Matt Grigsby is the Co-Founder of Ecolect and the Chapter Chair of IDSA Rhode Island.

This February marks the formation of the Industrial Designers Society of America's newest chapter, IDSA Rhode Island. A little known fact is that aside from Michigan, we have the largest proportion of Industrial Designers than any other state. The launch of our local chapter represents the prominence of creative design thinking in Rhode Island while highlighting the best and brightest designers in the world, growing and working right here in our community. Through the support of remarkable organizations such as RISD, Brown, Hasbro and Item Group, we've gotten the chapter off to a great start, with a strong interest from the Industrial Design community and several related sectors.

A large facet of our outreach strategy is to collaborate with creative and technical organizations that will promote education amongst IDSA members through fresh perspectives and diverse skill sets. In many ways, being an Industrial Designer requires you to be "a jack of all trades". We work between the art of creating forms that serve to be ergonomic and intrinsic while delivering cost-effective solutions, partnering with engineers, developers, and lawyers (to name a few), ultimately delivering products that are useful, feasible and sustainable on many different levels. We are a discipline that is hands-down, focused on people and the society that we live in. We love to problem solve and learn all aspects surrounding a product. We are obsessed with the users interacting with a design and what happens before during and after the product has been conceived, developed and implemented.

As an industry, we see tremendous value in learning from and working with local and national organizations outside of design. Even designers who create for a living must have solid and changing source of inspiration. What does this mean for the info-tech and digital media sector in Rhode Island? We see the formation of our chapter and outreach through members as an opportunity to connect and learn more about the people, projects and companies who make our state the national hub for innovation. We aim to bridge the gap between the professional and academic sectors in the state, helping to reverse brain-drain locally while showcasing the value of Industrial Design as a profession on an international level.

When bridging technology and creative thinking to create any type of product, Industrial Design has a history of being known as an integrated component any successful endeavor. Take Apple for example. There is no doubt that Industrial Design, User Interface Design and Technology live in harmony with each other and drive the company. Their products are purely about having the best experience by adding value to the lives of the users who buy them. They promote the best product interactions by leveraging a diverse range of technologies, always with purpose and always with a focused effort towards achieving something better, more useable and on top of all... something valuable to the user on a deep and continuous level. To learn more about Industrial Design and technology working together, visit core77.com.

IDSA Rhode Island is having our first event on the 20th at Tazza so no matter what industry you're involved with, join us in celebrating the launch of the chapter and meet the Industrial Designers who define our community in the state. Socialize with old friends, meet new ones, and enjoy drinks and hors d’oeuvres. The event starts at 5:30pm.

Please RSVP to party@ecolect.net

For more information about IDSA Rhode Island, visit http://www.idsa-ri.org. See our newly launched blog at http://www.idsa-ri.org/blog. To become a member, support the organization or simply share ideas for collaboration, email us! I can be reached at matt@ecolect.net.