Veranda Solar in Forbes!
Capra J'Neva and Emilie Fetscher of Veranda Solar are featured on Forbes this week.
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Recent Posts
- Veranda Solar in Forbes!
- d.light in the NYT!
- The art of low-res prototyping is entirely global.
- 100 Best Business Books of all Time? Actually, they're the the d.school.
- Personal Statements
- Ambidextrous Gets It On with Fall 2008 Issue
- No plans for a while...?
- Welcome back, Susie Wise! A new role and focus for this practiced d.schooler.
- Rich Crandall extends his term at the d.school as Director of K-12
- 2008 Stanford Design program alumni win € 500,000 prize and € 100,000 prize from the PICNIC Green Challenge!
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d.light in the NYT!
A new York Times article that mentions Sam Goldman and d.light! Too bad they didn't get the picture, but we're happy for now....
The art of low-res prototyping is entirely global.
Traveling around the d.school today is this wonderful video and blog post about teaching thinking-while-doing in a far corner of the world from the learning studio of the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
100 Best Business Books of all Time? Actually, they're the the d.school.
We've given over the d.school to host a book-launch party on Wednesday, February 4 at 7PM for a book that features some of our terrific d.school residents, friends and neighbors. It's called The 100 Best Business Books of All Time, by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten. Come on by if you have time. The Stanford Bookstore will be selling books, and refreshments will be provided.
d.school Professor Bob Sutton explains "The guys who wrote this book picked several books by people with close connections to the d.school, including Dan and Chip Heath’s Made to Stick (Chip is frequent guest at the d.school), Tom Kelley’s Art of Innovation, Randy Komisar’s Monk and the Riddle (Randy teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford and happens to be married to Debra Dunn, who teaches many classes at the d.school), and The Knowing Doing-Gap, which Jeff Pfeffer and I wrote."
The publisher's blurb is below....
A great business book can change your life.
When 11,000 business books are published each year, it’s not easy to find the ones worth your time and money. Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten of 800-CEO-READ have taken on the ultimate challenge, rereading the classics, bestsellers, and sleepers to choose the 100 best business books. The 100 Best Business Books of All Time features classics like Good to Great and The Essential Drucker and some surprises like Oh, The Places You’ll Go and Moneyball.
For more information and a free excerpt, visit: www.100bestbiz.com
To be published February 5, 2009 by Portfolio, a member of Penguin Group (USA)
Personal Statements
psst....
8:00pm -11:00pm
Friday January 23rd, 2009
at the Design Loft
Duena St. & Santa Teresa St.
Ambidextrous Gets It On with Fall 2008 Issue
A shameless plug and congratulations for our friends at Ambidextrous, Stanford University's Journal of Design. They've recently published their Fall 2008 issue themed "Getting It On" and celebrated with a happening launch party graciously hosted by Adaptive Path in San Francisco. Ambidextrous has been called a "quirky magazine [that] explores the craft of design and the nuances of design thinking" by Dan Pink, in his book A Whole New Mind.
Ambidextrous features the people and processes involved in design and design thinking. The print magazine is curated and edited by a team of Stanford students and recent grads with content by writers and photographers from all over.
The newest issue originated in a proposition that they explore the topic of sex ("Let's Talk About It"). The result is perhaps PG-13 at most, with topics such as MUJI designer Kenya Hara ("Landscapes of the Unknown"), fasteners and attachment ("Ups and Downs in Zipper History"), and the power of emotions ("Free as in Love"). They also investigated titillating instances of explicit sexual material ("Sex Goes to the Museum," "Getting it On Gets Faster") But what largely comes through in the issue is a lust for design and design thinking and a sweet affirmation and appreciation for those that do design.
At heart they're romantics about design and the design process. And this has been true for Ambidextrous from the start. The brown paper cover serves as a demure disguise for the ongoing passionate love note written by and for design geeks. If you're not yet a subscriber sign up now. It's a great read from cover to cover. Their website has some selected articles from this and previous issues up. And through Dec 31 they are having a holiday sale on magazine subscriptions -- $10 off their regular subscription price. Make Ambidextrous a stocking stuffer!
No plans for a while...?
Apply for a free alternative to business school with Seth Godin. Just the kind of innovative idea that Stanford graduates are known for, and that the d.school loves!
Welcome back, Susie Wise! A new role and focus for this practiced d.schooler.
We're so pleased to announce a warm re-welcome to Susie Wise!
The founding director of the d.school K-12 Lab, Susie coordinated the efforts of a huge number of people to build out the Nueva School iLab and ensuing curriculum in a jam-packed six months. Susie has been on hiatus since Winter of 2008, and is returning to the d.school in a new role, working with the d.school leadership team to bring the d.school to the next level. Her first public works project here will be to channel some of the d.school's tremendous efforts of teaching and learning into a prolific publishing engine!
Susie will be working half-time for the moment, and you'll see her at the d.school on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Please join us in welcoming her back to the d!
Rich Crandall extends his term at the d.school as Director of K-12
Please join us in extending our congratulations and warm re-welcome to Rich Crandall!
We are pleased to announce that Rich, one of our 2007-2008 d.school fellows, has agreed to remain at the d.school in a director's role, leading the K-12 Lab through at least Summer 2009. Rich started with Susie Wise and the K-12 Lab team in the Autumn of 2007, and has been guiding these efforts since the Spring of 2008. He's been continuing the work of developing K-12 design thinking curriculum and has been spinning up teaching teams with the Nueva School, East Palo Alto Academy, the Henry Ford Learning Institute, and more.
