CEO, Modern Edge Inc.
Charles Austen Angell is the founder of Modern Edge Inc., a strategic industrial design firm based in Portland, OR. Modern Edge is known for original work in the fields of health and wellness, mobility, home products and experiential environments. As president and CEO, Angell oversees all Modern Edge projects, from client contact through human factors research, design refinement, product and program management, market positioning and customer experience. He maintains a special focus on the role of culture, politics and geography in shaping human needs and meeting those needs with responsive product design. He is passionate about designing products that transcend cultural boundaries to enhance the shared human experience.
Inducted into Academy of Fellows: 2015
IDSA Chair Emeritus 2015-2016
IDSA Chair 2013- 2015
IDSA New Website Committee 2014
IDSA Search Committee for the Executive Director
IDSA Chair-Elect 2012-2013
Chair, IDSA International Design Conference, Boston: “THE FUTURE IS…”
IDSA Executive Vice President 2003-2004
IDSA Midwest District Vice President 1999-2000
IDSA District Conference Chair St Louis MO 2000
IDSA District Conference Chair Madison WI 1999
IDSA Wisconsin Chapter Chair 1998
IDSA Pod Moderator 2005-2008
INNOVATION Magazine: Guest Editor
Design Foundation: Original Trustee / Formation Team 2001-2002
Opioids: Designing for a Public Health Crisis
The opioid crisis in the United States is making global headlines. The fight against the dramatically escalating problem is one of the few areas of common ground in today’s political theater. Charles Austen Angell, FIDSA, will address the life-threatening issue from a design thinking perspective. He will review and discuss the technologies, legislative barriers and challenges within this space including:
Join Angell as he explores the role that design can play in addressing the crisis.
IDSA Medical Conference 2018 chair Bryce Rutter discusses speaker Austen Angell.
Driving the Next Generation of Medical Innovation
We are seeing an epidemic in preventable diseases. The medical community is struggling to keep up with the way modern consumers interact with consumer health care services. Important advances in wearable technology are being introduced to help manage positive behavior change, but the adoption is lowest in the highest risk populations.
To further complicate the issue, as the importance of consumer driven health goes up, consumer comprehension of health care information is facing new cultural challenges. A recent Columbia University study indicates that in the course a modern day people need to make an average of 70 important decisions. For many people, this leads to a state of diminished mental efficacy known as decision fatigue. The result is poor information comprehension and poor decision making in consumers, creating hereto unseen barriers in health literacy among the population and consumer health care interactions.
Austen Angell, FIDSA, and IDSA Board of Directors’ Chair Emeritus, will discuss his firm Modern Edge’s view of how service design and industrial design are transforming medical services and the development of consumer medical and wellness devices—driving positive trends in compliance, efficacy and adoption.
IDSA International Design Conference, Boston: “THE FUTURE IS…”
IDSA Wisconsin Chapter Chair
