Category: d.school

Alison Wong was one
of the fantastic students in a d.school class that Diego Rodriguez and I taught
earlier in the year on Creating Infectious Action.  One of the things that
Alison’s group did in the class (the group also included Josh Snyder, Brook Blumenstein, and Tim Wright) was to design and inspired
website for spreading Firefox among Christian users called Faith browser, which wowed the folks from
Mozilla who were involved in the class (they did this in two weeks!).  It  was also one of the student sites featured in an Information Week article on The Sacred and Profane Sides of Firefox. Alison
has an undergraduate engineering degree from MIT and a masters in Product
Design from Stanford. And she now works at IDEO.

I was thinking of Alison because all d.school classes are taught by teams of
two or more instructors from different background (the class I am co-teaching
this term has a teaching team of at least six people, a mix of product
designers, people experienced as senior executives, and organizational
theorists — and several people  like  Liz Gerber who fit into
multiple categories) and we construct teams by mixing master’s students from
around the campus, including people from product design, management science,
computer science, and the business school. We assign them tough
problems with short deadlines, while they struggle to coordinate their
schedules, do part-time jobs, take other classes, interview for jobs, and have
a social and/or family life.  Both teaching teams and students struggle with the challenges of group work.  And one of our main goals at the d.school is to
produce people who are creative collaborators. Yet little prepares the students
at places like Stanford and MIT to work in groups, even though they will likely
need to do so for the rest of their lives.  Plus creative work in companies
happens primarily in teams.  Unfortunately, the students who get into fancy schools like MIT and Stanford and are evaluated both before and after they arrive
largely on their individual performance: BUT then life plays a cruel trick on them,
forcing them to work in groups, to deal with the messiness and sometimes
craziness of human groups — and their individual brilliance is no longer enough and they have all those damn people, with different needs, opinions, priorities, and skills, and different schedules too, to deal with.

When Alison was a senior at MIT, she decided to do a graphic novel that
showed one group’s struggle — and ultimate — success dealing with group dynamics
through the product design process. As she wrote me:

"It stemmed from my
senior year at MIT where I realized that people didn’t know how to work in
groups.  There were many books and “textbook” ways on the design process
but nowhere did we have a resource that helped students realize that the people
were just as important as the process.  I’ve always had an interest in
organizational behavior and thought the comic medium was one of the better
mediums to convey it in!"

I recommend this novel to any student that is working on a team project or student group — or in fact any person or group in any organization — as it shows the struggles that just about every human group faces — plus the group’s ultimate success also shows some of the ways that groups can overcome such obstacles.   I also Alison’s the novel because it reminds me that, even in the most successful groups, group life is challenging and often upsetting — it is never (at least in any group I have ever known or been part of) this beautiful thing that unfolds in a seamless and relentlessly happy way — there are always hassles in the best of groups.

Alison has posted The Product Design Process on a website, where you can go and read it or download it.  I also think that this graphic novel is something that ought to sold as a real bound book ins tores and on Amazon and all that — and I am checking around to see if I can convince someone in the publishing business that this is the case.

 

I am in the process of writing a long post about the executive program on Customer-Focused Innovation
that a group of us led at Stanford earlier in the month, a joint
venture between the Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner
Institute of Design.  As I was thinking about what the participants in
that program did, I realized how closely it mapped the principles of
design thinking that Diego Rodriguez
and Executive Director George Kembel
drew out on a napkin about 18
months ago (Of course, this was about 50th prototype, in the spirit of
design thinking). I think it is lovely thing. As a matter of fact, as
Diego and I have been discussing lately, these are really principles
for turning designing thinking into action, not just ways of thinking.

The new Stanford d.school, or as it is known officially, The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, has been lucky to attract enormously skilled people who devote their time to teaching, administration, and fund-raising for no pay, or for a tiny fraction of what they can make in other jobs.  In the Clicks-n-Bricks class that we are doing this term, for example, my co-teachers are Michael Dearing who was an Executive Vice-President at eBay for years and Perry Klebahn — who invented the modern snowshoe, built Atlas Snowshoes to design, make, and market it, sold the company, and then went on to be COO of Patagonia.  (In addition, the second half of the class has involved heavy contributions from the amazing Debra Dunn, who was at HP for many years and held at least two different Executive Vice-President positions. And we also have two other incredibly  skilled and dedicated designers on the team,d.school fellow  Alex Ko and Ph.D student Liz Gerber.)

