho?

Fed up with the design world’s fetish with aesthetics and artistic pretension?  Don’t be fooled by the cover--this book is radical dynamite.
We love Alexander’s approach to identifying the appropriate design opportunities, managing the real world’s bewildering complexity and delivering meaningful results for real people.

One of the highlights from Autodesk University was meeting the team from Core77. Designer and journalist Rain Noe captured the highlights of our hour-long discussion about everything from design and partnerships to stolen equipment and spies.
Learn how DtM was inspired by a predawn boat ride with an underwater robot and some Navy SEALs.  Warning: salty language!

We just returned from Vietnam, where we followed up on Firefly installations in and around Hanoi, and tested our Otter Newborn Warmer prototype with nurses and doctors at rural hospitals, and with our partner MTTS.

As we begin the monumental process of field data reduction, here’s a quick slideshow of DtM at work!  Also, a thousand thank yous to our many hosts in Vietnam.

It’s #GivingTuesday and we’re asking you to support the design of a better world for everyone.  Last year’s year-end fundraising campaign was a record-breaker.  Your donation will help us save newborn lives.

We are pleased to announce a new partnership with the Chao Foundation and TFish Fund to advance the development of the Otter newborn warmer. Based in the Bay area, the Chao Foundation supports nonprofit and public welfare initiatives that improve children’s health in developing countries.

The DtM team is hitting the road for a field test of our Otter newborn warmer prototype in Vietnam with potential users at rural hospitals, and with our manufacturing partner MTTS.  Here’s a quick slideshow of our research prep and some old favorite photos from past field studies in Vietnam, Nepal, Benin and Bangladesh.

It isn’t enough to evaluate our work relative to our own expectations.  How might we assess a program like Firefly compared to other global health program and other potential social impact investments?  Join us as we unravel the mysteries of ROI and $/DALY.

If you’re determined to get your ideas past the beautiful prototypes and the promising pilots to achieve international scale, you must read Geoffrey Moore’s framework for consumer expectations, technology strategy and product positioning.

What is it like to personally deliver a Firefly phototherapy device to the small hospital in your family’s hometown?  Suzanne Graves tells her story.

In a 12-week design sprint this summer, we developed a revolutionary new medical device to protect vulnerable newborns from hypothermia, preventable illness and death. Here’s a recap in text and video!

Three members of our summer student design team discuss their experiences, their favorite parts of the design process and where they see themselves headed as distinguished DtM alumni.

In the process of building the Otter alpha prototype, we learned some painful lessons and picked up some useful new tricks.  These brief notes may save you time on your own projects!

DtM has just teamed up with students and faculty at Olin and Babson Colleges to help prepare the Otter alpha prototype for volume manufacture and scale.

New funding from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the Otter Warmer; national and international recognition for our work as social entrepreneurs, designers and engineers.

What is the link between what 1950s rocket scientists called “systems engineering” and what the cool kids call “design thinking”?

Check out the Firefly poster we presented at MIT’s Global Health conference earlier this month.

Learn how a hospital that hosted our earliest phototherapy research study received a Firefly donation from a Boy Scout troop in Italy!

Students designers and engineers from MIT, RISD and Harvard tackle the design of a pulse oximeter and a remote-monitoring tool for medical device donations.

This new paper in Neonatology finds an unmet need for cost-effective diagnosis and treatment of neonatal jaundice in low- and middle-income countries.

Scholarly articles, prototyping tips, gee-whiz technologies and bad jokes from DtM's internal mailing list: the April 2016 edition.

Scholarly articles, prototyping tips, gee-whiz technologies and bad jokes from DtM's internal mailing list: the February 2016 edition.

Scholarly articles, prototyping tips, gee-whiz technologies and bad jokes from DtM's internal mailing list: the January 2016 edition.

Folks, things are getting serious! Firefly has received CE Mark certification. The device meets all applicable standards for medical devices in the European Union. CE certification opens access for Firefly...

Students in MIT’s 2.009 capstone engineering course gave a final presentation of ‘Sunflower’, a prototype warming device for premature newborns. The prototype is a response to DtM’s Otter Project...

This week, Associate Director of Strategic Partnerships Kelly Murphy represented DtM at the Gates Grand Challenges conference by special invitation of The Lemelson Foundation. There was a lot of good...