Photograph by Vern Evans
The screensaver on Tim Brown’s office computer is a selection of photographs of classic automobiles. Some of the pictures came from colleagues at IDEO, including a few of the cars in company cofounder David Kelley’s collection. As one might expect, fascination with objects is a common trait at this 550-person design firm headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. “We all grew up,” says Brown, “making or working with beautiful things.”
Another common trait at IDEO is a fascination with systems — especially those involving such complex, interconnected issues as reconceiving marketing campaigns, rethinking the materials in packaging, and redesigning health-care delivery and early childhood education. IDEO is perhaps the earliest and best-known design firm to promote what Brown calls “design thinking”: a holistic approach to innovation, including in-depth customer insight and rapid prototyping, aimed at getting beyond the assumptions that block effective solutions. This means addressing the look and feel of the product being designed, as designers conventionally do. But it also means reconsidering the way it meets consumers’ unspoken needs, as well as reworking the infrastructure that enables the product and the supply chain that delivers it. (more…)