Sparkfactor Design provides flexible product design resources through offices in Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...

 and San Francisco. They help design products and equipment for the consumer electronics

Consumer electronics

Consumer electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, most often in entertainment, communications and office productivity. Radio broadcasting in the early 20th century brought the first major consumer product, the broadcast receiver...

, medical equipment

Medical equipment

Medical equipment is designed to aid in the diagnosis, monitoring or treatment of medical conditions.-Types:There are several basic types:* Diagnostic equipment includes medical imaging machines, used to aid in diagnosis...

 and other industries.

History and work

Sparkfactor Design was founded in 2001 by Claudia Truesdell and Robert Garrett, both graduates of the Stanford Graduate School of Product Design, and Mike Smith, an industrial designer from GVO. The current CEO, Abraham Farag, also graduated from the Stanford Graduate School of Product Design. Previously, Abraham Farag was a Senior Product Design Engineer at Apple Inc., a Product Design Engineer at IDEO

IDEO

IDEO is an international design and innovation consultancy founded in Palo Alto, California, United States with other locations in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Boston, London, Munich, Shanghai, and Singapore, as well as Mumbai, Seoul, and Tokyo. The company helps design products, services,...

, and a Product Engineer on the General Motors

General Motors

General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...

 EV-1

General Motors EV1

The General Motors EV1 was an electric car produced and leased by the General Motors Corporation from 1996 to 1999. It was the first mass-produced and purpose-designed electric vehicle of the modern era from a major automaker, and the first GM car designed to be an electric vehicle from the...

.

The firm employs approximately 20 people in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Design. Inc Magazine included Sparkfactor in their 2007 list of top 100 consulting companies in the USA and in the 2008 list in the top 20 engineering companies in the USA. Sparkfactor was also included in the San Francisco Business Times list of top 50 private companies in the San Francisco Bay Area for 2007. and in the 2008 top 50 list.

Sparkfactor has partnered with many product-oriented companies to help design more than 100 consumer electronic products. In total these products have had sales of over 150 million units.

Notable products

• Mechanical Engineering for the first Apple Wireless Mouse
  Apple Wireless Mouse
  The Apple Wireless Mouse is a one button mouse built for Macintosh computers. It was released in September 2003, although it is not widely recognized that it was Apple's primary wireless mouse until 2005. It interacts over Bluetooth 1.1 wireless technology...
  
   and other mice, the first Apple iPod
  IPod
  iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
  
   and follow-on iPods and other MP3 players, the first Apple Mac mini
  Mac Mini
  The Mac Mini is a small form factor desktop computer manufactured by Apple Inc. Like earlier mini-ITX PC designs, it is uncommonly small for a desktop computer: 7.7 inches square and 1.4 inches tall. It weighs 2.7 pounds...
  
   and follow-on Mac minis. These products have won many design awards including D&AD
  D&AD
  Design and Art Direction is a British educational charity which exists to promote excellence in design and advertising...
  
   "Gold" for Product Design and "Silver" for Product For Work, Plastics Industry Consumer Product Design of the Year Award and Red Dot Product design of the year awards.
• Complete ME and ID design for the Dash Navigation
  Dash Navigation
  Dash Navigation was a start-up based in Mountain View, California that produce devices and software for in car navigation systems. Their first product is Dash Express. In January, Dash Express won "Best of CES" awards from both CNET and LAPTOP Magazine...
  
   Dash Express Product: which was named by CNET and LAPTOP "Best of CES 2007" for Car Tech and GPS.
• Complete ME and ID design for the Meraki
  Meraki
  Meraki is a cloud networking company that provides hardware and software for building large scale wired and wireless networks. These networks are used by businesses, schools, and other organizations that need wireless access points, multi-site wired networks, or both. It uses a centralized...
  
   Networks outdoor product. Product:
• Design and manufacturing of the Apple Design Awards
  Apple Design Awards
  The Apple Design Awards is a special event hosted by Apple Inc. at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. The event is meant to recognize the best and most innovative Macintosh and iOS software and hardware produced by independent developers, as well as the best and most creative uses of...
  
  ., and the Apple change tray used in all Apple Stores in Japan
  Japan
  Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
  
  .