Has anyone worked at IDEO, i have become quite interested in them recently and was interested if anybody could share experience they have heard about working there or similar offices.
I was particularly interested in Design-led business consultancy, but don't know much about it....would be quite different from conventional architecture career.
grid+shay: will be doing a personal mini-research mission on IDEO over christmas, Will read Tim Brown's new book Change by Design and keep you guys posted with a summary.
j'aime - there's been a bit of discussion on ideo in past posts. it may take some deep researching to find it.
short take i'll add: they really want people who have a broad set of interesting experiences and general knowledge, with one area of very 'deep' expertise. office culture is huge with them - you can be hyper talented but if you don't 'fit', it's not going to happen. as in most places, if you know someone there, it helps in getting a look. not sure if it really helps in final selections.
finally, it's really an ultimate 'right place at the right time' from a hiring perspective. if you have the depth of expertise that they happen to be looking for - and there's an opening - and you're willing to potentially relocate...well, you might be in.
that said, i do think this type of firm, if managed properly, is a much more sustainable practice model than the current architecture firm.
before firms start being more like the IDEO's of the world, the entire structure of architectural education needs to be revamped from the obsolete uber designer model to a model based on collaboration.
any decision needs a leader, collaboration implies "no one is responsible when the shit hit the fan."
i have worked in very collaborative environment, yeah it sounds great, but when there is a major design flaw no one steps up the plate to defend it.
that being said do agree that the education system need to be revamped, but how? architecture/design in most cases is a very personal thing, no matter how collaborative 2 artists are, there will be differences. even successful partnerships required a good leader and supporters that don't mind taking care of the business end or play 2nd fiddle.
until schools start teaching "it is ok to be the supporter." forgettabout't!
i don't think too many people at ideo would consider themselves 'artists'. definitely 'designers' but for me there's a difference between the two. an artist has no one (in an idealistic sense) to please but themselves. a designer has to be more supple than that.
if you're tending towards the designer as artist, my guess is ideo wouldn't be the right fit. maybe something more like fuseproject.
first of all, IDEO's site is a mess. i still can't grasp precisely what they do after spending 5 mins. on their site. it basically looks like a giant infomercial that sells ummmm... please tell me what does this means:
"We refer to our overall approach as "design thinking": a means of problem solving that uses design methodologies to tap into a deep reservoir of opportunity. These methods include observation, prototyping, building, and storytelling, and can be applied by a wide range of people to a breadth of organizational challenges."
don't get me wrong, they might well be the best collaberative working model, but their site does not reflect that.
outed,
this perhaps belong to another thread, but when i said artist i was referring to how architecture seemed to be taught or perceived in a similar fashion as any fine arts major. people are taught to come up with their own designs, working on their own model, figure out their own parti, explore your own originality or weakness, etc. the work comes from within you and your work defines who you are. you take all the credit for your own work and you do not share ideas. call it what you will, at the end of the day you want your work to be recognized, be proud of etc. if not, exactly how an artist or designer would want.
the point is, design by nature is not a democratic process, someone always call the shots, be it the major design contributor or the deal maker, but often a business decision.
what is wrong with this model of education? I don't know. but i know that in order to contribute in a collaborative environment, you better have something to bring to the table. the current education system seemed to do just that. perhaps we should reduce "studio" credit and require the curriculum to include business courses and collaborative designs? more professional practice classes and say goodbye to summer abroad studies?
vado,
those are simple questions and since you seemed to be the expert on edward de bono's work perhaps u can shed some light.
hi. i agree their website is a bit of a mess. in some ways, a bit like their process....
the artist/designer distinction is fine for this thread - i think it's fundamentally what ideo would say differentiates them from other firms.
if you dig into ideo's method a bit, i'm not sure there is a single 'designer' which brings a more singular authority to each project, nevermind the entire studio. is there a project director? of course. do they help shape the end product the most? absolutely. but their process depends a lot on the model that 'great ideas may not look so pretty at first'.
