Ascend Smart In-Wall Timer

The Ascend Smart In-Wall Timer is a Wi-Fi enabled, 7-Day Programmable Timer Switch. With the accompanying Ascend app, end users can control and schedule their lights remotely over Wi-Fi. The Ascend Smart In-Wall Timer also can be easily integrated with Amazon Alexa, enabling voice control features. Cesaroni Design helped Intermatic combine their desire for a tech-forward timer with contemporary design aesthetics and a user friendly interface. The result is a design that minimizes the number of buttons, allowing space for a hi-resolution, backlit LCD display.

William C. Cesaroni established Cesaroni Design Associates, Inc. in 1979. As founder and president, Bill is responsible for the firm’s strategic product planning, and remains a hands-on project leader who is involved in the design process. Bill’s firm has designed more major appliances and countertop appliances than any industrial design firm in the United States. Cesaroni Design is also responsible for modernizing the bowling industry by incorporating comfortable furniture and electronic scorers, impacting the commercial fitness industry with over one hundred products, creating one of the most successful contract furniture lines available and revolutionizing the gaming business with the development of the first ergonomically designed slot machine. As an active member in his profession, Bill is a Patron Member of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). He is also featured in Who’s Who in Design: The Leading Designers of the World.

Cesaroni Design is a consistent leader in the industrial design profession, resulting from a commitment to progressive product design. Early in his career, Bill realized that successful industrial design requires a strong understanding of engineering and manufacturing. Although the industrial design process and manufacturing materials have remained remarkably the same over the years, computers have greatly impacted the profession. Cesaroni Design was the first industrial design firm in the Chicago area to arm its designers with computers. Computer Aided Design (CAD) coupled with manufacturing knowledge provided Bill’s designers with the opportunity to define their designs to the level that matched final production.

For over thirty years, Cesaroni Design has had the privilege of working for some of the best privately owned and public corporations in the world. The firm’s extensive experience expands across industries that include major appliances, consumer products, medical and laboratory equipment, fitness machines, consumer electronics, housewares, commercial equipment and office furniture systems.

Cesaroni Design has earned recognition and received prestigious industrial design awards from the most esteemed national and international design competitions. The firm has won more than sixty major design awards including, the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), Medical Design Excellence Awards (MDEA), Best of Innovations CES International, Design Distinction I.D. Annual Design Review, The Chicago Athenaeum Good Design Awards, Appliance Design Excellence in Design awards and Best of NeoCon.

Bill graduated from Michigan State University with a BA in industrial design and minor in business administration. He went on to receive a Master’s degree in packaging engineering also from Michigan State. After completing his education, Bill began working as an industrial designer at Mel Boldt and Associates, the largest industrial design firm in Chicago at the time. It was there, working along side some of the most talented designers that he learned the fundamentals of his profession. Bill then elected to gain knowledge of the corporate environment at Bell+Howell before staring his own industrial design firm in suburban Chicago.