Back to Perry. I’ve worked on three different d.school classes with Perry, and just last week, worked with him on an executive program called Customer-Focused Innovation that I co-direct with Huggy Rao. This program is a joint venture between the d.school and the Graduate School of Business (I will write about on another post — it was an inspiring and exhausting experience, especially for the d.school hands-on design experience that Perry co-led).  These classes and programs are among the most exciting, chaotic, and intense teaching experiences I’ve ever been part of — the design teams work under intense time pressure, toward uncertain goals, produce prototype solutions rather than just talking about what to do, and feel pressed to do creative work — which is then judged in public by panels of experts who are polite and constructive, but call it as they see it.

No matter how wild things get, Perry is always rock-solid, never losing his cool (even as those around him do, including me), constantly praising people and pushing them ever harder, and displaying massive knowledge about the intersection between human needs and the sometimes harsh realities of business.  And throughout, he says remarkably little, while modeling the right behavior.

In classic Perry fashion, although I saw him constantly last week, and asked how he was doing many times, he was focused on the executive program and never mentioned a bit of personal news (which was rumored, but not confirmed) — because as always, Perry focuses on what matters most.  I eventually learned that on November 10th, a press release went out announcing that Perry is the new CEO of Timbuk2.  This company originally gained fame for making bike messenger bags and selling them to a broader set of customers, and now makes a wider line of products including laptop cases, backpacks, and accessories. Plus Timbuk2 is set-up so you can build your own custom bag either online or in person at their store in San Francisco — check it out if you want to design your own bag or want to see a great case study of mass customization in action.

Perry is still committed to the d.school and will still teach classes, but no doubt we will be seeing less of him. The people at Timbuk2 are mighty lucky to have him, as are Timbuk2 customers. Perry is a great leader and doer.  I am constantly inspired by his action orientation, his coolness when all seems to be falling apart, and his remarkable ability to see and develop the best in every person around him.  I write and talk about what it takes to turn knowledge into action, but Perry lives it!

As
I mentioned in an earlier post, we had conference
earlier this week at Stanford this week on sustainability, which was hosted by
our d.school class Clicks-n-bricks: Creating Mass Market Experiences.  After Debra Dunn set the stage, we had a great
presentation by IDEO’s Bob Adams on the challenges of designing for
sustainability, and then we had CEO of Wal-Mart.com Carter
Cast and Wal-Mart’s Vice-President for Strategy and Sustainability Andrew
Ruben do a presentation about Wal-Mart’s Sustainability efforts and goals.  I was taken by how much progress Wal-Mart was
making and the apparent seriousness of the effort (Andrew was quite open in
admitting that is started as a PR effort, but once they started looking into
it, they were completely hooked as they saw how serious he global warming
problem was and the opportunities to save so much money in so many ways). 

When
the conference was over, I was talking to one of my colleagues about how
impressed I was with the small successes that they have achieved, and what
seemed to be a continuing strategy that sounds much like Karl
Weick’s  classic article: "Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems,"
which was published in the American Psychologist in January, 1984. Weick argued
that when people start thinking about solving a massive problem like sustainability,
that they can seem so difficult to solve and so upsetting, that “People often
define social problems in ways that overwhelm their ability to do anything
about them.”  Weick proposed that a
constructive alternative is “To recast larger problems into smaller, less
arousing problems, [so] people can identify a series of smaller controllable opportunities
of modest size that produce visible results.”  Weick went on to argue that this strategy of “small
wins” can often generate more action and more complete solutions to major
problems because it is a path that enables people to make slow, steady
progress, rather than to be frozen in their tracks by a seemingly unsolvable
problem.

