IDEO - Take Two

I visited the IDEO office in SFO on my first day of the Exchange and was also lucky to visit the Palo Alto office towards the end of my Exchange.  This gave me more insight into design thinking and the way IDEO work. 

The table top is paper, you peel the strips of paper off

Jonah met Ellen and I in the foyer of the Palo Alto office.  There are two things that can happen on arrival.  You could either be met for a brief discussion in the circular couch or stand at the tall counter to see where the discussion takes you and the discretion of your host.  We discovered this after a great 1 ½hr discussion and tour with Jonah – we were lucky not to be the ones that hit the couch. (However I did like the stack of paper - that was the table - and crayons)

 Before we headed off to look around IDEO, Jonah explained ‘rapid prototyping’  showed us an example in the foyer and said it can be used on any project not just engineer designing.  It’s about moving fast. Don’t spend forever on something and then find out it’s a waste of time, says Jonah.  If you spend a long time designing or creating a project before you know whether its going to work well, you may end up having a vested interest in making it work.  He showed us examples of models that are done quickly and either thrown away or continued to be worked on.

In the foyer is an example of one of the ways they gather ideas from the staff.  They did 3 quick prototypes for redeveloping the foyer and asked the staff to make suggestions and advise which one they liked or if there were other ideas.  He said you have to hold them to it and make sure you get ideas. 

IDEO also provides free food for everyone (like Google and Facebook).  Jonah says the kitchen and dining area is a great space as its where some of the best ideas are born.

Onto brainstorming. Whenever there is a brainstorming session or question to be asked of people Jonah says it has to be a very specific question.  Go out and do the research first and understand what you are after, then start the brainstorm with a specific question.   He also said don't let staff or anyone tell you that they aren't creative, its just practice, everyone is creative.  IDEO went out to a school and asked the children to design a wallet, the kids all said they couldn't do it, they weren't creative and when IDEO prompted further, the ideas that spilt out were fabulous.  One group designed a wallet compartment in their 'flip flop' (sandshoe, I guess he means for we non Americans)

IDEO use their ‘human-centred design thinking’ philosophy and the CEO has written some great books I will be buying us.  They research human patterns and go out and experiment with people.  They worked on a new hotel lobby and found out you can change the nature of interaction by standing side by side vs face to face.  Standing side by side is more collaborative.   That's just a very quick example, they discovered much more during that experiment.

 IDEO's ethos - Try things really quickly in the lowest resolution, then increase the level of resolution – don't sit in rooms and pontificate says Jonah, get out there and look at behaviours and find out what's needed.  Don't just talk to the people who you always talk to, or to the majority of people, go to the 'edges' - find out why people on the edges don't get involved.  Go to supermarkets, shopping centres and just talk to people.  Jonah says, do less planning - do more researching.  Research by getting out and talking to people, but do it as quickly as possible.   For big hairy projects do small incremental things a long the way while you are developing towards the final outcome.  It stops the team from going to sleep, keeps them interested - but keep moving fast to the end product - was Jonah's piece of advice.

There's that 3d Machine again

Palo Alto City use IDEO's human centred design thinking in a lot of their work.  I have some examples to bring back.

Can't resist showing the bike racks and use of space