Rich and the K-12 team have executed on numerous teacher workshops and student experiences, and are engaged in building long-term relationships and fund raising development as well. We're looking forward to seeing what new heights this year brings. Rich is an extraordinary design thinker and leader, and and passionate proponent of great learning experiences for kids. And he brings to the d.school a sure knowledge of what a little fun can do to change your day, your mood and your life
2008 Stanford Design program alumni win € 500,000 prize and € 100,000 prize from the PICNIC Green Challenge!
The d.news extends congratulations to our friends and neighbors at the graduate Program in Design for their sweep of the PICNIC Green Challenge in Amsterdam recently!
The 2008 PICNIC Green Challenge is the annual international creative competition, sponsored by the Dutch Postcode Lottery and cross-media event PICNIC, that challenges entrepreneurs worldwide to create greenhouse-gas-reducing products or services that encourage consumers to adopt a sustainable lifestyle.
With a revolutionary material EcovativeDesign has won this year's PICNIC Green Challenge, and Veranda Solar won a surprise special prize of 100,000 Euros.
After graduation Capra J'neva and Emile Fetscher formed Veranda Solar while Ed Browka joined Ecovative as COO. They were happy to see each other as finalists in Amsterdam, and receive a significant boost to their green ventures.
Greensulate™ is made with a revolutionary new manufacturing process that uses a growing organism to convert waste cellulose into a rigid biological resin. This process is extremely energy efficient, occurring in the dark, at room temperature and pressure, without any petroleum inputs. Greensulate™ is enabled by a flexible platform that can be leveraged to produce sustainable materials for many markets, including packaging, disposable coolers, and surf boards.
To learn more visit
http://www.ecovativedesign.com
Veranda Solar makes affordable, beautiful solar panels that hang out your window or clip to gutters and balconies. Their panels easy installation saves you half the cost of traditional panels. They are plug and play. They snap together. Now you can make the decision to go solar and hook up your house, all in a single afternoon. Now you too can invest in your own personal green energy future.
To learn more visit
http://www.verandasolar.com
This Fall: Design Thinking Bootcamp for Stanford Grad Students
Future innovators, prepare yourselves to become breakthrough thinkers and doers. Cross the boundaries between technology, business, and human values. Use design thinking to work on BIG projects with multidisciplinary teams. Be human-centered, prototype driven, and mindful of process in everything you do. Get a jump on your skills for d.school classes and Labs offered in the Winter and Spring quarters.
Topics include design processes, innovation methodologies, need finding, human factors, visualization, rapid prototyping, team dynamics, storytelling, and project leadership. We are looking for a magic mix of graduate students from across all disciplines and fields at Stanford to experience hands-on projects. Expect in-class exercises, guest lectures, and a Friday lab for design thinking workshops and team time.
Quarter: Autumn 2008
Class: ME377
Teaching Team: George Kembel, Scott Doorley, David Baggeroer, Corey Ford, Erica Estrada, Joel Sadler, Scott Witthoft
Time: Monday, Wednesday 1:15-3:05PM, Lab Friday 1:15-3:05
Location: Building 524, 451 Panama Mall
Enrollment Limit: 2 sections, 24 students per section
Grading: Letter Grade
Applications: Available on the d.school website September 15, they are due by midnight September 22 (the first day of class). Decisions will be made by September 24.
Plus, check out some of the other classes we'll be teaching this year in Winter and Spring Quarters...
IDEAs!
Congratulations go out to d.school regular David Baggeroer, whose thesis-work in the Joint Program in Design, a glorious innovation on triathlon handlebars, won a BusinessWeek 2008 International Design Excellence Award (IDEA). Fantastic work among fantastic competition!
On the radio!
Fast Company has a nice article this month about a recent exercise in design thinking experienced by the staff of New York's WNYC.
Executives from WNYC and PRI spent some time hanging out at the d.school learning about design thinking by doing design thinking. The fruits of their new skills and approach are documented here:
Startup Radio Show The Takeaway Recreated the Morning Edition
d.light Shines in the News
Our friends at d.light design are reporting great news in the News; a great article in Forbes Magazine. Plus articles in greentechmedia.com, the Industry Standard, and Venture Beat. Go d.light!
The Edible Balloon; d.school eats nouveau!
On Friday May 30, the d.school hosted Chef Ben Roche, of Moto Restauraunt in Chicago, for an interactive design exchange. He showed us the edible balloon technique, and aliens landing on our plates. The participants responded with levitating food, popsicle dinner, marshmallow-cayenne surprise, and a brand new take on the prairie oyster, among other nouveau eats. Chef Ben kept telling us he wasn't a designer. We beg to differ. Stay tuned for more Design Exchanges from the d.school.
d.school is Developing Ambidextrous Tendencies
Congratulations go out to the readers, writers, and staff of Ambidextrous Magazine, which launched its ninth issue "Developing" last night with a party hosted by the d.school. It also happened to be the first really big gathering in our new space at Building 524. We think it was 'the joint,' and we predict a few more fiestas before our final move to the Peterson building eighteen months from now.
New d.school Fellows for 2008-2009!
Introducing the d.school Fellows for 2008-2009, Erica Estrada, Joel Sadler, Scott Witthoft, and Corey Ford. After an extensive process of applications, multiple interviews, meet-and-greets, and heart-to-hearts, we are so pleased and proud to announce all four of our new fellows for this coming year, chosen from a crowd of truly amazing candidates.
