Refer to Snapshot from Practice IDEO: Masters of Design on page 568 of the text book. Based on this information and the article accompanying the case study in Canvas, answer the following questions: What are the advantages of rapid prototyping? Can you think of a personal project that would have benefited from prototyping? How? Why?

CEO Tim Brown at the Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters of IDEO The Deans of Design By James Pethokoukis golian nomads. The yurt is not an IDEO design, though. Brown spotted the Steelcase-created pro- hen you're the chief executive officer totype at a design show last year and just had to have W of one of the planet's most influential |it. Yet the technoyurt represents a core IDEO design design firms, you can't help but notice principle: creating something tangible as a launch- compelling design-such as the object | ing pad for further exploration and innovation. "It's in which IDEO's Tim not talking about what may be; it's ac- Brown and a visitor From the tually creating and building it," Brown are sitting this summer morning. says. "Something you can walk into. Right inside the front door of the two- computer mouse It's that ability to make new ideas tan- story lobby at IDEO's Palo Alto, Calif., gible that makes design useful." headquarters is a 5-foot-high, open- to the newest roofed, Corian-shelled, cylindrical Swiffer, IDEO is IDEO is all about experiential ap- proaches. Its designers try to see and micro-conference room. It's sort of sense the world by getting inside the a 21st-century version of a yurt, the the firm behind heads of their fellow human con- sturdy, all-weather tent of the Mon- the scenes sumers. The firm-a dream come true PHOTOGRAPHY BY WILLIAM MERCER MCLEOD FOR LERNEWRBest in Business for the concerned parents of liberal arts strategic and business development for majors everywhere-employs anthro- SSM Health Care-St. Louis, part of one pologists, cognitive psychologists, and of the largest Roman Catholic systems sociologists, among other right-brain in the country. "They understand that thinkers, to create, improve, or reimag- you need a messy process to gain con- ine all manner of products, services, sumer insights." work spaces, and business systems. "It's First laptop. IDEO employs some 450 a very human-centered process," says people-including plenty of industrial Tom Kelley, the firm's general manag- designers and engineers-at its home er and brother of founder David Kelley. base in Palo Alto and six other locations "Others approach a problem from the including Chicago, London, and Shang- point of view that says, "We have the hai. It was created in 1991 by a merger of smartest people in the world; therefore, David Kelley Design, which created the we can think this through." We approach first mouse for Apple Computer, and ID it from the point of view that the answer Two, which designed the first laptop is out there, hidden in plain sight, so let's computer for Grid Systems. In the 1990s, go observe human behavior and see IDEO made a name for itself by design- where the opportunities are." ing dozens of technology products such To illustrate the principle, Kelley as the Palm V and Treo organizers. On gives the example of working on a proj- the low-tech side, it has designed the ect with the SSM DePaul Health Center | Crest no-squeeze, stand-up toothpaste in St. Louis to revamp its emergency room. One ap- proach the firm could have A key element of IDEO's "design thinking" taken would have been to quiz a bunch of former pa- is getting out of the office and into the field. ients on their experiences. That sort of clinical, sterile also leveraging its tradi- approach is not the IDEO tional product design busi- way. Instead, the firm went ness, techniques of gather- up close and personal. For ing consumer insights, and instance, one IDEO an- methods for generating thropologist pretended to ideas to transform itself into be a patient and managed a broad-based consulting to videotape his entire firm that can teach compa- emergency room experi- nics how to focus on the ence. One realization: consumer, starting with de- While the admitting and sign. They still do excellent treatment process might product designs, but IDEO seem logical and orderly to also helps companies to staff, it appears chaotic and work through the complex confusing to patients. So "The answer is out there, hidden in plain sight," says Gonoral issues of innovation, partic- IDEO created a simple Manager Tom Kelley (top). Above, prototypes of the Apple mouse ularly the front end where "map" that the hospital ideas are generated, gath- staff could give each incoming patient | tube for Procter & Gamble as well as the | ered, and turned into product and service outlining the seven steps of the emer- award-winning Leap Chair for office fur- concepts," explains Stefan Thomke, a gency room experience, starting with niture maker Steelcase. (IDEO is now a professor at Harvard Business School the triage nurse. It also recommended wholly owned independent business unit who has studied and written extensive- cards that each member of the staff of Steelcase. ly on IDEO. could hand out so the patients could Product design has been getting more Nestled inside the yurt, Brown ex- keep track of who's who. "They