now, is this a process that's going to produce works of great authority or of a singular hand, in a way that we tend to recognize 'great designers' by? nope. and that may be the flaw in their model artistically speaking. i mean, really, can anyone point to 2 of their products made in the past 5 years? phillipe starck they are not...
so, back to the original thread: they are a company which is trying to develop an alternative business model, one that is explicitly moving within the biggest of corporate halls and one which hopes to change the way businesses see and value design. god bless them in that endeavor.
sorry - i should add: the point of the comparison is that if you hope to be a phillipe starck one day, this kind of office may help you understand how to work with companies, but it's not going to do you any good in terms of establishing a 'name'. and, honestly, we need the starck's of the world...
Six Thinking Hats is on YouTube. Its a rather old video that features an overhead projector. STH is not a hierarchical approach. Of course, any project will have its "leaders", that's not the point of the method. Rather it is to focus the different elements of thinking into categories allowing concentrated attention to each in time.
IDEO- method is...
Observation
Ideation
Implementation
The buzz these days is Design Thinking. Writers like Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Pink and Richard Florida champion the right brain, creative class type of thinker and this has migrated into business writers and thinkers who have taken up the call that "Design Thinking" is the way that organizations can remain innovative. IDEO is pushing to apply design thinking to problems that go beyond Posters and Toasters to move beyond conventional problem solving techniques. A worthy overview of theirphilosophy is in Stanford Social Innovation Review.
i checked out the video & article and i must say these are very utopian ideologies. they are extremely difficult to archive in the past, it will be even harder today considering how much faster design needs to be delivered.
in any rigorous process to produce any product or solution, the responsible thing is to understand how to finance it. who will pay for all these up front cost to sustain such diverse group of experts, or assumed experts? nothing against the idea of research, but when you hire a doctor, i am sure you want to find someone who knows their stuff. the idea of you paying him/her to experiment with techniques as part of the process will not be the ideal scenario. what are designer going to learn how to spend the client's money responsibly?
observation, ideation, implementation? sounds great! but when are westerner going to learn that their methodology does not work always with every culture? culture is not something that can be fully observed by any extended length of any project. do these so call design thinking really works? how many experiments should we allot before we move on to test theories in another 3rd world country? all we hear is what worked, but after how many failed attempts? how many lives and livelihood ruined is enough to satisfy our supposedly "better" thinking techniques?
perhaps it is simply how our civilization works. the intellectuals feed the powerful ideas and we have the economic collapse.
the 6 hats can be viewed as an organized sort of brainstorming. looking outside the box or review every possible solution is nothing new, but a lateral think tank? i do not believe more brains = better solution/possibilities. just look at the work pinned up on the walls in school. the best ideas comes from few truly remarkable people on this planet, yes they make mistakes too, and that is not going change, ever.
"i do not believe more brains = better solution/possibilities. just look at the work pinned up on the walls in school. the best ideas comes from few truly remarkable people on this planet, yes they make mistakes too, and that is not going change, ever."
I agree.
I don't think designers should be "servants" to public to satisfy their needs.I think what a designer should do is first and foremost is solve problems, come up with a solution and pay attention to aesthetic values while doing so and you don't need a couple of people working collaboratively to achieve that especially if the design you're working on is of a small scale like industrial design.
While I don't mind if you choose to work in groups to come up with a solution I don't think it must be a "requirement". I value my individual ideas rather too much perhaps, though I'm open to criticism but overall I'd like to be the sole creator of my own work. You can agree or disagree with that but that is my preference.I don't like the idea of collective brainstorming but if you say working independent with regular group reviews than that's fine.Anyway..that is the reason I'm second thinking industrial design.I thought about getting an internship with IDEO in the future but perhaps I'm not cut out for IDEO,hmm..
the more i read this, the more i would be drawn to IDEO, even those who explain why they wouldn't like IDEO and did well at explaining them, would be reasons I like the office.
