BlackHägen Design Founder, Robert Sean Hägen Passes

Robert Sean Hägen, BlackHägen Design’s co-principal, founder, and director of research and synthesis, died on February 25 after a brief illness.
 
Hägen spent 28 years building BlackHägen Design to support clients in the development of “mission-critical” products that are both safer and easier to use. He was pivotal in the advocacy of human factors and good design practices for medical devices and was at the forefront of patient safety initiatives, helping to found the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) Patient Safety Committee. 
 
During Hägen’s two terms on the IDSA Board of Directors as the Vice President of Special Interest Sections, he led the organization in developing professional continuing education strategies and initiatives. As a lead instructor in the IDSA contextual inquiry workshops, he enriched the education of many of his colleagues. Indeed, Hägen loved mentoring young designers and engineers throughout his career and had been looking forward to doing much more of the same in subsequent years.
 
“Working closely with Sean throughout the years, I know our entire team is honored to continue carrying out his vision for BlackHӓgen Design. His professional focus has always been to make a measurable difference by applying innovative user-centered design, informed through robust human-factors research, that improves the user experience for clinicians with better outcomes for patients,” said Philip Remedios, Sean’s business partner of 21 years. “He was a brilliant yet humble leader and designer who cared deeply for his colleagues, his family, and his clients. Sean will be greatly missed, but his wisdom and legacy will certainly be carried on by those he inspired, led, and nurtured.”
 
Jeff Morang, an executive-level human factors engineer and long-term professional friend to BlackHägen, has been promoted to the position of Director of Human Factors Engineering. Morang joined the company in September of 2022 and has over 18 years of Human Factors experience in corporate and consulting roles.
 
Rich Newman continues his role as Usability Engineering Test Manager, overseeing and conducting formal usability testing and other Human Factors activities. Newman has 30 years in the medical device industry and has been with the firm since 2016. Under their leadership, the HFE team will continue to flourish and provide industry-leading professionalism, quality, and dependability. BlackHägen’s Principal Philip Remedios oversees the entire R&D team and corporate operations.
 
Editor’s note: I was saddened to hear of Sean’s passing as I first met him during my previous position at Medical Design Technology (MDT) many years ago. Since then, Sean was generous enough to contribute a number of articles on medical device design and was always willing to share his expertise with me and my readers whenever he could. He consistently had an interesting angle on design and was often working with technologies that were at the forefront of engineering (i.e., techniques not being used by many others). He was a wonderful asset to the medical device manufacturing community and his loss is tremendous. My condolences go out to Sean’s family and business associates. —SF