February 2, 2010
Palo Alto, CA
Location of Airstream exhibition (parking spot): Design Loft Courtyard, 454 Santa Teresa St, Stanford, CA
Open exhibition times: 2pm – 5pm
Location of lecture/presentation: n/a
Lecture time: n/a
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Recap: Stanford University, February 2nd
This afternoon, we headed down the San Francisco Bay peninsula and set up shop at Stanford University. After backing the Airstream into their Design Loft Courtyard, home of the school’s graduate design department. Thanks to Amy Franceschini (of Futurefarmers, whose work is featured in the book!) and John Edmark, we organized a casual afternoon exhibition for design students and passersby.
Among those in attendance were Banny Banerjee (Director of the Design Department, who I met last year at the Copenhagen CoCreation conference), Bill Burnett (Executive Director of the Design Department and board member of engineering firm D2M), Bill Moggridge (IDEO Co-Founder who I have been dying to meet for years), a band of 7-year olds who happened to be visiting the campus on a school trip, and dozens of design and engineering students who brought both enthusiasm and a critical eye to the products in the exhibition.
Having literally lived with these forty products for months now (they inhabit the same trailer that I call home), I may be a bit biased as to their “amazingness,” so to speak. While each has its positives and negatives (some are beautifully formed but with mediocre business models to support them, some incredibly accessible yet poorly engineered), it was refreshing to hear sharp yet constructive critique. Some students asked questions about the business viability, questioning the distribution models for affordable devices like the Lifestraw or Adaptive Eyecare. Others asked about price point or durability of electronics like the HyMini wind charger or the XO Laptop (One Laptop Per Child).
After our first day at Redwood High School, a day filled with Hippo Roller vs. Bucket races and energetic teenagers, our afternoon at Stanford was a sharp but refreshing shift to a more critical approach to design for social impact. We left remembering that the products in the exhibition are meant as a bench mark, a stake in the ground that says “this is what we’ve done so far; this is what works; this is what doesn’t,” and a kick-in-the-pants for us all to continue to raise the bar.
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