I am not very interested in being a 'sole creator' or phillip starck and definetely not howard rourke.
unfortunately, i think you're ascribing all kinds of intention onto their work that they wouldn't even try to say they do. working in different cultural contexts is almost always going to require different ways of thinking. saying that their methodology has wreaked havoc on other cultures is a pretty big leap.
paradoxx - actually, if your attitude is to go it alone, a great bet is industrial design (much more so than architecture). just make sure you hook up with a specific manufacturer who trusts you enough to build whatever you dream up. if you can get that combo right, it's a great place to be in.
To add to the list of videos I would mention the movie "Objectified" It includes IDEO and other industrial design firms with interviews from the people that started them and some of the processes they use. Can't recall just how much was actually IDEO but its a good introduction for someone thinking about making the jump to industrial design type of work.
i do take niro's point about budgets though. for most design service professionals very little time is really available to explore the real potential of a project. so we are usually stuck with the most superficial solutions to problems. le sigh.
agree with the ideology critique; bear in mind that they primarily create things and things on paper. the stakes and circumstances of their design are pretty different from the architectural world-no matter how hard they try and co-opt "space-making". no one has to live in that wacky website.
IDEO
Has anyone worked at IDEO, i have become quite interested in them recently and was interested if anybody could share experience they have heard about working there or similar offices.
I was particularly interested in Design-led business consultancy, but don't know much about it....would be quite different from conventional architecture career.
sent you an email, j'aime. (well, two really. first one may or may not have gone through.)
I'm interested in this as well.
I would really like to know as well.
grid+shay: will be doing a personal mini-research mission on IDEO over christmas, Will read Tim Brown's new book Change by Design and keep you guys posted with a summary.
So far though links that are relevent.
www.ideo.com
David Kelley
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/david_kelley_on_human_centered_design.html
Tim Brown
http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_on_creativity_and_play.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_urges_designers_to_think_big.html
http://designthinking.ideo.com/
Paul Bennett
http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_bennett_finds_design_in_the_details.html
http://livingclimatechange.com/
dschool.stanford.edu
dschool.typepad.com
I am interested in IDEO as well. I am currently looking into their 6 month internships
j'aime - there's been a bit of discussion on ideo in past posts. it may take some deep researching to find it.
short take i'll add: they really want people who have a broad set of interesting experiences and general knowledge, with one area of very 'deep' expertise. office culture is huge with them - you can be hyper talented but if you don't 'fit', it's not going to happen. as in most places, if you know someone there, it helps in getting a look. not sure if it really helps in final selections.
finally, it's really an ultimate 'right place at the right time' from a hiring perspective. if you have the depth of expertise that they happen to be looking for - and there's an opening - and you're willing to potentially relocate...well, you might be in.
that said, i do think this type of firm, if managed properly, is a much more sustainable practice model than the current architecture firm.
before firms start being more like the IDEO's of the world, the entire structure of architectural education needs to be revamped from the obsolete uber designer model to a model based on collaboration.
vado - agreed. however, if anyone is really paying attention out in the 'real world', that change is going to happen irregardless of the schools.
collaboration?
any decision needs a leader, collaboration implies "no one is responsible when the shit hit the fan."
i have worked in very collaborative environment, yeah it sounds great, but when there is a major design flaw no one steps up the plate to defend it.
that being said do agree that the education system need to be revamped, but how? architecture/design in most cases is a very personal thing, no matter how collaborative 2 artists are, there will be differences. even successful partnerships required a good leader and supporters that don't mind taking care of the business end or play 2nd fiddle.
until schools start teaching "it is ok to be the supporter." forgettabout't!
i would start by instituting the ideas of edward de bono. starting with his book six thinking hats.
who will decide who wears what hat?
who will wear all the hats?
which hat would u rather wear?
