You wouldn’t expect to find spinal implants, guitars, motor homes and grills all behind a single converted store front on Irondale’s First Avenue.
But all these products have passed through Push Product Design. Within a cluster of drawing boards, computers and prototype designs, generations of products have taken shape at the firm.
The 10-year-old company’s name is meant to conjure up convenience at the touch of a button, and the idea of pushing the envelope of creativity and design.
Push works with the internal design teams of clients that include Gibson, John Deere, Peavey, Yamaha, Rheem and Medtronic to develop a wide range of products. This means marrying ergonomics with design and convenience.
In other words, creative problem solving in virtually any line of products.
”That’s what keeps it interesting,” said Lloyd Cooper, 46, the company’s principal. ”You don’t get pinned down into one specific area. You can look at each project with an open mind and maybe give it a different perspective than someone who is focused in on that area constantly might not have.
”You don’t have to be an expert in all areas of design, you just have to know enough to get into trouble by asking hard questions.”
For example, one of Push’s clients is Tiffin Motorhomes of Red Bay, which called on the firm to help design its RV cockpits and exteriors. This led Push’s designers to study different automotive trends in luxury cars, including touch points for instruments, sight lines and interior designs. The firm also looked at different design factors for a specific model targeted at the baby boomer market.
”We wanted it to feel more automotive and less like a big truck,” Cooper said.
The firm’s approach leads its designers to sometimes use experience formed on one project to work out the bugs on another. Furniture design, for example, helped Push when working with Char-Broil on legs for a new grill design.
”We’re very careful, though, not to use confidential information between clients,” Cooper said. ”But you often get insights from a totally different market that will help you understand another.”
Push worked with Griffin Technology on accessories for the iPod, such as the iTalk, the iTrip and the iTrip mini. Its designers also helped develop a new surgical hood for Microtek Medical.
The firm works with computer models for initial development, and works out problems through prototypes and scale models. This results in a lot of trial and error, testing and refinement.
Push hopes to take on more work in green product design. As an example, in architecture, there is a growing demand for LEED certified buildings, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. LEED is a building-rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council and designed to promote environmentally friendly construction.
One of the firm’s recent projects was a solar collector that tracks the sun and funnels its rays into a fiber optic bundle to carry light inside a building.
Universal design
Designer Andrew Thomson said another area the firm is branching out into is universal design - helping devise products that can be used by the physically handicapped but broad enough to appeal to the general market.
”It might be a product that works well for the elderly but is still attractive to the average user - designs that include everyone,” Thomson said.
All of the firm’s designers are Auburn University alums, with backgrounds in industrial design. Cooper said the school’s program was started by several German professors who were part of the original Bauhaus movement. That made for a natural transition when Cooper and his collegues began scouting careers.
Some of Cooper’s love of design, though, is in the blood. Cooper studied standard industrial design and mechanical engineering at Auburn, with a stint consulting for the Alabama Space and Rocket Center before Push began. His inspiration was his father, a former Naval architect responsible for not only designing a ship’s engine room but the silverware in the captain’s quarters. His mother studied design at Parsons. So problem solving and design comes naturally.
”It’s wonderful to always be learning,” he said. ”We often get asked to help solve challenging problems that no one has ever done before.”
