The Jawbone Era is a Bluetooth wireless headset that employs motion controls for enhanced interactivity. The company tasked designers to build a story around its latest product, including naming and positioning as well as developing key messaging for marketing purposes.

Credits: Yves Béhar, IDSA, Logan Ray and Angie Tadeo of fuseproject for Jawbone

Contact: Melissa Guthrie: melissa@fuseproject.com

PACT, an online underwear brand, blends design and sustainability with support for social and environmental causes. Each underwear collection is aligned with a nonprofit; each pair bought donates 10 percent back to the specific organization. The entire product experience—underwear styles and patterns, website and packaging—were designed under the brand tenant “Change Starts with Your Underwear.”

Credits: Yves Béhar, IDSA and Angie Tadeo of fuseproject for PACT Underwear

Contact: Melissa Guthrie: melissa@fuseproject.com

The JAMBOX is a Bluetooth wireless audio speaker and duplex speakerphone that employs the latest noise-canceling technology. In addition to delivering full-spectrum audio, JAMBOX quickly and easily connects with mobile phones, computers, tablets, iPods or any other Bluetooth devices, allowing consumers to seamlessly stream and share music, movies, games and calls anywhere all wirelessly, all in the palm of their hands.

Credits: Yves Béhar, IDSA, Logan Ray and Angie Tadeo of fuseproject for Jawbone

Contact: Melissa Guthrie: melissa@fuseproject.com

INNOVATION U is a curriculum designed for an aviation-specific conceptual design center. The curriculum integrates future trends/forecasting, cultural attributes and other scenario techniques into a curriculum that sets the client’s standards for next-generation project methods and processes.

Credits: The Boeing Company Design Team and TEAGUE Design Team

Contact: Sarah Matheny: smatheny@teague.com

Converse hired a design firm to help create an authentic store experience and service model that would appeal to its legions of devotees. Through research that included conversations with Converse loyalists, the team developed a retail vision that celebrates what the brand is all about: self-expression.

Credits: IDEO design team for Converse

Contact: Katie Clark: kclark@ideo.com

Intensive research into its customers’ habits and needs led Kata, which provides carrying solutions to the professional photography and video market, to focus on providing the lightest, most protective camera bags on the market. Borrowing technologies and materials from other fields, such as the parachute industry, it dramatically reduced the weight and strengthened the bags without compromising protection and functionality.

Credits: Alona Komsky, Alex Ritvin,Elisha Wetherhorn, Yarin Almog, Gil Liberman and Shachar Twito of Manfrotto bags Ltd. (Israel)

In the process of designing youth-oriented footwear and apparel, Li-Ning found that not only was it failing to offer a product and retail experience that resonates with Chinese youth, but so was the competition. This presented Li-Ning with a unique opportunity to develop an understanding of China’s emerging youth market. The subsequent research effort created the foundation for all later design work on Li-Ning’s product strategy, brand identity and retail design.

Credits: Eric Lawrence of Ziba Design and Li-Ning (China)

Contact: Julia Carpenter: julia_carpenter@ziba.com

The TDK 2011 Audio Line is a collection of six listening devices that combine analog warmth with digital flexibility. Consisting of two boomboxes, two turntables, headphones and the SoundCube speaker, the lineup provides the kind of experiences that have been lost in the era of iPods and earbuds: listening out loud with friends; shifting effortlessly among MP3s, records, CDs and musical instruments; and getting lost in the warmth and detail of a favorite track.

Credits: Paul O'Connor for Ziba Design and TDK Life on Record

Contact: Julia Carpenter: julia_carpenter@ziba.com

This strategy involved creating an early-stage investment company designed to fuel tech innovation in Europe and free Europe’s best developers from their day jobs to help them build their own game-changing companies. Since HackFwd’s launch in June 2010, it has reviewed hundreds of ideas, funded eight, and hopes to finance another five by June 2011.

Credits: IDEO design team for Lars Hinrichs (Germany)

Contact: Katie Clark: kclark@ideo.com

OpenIDEO.com is a Web-based platform for innovation where creative thinkers worldwide can design better, together. The platform seeks only solutions for social good. Designers post a problem, typically sponsored by a nonprofit group, which moves through three phases of development, and site users provide feedback every step of the way. The final design may be produced by whoever chooses to do so: all concepts are generated under a Creative Commons license.

Credits: IDEO design team (United Kingdom)

Contact: Katie Clark: kclark@ideo.com