Design Thinking with Barry Katz at Stanford: Class 3

In the third How to Think Like a Designer class, Barry started by sharing a story about an inspirational visit to a cutting edge recycling plant called Green Waste in Palo Alto, CA. He asked the class to guess what the #1 working hazard was. Breathing/lung issues? Carpal tunnel? No. 95% of all the injuries are needle sticks. Even though the workers wear needle resistant gloves, it's not possible at this time to completely avoid needle sticks. This ignited an impromptu brainstorming - use magnets to pull the needles from the piles, put RFID tags in needles so they can be scanned and seen, create more stick resistant gloves, provide needle repositories on public recycling bins, and more. The ideas ranged from changing the needles, to changing how they're identified, to changing the way they are discarded in the first place.

How far up the chain do we go when we look for a solution? It depends on the careful defining in the brief. Design solutions can behavioral, technical, social or legislative. Defining a brief is an art. The client often comes to the designer with "This is my problem." The designer needs to say, "No. You think that’s your problem. This is the real problem." Guiding a client to the proper posing of the issue in the first place is often the most difficult part of the process.

Barry talked about the 7 year itch phenomenon in the industry. First people were all about design methods, then design management, now it’s design thinking. It’s a sign of a profession that is continually renewing itself.

We then resumed where we left off last week on the origins of design thinking:

Design Thinking with Barry Katz at Stanford: Class 2

In the second How to Think Like a Designer class, we explored the origins of design thinking:

1. Design history is the history not just of objects, but of ideas.

Primatologist Sherwood Washburn believed people don't make things. Things make people. Primitive tools have shaped our evolution.

The Historical Trajectory of Objects:

19th Century - the stand alone object is analog, mechanically straightforward, and operated by hands. Ex: Olivetti Typewriter
20th century - the plug in object makes no sense unless it's connected to electricity, which is both a restraint and an opportunity. Ex: Television sets
21st Century - the networked object opened up new product categories and made predecessors obsolete almost instantly. Ex: iPhone

The Historical Trajectory of Design Thinking:

In the 1840's, Henry Cole pioneered government recognition of design. He lobbied the British government for support for his campaign to improve standards in industrial design. He was appointed the first General Superintendent of the Department of Practical Art, tasked with improving industrial art and design education in Britain. He was also the inventor of the postage stamp and the Christmas card.

In 1851, Joseph Paxton made an important contribution to biomimicry inspired design in the Crystal Palace for The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations - the first World's Fair. The Crystal Palace could be considered the world's first horizontal skyscraper - revolutionary in its modular, prefabricated design and use of glass in a patterns that mirrored the structure of a leaf. Not only did he consider the architecture, but its use by thousands of people a day. He designed the wooden floorboards with slight spaces between them so dirt could be easily swept into the spaces below the floor. He then hired a huge group of boys to sweep the floors every evening, but soon realized that the bottom of ladies' dresses were doing the job.

Design Thinking with Barry Katz at Stanford: Class 1

I'm beyond excited about the new class I'm taking at Stanford! It's called How to Think Like a Designer taught by Barry Katz. Barry is a consulting professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University, professor of Humanities and Design at California College of the Arts, and fellow at IDEO, a design and innovation consultancy that I've been a major fan of for years.

Just being on the Stanford campus is inspiring! The 12 week class is held in the Mechanical Engineering building adjacent to the beautiful Memorial Church. I arrived a few minutes before start time and was lucky to get one of the last seats in the back (some people sat on the floor). There must be 70 students ranging from mid 20s to mid 50s, more people than anyone was expecting. The interest and enthusiasm in the room was palpable. I'm among people who love learning and collaborating. I am home!

Barry gave an excellent overview of his experience, which included a fascinating history of the Stanford d.school, CCA and IDEO. He told stories about innovative projects from each place, and observed an interesting switch in the undergrad/grad focus. In the past, students often received their undergraduate degrees in something general, like Liberal Arts, and then pursued a specialty in grad school. These days, more students get a specialized undergrad, then use their graduate studies to explore how they want to apply that specialization. He talked about the history of design thinking, including French industrial designer Ray Loewy who designed everything from locomotives to Lucky Strike cigarette packaging, and Nobel prize winning polymath Herbert Simon who studied human activity around human built systems. He also told us about the book, Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, which he co-authored with Tim Brown from IDEO.

Barry closed the class by revealing our semester long assignment: improve the experience of commuting. He said it's our responsibility and opportunity to define what commuting means. Immediately my mind kicked into high gear:

Commuting by car: improving comfort, safety (requiring driving tests more often, offering greater rewards for passing driving tests/traffic school, driving tips while you drive, rewards for staying at or under speed limit), multitasking, distractions from children and pets, traffic alerts, construction, alleviating boredom (new suggested routes to and from work to discover new things), parking (parking meters, paying remotely, app to avoid parking tickets), making use of traffic cameras to provide commentary/emotional feedback, weather conditions, sun in your eyes (a windshield that can dim, like auto-tinting eye glasses), forgetting your laptop at home.

Commuting by train/bus/subway: seat comfort, mobile phone use (etiquitte, accessibility), falling asleep and missing your stop, cleanliness/smell, temperature, transferring, lack of seating, accessibility, accommodating packages, using public transport to move something other than yourself (pets, sick people, bulky objects), meeting people, schedules, waiting shelters, advertising, educational opportunities while you wait, empathy for customers and drivers/conductors, tickets, exact change, loosing cards, over capacity, traffic, construction. Also commuting by taxi and car/limo/van service, special events, parties.

Commuting by plane: orientation and relationship to public transportation, shuttle buses, loosing your boarding pass, boarding order, safety assurances, meeting people (Virgin's seat to seat IM), frequent business flyer perks/issues, sleeping in airport when weather is bad, lost luggage, luggage flies to airport before you do, delays, updates, sleeping on plane, empathy for fellow passengers, lighting, food and drink, staying hydrated, circulation, time zone changes, odors, temperature, storage, lap belts, safety instructions, wifi, barf bags.

Commuting on foot/bike/motorcycle: navigation, addresses, parking, carrying laptop, number of blocks to surrounding destinations (California Ave), comfort, weather, relationship of cars to people/bikes, giving the right of way, blind spots.

I can't wait to collaborate with new people and apply my passion for design thinking to important issues we all share.

Becoming more...User Experience Design and beyond

I've been thinking about getting a Masters that will challenge and enable me to do more of what I love: help people feel smart, have positive experiences, and learn to do anything with a sense of fascination, ease and joy. One place that I'm looking into is the dschool at Stanford. I'm also inspired by 2 close friends who recently decided to get their MBA and MFA. Thank you for making me feel like I can do it too.

2010 Razorfish Outlook Report

Always enlightening and valuable. You can also check out more documents from Razorfish here.