For your team
Hardware for industrial designers
Industrial designers can model the form, the interaction, and the experience of a product beautifully — but making the electronics actually behave means handing off to engineering or wrestling with firmware that isn’t your craft. That hand-off slows down the design loop and puts a wall between “looks right” and “works right.” You want a functional prototype that proves the interaction, not just a foam model.
The problem for industrial designers
Design tools get you a gorgeous form and a clear interaction model, but proving that interaction means functional electronics — and that usually triggers an engineering hand-off or a firmware detour outside your expertise. The loop between “designed” and “demonstrably works” gets long and lossy, just when you want it tight.
How Palpable helps
Drop Qwiic sensors and a display into your concept, describe the interaction in plain English, and PAL writes and runs the behavior on a Pi inside your prototype. You keep iterating in your own loop — change the response by describing it, push it over the air — so a design review can feature a model that genuinely senses and reacts.
What you’d build
A working interaction prototype: a device that responds to proximity, touch, light, or motion with on-screen feedback or output, embedded in your physical model. It’s enough to test the experience with real users and present something live rather than a click-through.
Honest caveat
Palpable brings the behavior to life on off-the-shelf modules and a Pi — it doesn’t design the custom board or miniaturized internals a final product needs. For form factors tighter than a Pi and Qwiic modules allow, you’ll still partner with electrical engineering. It excels at proving the interaction early, in your hands.
Make your concept actually sense and respond, without leaving the design loop.
Questions
Do I need engineering help to make my model interactive?
Not for the prototype. You describe the interaction and PAL writes and runs the code on a Pi with plug-and-play sensors — no firmware or wiring on your side.
Can it fit inside my physical prototype?
A Pi Zero 2W and Qwiic modules are compact enough for many bench and full-size models. Final miniaturized form factors still need custom electronics design.
Can I change the behavior during a design sprint?
Yes. Describe the change and PAL pushes it over the air with automatic rollback, so you iterate inside your own loop.
Make something you can hold.
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