It’s funny how coincidences work. Our friends at Tec Lean Mentors, asked us if we were open to write an article for MIT Reap Monterrey about the entrepreneurial ecosystem in our city. Gladly, here we are, ready to talk about our latest implementation with the help of REDLAB from the Department of Design at ITESM and Enlace+.

We are an interior design studio, born and raised in Monterrey. Our company has been on its feet for 6 years and a great amount of changes have been made, from employee rotation to strategic pivoting. Besides the shifts and alterations, the company’s mind has always been one: “We seek to impact the world of interior design through the validation of projects and the connection with users. To make spaces feasible and functional in order to create better user experiences” – Miguel Garza González, CEO and founder of Diverso Estudio.

Diverso Estudio is a research and interior design studio with a focus on four industries: retail, banking, restaurant and corporate. In our road towards continuous improvement and innovation, we opened up to create a four-pillar strategy, though which we offer as services:

1. Forenow: Strategic foresight consulting and project validation
2. Strategic Design: Interior design, furniture design and spatial distribution
3. Production: Carpentry, welding, painting and upholstery
4. Project Management: Initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and closing

As part of our latest implementation, and with more than a year of development, we created the Department of Forenow Research and Validation. This department guides incoming projects through the (1) Foresight Consulting branch and (2) Project Validation branch.

There was a time where our clients demanded immediate design solutions without the time investment. This led to fast-paced design solutions to meet time restrictions and at the end, the economic investment, most of the time, doubled because of poor user-testing. This is when we grasped the opportunity to implement continuous trend research, consumer insights and project validation through emerging technologies as core attributes for our design projects.

Our objective moving forward (1) is to help companies looking to diversify their services to get a broad picture of emerging trends and place blind spots on the table through a foresight analysis, attribute assessment and value-added development. At the same time, through the validation process (2), we strongly seek to help architectural and interior designers to validate their design proposals and offer better design solutions to their clients through technology validation, user-testing and data collection.

This entrepreneurial project is the result of a great collaboration between REDLAB and Enlace+. REDLAB is a research, experience and design laboratory at ITESM. One of the leading team members and professor at the institution, PhD. Juan Carlos Rojas, guides our application of eye-tracking technology in interior design projects. By applying this technology, in both our projects and our client’s, we are able to detect flaws in the design experience and usability before taking the project into the real world. This approach not only helps on the economic aspect, but also on the environmental and social aspects of a space.

And we have big dreams and great aspirations, we believe that through research, design, and validation we are able to transform the spaces we inhabit and strengthen the Mexican design community. This purpose is being fulfilled thanks to the mentoring of the council board and team of Enlace+. We are part of the Enlace+ Network, the accelerator of EGADE and Tec de Monterrey, which supports us in the development of the project. With their guidance, we are able to better structure our internal and external processes to better offer our services to our clients.

At only 30 years of age, Miguel Garza is a passionate entrepreneur and visionary, founder and CEO of Diverso Estudio since 2015. He carries out activities aimed at the management and leadership of three areas of focus within the studio: Furniture, Projects, and Design.

His experience includes managing the Tacoma project for the Metalsa company in 2013 and continuous training through specialized courses led by the IPADE Business School (2015) and Centro de Estudios Superiores de Diseño de Monterrey (CEDIM) (2016).

Currently, Miguel facilitates the planning and coordination of different areas by making strategic decisions, working through collaborations, alliances and using empathy as the main tool to generate experiences.

Graduated from Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey (ITESM, 2020) as an Industrial Designer, Regina Garza Chapa developed a main focus on research and strategic foresight.

Working as Leader of the Department of Forenow – Research and Validation, she specializes in trend forecasting, consumer insights, human-centered design and project visioning. Through the development of a methodology focused on the validation of physical and digital projects, the team is able to detect flaws in the design experience and usability before taking the project into the real world. As part of the team, she guides projects in order to reinterpret the vision and use foresight as a vehicle to assign meaning and objectives to the projects.