niro,
i don't think too many people at ideo would consider themselves 'artists'. definitely 'designers' but for me there's a difference between the two. an artist has no one (in an idealistic sense) to please but themselves. a designer has to be more supple than that.
if you're tending towards the designer as artist, my guess is ideo wouldn't be the right fit. maybe something more like fuseproject.
please wait until it is time to wear the read hat before you object to every proposal.
first of all, IDEO's site is a mess. i still can't grasp precisely what they do after spending 5 mins. on their site. it basically looks like a giant infomercial that sells ummmm... please tell me what does this means:
"We refer to our overall approach as "design thinking": a means of problem solving that uses design methodologies to tap into a deep reservoir of opportunity. These methods include observation, prototyping, building, and storytelling, and can be applied by a wide range of people to a breadth of organizational challenges."
don't get me wrong, they might well be the best collaberative working model, but their site does not reflect that.
outed,
this perhaps belong to another thread, but when i said artist i was referring to how architecture seemed to be taught or perceived in a similar fashion as any fine arts major. people are taught to come up with their own designs, working on their own model, figure out their own parti, explore your own originality or weakness, etc. the work comes from within you and your work defines who you are. you take all the credit for your own work and you do not share ideas. call it what you will, at the end of the day you want your work to be recognized, be proud of etc. if not, exactly how an artist or designer would want.
the point is, design by nature is not a democratic process, someone always call the shots, be it the major design contributor or the deal maker, but often a business decision.
what is wrong with this model of education? I don't know. but i know that in order to contribute in a collaborative environment, you better have something to bring to the table. the current education system seemed to do just that. perhaps we should reduce "studio" credit and require the curriculum to include business courses and collaborative designs? more professional practice classes and say goodbye to summer abroad studies?
vado,
those are simple questions and since you seemed to be the expert on edward de bono's work perhaps u can shed some light.
niro -
hi. i agree their website is a bit of a mess. in some ways, a bit like their process....
the artist/designer distinction is fine for this thread - i think it's fundamentally what ideo would say differentiates them from other firms.
if you dig into ideo's method a bit, i'm not sure there is a single 'designer' which brings a more singular authority to each project, nevermind the entire studio. is there a project director? of course. do they help shape the end product the most? absolutely. but their process depends a lot on the model that 'great ideas may not look so pretty at first'.
now, is this a process that's going to produce works of great authority or of a singular hand, in a way that we tend to recognize 'great designers' by? nope. and that may be the flaw in their model artistically speaking. i mean, really, can anyone point to 2 of their products made in the past 5 years? phillipe starck they are not...
so, back to the original thread: they are a company which is trying to develop an alternative business model, one that is explicitly moving within the biggest of corporate halls and one which hopes to change the way businesses see and value design. god bless them in that endeavor.
sorry - i should add: the point of the comparison is that if you hope to be a phillipe starck one day, this kind of office may help you understand how to work with companies, but it's not going to do you any good in terms of establishing a 'name'. and, honestly, we need the starck's of the world...
Six Thinking Hats is on YouTube. Its a rather old video that features an overhead projector. STH is not a hierarchical approach. Of course, any project will have its "leaders", that's not the point of the method. Rather it is to focus the different elements of thinking into categories allowing concentrated attention to each in time.
IDEO- method is...
Observation
Ideation
Implementation
The buzz these days is Design Thinking. Writers like Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Pink and Richard Florida champion the right brain, creative class type of thinker and this has migrated into business writers and thinkers who have taken up the call that "Design Thinking" is the way that organizations can remain innovative. IDEO is pushing to apply design thinking to problems that go beyond Posters and Toasters to move beyond conventional problem solving techniques. A worthy overview of theirphilosophy is in Stanford Social Innovation Review.
i checked out the video & article and i must say these are very utopian ideologies. they are extremely difficult to archive in the past, it will be even harder today considering how much faster design needs to be delivered.