under- and more attention in recent years as pounds on what IDEO has termed "de- stand that creativity had to be provoked companies worry about their wares being sign thinking" and how it forms the and fed," says Robert Porter, who has turned into indistinguishable commodi- basis for innovation and problem solv- ed with 1En n pad of Design can add value But inamis ant of lesion thinking iselectronic device for use in waving and gesturing. Seeing that this hospitals. One option was sort of abstract back and forth wasn't to put the 20-pound device getting the group anywhere, an IDEO en- on a rolling cart. But IDEO gineer stepped out of the room for five realized that nurses would minutes and came back with a crude tool hate hauling the thing model slapped together out of a white- around. So designers de- board marker, a black film canister, and cided to shape it like a clas- a clothespinlike clip. "That prototype sic 1930s doctor's bag, stur- crystallized the conversation in the room dy handle and all. That and allowed the project to move for- design not only made the ward," Kelley says. "That kind of proto- device easier to carry, but type also lowers the bar so that everyone the visual iconography re- in the whole organization can do a pro- ally connected with nurses. totype, which really contributes to a cul- The answer often lies with | ture of innovation. No one will mock you humans," says Tom Kelley, for bringing something unpolished to author of two books on cre- the CEO." ativity at IDEO. "When we Fragile. The third big element of de- tried to redesign a supply sign thinking is storytelling. "Ideas are chain, for instance, we fragile even when they're prototyping." didn't watch trucks, we Brown says. "And in large organiza- watched the workers." tions in particular, new ideas can get A second key to design killed very easily because people don't thinking is rapidly proto- understand them or connect with getting out of the office and into the typing initial ideas and exposing them them." Vocera came to IDEO with tech- field, as with the emergency room proj- to users. It helped IDEO when working | nology for a two-way wireless device ect. "Design thinkers are trained to go on the new Crest toothpaste tube for that could be clipped to a shirt pocket out into the world and connect with the P&G. A big challenge was improving the or worn on a lanyard. It was ideal for world in a way that gives insight into traditional screw-on cap, which always hospitals, big-box stores, or corporate new ideas," Brown says. gets gunked up with toothpaste. IDEO campuses. To dramatize how the Star Specialized Bicycle Components, a first suggested a pop-on, pop-off cap. Trek-esque device would work, IDEO California bike access y company, came But when designers worked up rough produced a five-minute film that the to IDEO looking for new approaches to prototypes and watched people use firm later used to get venture-capital the common water bottle. So the com- them, they quickly noticed that users funds and that served as a basis for pany sent a team of researchers into the kept trying to unscrew the cap even marketing the product. foothills above Stanford University in though they were told how it worked. Most people are probably not really Palo Alto to watch bikers using their The action was a well-ingrained habit aware that firms like IDEO exist. They water bottles in action. The observers that would probably be impossible to may assume that companies do design quickly came to two conclusions: First, break. So designers came up with a hy- in-house. Others may have discovered reattaching a water bottle to a bike is brid: a twist-off cap that had a short design firms through the reality tele- a tricky move when you're also trying thread but would still be easy to clean. vision show American Inventor, which keep your eyes on the road ahead. The "It doesn't matter how clever you are, pitted inventors and their products IDEO solution was a water bottle with your first idea about something is never against one another for a $1 million a tapered bottom and a rubber friction right," Brown says. "So the great value prize. At one point in the show, the fi- ring to make it easier to grip. Second, of prototyping-and prototyping quick- nalists started working with design bikers used a two-step process with the ly and inexpensively-is that you learn firms to improve the look of their in- water bottle: pull the nozzle out with about the idea and make it better." ventions, their functionality, or often their teeth and squeeze the bottle. So, The prototypes don't have to be elab- both. But American Inventor gives a using the hu-man tricuspid heart valve orale, Brown is quick to note. Not at all. misleading view of companies like as a bit of in-spirational biomimicry, the For instance, IDEO was working on a IDEO because "it assumes design is IDEO team designed a simple self-seal- surgical tool design for Gyrus ENT. Dur- something that is added late in the ing valve that opens only when squeezed. ing a meeting with a roomful of surgeons process," Kelley says. Years of customer observation also from the company's advisory board, not The show also implies that design is helped the company design a portable much was getting done-just lots of hand | simply about products. But IDEO is