IDEO Deep Dive

IDEO is a design company based out of Palo Alto, CA.They have done designs for a number of famous clients (including Apple's first mouse) and are a leading company in the industrial design industry. 

The IDEO design studio in Palo Alto, with worker's bikes hung from the ceiling and an airplane wing prominently displayed as decoration. As you can see, their workplace is a little "off-the-wall." :-)

They were challenged by the folks at Nightline to redesign the shopping cart in 5 days. The series of videos that we watched documents that process. Those videos can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M66ZU2PCIcM  ,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVZ8pmkg1do&feature=related  ,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyugyrCQTuw&feature=relmfu  .

Much of the work at the front end of a project is "Deep Dive" brainstorming sessions of "focused chaos." The purpose of this phase is to gather a sheer quantity of thoughts and ideas related to the item or design problem at hand. IDEO has set some ground rules to govern this important stage:

-- think of your product in terms of verbs rather than nouns.
-- concentrate on one conversation at a time
-- stay focused
-- encourage wild ideas
-- go for quantity (no editing)
-- be visual (visual words or sketch)
-- defer judgment (no stopping to say that isn't going to work, isn't a good idea...)
-- build on the ideas of others

At IDEO, they believe that it takes a group to generate the best ideas. They say that a "lone genius" could not explore the depth and breadth of ideas that they do in these group sessions. As Deiter Rams said in Objectified, design does not happen in a vacuum.  The ideas and interactions of others must be taken into account throughout the design process. The best idea for improvement may be the one that you never thought of, or someone else's idea might complement and improve yours. The design process is all about keeping your mind open to the ideas of others and knowing that there is always room for improvement.

The next step in the process was to break into groups and prototype. I thought it was important to note that although they encouraged a period of off-the-wall, unfiltered brainstorming, they had to step in at some point and encourage their groups to move forward with certain ideas. They recognized that they had to stop the idea-generating process at some point or it would never end. Because the "best possible" improvement to a design is such a subjective ideal, ideas could be tossed around forever at this stage. I think it is important to set a deadline for the brainstorming period and move forward with one or several of your best ideas at that point. Otherwise, your brainstorming ideas would never lead to any finished products.

Finally, all groups compared their prototypes and combined the best elements from each into a refined finished product. Not every product goes to market or is produced extensively, but the process goes on.

I think the most important element of this process was the number and variety of sources consulted along the way. Before any brainstorming was done, they sought out retail workers, cart manufacturers, shoppers, and other "experts" who had experience working with carts and knew some major problems that could be improved. Brainstorming was done as a large group, prototyping was done in teams, and these prototypes were brought back to the large group for a final design review. Once the finished product was prototyped, they brought it straight to Whole Foods to ask for a couple of workers' opinions on the appearance and functionality of the design. Seeking experts who have experience with the product and real people who use the product seemed like a very effective method of obtaining information and feedback.

(Sidenote: I saw this same video when I was in probably 5th grade, and have wanted to be an industrial designer ever since! As you can imagine, IDEO is very near and dear to my heart. I would love to work in a collaborative design firm such as IDEO some day.)