Don Rickert Research & Design Blog

New Musical Instrument Designs at Adventurous Muse

At the center of the Don Rickert Design business plan revisions is our musical instrument operation, The Adventurous Muse. There will be radical changes in the coming weeks to Adventurous Muse and its associated Adventurous Muse Store. These changes will definitely involve dumping product lines that have failed to attract good customers...a good customer is a loyal customer who actually buys stuff. One set of musical instrument products that we WILL NOT be dumping are instruments of our own design.

In a recent post our Adventurous Muse blog we described our collaboration with Aalborg University on the Overtone Fiddle, pictured here, which will very likely be commercialized in time.

Of course, our Octave Violins, historic pochettes and modern travel violins are gaining world-wide renown and we intend to win some design competitions with some of these instruments in 2010...so those instruments are safe from the chopping block. In fact, we have a new Octave Fiddle on the drawing board as well as a really skinny (but full 4/4 length) travel fiddle that is extremely durable for the most punishing environments.

We have some concept sketches of the new travel fiddle, which we are currently calling the Rickert Mountaineer Backpacker Fiddle in a new post at Adventurous Muse.

Don Rickert Design Getting Back to its Core Business--Design!

Note: Cross-posted at DonRickertDesign.com

The adventurous business climate has prompted us to rethink our business model and tactics. While we will continue our work in the area of ground-breaking musical instrument (Adventurous Muse) and high-performance rowing craft designs, we will also be renewing our emphasis on being a full-service multi-disciplinary design research and product design firm.

For those who need details, you'll just have to wait until we figure out which of our business enterprises are worth moving forward with as the economy improves and which ones simply have an insufficient number of good customers to be worthwhile pursuing.

Dr. Don Rickert ponders our business future...

Click on the photo for a larger view.

  

For the observant Industrial Designers among you, that sure as heck is a genuine Eames Chair!

Collaboration with Aalborg University, Denmark on Next Gen Synth Violin

Don Rickert Design is collaborating with the Aalborg University Department of Media Technology (Copenhagen Institute of Technology), section for Medialogy (media.aau.dk/) on the next generation of violin synthesizer. The instrument, an outgrowth of Professor Dan Overholt's extensive work in "active acoustics", is unique in that all processing occurs in the instrument and is not MIDI-based, nor does it require a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), such as Ableton Live!. It will be called the Overtone Fiddle.

For the details of how it all works, you will have to wait for Dr. Overholt's initial research papers early in 2010. Dr. Don Rickert of Don Rickert Design is designing and building the instruments that the musician actually plays and also house the electronics for this groundbreaking project. The initial instruments will be slightly larger than the travel violins sold by Adventurous Muse but smaller than conventional violins. Nevertheless, the instruments will have all of the critical ergonomic features of a standard violin.

Since all of this work is occurring in the public domain, we will have drawings very soon and photos a bit later of this new electronic bowed instrument.

Stay tuned, and all will be demystified ultimately.

D.R.

Cross-posted at Adventurous Muse

Elaboration of Don Rickert Design In-House Product Development

In addition to work for clients, we invent many new Don Rickert Design^(tm) products in-house, being very careful to avoid conflicts of interest with our work for clients.

Some of our in-house New Product Development is self-funded and some involves joint ventures and limited external funding. We tend to avoid external funding, as primary ownership of our inventions is key to our business plan.

It is no secret that Don Rickert Design has unique expertise in the design, manufacture and marketing of innovative musical instruments, primarily bowed instruments (acoustic and electric violins and synthesizers with a violin-like interface). In fact, Dr. Don Rickert is internationally known in the field of musical instrument invention and innovation.

Some might find this musical instrument angle surprising. It is no different, however, than Cox Enterprises owning the world's largest used automobile buying and re-selling (to dealers) enterprise, Manheim Auctions. Nor is it different from Clabber Girl, a brand of baking powder, baking soda and corn starch, which also owns and operates the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Indy Racing League.

Would you really want a product development firm that does not invent, manufacture (through a complex network of boutique CNC, laser-cutting, carbon fiber fabrication and violin-making workshops in the U.S.) and market its own products helping you in your own product development efforts?

A key business partner in our musical instrument arena has been Fiddarci Lutherie (lutherie is the proper name for a stringed instrument making workshop), located in Helena, AL. Another critical business partner has been International Violin Company, which serves as a broker to specialty workshops in Germany, Eastern Europe and Hong Kong for the manufacture of some of the parts, such as the distinctive necks used for Don Rickert-designed violins.

