In response to an open letter to Steve Jobs, experience design firm Adaptive Path has taken up the call to come up with a design for a device that would transform how diabetics manage their condition.  They pulled together a group of interested employees for an R&D team and dedicated time between projects to work on it.  From start to finish, they spent all of 9 weeks.  

This is a great example of bringing together employees passionate about a particular subject and creating an opportunity for blue-sky concepting that is essentially 100% user-focused; something rarely possible with billable project work where a pre-existing site/product is often the starting point or business/political considerations must be considered.

Adaptive Path president Jesse James Garrett has blogged about the research and design process.  The full story is worth a read.

http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/category/charmr-project/

Charlie Zicari