Stratus Design Delivers With Empathy Simpler Systems, Safer Solutions
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” –Leonardo da Vinci
As an example, Morang shares that the lander had 100 wires, a deliberate design decision by development teams to ensure system redundancy while also integrating simplicity for the human astronauts. The intent was to focus on staying within human capabilities to reduce risks so that failures wouldn’t translate into catastrophic outcomes. “The engineers spent a lot of time trying to understand what would be mission-critical and safety-critical, and that some empathy would be applied because humans were involved. They really took the time to understand the system’s complexity and distilled it down while still incorporating redundancy for safety. At its core, this was human integration within a systems engineering approach, similar in spirit to what we do at Stratus Design.” As for scientific breakthroughs here on Earth, Morang is proud to play a critical role in shaping the safety and efficacy of medical devices now and into the future. “It’s very likely that the people who most benefit from our work will never know our names, but I know that I’ll be able to sleep better being a part of the solution. I know that at some point, someone I care about, or someone I know who has a loved one, will come into contact with a design I was involved in. That person will be helped by a medical professional who can now be more efficient, more accurate and make fewer mistakes. That’s what drives me.”
The above quote can be applied to seemingly everything in life, but it holds a particular significance in the life sciences and medical fields. In the quest to bring new innovations to the marketplace, startups and other creators may sometimes overlook the most critical aspect of all: the human element. Just because a product works on paper or in a development lab doesn’t necessarily mean it will work with real human users. And when it comes to the design and implementation of medical devices, this oversight can be costly and potentially devastating. That’s where Stratus Design comes into play. Founded in 2024 and co-headquartered in Foxboro, Massachusetts, and the Tampa, Florida, area, the firm applies human factors engineering and design to better ensure product safety and usability. Its goal is to design with the human as part of the system while making technologies more adaptable, empathetic and responsive to users. This approach aims to reduce use-related risks and promote safer, more effective and more meaningful use. Co-founder Jeff Morang, a veteran human factors engineer who launched Stratus Design with partners Jesse Knight and Bartosz Korec, follows da Vinci’s edict by striving to refine complex ideas into clear and simple forms for the benefit of human health. “Humans are routinely looking for the simplest path, and sometimes we make snap judgments and then go forward because we want to distill down the
complex to the very simple and make things a little more black and white. However, we humans exist on a continuum of constant shades of gray. Because it takes more than one person to create a design and more than one discipline to get a medical device to market, Stratus Design is working to overcome those gray areas by helping clients avoid a haste-makes-waste mindset that overlooks critical details about the human condition and then requires course correction later at the expense of time, money and sometimes resources.” To illustrate this philosophy in real-world terms, Morang points to the role of human factors engineering in the success of NASA’s Mercury and Apollo programs. “What made them such a success was that everything from the design of the lander to the training to the designs of the suit was built upon integrating the environment, the user and the system,” he says.
For more information on Stratus Design, please visit StratusDesign.io .
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