In the past 24 hours, we have wrested a two-sentence biography from each of them, and you can read them below. Congratulations and welcome to the team!
Erica Estrada is from Texas if she's in California, and from California if she's in Texas. A Stanford Mechanical Engineering and Design for Extreme Affordability alum, she's spent the past year traveling the world with her trusty travel sheets, lighting up unnelectrified villages with LED lights as a product designer and co-founder of d.light design.
Joel Sadler came from a childhood building potato cannons in Jamaica to a mechanical engineering degree at MIT where he fell in love with design and the power of human-centered creation. After a making vow to avoid cold weather he has since explored design in various industries, including in medical devices and consumer electronics. For the last year he has been pursuing a masters degree in mechanical engineering at Stanford.
Scott Witthoft arrived in California by way of Tucson, AZ, St. Louis, MO, and most recently Austin, TX. Beyond understanding the magic of Thursdays and Saturdays, Scott spent his time in the field of forensic structural engineering.
Corey Ford loves a good story, adventure, creativity, and his wife. Before Stanford business school, Corey led the production of 17 films for the PBS public affairs series FRONTLINE, where each film allowed him to continually quench his desire to discover the world by immersing him in new subjects (from terrorism to the music industry), sending him on adventures (from riding around with gang cops in LA to tracking down a mountain lion), and introducing him to people from all walks of life (from interviewing a struggling truck driver to taking a dead drop from a high level government official on a dark DC street corner).
Executives, It's Independence Day. Design Thinking Bootcamp Now Open for July
NOW OPEN! d.school Executive Education Program - this July
Design Thinking Boot Camp: From Insights to Innovation offers executives the chance to learn design thinking — a human-centered, prototype-driven process for innovation that can be applied to product, service, and business design. We believe that innovation is necessary in every aspect of business, and that it can be taught. We invite you to join us here at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, affectionately called "the d.school," for an experience that will enhance your ability to drive innovation in your organization.
As a participant in Design Thinking Boot Camp, you will be part of a small multidisciplinary team and work through a hands-on innovation challenge from start to finish. You will walk away from the workshop with a strong understanding of the key tenets of design thinking and be able to execute them at home. You will learn:
How to Use Observation to Develop Deep Consumer Insights
How to Use Rapid Prototyping to Reduce Risk and Accelerate Learning
How to Drive Towards Innovation, Not Just Incremental Growth
How to Empower Your Employees To Be Innovative
We invite you to learn more about the program and apply here.
All Hands on Duck!
A great article in BusinessWeek about Winter Quarter's Business Process Innnovation project to fix Timbuk2's broken all-hands meetings. Congratulations to the BPI students and teaching team, and some very big kudos to Perry Klebahn for letting the playground into the principal's office!
THE d.school IS NOW RECRUITING 2008-9 FELLOWS
*Are you interested in a superb opportunity to teach and lead innovation at Stanford?
*Are you passionate about design thinking?
*Do you want to collaborate with world-class faculty and designers?
We are looking for people like you!
This is an exceptional opportunity for fellows to develop innovation leadership skills,
contribute to the design thinking movement, and to help build one of the most outstanding
new organizations on campus. D.school fellows will leave Stanford as members of an inspiring
network of leading industry and academic design experts with the confidence, experience, and
skills to make a unique and lasting impact on the world.
Where the Rubber Band Meets the Road
Stanford's Entrepreneurship Week is off and running! Last year's Innovation tournament featured the ubiquitous Post-it. You can find the winners here. And you can still sign up for this year's tourney, featuring the lowly, yet powerful rubber band. Get a team together and snap out some value if you dare!
Recent Raves on K-12 Efforts from Inter*Action
Take a look over at Stanford's Inter*Action publication, a quarterly that focuses on Stanford's "myriad efforts in multidisciplinary research and teaching." The Winter 2008 issue has a great story on the Nueva School Innovation Lab project taken on by the K-12 Lab this past summer. And in general, Inter*Action always has the kinds of stories that are right up our alley, about people from different disciplines taking on the challenge of radical collaboration.
A Cool Drink of Water
We came across the winner of the Specialized "Innovate or Die" pedal-powered machine competition today on YouTube's front page. (We hear tell that team member Eleanor Morgan is a graduate of Stanford University's ME Design Program.) This idea is a beauty, really worth a long look. For that matter, all the entries are worth a peek.
Splash Landing! Extreme Affordability hits the water running.
Have you ever tried to catch a monsoon? As 41 aspiring designers learned this weekend, it's not as simple as you think. Especially when you impose rules that mimic resources in the developing world, where catching rainwater is a serious necessity. Facing their constraints, eight competing design teams scrounged for materials all over campus and fashioned a group of highly unorthodox rainwater collector designs.
The weekend-long "monsoon collection" competition was the inaugural design project of the d.school's Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability class. As simulated monsoon rain showered down on the improvised designs, the teaching team gave a muddy lesson in the value of prototyping. At the end of the three-hour event, some monsoon catchers lay in ruins while others surprised the judges with their fantastic performance and brilliant innovations. The judges awarded prizes not only for best performance, but for outrageous visual appeal, team spirit, elegance, and sheer guts. The competitors left soaking wet and speckled with mud, but eager to get back to the studio, designing products to help the world's poor.
Congratulations to the K-12 Lab!
