Welcome to the d.school!

The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (also known as the “D-School” or “d.school”)

Presented Thursday morning, August 25, 2011, in the d.school building (close to the old Geology Corner)

The first speaker was George Kembel, executive director and co-founder of the d.school. Kembel is an entrepreneur and investor turned educator. He states simply: “Design is changing the world.” The d.school is project-based rather than lecture-based and is interdisciplinary--and all d.school classes are oversubscribed. d.school founder David Kelly calls d.school: ”A home for wayward thinkers.” Kelly believed that too many students felt they weren't creative because they couldn't draw.

Hasso Plattner endowed the d.school with funds to start the program and to renovate its building. Plattner was investing in the capacity to innovate, as opposed to investing in the next innovative idea.

Kembel emphasizes that d.school is not a “design school.” (As a matter of fact, Stanford has a history of product design under the School of Mechanical Engineering—a two-year program that's about 50 years old.) He wants students to discover they can be creative in everything they do, from improving drug approval processes to removing the dread of going through airport security. Students will develop new things to make life better. d.school intends to nurture the creative capacity of all of its students.

In addition to not being a design school, d.school is not a school. Period. d.school does not grant degrees. The idea is to marry the school of a student's home degree (e.g., medical school, business school) with creative competency. d.school is like a startup inside Stanford. Classes are listed in home departments and are taught by teams of faculty. A typical d.school class meeting begins with a 10-minute talk. Then students work. Then students talk together about what they are working on. The idea is to learn while making the product.

When you “graduate” from d.school, you get a nice pin. As a couple might be encouraged to “go forth and multiply” at a wedding, d.school “grads” are encouraged to go forth and innovate.

The second speaker was Rich Crandall, a veteran of Teach for America in Oakland and director of d.school’s K-12 Lab. Stated a different way, Crandall’s d.school focus is transforming education, where he has numerous partners and projects including the Kill Gas Project, the Food Deserts Project, JetBlue, Facebook, and the Girl Scouts.

Crandall says that d.school faculty members follow their students, rather than vice versa. Whereas traditional thinking is directed thinking, design thinking is emergent thinking. Common d.school vocabulary words include “empathize,” “define,” “ideate,” “prototype,” and “test.” Common d.school phrases include “human-centered,” “bias toward action,” “radical collaboration,” “culture of prototyping,” “show don't tell,” and “mindful of process.” Empathy provides confidence that one is working on a meaningful problem.

Much to the surprise of attendees, Crandall then introduced our project for the day: What can we do to improve the car maintenance experience? Attendees immediately offered these solutions:

·       Provide a meaningful explanation of check engine light.

·       Get a referral for a mechanic from a friend.

·       Have the repair shop provide doughnuts.

We then viewed a film that featured John, a mechanic, and Erica, a truck owner (and d.school student). These things are important to Erica when she visits a garage: to feel empowered, to trust her mechanic, to learn, to be independent, to appear knowledgeable, and as a mechanical engineering major, she suspects that she could understand some of her truck’s symptoms and solutions. These things are important to John: to be trusted, to tackle a challenging problem. The film also showed d.school students brainstorming the problem of getting kids to eat vegetables. The students had fun, showed no judgment of others’ ideas, and they moved around trying out different solutions.

Now it was time for the Class of ’59 to work on the car maintenance experience. Here were the rules:

·       Defer judgment

·       Go for volume

·       One conversation at a time

·       Be visual

·       Develop a headline

·       Build on the ideas of others

·       Stay on topic

·       Encourage wild ideas

and Crandall introduced the “word at a time proverb” [below].

Attendees were then divided into teams of seven and set free in a big lab. Each team was charged with developing a product for either Erica the truck owner or John the mechanic. Teams started with word at a time proverbs: one member offers a word and then the next person offers a different word. When the string of words makes sense as a sentence, everyone claps. The person who provided the last word offers the first word for the next string. We developed several strings of words before setting to work on solutions for either Erica or John.

A team brainstormed the problem, listing challenges or frustrations experienced by Erica or John on a white board. From the list of challenges, the team thought up a product or two that might provide a solution. Then team members got to select items from big plastic bins—items such as pieces of construction paper, pipe cleaners, Styrofoam blocks, and masking tape—with which to build a solution. For example, one team had to design a solution for Erica. They believed that if Erica could watch the work being done on her truck on her computer, she would feel empowered and more confident about the work being done. So the team got a big square block of Styrofoam, attaching a piece of construction paper to one side (to act as the screen) and a smaller piece of construction paper in front of the block—to serve as a keyboard.

The session ended with a spokesperson for each team providing a one-minute show and tell of the team’s product.

The upshot of the d.school experience was that most of us would sign up for a d.school class were we still Stanford students. What fun they have. And the d.school produces many useful products, including a cartoon-type film that is used to prepare a child for an MRI. Another d.school product is a very low cost incubator that is now being used in isolated 3^rd world villages that have very high infant mortality rates. Be sure to visit the d.school website.