In
fact, some of the most impressive things Wal-Mart has accomplished are what
they call “Quick Wins.” Andrew Ruben gave us numerous examples; consider just two.
First, is something called an auxiliary power unit (APU) in Wal-Mart trucks. It
turns out that when drivers stop their trucks, they often still leave their  engines running so that the heat or air
conditioning stays on; APUs provide power so that they can shut-off the engine –
and it turns out that many trucks out there still don’t use APUs. Wal-Mart
installed APUs in 100% of its trucks during the past couple years, saving them
25 million a year in fuel costs and reducing carbon output from their trucks by
100,000 cubic feet per year.

Or
to take another example, they are working with suppliers to reduce the size of
the boxes that their products are placed in – for everything from laundry soap
to boxes for toys pictured below. Ruben explain that the difference between
these two boxes don’t look like much, but when you load up thousands of
shipping containers a year with your product, small changes have a huge impact
on how many ships and trucks are needed to transport products to the 6500
Wal-Mart stores in the world.

I’ve
always loved Weick’s article and it strikes me that Wal-Mart’s early successes
are a perfect example.  I am also impressed
by how they are using their market power to do everything from pressing
suppliers to make more condensed laundry detergent to making power supplies for
laptop computers that cut energy usage by substantial amounts – and in the
process making some “green” technologies that were not economically viable
before Wal-Mart ordered them, instantly viable for every company as a result of
new economies of scale -– which is exactly what happened with the energy efficient
LED lights that they ordered for the refrigerator display cases.

My
colleague, however, made an interesting counter argument that has left my
wondering if I am overly enamored of Wal-Mart’s small wins, or quick wins as
they call them, as a route to solving the sustainability crisis. She said that
she liked the wonderful examples, but also wondered if a more systematic approach
wasn’t also required, as they needed to think more systematically about how the
pieces of the system fit together, and the hidden trade-offs associated with what
seemed like clear wins.

I
guess that this discussion is just a special case of the long running argument
about whether central planning is possible, or if even if it is possible,
whether trial and error approaches yield superior approaches to a central plan –
an old debate in economics and organizational strategy.  I don’t know the answer, but my strong opinion
at the moment is that Weick is right, and if Wal-Mart executives had framed the
problem as huge and overwhelming, rather than breaking it into smaller problems
that they could tackle, then they would not have accomplished so much so fast.  But this is a strong
opinion that is weakly held, and I wonder what the limits of a small wins
approach are in this case — not just for our students who are trying to help
Wal-Mart a bit with this challenge, but also for Wal-Mart as a whole, and for
every other company that wants to tackle the sustainability problem. I am of
course especially curious to see how our students respond to this challenge,
and if they accept – or challenge – the small wins approach.  And I am equally curious to know what others
who have thought about and tried to tackle sustainability problems –and other
seemingly overwhelming problems – think of the small wins approach versus the
importance of developing an overarching strategy that fits all the pieces
together.  I suppose one answer is you
need both, but if you read Weick and some of his followers, you can see that
some people take a very strong stance against overall strategy, and argue,
instead, that it is usually just a pretty story that people make after they
string together a series of small wins (or small loses) to explain what
happened in retrospect.

You are all invited to an conference on sustainability that our d.school class — Clicks-n-Bricks: Creating Mass Market Experiences — is hosting this Thursday on the Stanford campus.  The next project that will be tackled by our class focuses on how to create excitement, build networks, and spread knowledge within Wal-Mart about their current sustainability initiatives.

The speakers will include:

Debra Dunn, former  HP Executive Vice-President who (among other things) led their sustainability efforts.
Bob Adams, who leads IDEO’s sustainability efforts.
Andrew Ruben, Wal-Mart’s VP of Corporate Strategy and Sustainability.

Debra and Bob are fantastic speakers!  I suspect Andrew will great as well.

Here are the particulars:

What is Designing for Sustainability?
d.school Mini-Conference Fall 2006
3:30 PM – 7:00 PM
Hewlett 200

Please join us!

Also, I attach a great poster done by d.school Fellow Alex Ko.