The d.school's K-12 Learning Lab has won their first grant to bring design thinking into the public schools! The $75k grant will fund pilot work with East Palo Alto Academy Elementary School (EPAAES) and lay the groundwork for engaging schools nationwide. Lab Director Susie Wise, School of Education Professor Shelley Goldman, and d.school Interim Faculty Director Bernie Roth collaborated on the grant. It underwrites work to create design challenges for East Palo Alto Academy students and to study how kids learn through design. In addition to hands-on work with kids the grant will also support paying teachers to attend design thinking workshops in Summer 2008.
The grant comes from the University-wide K-12 initiative being led by Kenji Hakuta and Helen Quinn.
Agile Aging, Mobile d.school
In late December the d.school took it show on the road - well, the sidewalk - and worked with the Stanford Center on Longevity to brainstorm potential areas of focus for the Center's Mobility project. The Mobility project brings together an interdisciplinary group to address how to increase and preserve mobility as people age in order to maintain a better quality of life. The brainstorming session was led by George Kembel and Kerry O'Connor from the d.school, and initiated by Anne Friedlander, director of the Mobility Project, and one of the Teaching Team members for this quarter's Agile Aging Course. They covered potential areas for innovation that included how to address disease, economic factors, psychological factors, environmental factors and political factors that converge in order to limit mobility. From the hundreds of ideas that were generated during the brainstorm, the advisory board narrowed the potential areas of focus down to two dozen. Over the upcoming months the SCL will work to direct its resources to the most promising and novel initiatives that will reside within the diverse disciplines here at Stanford.
New K-12 Course for Winter Announced! Designing to Learn
Course: Designing to Learn
Units: 2-4
Tentative Time: Tuesdays 9:30-10:50
The d.school's K-12 Lab has organized their ongoing endeavors at the Nueva School and East Palo Alto Academy into a small course for the Winter Quarter, and are looking for Stanford students with an interest in K-12 design thinking education who haven't yet heard about the opportunity. They are seeking motivated people who want to learn more about design and its applications to K-12 contexts. Participants will have the opportunity to work directly with middle school students in East Palo Alto and Hillsborough. The course will provide a forum for students to discuss the potential for design and design thinking in education with fellow students and industry and educational leaders. If you are interested in participating, please email Ugochi Acholonu at (acholonu at stanford dot edu) for a syllabus and application information.
Winding up the Quarter...with a Twist
The d.school headed into the Winter break with a wonderful wind-up, dancing! We took our inspiration from the the d.school bootcamp. The students have spent many weeks in deeply immersive sessions on ramen noodles, sustainable fast food, and morning radio, so we thought we'd continue the immersive experiences by bringing the whole d.school community a one-night Salsa club complete with lessons to make us experts in minutes. It was a great evening–more than one d.schooler learned that collaboration at close range can be both risky, and rewarding!
The d.school goes (even more) global! Prof. Bernie Roth receives honorary doctorate in Paris
Although Bernie might tell you that the most interesting thing about this picture is the wonderful artwork and decoration on the walls in the background, we beg to differ. While the rest of us were making our ways home for the Thanksgiving holiday, Bernie Roth was suffering though those embarrassing moments in a doctoral degree presentation when the presenter spends 10 or more minutes enumerating all of your excellent qualities and fantastic discoveries before bestowing important honors on you.
Jean-Claude Guinot, of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie–France's premier scientific University, which bestowed its honorary doctorate on Bernie on Nov. 21–says of Bernie, "This great mind is not only incredibly modest, he is also a sharp-eyed humanist, who weighs up the consequences of technological developments for society." Bernie's honors have stemmed from a career of revolutionary work in kinematics and robotics begun some time ago, which has generated entirely new disciplines and work for a whole host of scientists and engineers.
Prof. Guinot also described Bernie as "an exceptional teacher who has the ability to pass on his knowledge and enthusiasm, not only in his usual role as a professor, but also by devising innovations to aid problem resolution through modern creative concepts." For those of us who have had the opportunity to work with Bernie and his modern creative concepts, we think his next honorary degree may stem directly from there.
Cooking with Gas
During the week of November 11th, the d.school hosted an executive education program in conjunction with the Graduate School of Business. The participants of “Customer Focused Innovation” spent the mornings in lectures at the b-school, and the afternoons immersed in design thinking at the d.school.
Nearly forty executives from a diverse group of companies spread across four continents took on the timely challenge of redesigning the gas pump experience for ARCO brand service stations. After a teambuilding warmup competition changing the tires on a NASCAR racer, participants went deep into interviews and observations on site at gas stations—some gaining access to interviewees by washing their windshields as they pumped! For the next two days the executives synthesized all of their notes and observations into a working point of view, brainstormed, prototyped, and showed their ideas to real users in order to iterate their designs. Finally they got to show off their teamwork to high-level representatives from BP, who evaluated the refined prototypes declaring, “It's really humbling that in four days you can describe what our customers think. We have been working there for 20 years.”
For bigger, better information on the whole shebang, check the stories in it at out Bob Sutton's Work Matters blog.
Radio Redesigns
On a Wednesday evening, a small group of design thinkers made history
within the cozy walls of the Product Design Loft. The innovators were
students from the d.school's Experiences in Innovation and Design
Thinking class (affectionately nicknamed Bootcamp). Their capstone
project was a joint collaboration with New York Public Radio (WNYC)
and several other radio affiliates to redesign the sound of morning
news radio. In a few months, WNYC will launch a new radio show that
will redefine the face of news radio, and their secret weapon is
design thinking.
