![]() ![]() We consume so many water bottles, and more and more companies are starting to take on the problem, but it seems we just keep consuming disposable water bottles. I’ve always had a problem with water bottles. Bikes and cabs-the infrastructure for transportation that supports alternatives to cars is a bit broken, and a tough problem to solve. The personal health dashboard is a big one, and people are focused on it. ![]() Is there an area of modern life that you feel is underdesigned? Everybody wants to do the iPhone cover, and it’s like, really? They have so many people working on that. There’s a lot more opportunity in that space. It’s in a realm that helps people in a different way. I get more excited about that stuff, which isn’t that glamorous, compared to the next iPhone case or watch or whatever. We ended up working with him on figuring out a new UV-C light system that can kill these “superbugs” at a cellular level, versus right now, where state of the art disinfection is basically using bleach. And then Surfacide started with a guy who’d been working on infectious diseases in water treatment for years, and a lot of his corporate clients were saying they needed something for their patient rooms. So we worked with her on that, and actually she’s in trials right now. My mom had passed away at 51 from a sudden cardiac event, and my daughter had just been diagnosed with ASD which is a hole in the heart that didn’t close-it’s fine now, a year or two years later-but it was on my mind. Her husband had died at a young age from this, and she was a Stanford engineer and figured out a way to identify if you have any kind of blockage in your artery. Shortly after that, a woman walked in the door who had this breakthrough technology, an algorithm for identifying turbulence in your arteries. They do point-of-care ultrasound, so we helped them with a new system that just launched and another system that’s launching in January. You’ve also designed a number of medical products recently. ( MORE: Why Secret Frank Lloyd Wright House Should Not Be Torn Down) Any product that you ask people to put on their body is inherently harder than designing an Xbox that sits on the table. It’s got to be comfortable there’s an ergonomic, wearable aspect to it. You’ve got limited real estate and a lot of constraints. Working at that scale, of fractions and millimeters, and designing from the inside out-they’re like little machines. It’s funny-before I went to work at Nike to do their watches, I think I had one watch. You seem to have an affinity for watches and watch design. I figured other people that were watch fanatics and some Apple fanboys would buy it, but there’s a lot more out there than you realize. I pretty much did the video myself on a Sunday and threw it up there. So I had this thing that I’d designed on the side, and I figured it was either going to die in my notebook or on the shelf as a prototype, or I could try this thing Kickstarter. They all thought it was too expensive or they were going to do their own. I had this idea for a watch, and I was just pitching it to other brands. You used Kickstarter in 2010 to fund the TIKTOK + LunaTik project, which turned the iPod Nano into a multifunctional watch. But you can always do it more minimally than what’s existing out there in the market. It comes down to the consumer and the market you’re designing for. We try to take what we do and our flavor and mix that with the DNA of the brand that we’re working with. But you can’t prescribe minimalism for every client. Not everything has to be absolute minimalism it’s just taking out what is not necessary. Would you say that’s also an accurate description of your design aesthetic? ( MORE: Go Behind the Scenes on an Open House Weekend) Twenty years later, I still can’t turn it off. I was fortunate to find something, and to end up loving it. Product design and development seemed to combine the two-technical, creativity-so it was a good fit. My art teacher was actually pushing me to be an illustrator or graphic designer. I also liked math and physics and how things worked, so in high school my guidance counselor told me to be an engineer. ![]() I was always drawing, growing up, and I was always the artist in the class. When did you first realize that you wanted to be a designer? Wilson has worked on wide-ranging projects that range from LunaTik watches for the iPod Nano and Microsoft XBOX 360+ Kinect to baby furniture and medical technology, which he recently spoke to TIME about. This October, he is recognized as the recipient of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Product Design (2012). Scott Wilson knew he had an artistic bent as a young child, but it wasn’t until he founded the Chicago-based MNML that he was able to marry a passion for design with his entrepreneurial vision for a 21st-century hybrid design studio that embraces both corporate brand-building and disruptive startups. ![]()
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