in any rigorous process to produce any product or solution, the responsible thing is to understand how to finance it. who will pay for all these up front cost to sustain such diverse group of experts, or assumed experts? nothing against the idea of research, but when you hire a doctor, i am sure you want to find someone who knows their stuff. the idea of you paying him/her to experiment with techniques as part of the process will not be the ideal scenario. what are designer going to learn how to spend the client's money responsibly?
observation, ideation, implementation? sounds great! but when are westerner going to learn that their methodology does not work always with every culture? culture is not something that can be fully observed by any extended length of any project. do these so call design thinking really works? how many experiments should we allot before we move on to test theories in another 3rd world country? all we hear is what worked, but after how many failed attempts? how many lives and livelihood ruined is enough to satisfy our supposedly "better" thinking techniques?
perhaps it is simply how our civilization works. the intellectuals feed the powerful ideas and we have the economic collapse.
the 6 hats can be viewed as an organized sort of brainstorming. looking outside the box or review every possible solution is nothing new, but a lateral think tank? i do not believe more brains = better solution/possibilities. just look at the work pinned up on the walls in school. the best ideas comes from few truly remarkable people on this planet, yes they make mistakes too, and that is not going change, ever.
"i do not believe more brains = better solution/possibilities. just look at the work pinned up on the walls in school. the best ideas comes from few truly remarkable people on this planet, yes they make mistakes too, and that is not going change, ever."
I agree.
I don't think designers should be "servants" to public to satisfy their needs.I think what a designer should do is first and foremost is solve problems, come up with a solution and pay attention to aesthetic values while doing so and you don't need a couple of people working collaboratively to achieve that especially if the design you're working on is of a small scale like industrial design.
While I don't mind if you choose to work in groups to come up with a solution I don't think it must be a "requirement". I value my individual ideas rather too much perhaps, though I'm open to criticism but overall I'd like to be the sole creator of my own work. You can agree or disagree with that but that is my preference.I don't like the idea of collective brainstorming but if you say working independent with regular group reviews than that's fine.Anyway..that is the reason I'm second thinking industrial design.I thought about getting an internship with IDEO in the future but perhaps I'm not cut out for IDEO,hmm..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq9udFmsNO0
(sorry,couldn't help myself..)
the more i read this, the more i would be drawn to IDEO, even those who explain why they wouldn't like IDEO and did well at explaining them, would be reasons I like the office.
I am not very interested in being a 'sole creator' or phillip starck and definetely not howard rourke.
niro -
unfortunately, i think you're ascribing all kinds of intention onto their work that they wouldn't even try to say they do. working in different cultural contexts is almost always going to require different ways of thinking. saying that their methodology has wreaked havoc on other cultures is a pretty big leap.
paradoxx - actually, if your attitude is to go it alone, a great bet is industrial design (much more so than architecture). just make sure you hook up with a specific manufacturer who trusts you enough to build whatever you dream up. if you can get that combo right, it's a great place to be in.
no, the point is, method of "thinking" is inherently cultural.
i am simply pointing out its flaws when forced onto another culture.
"understanding" & "refinement" perhaps should be the approach.
time is the enemy, not IDEO.
one of de bono's primary objections is to the history of western critical thinking and its focus on the negative.
To add to the list of videos I would mention the movie "Objectified" It includes IDEO and other industrial design firms with interviews from the people that started them and some of the processes they use. Can't recall just how much was actually IDEO but its a good introduction for someone thinking about making the jump to industrial design type of work.
i do take niro's point about budgets though. for most design service professionals very little time is really available to explore the real potential of a project. so we are usually stuck with the most superficial solutions to problems. le sigh.
agree with the ideology critique; bear in mind that they primarily create things and things on paper. the stakes and circumstances of their design are pretty different from the architectural world-no matter how hard they try and co-opt "space-making". no one has to live in that wacky website.
maybe IDEO can help these guys so they know the difference between metric & english units:
when some of the top minds working together...
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/news/mco991110.html
just some fun facts.
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