Sophie Adams-Foster

Realise Product Design

Working in the engineering and design industry for the best part of 12 years, Sophie has helped businesses design, develop, manufacture, and launch great products. Ranging from IOT connected devices, consumer products and industrial equipment, from small batch manufacture through to runs of hundreds of thousands, she has seen many successes and many more failures.

She specialises in helping customers define the products they want to build and how best to do it by applying the hands-on knowledge she has acquired through her own non-linear career path, alongside a team of hugely talented creative designers.

How things are made, why they are made, the decision process behind the scenes, they all have huge impacts on the development cycle. Working within a purposefully minded Product Design agency, Realise Design, allows Sophie to continue her own pursuit of knowledge and help people launch purposeful products.

Unethical design, bad design, lazy design? Or just bad decisions?

The responsibility we must own as designers when developing and manufacturing new products does not just apply to digital products alone. It also applied to physical products too. From the way a person has designed the Nest thermostat on your wall, how it has been manufactured, the materials
it contains, its transportation, sale, installation, to the point it will be thrown away. Its impact is not just restricted to the influence it has over our daily lives. The physical impact it has on our world throughout its whole lifecycle is
enormous and greatly underestimated.

Designers love to make something. The joy of creating something that doesn’t yet exist in the world is a thrill. Often, however, they are quickly blamed for bad design when things go wrong, but they are not the only person in the
process. There is a cast of heroes and villains in any products history, but ultimately all decisions have one driver: money.

No longer do designers have the luxury of making products for the sake of it, yet large corporations often put profit over innovation and sustainability.
So, what do designers and agencies alike do? Now more than ever it’s important to empower teams to work within a wider system, not just as a singular entity.