
Professionals like you make things happen. You manage countless day-to-day product challenges, whilst planning for tomorrow’s next big thing. All within limited resources.
We understand. Our designers and engineers are cut from the same cloth as you.
Cobalt provides on-call, expert design and engineering resources to accelerate your existing development programmes, or complete standalone projects that would otherwise stretch your in-house resources.
You have lots on your plate. Products are just one of them. To do your job you need people who know their stuff; people you can trust to get a great result.
We understand performance and value are non-negotiable to business managers. That’s why we’ve continued to grow since 1996; we deliver creative product design to businesses like yours.
We provide independent and strategic product development and marketing-support services to companies looking to innovate, export and thrive.
You’ve got belief that there’s a better way; you’re running hard to turn your ideas into reality. But you can’t do it alone.
You need experts that get it, and can get you to launch as directly as possible.
Cobalt loves the focus and energy in doing something first, and doing it right. Since 1996, we’ve helped people like Jamie and Abigail Forsythe create a global business (KeepCup), and a whole new product category (reusable coffee cups).
We understand that you need high quality outcomes, but within limited resources/funds. You need someone that shares your vision and ‘can-do’ spirit, but also someone that will tell you what you need to know, when you need to know it.
Medical, Scientific, Technology
B2B, Tools, Industrial
Sports, FMCG, Homewares
Rail, Custom, Automotive
Accessibility, Public Space, UX
As well as the ubiquitous mobile phone in your pocket, ‘devices’ include pathology & scientific instruments, medical devices, healthcare equipment and most handheld electronic products. Cobalt applies our design-research, industrial design and mechanical engineering expertise to create devices that integrate user requirements and human-to-device interaction.
To us, ‘equipment’ means any B2B product or ‘business-to-public’ system. From a trades tool, to a surgical instrument; from an airport scanner to stadium seating; ‘equipment’ spans a huge range of product categories. But two common traits across all equipment products; (a) purchasers are well informed and pragmatic, meaning (b) the equipment simply must perform; day-in and day-out.
For equipment projects Cobalt places an even greater focus on planning, definition and quality-system processes from user-insight research through to design reviews and tool-release stages.
This is where design gets personal. Consumer products come in all shapes and types, but they all must combine function with an emotional connection. To succeed, people need to feel a consumer product will suit them; whether through expressing their style, their need, or their budget.
Through our user-centred approach we translate user insights into product features that either delight, or in the case of utility products, reduce the drudgery of use.
Cobalt applies our design and engineering skills to custom automotive and mass transit projects. These range from trams, trains and buses; to mining trucks, emergency vehicles and automotive accessories.
Vehicles face uniquely challenging conditions such as vibration, environmental/dust/UV, and operational/vandal damage. They are both workplace and service. Primarily providing a service, they are also a workplace where the driver’s needs rightly needs special attention.
And like all designs, the form of a vehicle is a large and powerful canvas to express the vehicles intent to all that see it.
The distinction between product and service continues to blur. Whether it is purely process-based, digital, partially physical elements or some combination of these, service design (or experience design) share the same fundamentals which underpin product design. Read more about our service design here.
Cobalt’s approach to service design is based on our deep new product development experience refined over 24 years and 1200+ projects. For service design we apply our core new product development principles: