Play Orbit Studio - Industrial Design Collab

Play Orbit is a multi-disciplinary studio with decades of experience designing insight-driven products, services, spaces, and graphic communications for a global client base.

Led by Von Robinson, every project Play Orbit takes on goes through a design process inspired by his mentor Eva Zeisel's motto “a playful search for beauty" which brings together design research, systems thinking, and human-centered design. We call this process Deep Design. 

As a Design Partner, I contribute to client discovery, design research and synthesis, design ideation, design reviews, along with general management of the business.

Some Play Orbit Projects

  • Ellie Patient Recliner for Kwalu

    Best of NeoCon Business Impact award, 2025 / Best of NeoCon Silver award, 2025 / Best of Year Award finalist, 2024 Interior Design Magazine

    Designed to provide dignity to patients and estigmatize the experience, Ellie is composed of biophelic, soft contours—nature’s flow and erosion lines—to relate with our human nature in a clinical environment that does not. Human-centered features like a negative inclined footrest and molded ergonomic armrests facilitate sit-to-stand dignity and safety, and Ellie’s molded embrace back integrates passive lateral support to help patients maintain an upright healthy posture without visual lateral supports, de-stigmatizing and preserving patient dignity while facilitating better respiration and blood oxygenation.

  • Ellie Sofa Sleeper for Kwalu

    Best of NeoCon Business Impact award, 2025 / Best of Neocon Silver award, 2025 / HiP award finalist, 2025, Interior Design Magazine

    Guided by nature, we crafted a biophelic design language of flowing curved contours that embrace users and are easy for the eye and hand to follow. We know from research that this language can reduce stress, heart rate, and blood pressure, for faster recovery and improved cognitive function. And we know from experience that serving the dignity and holistic health of people typically improves the health and sustainability of the systems they and we share.

  • +Impact Studio for University of Michigan Ross Business School
    A new space and course that teaches students how to use design thinking methods to address the wicked problems of our world. It is a space, an action-based learning course, and a campus hub for programming and events. (Poets and Quants called it “The Most Interesting New MBA Courses at Business Schools This Year,” 2019)