Will Mitchell
Will Mitchell is Managing Director of 4c Design, an award-winning product design and engineering consultancy in Glasgow.
With over 25 years of experience across a range of sectors and industries he, alongside his team at 4c have successfully developed and launched a range of products for both themselves and an international client base.
Brian Combe
Co-founder and Managing Director of i4 Product Design (i4PD), Brian has over 30 years’ experience in product design & development, consultancy and business management.
Having started his career completing a mechanical technician apprenticeship with Edinburgh based Ferranti Defence Systems, he went on to spend over 20 years designing and leading electro-mechanical projects in the development of many successfully commercial products.
Since he and his fellow directors founded i4PD in December 2003, he has presided over a huge throughput of projects. The products that these projects have realised have been introduced into the consumer, medical and industrial markets, generating hundreds of millions of pounds of revenue for i4PD’s customers.
i4PD are a successful product design & development consultancy who have enjoyed steady growth, from a staff of 4 and turnover of £0.3M in 2004 to the present day staff of 21 and turnover of £1.85M.
i4PD transitioned the company to Employee Ownership in April 2018 to enable the founders to one day leave a legacy of a sustainable and profitable Scottish based company for our creative team of designers, engineers, managers and administration staff.
Hilary Grierson
Dr Hilary Grierson is the Director of Teaching & Learning in the Department of Design, Manufacturing & Engineering Management (DMEM), University of Strathclyde and teaches Product Design, focusing on design methods and design project work. She has recently been developing online modules for Strathclyde’s first Graduate Apprenticeship programme – Engineering: Design & Manufacture.
She studied Architecture at Strathclyde and the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University and worked in architectural practice for over 12 years before moving to full-time academia. She holds degrees in Architecture, Computer-Aided Building Design, and a PhD in Distributed Information Management. Her research focuses on distributed teamwork, global collaboration, information visualisation and design education; having worked with global partners, e.g. the Defence Science and Technology Laboratoy (Dstl, Gov.uk) and Stanford University. She has published over 40 journal and conference papers in the area of design education and distributed design and held an EPSRC grant on data information systems.
She currently sits on the University’s Senate and Education Strategy Committee. She is co-chair of the Design Society’s Design Education SIG, and sits on the editorial and organising committees for the Engineering & Product Design Engineering Conference and the International Conference for Engineering Design.
Rory Ingram
Rory Ingram is a Product Design Engineer with experience covering the entire product and project lifecycle, which has been gained over 17 years developing mainly high integrity products for Consumer, Defence, Maritime and Oil & Gas sectors. Rory has operated in both SME’s and Fortune 500’s so is well placed to support SMEs and OEMs alike with a sound appreciation of business processes and perceived barriers or hurdles. Most recently, Rory has developed an industry-focused team within the UK’s High Value Manufacturing Catapult, hosted in the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland near Glasgow. In his current position, Rory and his team support innovators from all sectors in conceptual and prototype product development, verification and validation, mechanical design, CAD modelling & draughting and tooling and fixture design, always paying consideration to regulations & standards along the way to maximise likelihood of success. Rory’s team are also well placed to assess product materials and manufacturing methods, with access to sophisticated cost modelling software and very possibly the largest team of metallurgists and material scientists in Scotland. Rory very strongly believes in the power of a network as everybody knows something and nobody knows everything.
Danny Kane
Danny is the Design Director and Co-Founder of Filament PD, a Product Development agency specialising in the design and development of connected hardware and IoT devices. Working across diverse sectors including renewable energy, circular economy, financial technology, smart buildings, medical devices and industry 4.0, Filament helps companies design and engineer product experiences from concept to commercialisation.
Danny has been involved in several Red Dot Award winning products, and helped dozens of clients obtain significant funding, numerous design accolades, and ultimately been pivotal in the successful release of over 100 products. He is passionate about human centred design at the intersection with technology and business.
