Startups: Where design and technology meet

Sven Viquerat, designer, and Thibault Asselborn, CEO of School Rebound © 2021 Alain Herzog Enabled by Design is a joint EPFL-ECAL program that forges ties between researchers and designers to make it easier to bring new technology to market. Researchers are often the first to see a device's innovative potential. But investors, users and end customers will look not only at its functionality, but also its ergonomics and aesthetics. Laboratory prototypes rarely meet the last two of these criteria - that's not their purpose. The goal of a prototype is to evaluate the feasibility of a given technology, perform tests and collect data. When a device leaves the research lab and moves into the product development stage, however, its technology needs to meld seamlessly into an intuitive design in order to appeal to users, markets and investors. That's where Enabled by Design comes in.