Design on Wednesday

Elisabeth Mach is a product designer, founder and start-up consultant. As co-founder and managing director of Mesozon GmbH, she and her team develop products for children with type 1 diabetes under the nimbo brand. She combines product design with technical development and explores how design can make everyday life easier for those living with a chronic condition.

Even whilst at university, Elisabeth Mach had no desire to develop yet more consumer products. She was interested in how products could better integrate people from medically and socially marginalised groups into everyday life. With nimbo, she approaches health from a perspective that goes beyond medical care: the digital and physical products are designed to support daily management whilst also becoming a natural part of the everyday lives of children and families.

Elisabeth Mach studied Product Design (BA) in Hanover, Service and Experience Design in Wuxi (China) and Integrative Design (MA) at the HAWK Faculty of Design. She was unable to complete her studies in China due to the pandemic, but finished her Master’s degree in 2025. In parallel with this and afterwards, she worked in the field of entrepreneurship at HAWK; she is now a start-up consultant at the HAWK Start-up Campus. With nimbo, she took part in, amongst other things, the OHA Accelerator, the Venture Villa and EXIST Women at HTW Berlin. The team received, amongst other accolades, the Start.Preis Hildesheim, came second in the ‘Future Health’ Startup Impuls competition, and was voted Osnabrück Start-up of the Year 2026.

nimbo Base translates glucose levels and their trends into a visual representation suitable for children. The nimbo Buddy app complements the product: children use it to reflect on their daily lives and learn more about managing their own diabetes. The products are not intended to replace medical care. Instead, they focus on everyday life, learning and independence.

A design project undertaken during her studies has evolved into a health-tech start-up. Elisabeth Mach recounts the journey from the initial idea, through prototypes and initial user feedback, to the medical device and the establishment of the company. In her talk, she explains how design, target group research and entrepreneurship interplay, and why design is important for innovation. She discusses how a design question can give rise to a product and a company, and the challenges that arise when design takes on responsibility within the sensitive context of healthcare.

Elisabeth Mach’s talk, ‘From a Practical Project to a Start-up’, will take place as part of the public lecture series ‘Design on Wednesday’ on 4 November at 5.00 pm on the ground floor of Building A, in Room E02, at Renatastraße 11.

The talk is open to the public and admission is free.

What can revolutionaries learn from brands? And what other small tricks and techniques are there to achieve maximum impact with minimal effort? At this design session on Wednesday, various case studies will be presented and the basic principles for successful protest will be outlined.

The lecture "How to design a protest" by Prof. Barbara Kotte will take place as part of the public lecture series "Design on Wednesday" on November 25 at 5:00 PM on the ground floor of House A in the "Aquarium," Room E02, at Renatastraße 11.

The lecture is public, admission is free.

Corrina Goutos is a New York born, Hamburg based interdisciplinary artist working across jewelry, objects, and installations. She coined the term “Anthrosmithing” to describe her practice, which rejects the idea of “raw material.” Instead, she views the craftsperson’s hand as just one of many agents continuously reshaping matter. Her future artifacts reflect humanity—its ingenuity, excess, and its detritus. Corrina applies precise, pre-industrial craft techniques to post-consumer detritus with the same reverence a smith would give a rare earthly resource. Through a radical attention to the political ecologies of human and non-human forces, her eerily harmonious conglomerates dismantle hierarchical narratives of the master-maker with nature at his disposal, and instead cultivating a sense of compassion through co-creation with materials.

She received her BFA in Jewelry and Objects from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2013 and has since participated widely in international craft exhibitions. Corrina was the 2025 Françoise van den Bosch Residency recipient and a two-time AJF Young Artist Award finalist, alongside multiple distinctions in sustainable fashion. She is recognized for her expansive, fluid interpretation of contemporary jewelry and object-smithing.

The lecture ‘Anthrosmithing’ by Prof. Corrina Goutos will take place as part of the public lecture series ‘Design on Wednesday’ on 2 December at 5.00 pm on the ground floor of Building A at the Aquarium (Room E02) at Renatastraße 11. 

The lecture is open to the public and admission is free.