Celebrating more than a decade of Innovation by Design, the 2023 honorees include nearly 500 projects, products, and services from Adobe, PepsiCo, Canva, and others

HARMAN today was honored in Fast Company’s 2023 Innovation by Design Awards in the Automotive category for its new Ready Care product and its purposeful integration of several key technologies in order to improve driver safety and well-being on the road.

The Innovation by Design Awards, which can be found in the September 2023 issue of Fast Company, honor the designers and businesses solving the most crucial problems of today and anticipating the pressing issues of tomorrow. The competition, now in its 12th year, features a range of blue-chip companies, emerging startups, and hungry young talents. It is one of the most sought-after design awards in the industry.

HARMAN Ready Care is the latest in HARMAN Automotive’s expanding portfolio of products designed and built to deliver consumer-focused experiences at an automotive grade. Ready Care is the industry’s first closed-loop interior sensing and tailored interventions product that measures a driver’s eye activity, cognitive load and vital signs to determine the level of focus and attention on the road ahead. Using neuroscience, artificial intelligence and machine learning, Ready Care classifies a driver’s behavior into a focused versus distracted state and initiates a personalized in-cabin response to help mitigate dangerous driving situations, such as stress, anxiety, distraction and drowsiness. More information on Ready Care can be found here.

“We are incredibly grateful to be honored by Fast Company’s 2023 Innovation by Design Awards for our Ready Care product, acknowledging our dedication to designing the smartest and safest vehicle experience for both drivers and passengers, alike,” said Armin Prommersberger, Senior Vice President, Automotive Product Management at HARMAN International. “HARMAN is advancing the future of in-vehicle safety through cutting-edge, research-driven innovation that solves one of the biggest challenges out there: giving the car the ability to truly connect with its passengers. By applying technology in meaningful ways, we’re equipping vehicles with the unique ability to understand what passengers need in the moment – which allows the car to identify and deliver appropriate interventions and experiences. With Ready Care, we are proud that this honor recognizes the innovation investments we’re making that translate into tangible, safer drive experiences for consumers and their loved ones.”

Ready Care is part of HARMAN’s Ready suite of products that are road-ready — and have demonstrated they deliver compelling in-cabin experiences. Each product is designed to work independently to deliver specific vehicle safety, well-being, in-cabin entertainment and connectivity benefits — but also integrates seamlessly with other HARMAN Ready products for an even more enhanced in-cabin experience. For example, Ready Care is compatible with HARMAN Ready Vision, an immersive audio-visual experience to assist the driver and create a safer and more informed journey with its Augmented Reality (AR) head-up display hardware and AR software, by offering extended situational awareness with enhanced audio/visual alerts when a driver is distracted to bring them back to a more optimal state for driving.

“So much innovation news these days is focused on AI,” said Brendan Vaughan, editor-in-chief of Fast Company. “This year’s Innovation by Design honorees are a reminder that it’s human ingenuity that drives invention.”

The judges include renowned designers from a variety of disciplines, business leaders from some of the most innovative companies in the world, and Fast Company’s own writers and editors. Entries are judged on the key ingredients of innovation: functionality, originality, beauty, sustainability, user insight, cultural impact, and business impact.

Winners, finalists, and honorable mentions are featured online, and winners and finalists are featured in the issue of Fast Company magazine, on newsstands August 29, 2023.

To see the complete list, go to https://www.fastcompany.com/innovation-by-design/list.

ABOUT HARMAN

HARMAN (harman.com), a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., designs and engineers connected products and solutions for automakers, consumers, and enterprises worldwide, including connected car systems, audio and visual products, enterprise automation solutions; and services supporting the Internet of Things. With leading brands including AKG®, Harman Kardon®, Infinity®, JBL®, Lexicon®, Mark Levinson® and Revel®, HARMAN is admired by audiophiles, musicians and the entertainment venues where they perform around the world. More than 50 million automobiles on the road today are equipped with HARMAN audio and connected car systems. Our software services power billions of mobile devices and systems that are connected, integrated and secure across all platforms, from work and home to car and mobile. HARMAN has a workforce of approximately 30,000 people across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. In 2017, HARMAN became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

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