Michael Prince

President + Founder, Beyond Design, Inc.

Chicago

Originally from the east coast, Michael started his design journey at Syracuse University. Graduating with a Bachelors of Industrial Design (BID), his career concentrated on integrating design with business, manufacturing and marketing. After graduating from Syracuse, Michael’s professional career began with working in product development at Sony Corporation and RCA/Thomson Media where he was responsible for developing a broad range of consumer electronic products.

Spurred by an entrepreneurial spirit, Michael founded Beyond Design in 1994.  The strategic product development consultancy provides a diverse range of disciplines including: Research and Strategy, Industrial Design, Engineering and User Experience (UX).  Clients include major Fortune 500 companies such as Johnson Controls, Medline, and Amazon. Beyond Design also works with smaller local companies and trailblazing inventors.

Over the course of 25 years, Beyond has employed a holistic approach to identifying user needs and market opportunities through research and design, and engineer products for manufacturing.  As a progressive company focused on designing for the future, the Beyond team’s strength lies in uncovering product opportunities and providing the creativity and innovation that enables customers to further differentiate and successfully market their products.

While the company focused on Industrial Design at its inception, the introduction of Computer Aided Design (CAD) enabled the Beyond Design to expand its offerings to include Mechanical Engineering. Over the years, Research and Strategy has become a pillar of the development process, enabling customers to focus on new product development opportunities based on consumer insights and trends. Beyond Design continues to evolve and offers User Experience (UX) as a service to clients, enabling their products and services to be connected and on the cutting edge. From its origins as a one man company, Beyond Design has grown to a full service product design consultancy dedicated to helping clients uncover creative product opportunities and providing insight driven custom solutions for all markets.

Beyond Design has grown into a household name in the Midwest, specifically in the Ravenswood community. Recognizing the importance of community outreach and investing in the future, they proudly support local schools and educational efforts. Michael has served on the board of the Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA) as well a Lane Tech Second Century Foundation member.  He offers student tours and question and answer sessions for middle school, high school, and Universities both on site at our Northside studio and on campuses. The highly renowned dig-8 program has helped middle school students learn the full product design process with help from real designers - instilling this creative mentality both externally (dig-8) and internally.