Two Industrial Design Titans Helping Brands Simplify Tech

Future Facility, a spin-off of the British firm Industrial Facility, wants to make networked products work for us, not the other way around.

Kim Colin and Sam Hecht, founders of the London-based industrial design studio Industrial Facility, have helped a number of large companies work through thorny design problems. Herman Miller tapped their expertise when it was in the middle of reconsidering its business strategy, and Muji has frequently collaborated with the firm for additions to its product line. 

In the last few years, Colin and Hecht started to notice that their clients were coming to them with the same problem: how to respond to tech trends.

So this year, Colin and Hecht launched a spin-off of their design studio and consultancy called Future Facility, which aims to help companies rethink how they approach connected products.

"We came to a realization that every product with a button will become connected to the Internet - it's an inevitability and will become an overcomplicated situation," Hecht says. "If that is a reality, there are two routes you can take as a designer. One is to completely ignore it and say, 'That's not for me, I'll stick to furniture design.' Or you could say, 'There's a bit of a beauty and an important part a designer can play as an editor and a form-giver for digital content.' We felt compelled by that second option."

One of Future Facility's biggest tasks is helping tech companies - which often have prolific research and development departments - translate their proprietary knowledge into consumer-facing products. "We're interested in how to make technology every day and easy to reach as opposed to engineers thinking about a 'blue sky' [scenario]," Colin says. "Our job is to make them ready for right now."