d.school news

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