The final presentations were a particularly memorable collection
of skits, videos, and reenactments that demonstrated the hidden needs
of people that have not yet been reached by public radio. The
resulting ideas for news radio were bold yet actionable, and the radio
executives that gathered in the Loft--including the presidents of WNYC
and Public Radio International--gave the teams a standing ovation for
their ideas and their enthusiasm. In the next few months, WNYC will
weave these new ideas into their plans for the show, and when it
launches in the spring, you may turn on the radio and hear morning
news in a way you've never before experienced. When you do, remember
that it all started here.
Extreme Affordability Returns
Jim Patell and David Klaus, instructors of Entrepreneurial Design for
Extreme Affordabilty, recently returned from a trip to Ethiopia. They
spent a week in the country meeting with the partners that will be
sponsoring design projects for the upcoming Winter-Spring course.
This year's projects will be in the areas of irrigation, cooking,
agricultural harvesting tools, devices for the disabled, and local
manufacturing operations. For more information about the course and
this year's partners, check out extreme.stanford.edu.
Winter d.school Classes for Stanford Students
This Winter the d.school is offering 5 amazing class options for Stanford students. Have a look at the incredible range of them! We're looking forward to an incredible quarter.
Design for Agile Aging
(MED 279Y; CS 379Y; HumBio 131)
TTh 3:15-5:05, 4 units per quarter
Limited enrollment via application at http://hci.stanford.edu/agile/
Applications available on Nov. 5, 2007. Due by Nov. 25.
Maintaining mobility is critical to successful aging. Impaired mobility limits daily activities and independence. For individuals who are already mobility-impaired, or are at risk of becoming so, small improvements in mobility can dramatically improve quality of life. This two-quarter interdisciplinary course sequence is designed to explore innovative ways to integrate computer and device technologies with behavioral and social interventions to maintain and enhance mobility in seniors. In project team, students draw upon perspectives from Computer Science, Design, Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Medicine to develop interventions that will address the potential of people to maintain vitality and mobility as they age. Students need not take both courses, although students must take the Winter course in order to enroll in Spring.
Teaching Team:
Anne Friedlander, Stanford Center on Longevity
Carol Winograd, Medicine and Human Biology
Terry Winograd, Computer Science
Paul Yock, Medicine and BioDesign
Transformative Design
(ENGR 231)
MW 5:30-7PM, 3-5 Units
Designed products have always had tremendous impact on individual, social and cultural behavior. This project-based course investigates how interactive technologies can be designed to expressly encourage behavioral transformation. Class sessions will be structured around interdisciplinary discussion of topics such as self-efficacy, social support, and mechanism of cultural change in domain such as weight-loss, energy conservation or safe driving; accompanying lab sessions will familiarize students with basic hardware and software tools for interaction prototyping. Students will work in teams to create functional prototypes for self-selected problem domains for the final project.
Teaching Team:
Bernard Roth, Mechanical Engineering Design Group, d.school
Sarah S. Lochlann Jain, Cultural and Social Anthropology
Wendy Ju, d.school
Bill Moggridge, IDEO
K-12 Learning Lab Independent Projects
Times and Units Flexible
The K-12 Learning Lab has major projects with the Nueva School, East Palo Alto Academy Charter School and the Henry Ford Learning Institute. We’re building spaces, courses, and partnerships to bring design thinking to young people. We are looking for students who want to bite off parts of the projects and work on them independently. The overall team will meet together every other week to share learnings and prototypes.
Lab Director:
Susie Wise, d.school
Entrepreneurial Design For Extreme Affordability
(OIT 333/334; ME 206A/206B)
MW 10-11:45AM, Th Lab 7-9PM
4 Units, registration in both Winter and Spring quarters required
Limited enrollment via application available at extreme.stanford.edu
Applications available on Nov. 5, 2007. Due no later than Nov. 16.
Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability is a two-quarter project course in which graduate students design comprehensive solutions to challenges faced by the world’s poor. Students learn design thinking and its specific application to problems in the developing world. Students work in multidisciplinary teams at the intersection of business, technology, and human values. All projects are done in close partnership with a variety of international organizations. These organizations host student fieldwork, facilitate the design development, and implement ideas after the class ends.
The first quarter of the course (Winter 2008) immerses students in the fundamentals of design thinking. Students learn the design process experientially as they are coached through a number of fast-paced design projects, culminating in a real-world project with local partners. In parallel, the course gives students a background on business, technology, and development, and an introduction to our international collaboration partners. By the end of the quarter, students will form teams and begin their capstone spring quarter project. The second quarter (Spring 2008) is devoted to developing comprehensive solutions to these design challenges. Teams will develop empathy with all stakeholders so that they can develop a solution that fits into the culture, aspirations, and constraints of their target users. Teams will iterate on their designs and business models through a rapid sequence of prototyping and testing. Students also will interact with entrepreneurs who have launched ventures in the developing world, including several alumni from the class. The final deliverable is a product or service framed in a comprehensive implementation plan including the business model, the technical innovations, the cultural rationale, and the appropriate next steps. The course culminates in a professional presentation to the international partners and a panel of industry experts.