Graduating in Product Design Engineering with a First-Class Master’s Degree, Danny went straight into the field of design consultancy following his years at Glasgow School of Art and The University of Glasgow. Danny’s core skills lie in design strategy, industrial/UX design, mechanical engineering and project management. Over the past 15 years he has collaborated with ambitions start-ups all the way to global brands including Audi, Ikea, and Marks & Spencer.
Stuart Kelly
Stuart is a chartered engineer and bioengineer, with over 20 years’ experience of multi-disciplinary product design, primarily in the fields of medical devices, scientific instruments and consumer products.
Now working with early-stage businesses as an independent design consultant, having previously worked in senior roles at major Scottish and UK product design consultancies. He has experience of every phase of the product development lifecycle – from concept to volume manufacture.
Stuart has been involved in the planning and delivery of around 80 product development projects, for customers ranging from start-ups to global device companies.
Matthew Love
A design engineer and entrepreneur of innovative, disruptive, high reliability intelligent adaptive control and inertial systems. A technical leader of engineering teams with 25 years at the coalface of engineering design and management for high reliability sectors (Defence, Aerospace, Oil, Gas and Renewables).
Andrew Peacock
Andrew Peacock is the founder and managing director of Peacock Technology Ltd, a design house with capabilities in embedded electronics and software and in industrial automation.
Craig Whittet
Craig Whittet is Head of Department of Product Design Engineering, a collaborative series of Undergraduate and Postgraduate programmes taught at the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow. The programmes are accredited by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, Institute of Engineering Designers and Institute of Engineering Technology.
Craig’s research focuses on how design engineers can use their skills to influence manufacturing, social policy and placing the user central to the design engineering process. Through his network and contacts, he continues to explore links between academia and industry; in particular expanding existing markets through disruptive technologies. He has presented at International conferences, contributed to journals, articles, chaired discussion panels and is a member of the review team for the Engineering and Product Design Education International Conference.
Craig’s Academic experience has also included the role of Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, External Examining and course validation panel membership at a number of UK and International Academic Institutions. He also provides Design Engineering workshops for the University of Electronic Science and Technology China.
Prior to working in academia, Craig’s award-winning industrial background included physical and virtual product development.
Abi Hird
Abi is founder and Director at Defankle Innovation Limited. Defankle are an innovation consultancy specialising in helping organisations develop processes and configure and align resources for impactful innovation and sustained competitive advantage.
Over the last 15 years Abi has worked with businesses to develop and embed systems approaches to address a variety of complex innovation challenges. Having worked as an academic, with industry and for public sector, Abi has breadth of perspective on innovation.
Abi brings a Systems Approach to everything she does. Specific expertise gathered over the years includes bringing manufactured products to market, forecasting resource requirements for innovation and, the role of design in innovation.
Abi studied Product Design Engineering at the University of Strathclyde and has a Doctorate in Systems Engineering, awarded for industry-based research in planning innovation processes. Abi also has Post Graduate qualifications in Operational Research (the maths behind decision making) and Academic Practice. She is a Fellow of the RSA.
Russell Overend
Russell is Managing Director of Wideblue Ltd a Glasgow based New Product Design and Manufacturing company. Wideblue’s multi disciplinary team works to bring new technology products from the concept design stage through prototyping and testing to full volume manufacturing. Wideblue specialise in development of products with optical and sensor components, new medical devices and design for manufacturing.
Russell was one of the founders in 2006 when Wideblue was created as a management-buy-out from Polaroid’s European Design Centre. Wideblue have over 20 Scientists and Engineers covering industrial design, ergonomics, mechanical design, electronics, firmware, optical design, medical devices, testing, regulatory approvals, prototyping, production and work on projects in multiple areas. In 2018 Pivot International acquired a stake in Wideblue and now offer a route to low cost component sourcing and manufacturing in the Philippines the USA market.
Russell is a Physicist with experience in optical R+D, Defence Optical products, high volume consumer products, medical devices and associated project leadership. Russell is also quality manager for Wideblue ISO13485/9001 QMS. In 2017 Wideblue won best overall European Product Design Award for al low cost Ophthalmoscope taken from design into manufacturing and in 2019 a Gold award for a new personal Infra-Red Capnometer.