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As designers, we’re able to simultaneously answer 'why something should exist' and 'what should it be', allowing us to rapidly understand, vet, and develop ideas into meaningful products.
Meet Jon Grossman: Design Director
Meet Jon Grossman: Design Director
Meet Jon Grossman, Design Director. Jon brings an optimistic lens to the intersection of business and creativity. He’s designed across industries, including healthcare, technology, and consumer goods, creating award winning designs. His work is grounded in understanding user and market needs, then translating those into meaningful products. Jon wants to help clients impact their industries, and by extension the world, through great design.
We sat down with Jon to discuss the evolving landscape of industrial design, accelerating the design process, and his philosophy on leadership and creativity within a multidisciplinary environment.
What types of problems get you excited?
My favorite problems are the ones that cross disciplines. Problems in healthcare are a perfect example of that, as each one is multifaceted. Questions like why someone doesn’t follow a care plan or how to enable sites to adopt new equipment, don’t have easy answers. As designers, we’re uniquely positioned to help solve these challenges. We’re able to simultaneously answer “why something should exist” and “what should it be”, allowing us to rapidly understand, vet, and develop ideas into meaningful products.
Tell us about a time you solved an intimidating design challenge.
During the pandemic, I was working at Verily, Alphabet’s “other bet” in health care. We had a long running R&D program building a wearable continuous temperature monitor to detect for early signs of fever. When COVID hit, we accelerated the project timeline to commercialize the project and create an easy to use device. At the time, fever was an early marker of COVID infection, and the team shared an understanding that this could be a truly meaningful product. Within a year of acceleration, we launched Verily Patch. Not only did we commercialize a novel and regulated medical device in record time, but we incorporated formative research to refine usability and comfort throughout the process. I’m still proud of being part of the team and project today. Our usability research insights not only led to a great product, but a utility patent for the replaceable adhesive design.
What does leadership mean to you?
Leadership is about empowering a team to do its best work. You first have to understand each team member as an individual, from their long term career goals to daily skills they want to learn. This helps you know what motivates them, enabling you to better shape projects they’ll excel at. Then it’s all about building relationships, not only within your team, but your broader organization. When you have the groundwork to know how something is brought to life, you have the ability to get great work done. Finally, you need to bring a clear point of view. Every project is shaped differently, and driving excellence means people trusting you and your vision. Great leadership combines these qualities, shifting a team from just building deliverables to driving outcomes.
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Every project is shaped differently, and driving excellence means people trusting you and your vision.
What are the new frontiers of your discipline?
Integrating algorithms with hardware design. Across industries, there’s work being done at the intersection of machine learning and device design, and the challenges to make this happen are really unique.
For example, in healthcare, algorithms are making medical devices easier to use than ever before. Models can interpret whether a patient is positioned correctly or moving too much, and can be tuned to explicitly tell nurses and operators when something is wrong and how to fix it. Designing the device, the algorithm, and the user experience to enable these outcomes is like creating choreography, and is absolutely on the cutting edge of design.
In robotics, there’s so much work being done to automate tasks at scale. As general purpose robots build their use cases (i.e. home use, e-commerce infrastructure, last mile delivery, manufacturing, materials science, etc.) designing for specific workflows will be critical for product/market fit.
Wearables with new form factors driven by AI are also exciting. From screenless health wearables to augmented reality glasses, these objects not only have to be designed to fit into our lives, but to consider the user experience they enable. Especially as consumers become more aware of their data usage and privacy, designers need to consider these tradeoffs and how they relate to the value they get from use.
Having worked in consulting and in-house, what are the differences?
The major difference is the role of stakeholders. In an in-house setting, it’s necessary to understand the motivations and goals of a wide range of internal, non-design teams. For each group, it’s important to build a strong, foundational relationship to influence design in a meaningful way. Without that influence, it’s very difficult to advocate for design that is both meaningful for the business and something you can be proud of.
In consulting, the work is both more focused and more varied. While clients may come to us not knowing exactly how design can help them, they’re aware of the value it can bring to their product and business. When we partner with clients to shape a project before design begins, it allows us to deliver outcomes and business impact much faster.
About Jon Grossman
Jon Grossman is a Design Director with over 13 years of experience leading design for ambitious teams. He previously led the medical device UX & ID team at Verily, Alphabet’s “other bet” in healthcare. At Verily, he designed for many emerging technologies in a highly regulated space, including screening devices, wearables, AI-enabled diagnostics, drug delivery, and packaging. Alongside healthcare, Jon has designed many tech & innovation projects, including action cameras, stroller accessories, draft beer infrastructure, and cafes. He holds 8 utility patents and 9 design patents across medical devices, wearables, consumer products, and beverage dispense systems, alongside design awards from Red Dot, iF, IxDA, Fast Company, and Google.