Teaching Team:
Jim Patell, Graduate School of Business
Dave Beach, Mechanical Engineering
David Klaus, d.school
Innovation in Complex Organizations
(MS&E 282 A, B)
Th 3-6PM, 3 Units, Enrollment limited to 12, Letter grade only
The purpose of this course is to offer students a chance to pause, discuss, and integrate design thinking and innovation in business in a small seminar, case-study format. This centerpiece of this small seminar will be three or four “live” case studies where, executives from large, complex organizations come to class and describe their efforts to move creative new ideas from inception to implementation. Past cases have included Google AdSense, P&G, NASCAR, Method Home, and General Motors. They will describe how their organizations screen and move along promising ideas and how their organizational practices facilitate and impede that journey. Student teams will analyze each case and provide recommendations to the executives, who along with the teaching team, will judge the work. The final project will be a general analysis and set of recommendations about this vexing organizational problem. This course is co-sponsored by the d.school and STVP (Stanford Technology Ventures Program).
Teaching Team:
Robert Sutton, Management Science & Engineering
Michael Dearing, d.school
Business Practice Innovation (BPI)
(MS&E 287)
WF 3:30-5PM
3-4 Units, Letter Grade, Enrollment Limited to 12, No Auditors
Treating Business Practices as Prototypes. In this small, team-based, multidisciplinary class, students will work in dyads or larger teams. They will apply the design process to specific practices (like talent management, organizational design, and communication with external stakeholders) in organizations that may include a software firm, a professional services firm, and an airline, and treating the targeted practices as prototypes. The course will provide hands-on experience in collaboration and design, in the context of tackling real problems in real businesses.
Teaching Team:
Debra Dunn, d.school
Kris Woyzbun, IDEO
Robert Sutton, Management Science & Engineering
Innovation Lab Opens
The d.school's first major venture in the world of K-12 education opened this week at the Nueva School in Hillsborough, CA. Called the Innovation Lab, the project is a 3500 square foot space where students in the K-8 school will develop their design thinking skills. The project cycle was rapid with needfinding in April and May, conceptual prototype in June, and full-scale prototyping at Sweet Hall in July. July's prototype sessions brought 20 kids a week to campus and deeply informed everything from how to brainstorm with 1st graders, to how high to build the tables. The team also conducted a 3-day teacher workshop with Nueva faculty where teachers reported they rediscovered the importance of play and one was quoted as saying, the Innovation Lab, "is not just a space, it's a movement."
The project was led by Scott Doorley, Alex Ko, Kim Saxe, and Susie Wise and included the design of the space, furniture, curriculum, and program. Coaching support and prototype development will continue through the school year and work to take the curriculum to Stanford's East Palo Alto Charter School has already begun.
Thanks to the amazing K-12 lab members who made it happen: Ugochi Acholonu, Cathy Chase, Rich Crandall, Jonathan Edelman, Elysa Fenenbock, Karin Forssell, Hillary Freeman, Yuseke Miyashita, Maryanna Rogers, Adam Royalty, Andrew Salverda, Sandy Speicher, Daniel Steinbock, Andrew Taylor, Scott Witthoft, and Natalie Wozybun.
d.school adventures around the world
Current d.school fellow David Klaus recently returned from a summer in Africa and Asia, where he set up partnerships for the coming year's Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability class. In the winter and spring, the d.school will be partnering with several of these organizations to design products and services for the world's poor. The list of potential projects is more diverse than ever, including irrigation products for rural farmers, wheelchairs and prosthetics for victims of war and disease, energy solutions for affordable (and sustainable) lighting and cooking, new tools for the care of livestock, "entrepreneur kits" to help street children generate income, and innovative business models to help the poor access credit, to name a few. During the summer, David kept a travel blog with more details on the partnerships, and a whole bunch of entertaining stories about his adventures as a designer in the developing world. You can check it out at dpklaus.blogspot.com.
VPs of Design
d.school Associate Consulting Professor Perry Klebahn (who in his other day job is the CEO of Timbuk2) is mentioned in this article about design for business in BusinessWeek: Wanted: VPs of Design
A B-School All-Star at the d.school
Our very own Bob Sutton was named by BusinessWeek to their "B-School All-Stars" list. BusinessWeek calls it "... a look at 10 B-School professors who are influencing contemporary business thinking far beyond the halls of academia."
Also, check out the related article in BusinessWeek: Powerful Profs
Way to go, Bob!
d.light wins the DFJ Venture Challenge!
Great news from the d.light team! This group of d.school alumni from last year's Design for Extreme Affordability class have taken their project the next step, starting a company around their d.light product. Yesterday, they got a huge boost, winning the DFJ Venture challenge to the tune of $250,000. Congratulations!
Infectious action at the d.school
Earlier this quarter, and after just two weeks of work, CIA-KGB
students launched their solutions to help Mozilla attract and retain
users of Firefox. Actually, it wasn't really two weeks -- it was eight
working days and four weekend days. As you'll see by clicking through
on the URL's, below, each team of four students accomplished an
incredible amount of work. When was the last time you went from zero
knowledge in a subject area to putting something real and working in to
the world in just two weeks? While working the equivalent of three or
four other full-time jobs?
Here they are -- check 'em all out!
It's important to note that these were only a launch and not a final deliverable. We've been tracking the progress and performance of each project over the entire quarter.
mini-conference alert: Creating Infectious Action through Social Enterprise
How might one apply design thinking to create infectious action through social enterprise?
As part of the CIA-KGB class being taught at the d.school, we'll be holding a "mini-conference" next week, and you're invented to attend. We only call it "mini" because it's not a full-day event. However, as you can see below, the speaker roster is simply amazing.
