Designing a Cup Holder for Bikes: A New Film From d.school Students on the Process

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I have already written about Gus Bitdinger’s fantastic "movie version" of one my favorite creativity books, Gordon McKinsey’s classic Orbiting the Giant Hairball. The students at the Stanford d.school are at it again, and have new film, called The Stanford Design Thinking Process. This 7 minute film shows how a group four students — Madalina Seghete, Dorothea Koh, Mannan Amin and Ana Paula Azuela Garcia — used the design thinking methods that we teach to develop a prototype drink holder for bicylcles. It shows the primary design practices including user observation, brainstorming, developing a point of view, prototyping, testing, and doing multiple iterations. The idea for this project was sparked by students who wanted a place to keep a nice hot cup of coffee as they pedaled between classes. Check it out on youTube.

P.S. Mada Seghete reports that it took about 5 hours to do this little cup holder project and about another 15 hours to produce and edit the video — so this is a very quick design process, but I especially like it because it shows the main elements of the design process so clearly.

Also, some of you might react with "that is mighty crude prototype." That is a key part of the process . Our perspective on prototypes is that — in the early stages of the design process — we encourage people to come up with quick, crappy, and easily disposable "low-res" prototypes that allow them to quickly test a concept. This prototype is good enough that the students could ride around with a cup of coffee (see the film), and thus test the concept. But it is crude enough that they could quickly discard it, modify it, and so on — such lack of investment encourages creativity because they don’t become overly enamored in an idea just because they worked like crazy to make a bad or incomplete idea look "too perfect" and it enables rapid iteration though the design-build-test cycle. Finally, note that, although Gus Bitdinger isn’t even a member of the class these student’s did the video for, he appears quite a bit in the video as a user of the product. I’ve been joking that we should hire him as the head of the d.school film department.

Comments

4 responses to “Designing a Cup Holder for Bikes: A New Film From d.school Students on the Process”

June 3, 2007

MD

This was an outstanding effort on the part of the students. (I co-teach the class for which they produced it.) These four really blew us away with their ability to execute the process in a very compressed time frame, AND to tell the story in a compelling way. The finished product has a high “get it” factor and I am fired up to use it in future classes. The non-pro look and feel only adds to the credibility as a real story.
MD

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June 3, 2007

Bob Sutton

The above comment is from Michael Dearing, one of the professors who taught the class. Michael taught a lot of classes this year, including the one the film was made for on Creating Infectious Action — see http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/04/dschool_student.html

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June 3, 2007

Mada

Thank you Bob and MD for your great comments and feedback!! We had a great time working on this, and the d.school experience has been fantastic. I will really miss everyone next year!

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June 3, 2007

gus.

Bob, you guys should hire Mada as the head of the d.school film department. She’s a hundred times more talented than I am. I just do what she tells me. =)

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