d.school news

Applications for Design Thinking Bootcamp are now available!

 

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.

Number: ME 377
Teaching Team: George Kembel, David Baggeroer, Jeremy Utley, Thomas Both
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

Application: Available here.

Teams fighting malnutrition are looking for MBAs!

Message from Social E'ers & Extreme Affordability Alumni Soniya & Erik:

Want to help launch a compelling new technology to fight malnutrition?  

 

The Small Scale Fortification Group is looking for two MBAs to join our team.   We are a collaborative of three teams (DrinkWell, Zing, and AMaize) that emerged from the 2009 Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability course at Stanford’s d.school.  

 

Mission. Our goal is to fight malnutrition, which plagues the developing world.  In the US, people get vitamins through fortified cereals and salt, which is the most cost-effective method to deliver vitamins to people.  However, in the developing world, the rural poor cannot afford and do not have access to processed foods.  Our mission is to develop technologies that make it possible to efficiently deliver nutrients to those who cannot access centrally-processed foods.  We are exploring fortification of both water and staple foods.

 

Our initiative partners with (and is funded by) Project Healthy Children (PHC) www.projecthealthychildren.org. PHC has established food fortification initiatives in Rwanda, Nepal, and Honduras. It was founded by successful serial entrepreneur, David Dodson, GSB ’87, who runs it in partnership with Amy Lockwood, GSB ’03. 

 

Role.  We are ideally looking for two committed MBAs to replace outgoing GSB graduates, Erik Bengtsson and Soniya Sapre.  There are two roles: one within the DrinkWell team (water fortification) and one within the Zing team (flour fortification at small-scale, rural mills).  (See Executive Summaries below for more information on each team / technology.)  The two roles are similar, with responsibilities that include:

·    Work within the Small Scale Fortification Group’s “Business Model Team,” to develop a financially-sustainable, scalable business model

·    Work closely with engineers within each team (DrinkWell or Zing, respectively) to ensure a tight connection between the technical development of the product and the strategy / business model

·    Collaborate with Project Healthy Children as they support our efforts

·    Help to shape our newly-formed collaborative as it develops its culture, systems, and working norms

 

We see the role as a highly-entrepreneurial leadership position.  Each team has become an eccentric family of its own and we are now forming a dynamic among the larger collaborative. We are working on a problem that has not been solved by anyone:  it is an area ripe for fresh ideas and one where there is the potential for truly significant global impact. This is also a great opportunity to gain exposure to design thinking and to take social entrepreneurship from theory into practice.  There is potential for these positions to evolve into a full-time role in the future.    

 

We’d love to hear from you.  Please email a resume and a short explanation of the nature of your interest to:

Bengtsson_Erik at gsb dot stanford dot edu and Sapre_Soniya at gsb dot stanford dot edu.

 

Thanks!

 

Soniya and Erik

DrinkWell - Executive Summary:

DrinkWell has created a unique system to alleviate iron deficiency anemia, one village at a time. DrinkWell delivers critical nutrients to rural families by reaching them at the water pumps they visit each day. Water fortification has the ability to reach every person in a village. DrinkWell can add safe, soluble iron to water without influencing its taste, odor, or color.  The DrinkWell device will attach to community hand pumps in Kenya and meter out tiny amounts of iron fortificant solution into the stream of passing water. The device would not require an attendant nor require any additional energy source in operation. The device would also not require any behavioral change from those who use the water pump and will cost roughly $100 to produce. DrinkWell has raised funding and is scheduled to complete mechanical trials of its device in Houston and Kenya in September and October respectively. 

 

Zing – Executive Summary:

In March 2009, the team conducted a field visit to Rwanda, where malnutrition is linked to 60% of child deaths.  The team noted a critical need to efficiently deliver nutrients to the rural poor, who rely on cassava, a shrub lacking in almost all vitamins, for their sustenance. The team developed a $35 mixer that that attaches to the output of small-scale mills and evenly mixes vitamin and mineral fortificant into flour.  The mixer is designed to fit with every mill, to ensure uniform mixing, to incur minimal operating costs, and to require minimal additional effort on the part of the miller.  The device will be distributed to small-scale millers in rural areas—this is a cost-effective channel to reach families, who often visit such mills to grind their cassava into flour.  While mixers are a simple and inexpensive way to fortify staples, to date they have faced challenges in the developing world, which the team is seeking to address.  The team is being advised by several experts in the field and hopes to launch a pilot field study of its device in Africa during Fall Quarter. 

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!

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.

• Applications are NOW AVAILABLE on the d.school website
• Meet d.school fellows past/present to find out more: April 2nd, 6pm or April 3, 11:30am (RSVP)
• Applications DUE Monday, April 7th
• INTERVIEWS April 14-25th
• Positions will be ANNOUNCED by Wednesday, April 30th

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.

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

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 .