Here are the speakers (in order of appearance):
- Jim Fruchterman, Founder & CEO, Benetech
- Dennis Whittle and Mari Kurashi, Co-Founders, Global Giving
- Jessica Flannery, Co-Founder, Kiva.org
In addition to getting to hear each of these people speak about creating infectious action through social enterprise, we'll also be treated to a panel discussion with them moderated by CIA-KGB teaching team member Debra Dunn. And, this being the d.school, we'll retreat afterward to the lobby for some heated discussion about design thinking, as well as some tasty drinks and snacks.
This year's CIA-KGB mini-conference is focused on the domain of social enterprise because this year's class will be embarking on a five-week design project on behalf of Global Giving. Last year's conference talked more generally about creating infectious action, and was a blast. Hope to see you there!
logistics:
Creating Infectious Action through Social Enterprise
Thursday, May 3
3:30 - 6:45
Hewlett 200
Stanford University
free of charge, but bring your brain
THE d.school IS NOW RECRUITING 2007-8 FELLOWS
* Are you interested in a superb fellowship opportunity at Stanford?
* Are you passionate about design thinking?
* Do you want to collaborate with world-class faculty and designers?
* We are looking for people like you!
This is an exceptional opportunity to develop your innovation
leadership skills, contribute to the design thinking movement, and
help build one of the most outstanding new organizations at Stanford.
* Applications DUE Wednesday, April 11th
* INTERVIEWS April 16-20th
* Positions will be ANNOUNCED by Friday, May 4th
Details are in the application .
Bruce Nussbaum on Design Thinking & the d.school
BusinessWeek's Bruce Nussbaum has written some very thought-provoking posts recently about the state of design, design thinking, and education.
In his first post, Bob Kerrey Gets Innovation Right at The New School and Parsons, he says that "Design thinking is seen as the integrative solvent that brings together the programs through a powerful methodology that solves a myriad of problems. It's the same perspective as Stanford has in its new d. school -- the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design."
And then there's his second post, Are Designers The Enemy of Design? It's definitely worth a read, and is very though provoking. In it he makes a distinction between the world of design and the world of design thinking. We'd love to hear what you think of it, either in the comments section on this blog or at Bruce's own blog.
Attention Stanford students! Apply for these Spring d.school courses now
All of us at the d.school are excited about two upcoming courses to be taught Spring Quarter. Each of them requires an application, so we wanted to take a minute to highlight them (and their application deadline) here.
Software Design Experiences: application due March 5
CS447 (also ME325) is a unique opportunity offered by the d.school. SAP co-founder, Hasso Plattner, along with Professor Terry Winograd, and SAP Executive Vice President, Zia Yusuf will bring their unique perspectives to the class. Interdisciplinary student teams will apply design thinking and user-centered methodologies to the full software system and lifecyle, including its construction, distribution, and the social and organizational implementation.
Students will develop composite software prototypes that explore real-world opportunities for city governments to better serve its citizens. Students will engage with city officials from Palo Alto and Mountain View and leading industry experts to co-create real systems on industrial-strength platforms, In addition, the class will travel to Atlanta to attend SAP’s Sapphire event, where 15,000 participants from both the business and technical worlds come together with SAP experts, customers, and solution providers to discuss best practices and learn about the future of enterprise software.
Creating Infectious Action, Kindling Gregarious Behavior (CIA-KGB): application due March 9
This small and intense project-based class is built around two team efforts to “spread” positive behavior, which will be bolstered by exposure to, and coaching from, industry experts and academics. The first project will be an initiative done with Mozilla, the second a project focused on building the user base of a social venture called Global Giving that runs an online marketplace connecting donors with social entrepreneurs globally. A limited number of summer internships with Global Giving will be available to CIA-KGB students who wish to continue creating infectious action in that domain.
The teaching team behind CIA-KGB brings a wealth of academic and real-world experience to the course. The instructors are Michael Dearing, Debra Dunn, Diego Rodriguez, and Bob Sutton (who will be a guest instructor). The course assistant is Kris Woybun, who was part of the inaugural version of CIA last year. Project teams will also benefit from the coaching of Timbuk2 CEO Perry Klebahn.
Learning how to become a better design thinker will be a major focus of this course. Students will apply the “build to think” philosophy of the d.school and create prototypes of everything from viral marketing campaigns to entire businesses. While there will substantial helpings of theory delivered throughout the quarter, this is a course for people who want to get their hands dirty, to get out in the world and do things.
Course applications can be found on the respective class websites above.
Why the d.school Works
Min Liu just graduated from Stanford at the end of the winter term. Those of us at the Stanford d.school were lucky to have her as a student in our "Clicks-n-Bricks" class during her last term at Stanford, which among other things, did a project for Wal-Mart focused on fueling their sustainability efforts. I wrote a couple of posts about the class, including one describing the great group dynamics on our teaching team (which included Debra Dunn, Liz Gerber, Michael Dearing, Alex Ko, and Perry Klebahn), but Min just put-up a post that has more information about what it is like to take a d.school class than any other place I know. Check out her new post on Why the d.school Works. Check it out, it not only has opinions, it has a couple videos from our class field trip to Wal-Mart.com. Our students were invited to present their work to a big group of Wal-mart.com employees after presenting their projects -- and having them evaluated -- by 7 or 8 Wal-Mart executives plus our teaching team the prior week. The first video is of Carter Cast (CEO of Wal-Mart.com) and I setting the stage for the presentations and the second is of Min's group doing their presentation on how to get Wal-Mart.com employees more engaged in their sustainability efforts.
