Mike Forbes

I almost spent my career designing toys at Hasbro. Instead, I joined Henry Ford Health’s new innovation institute in 2011, straight out of the College for Creative Studies, as part of its very first group of design interns.

What started as a student prototype of a better hospital gown became my project to bring to market. I led the Model G through patient testing, patents and production specs, then found the partners to make it real. Carhartt manufactured the first run of 35,000 gowns, I later licensed the design to Medline for distribution to hospitals nationwide, and the story traveled from The New York Times and NPR all the way to The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

At the same time, I helped invent new methods of 3D planning for heart procedures and helped build Henry Ford’s in-house 3D printing and pre-surgical planning program around them. I also designed StatChat, a care-team communication app piloted at the hospital. The Model G earned an Edison Award, the gown and the heart planning software earned multiple U.S. patents, and that work landed me on Crain’s Detroit Business 40 Under 40 in 2015. Before leaving Henry Ford, I licensed the heart-procedure planning software we’d developed to Materialise, a global leader in 3D medical technology.

Those years taught me that good design makes complicated things feel simple for the people who use them, and that idea has followed me everywhere since. At Hyundai-Kia America Technical Center, I led design thinking workshops and helped shape future mobility concepts.

Then I joined Materialise to keep building the planning software I’d licensed to them. As Cardiovascular Technical Consultant, I led UX and interaction design for Mimics Enlight. I spent time with cardiologists and imaging specialists to understand how they plan heart procedures, then designed the workflows, measurement tools and multi-step planning screens that turn complex 3D scans into clear decisions. I worked side by side with Materialise’s global engineering and product teams, based at its Belgium headquarters, every day to bring those designs to life, and trained clinical teams around the world. The software is now used by cardiologists worldwide.

At Elm Park Labs, as Product Manager & Designer, I owned UX research and product design for a VR training platform for ECMO, one of critical care’s highest-risk procedures. I mapped every step of the procedure with specialists, perfusionists and ICU nurses, then designed the in-headset interface and step-by-step guidance that help teams learn it safely. Working with Unity engineers and clinical advisors in fast design sprints, we took the platform from research to tested, high-fidelity prototypes.

At Inspire Rx, as Product Manager & Designer, I partnered with the CEO on medical product development: I led user research and usability testing to validate concepts, prototyped devices in SolidWorks, and worked with FDA consultants and manufacturers to keep design decisions aligned with compliance.

In college I designed a survival bag for people experiencing homelessness, and to help fund it, I co-founded Anymile Clothing, an apparel brand that supported local families facing hardship. We grew from local shops into malls across Metro Detroit, worked vendor events, and kept it going for eight years alongside my design career. It taught me how much every dollar, every customer and every decision counts when the business is yours.

Later, at Image360, I designed signage and environmental graphics for local businesses and saw firsthand how much the right design can change the way customers see a business.

On the side, I run a small line of Detroit- and Michigan-inspired apparel as a passion project. Building it from scratch taught me social media marketing, website design, e-commerce and drop shipping. Now that it runs largely on its own, my hope is to give a portion of its proceeds to people in need, picking up where Anymile left off.

Good design comes from listening, keeping everyone aligned and staying honest about timelines. Licensing products to companies like Medline and Materialise taught me to think about the business behind the design, and time on the sales floor taught me the rest: design only matters if it helps people connect.

Forbes Design is where all of it comes together: my independent studio, where I work across brand, web, apps and products.