KartenDesign


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 to product engineering and production. Karten Design works in the fields of consumer electronics, digital health, medical devices, housewares, business products, sporting equipment and transportation design.

History

Founded by Stuart Karten in 1984, the firm has a staff of 30 design researchers, industrial designers, and mechanical engineers. Previously the company was named Stuart Karten Design and rebranded in 2011. In 2008, Karten Design was one of five industrial design firms profiled in Fast Company's Masters of Design series. The firm celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2014.

Clients and products

Karten Design has worked with industry leaders such as Boston Scientific, Samsung, DirecTV, Kohler Company, and Cardinal Health, and designed inaugural product lines for several start-up companies, including Endotronix, Vessix Vascular, 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:
Since 1984, Karten Design has received national and international design awards, including the , , iF product 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 in 2008.
Karten Design has received 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. The Zon was also featured in one of the Smithsonian Design Museums re-opening exhibitions in 2014. The Zon hearing aid appeared in the 2015 exhibition Tools: Extending Our Reach.
In 2009, Fast Company published an article on the evolution and design of hearing aids, which focused on the Karten Design's partnership with Starkey, and the development of the S Series.

Conceptual projects

Epidermits

The Museum of Modern Art featured one of Karten Design's conceptual art projects, Epidermits, as part of the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition in 2008. The Epidermits 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 by Wired 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.”