Download d.school mini-conference.pdf

I’ve written about the new d.school class that we are teaching in Fall. We’ve got more details about the class, and if you are a Stanford masters students (from any department on campus, we select a mix of students and you work in teams), we hope you will consider applying.  These are intense classes with a large element of realism. They are also really fun.  We also have more d.school classes coming this year.

I realize that most of you aren’t Stanford students. But there some interesting lessons from these classes about how to do creative work and to prepare students to work on teams that do creative work, and I’ll tell you about the interesting ones as they arise.

Clicks-n-Bricks: Creating Mass Market
Experiences

MS&E 289 – Fall Quarter 06

Clicks-n-Bricks: Creating Mass
Market Experiences is the lead-off in a series of project-based classes taught
by Stanford’s Hasso Platner Institute of Design(“The d.School”)this year. This
class will focus on innovating On-Line and Off-Line experiences for customers
and employees, working with real executives, industry experts, and companies to
find solutions to real problems.

The projects will be tackled in
teams. The class will be made up of graduate students from varied backgrounds
and programs. Students will do most of their work in interdisciplinary teams.
Students will get out in the field, make observations of users in context, and
quickly iterate prototype experiences, organizational design changes, and other
solutions aimed at improving customer and employee experiences.  In addition to intense interactions with the
teaching team, students will be guided, coached, and judged by a cast of
industry executives, managers, and experts.

The class will focus on two
projects. The first will be on improving the “theme park” experience for
customers as an introduction to design thinking and methods. Students will
visit and study local theme parks and apply the design process to identify
problems and quickly iterate solutions. They will be advised and receive feedback
about their work from managers and executives in the industry, as well as
members of the teaching team. The second project will entail using the design
process to work with Wal-Mart on its sustainability initiative, specifically to
spread knowledge, network connections, and enthusiasm among Wal-Mart employees
about this initiative. Wal-Mart executives and managers will work with students
to explain the company’s commitment to sustainability, guide students efforts
to engage Wal-Mart employees more fully and effectively in this effort, and
(along with other experts), give feedback to students about their work.

Student teams will present work
periodically in the class as well as complete their design project

Teaching Team:

Professor
Robert Sutton

Associate
Consulting Professor Perry Klebahn

Associate
Consulting Professor Michael Dearing

Instructor
Liz Gerber, PhD Candidate

d.school Fellow Alex Ko

3-4 Units

Class Location: Birch

Time:

Class
– 3:15PM-6:15PM Thursdays

Lab
Session – 5:15-6:15pm Mondays (as scheduled)

Class Size: 24

Prerequisites: Masters standing
and permission of instructor

If you want to be notified about
the application process, click here and then click on the “contact us” link.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/dschool/participate/program_information.html

A pair of stories came out in InformationWeek yesterday about how companies use "viral" or "buzz" marketing to spread excitement about, and use, of their wares.  One of the things that the story mentioned was the d.school class that Diego and I taught on Creating Infectious Action, which focused on getting students out into the world to do things like Firefox adoptions, promote hip-hop artists, and saving by young people.  The main story talks about the different ways that companies implement this kind of marketing (and I am quoted as saying that, they often have a lot less control over it than they admit, which I believe).  I was especially delighted to see the sidebar "The Sacred and Profane" about the impressive accomplishments our wonderful students had in spreading Firefox, producing over 10 websites in two weeks, some of which were extremely successful and others that were extremely clever.

To extend my brief quote in the main story, the thing that bothers me about the way that venture capitalists and others talk about viral marketing and other management techniques is that they focus so much on the rare successes, but rarely talk about about all the companies that have done the "right" things, and failed. On the other hand, I don’t really blame Steve Jurvetson (who is one the smartest, and probably the nicest venture capitalists I know) for wanting to talk about hits Skype and Hotmail so much, and the failures he has been involved in so little.  If you care about internal rate of return (rather than failure rate) he is doing mighty well!

PS:Check-out metacool if you want to see the talk that Diego and I gave about our class and the panel that followed. It is a grainy video, but I thought interesting.