Below: designing Orbit products is a study in trial and error.

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Over 12 years ago, in the Product Design department at Stanford, Bryan White and Joseph Hei were pulling an all-nighter to meet a demanding design project deadline. They also talked about starting their own company.

Knowing they wanted to build products that worked smarter, looked better, and addressed challenging problems the original notion of Orbit Baby was born.

After Stanford, Bryan and Joseph found themselves working together at IDEO, a celebrated industrial design firm in Palo Alto, California. Here they had a hand in designing some of the world's most innovative and interesting products for companies such as Apple, Palm and many more.

Later, Joseph and Bryan each got married and started families.

It was at this time that they realized the many opportunities that existed for designing products for the child transportation industry. It seemed that primarily cutesy and redundant design seemed to reign supreme while trends in similar categories, such as home and auto design were turning out sleeker, simpler, smarter products.

They learned lessons about baby carriers caring for their own children, nieces, and nephews.

They spent hundreds of hours observing and talking with other parents. They pored through reviews and parenting blogs, ordered all types of products from overseas, and compiled "bug lists" of what bothered parents most. They also tapped the knowledge of some of the leading experts in the field of child seat safety.

This user-centered design approach led them to the first simple prototypes of the concept that would grow into the Orbit System. After analyzing the engineering challenges involved, and developing the innovative technologies and designs that make car seats and strollers significantly better, the first of a family of products began to take real shape. The team filed patents for over 10 key technologies.

To round out the founding team, their wives - Farrah White and Vivian Chiang - joined Orbit to energize the operations, sales and marketing efforts with their strong backgrounds in business and management. Also, fellow IDEO alum and decorated industrial designer Chris Loew joined to infuse all of Orbit's efforts with his thoughtful designs.

Now, the company that Bryan and Joseph dreamt about has grown to include a diverse team with varied backgrounds that encompass architecture, electrical and mechanical engineering, pharmaceutical research, marketing, business, and of course product design.