Min was kind enough not to talk about all the mistakes we made as a teaching team, as we worked under massive uncertainty and time pressure. Things came out well in the end, but the creative process is usually pretty bumpy, and this class was no different. Here are some of the nice things Min said:
The class gave me the breadth to do hard out-of-the-academic element projects. For example, designing a sustainability project within a large organization can't solely rely on theoretical foundations of organizational behavior. My team and I interviewed the Walmart.com folks, talked to various individuals outside Target and Whole Foods who were passionate or apathetic about green, developed a point of view for our subjects, and came up with a cool solution based on our observations and prototypes. And like no other department I've experienced, we got access to the d.school 24-7 and free food and drinks all the time......
Personally, my last quarter at Stanford was the best because I learned that the process of doing what I love (finally!) is so much better than living up to some abstract expectation even though it is, by convention, the best. Sure, the realization was a good part done by myself outside of the d.school, but it was d.school's welcoming, innovative, and incubative environment that helped me realize that the riskier and gutsy-er a path is, the better.
Of course, Min's comments warm our hearts. It is the kind of thing that keeps us going when all seems dark and messed-up, and why we are lucky to work at place like Stanford that allows us to do such crazy things, to take risks in our teaching and research, just as we press our students to do in their projects.
written by Professor Bob Sutton
Learning as we go: Reflections on Fall Quarter
Professor Bob Sutton has written an interesting post about teaching and learning at the d.school during the Fall 2006 quarter. Here's an excerpt:
We just wrapped-up our d.school class Clicks-n-Bricks: Creating Mass Market Experiences. When I walked in the door on Friday night after our teaching team went out to celebrate, the first thing I said to my wife was “That just might be the best team I will ever be on in my life.” The other team members were Michael Dearing, Debra Dunn, Liz Gerber, Perry Klebahn and Alex Ko.
We continue treat d.school classes as prototypes, as an opportunity to learn about teaching, design thinking, teaching design thinking, teaching lifelong learning, and ultimately the d.school itself. You can read the rest of Bob's post here, and please let us know what you think using the comments feature below.
Next: A Big Move, and Winter Quarter!
Innovation "boot camp" class next quarter
Experiences in Innovation and Design Thinking
Immersive experiences in innovation and design thinking, blurring the boundaries between technology, business, and human values. Explore the tenants of design thinking including being human-centered, prototype driven, and mindful of process in everything you do.
Topics include design processes, innovation methodologies, need finding, human factors, rapid prototyping, team dynamics, storytelling, and project management. Hands-on projects, in-class exercises, and guest lectures. Rich in frameworks and methods that support breakthrough thinking. Students and faculty collaborating from all areas of the university including business, earth sciences, education, engineering, humanities and sciences, law, and medicine. Preparation for leading real world innovation and for advanced d.school courses.
what you need to know: Limited enrollment. Application required. Deadline and details below.
Students last year said:
- "I learned more about innovation in a week at the d.school, than I did in a year in my other classes"
- "You think you are coming to a take a class, but you leave with a higher self-awareness and a commitment to personal growth"
- "This space has a change-the-world energy. It makes me want to think out loud"
Details:
Number: ME 377
Title: Experiences in Innovation and Design Thinking
Days: MW 1:15-3:05
Room: Sweet Hall, 2nd floor
Instructors:
And many interesting guests!
Units: 3
Grading: Satisfactory/No Credit
Application details:
If you are a Stanford graduate student with an interest in changing the world, please apply to be a part of our class and community. To apply, please email the following to dschoolbootcamp2007@lists.stanford.edu:
- Your coordinates: Include Name, Email, Phone, Degree Program, and Year in Program
- Three reasons you why you want to take this class and what you hope to contribute (less than 200 words)
- An 8 1/2 x 11 page in a standard digital format (Word, pdf, jpg, etc.) of any content to help introduce yourself
- Your resume
APPLICATIONS DUE NO LATER THAN THE END OF THE FIRST CLASS SESSION (3:05pm January 10th, 2007)
Email applications to dschoolbootcamp2007@lists.stanford.edu
Class list will be announced by midnight after the first class
Early applications will be given preference
Picking up design thinking, Ambidextrous releases issue #5
Congratulations to the folks at Ambidextrous Magazine! The first issue of a new volume has hit the newsstands and internet, and a launch event is in the works for December 14.
An early project of the d.school, Ambidextrous is an independent, student-run design magazine that takes a broad view of the nature of design. (To see how broad, take a look at Wendy Ju's pictures of where they stand in the continuum between the pragmatic and romantic accounts of design.) Among some great tips on dating and a mechanical dissection of record players, Issue 5 "Picking Things Up" also includes interviews with d.school faculty member Bernie Roth, silicon valley design luminary Hartmut Esslinger of frog design, needfinding expert and Stanford professor Michael Barry, and a back page by our own Larry Leifer.
Customer-Focused Innovation
The d.school and Stanford's Graduate School of Business recently teamed up to teach an executive education course called Customer-Focused Innovation. The experience of the course was designed to pair theory and action in a way that would help participants be able to know and do upon returning to their respective organizations. As Bob Sutton talks about the class:
We became quite enamored of this idea of “clean” innovation models for the morning sessions and the “messy” process of doing creative work for the afternoon sessions. We liked this approach was that it models how effective organizations do innovation: traveling between rigorous (if somewhat sanitized) theory, evidence, and case studies and the (more messy) challenges of actually identifying, developing, and trying to test real ideas with real customers
Read more about the class -- and all the talented people who made it happen - on Bob Sutton's blog.
