Johnson & Johnson
Designing a Low-Cost Knee System
2012 | Lead Designer
The Reach Project was a low-cost total knee replacement system focused on emerging markets and was developed out of our Suzhou, China facility.
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The challenge was solving use errors, reducing risks, and optimizing human factors and design attributes while working with a diverse and global team.
Business Objective
Incorporate the new Attune visual design language while meeting the project's cost target.
Design Objective
Provide a range of design and usability recommendations that align with the project's constraints.
THE CHALLENGE
Our design focus had been strictly on the Attune: Primary Total Knee Replacement System, which had a sizable investment, great resources, and a development team located locally.
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The challenge was now to take our new design strategy and scale it down to our Reach Project - a low-cost primary knee replacement system developed for our emerging market geography. It was overall a low-funded and under-resourced project out of our Suzhou facility in China.
My responsibility was to scale our visual design language and offer solutions based on a prioritization of features as well as provide general cost implications of different machining and manufacturing processes.
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By pitching this scaled approach, the company was able to better understand the trade-offs between cost and design and focus on features that were critical to improving the usability of the instrumentation.
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This project required both design and business leadership in order to understand the priorities and risks of the project.