The current main website/blog for Don Rickert Design musical instruments is www.AdventurousMuse.com. There are several online retail outlets where both Don Rickert Design, as well as instruments and accessories from other makers are sold. The primary online store is www.AdventurousMuseStore.com; however, we also own storefronts on Amazon.com and Etsy.com.

Other In-House Product Development Areas:

In addition to the musical instrument development described above, Don Rickert Design has considerable expertise in rowing craft design and construction. We are "sitting on" three original designs for high-performance boats intended for ocean, bay and rough river rowing until we can get the rest of our business running on a new "troubled times" business plan.

Another reason we are waiting is that high-performance rowing craft are "luxury" items and launching them now (no pun intended) would not be prudent, even if investment resources were available, which they are not.

The NEW Don Rickert Research & Design Blog

This is the blog that accompanies the main site for Don Rickert Research & Design.

Don Rickert Research & Design, a DBA for Wiederholt & Rickert Partners, LLC, is a full-service multi-disciplinary design research and product design firm with TWO lines of business. It is essential that you understand this. We are located in Atlanta, GA.

Consulting Services: Learn More...

Focus is on solving your most challenging product development problems through observation, research. Don Rickert Research & Design Consulting provides New Product Development (NPD) services to companies that want to create a successful new and/or breakthrough product (or fix a flawed or outmoded existing product). Services include: Usability, User Experience, Design, Product Development and Ethnography.

Our Own Product Development (Primarily Ground-Breaking Musical Instruments): Learn more...

Doing business under the name Don Rickert Design(tm), we invent, design, produce and sell innovative musical instruments under two primary brand names:

1. Don Rickert Design: Mostly electric and electronic musical instruments, but also some cutting-edge modern acoustic instruments, all designed by Dr. Don Rickert or in collaboration with other top musical instrument designers.
2. Old Mill Musical Instruments: Mostly acoustic instruments of a more "traditional" (but cutting-edge) type, all designed by Dr. Don Rickert or in collaboration with other top musical instrument designers.

Don Rickert Design operates two primary online stores.

1. The first is The Adventurous Muse Store (motto: "Working to be the most interesting musical instrument store in the universe!"). The informative website and blog and "landing page" is The Adventurous Muse.
2. The second store, actually a department within the Adventurous Muse Store, is called Musicians' Sutlery and exists to serve the needs of 19th Century "living historians", selling authentic replicas of mid-19th Century musical instruments and accessories.

Dr. Jesse Zolna Now a Don Rickert Research & Design Associate

We are pleased to announce that Jesse Zolna, Ph.D., has rejoined Wiederholt & Rickert Partners, LLC (DBA Don Rickert Research & Design).

Jesse will be dividing his time between freelance work in New York and his work for us.

Click on the photo to enlarge it.

Jesse worked for Dr. Don Rickert in an in-house corporate Consumer Insights/UX/Usability group (at S1 Corporation) over a period of 4 years, starting as a Masters degree Intern and eventually becoming a regular part-time employee while working on his Ph.D. in Engineering Psychology at Georgia Tech. He was Dr. Rickert's most trusted adviser on the state-of-the-art on everything from advanced research methods/statistical analysis to the latest in usability testing methods. He also educated Dr. Rickert on the obscurities of the Hip-Hop world, a topic of which he possesses unbelievable knowledge.

Jesse also helped to found Wiederholt & Rickert Partners, LLC, and continued to work as a contractor for us, even after his muse guided him to New York to swim with the sharks in the New York Consumer/Market Research scene. He as returned to the fold for a yet-TBD period of time.

Dr. Zolna has deep and wide-ranging experience in user research, interface design and customer insight. He has the rare ability to apply his usability expertise, research skills, software development experience, analytical thinking and creativity to producing useful, usable and compelling user interfaces for interactive and transactional systems.

Specialties

• All phases of usability testing, survey research, field studies, focus groups, ethnography, A/B testing, contextual inquiry, expert and consumer interviews, persona, card sorting, ZMET, etc.
• SPSS, Flash, HTML/CSS, Morae, SnagIt, Photoshop, Illustrator, Visio, survey development tools
• Usability inspection; requirement specification; quantitative and qualitative data analysis; working with marketing managers, engineers, designers, product managers, and business analysts, among others.

See Jesse's complete profile on LinkedIn.