IDEO Labs

Ready to make a difference over the weekend? Join us for two fun and intense days of making, as we craft, hack, and build human-centered design solutions to real world challenges, working alongside IDEO designers from various disciplines.

The theme for our Munich Make-a-thon is Good Morning, Good Evening, Good bye. We will tackle design challenges along a human life cycle and within a daily routine. It is up to the teams to define the specific challenges as well as the solutions. More details about the briefs will be released a few days prior to the event.

Due to a limited number of spaces and the need for a mix of system thinkers and skillful makers, you need to apply here to attend the Munich Make-a-thon. All your information will be treated confidentially. You will then receive an email from us to confirm your participation. If you do not get a spot, apologies if we can’t fit you in.
There is always a next time!

We will report back on the outcome of the Munich Make-a-thon here on IDEO Labs after the event. Please be aware: We believe in open source. Designs, prototypes, works created at the Make-a-thon, will be offered under Creative Commons license (CC BY 3.0).

When:
Friday, July 5th 2013, 1:30pm till late
Saturday, July 6th 2013, 10:00am till 8:00pm

Who:
Makers, designers, hackers, system thinkers, friends

Where:
IDEO Munich
Kellerstraße 27
81667 München

Agenda:
Friday, July 5th
1:30 Welcome and introduction
2:00 Talk: Design thinking at IDEO
2:15 Project team briefings
3:00 Talk: Design research
Participants break out into teams.
3:30 Project teams: Inspiration and design research
4:00 Talk: Prototyping and experimentation
4:15 Project teams: Brainstorming and prototyping
6:00 Project teams: share back
7:00 Studio dinner
8:00 Teams can wrap up or continue working
9:00 Studio closes

Saturday, July 6th
9:00 Breakfast
9:45 Making in project teams
12:30 Lunch and inspirational talk
2:00 Making and user testing
6:00 Final presentations

Inspirational talk: We are very happy to host Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, interaction designer, entrepreneur and founder of the Good Night Lamp http://goodnightlamp.com/ as our inspirational speaker. Alexandra leads Designswarm, an ‘internet of things’ design studio, and co-founded Tinker London, the first distributor of the Arduino platform in the UK.

Twitter: Use the twitter hashtag #ideomake to discuss the event.

If you have any additional questions, or if for some reason you’ve signed up and can’t make it, please email us at munichmake@ideo.com

Years ago, IDEO projects were primarily completed inside our studios. No longer. These days, more and more IDEO designers are embedded with client teams around the globe and prototyping in the field.

This initially created some technology and infrastructure challenges. Things like storage (a file server), connectivity (the Internet, a wired and wireless local area network), enterprise grade server architecture (domain controllers, print servers, etc.) and protection (a professional-grade firewall) all had to be accessible in remote locations.

Basically, we needed to find a way to take all this stuff:

And put it in a container small enough for a designer to hand carry on a plane. Oh, and also make sure it works anywhere in the world, with whatever voltage is prevalent. (more…)

With the passing of IDEO co-founder Bill Moggridge, we have been reflecting on the ways he has influenced our lives and made the world a better place.  Bill has had an enormous impact on the field of interaction design and professed the importance of making interactions delightful.

For IDEO Labs, we wanted to do a tribute to him in a very IDEO Labs kind of way.  Perhaps one of the most iconic objects Bill designed was the GRiD Compass, the world’s first laptop computer.  Bill’s design was the original clamshell design that all current laptops have descended from.  We wondered if we could use a GRiD as a way to collect stories about Bill from around the office. (more…)

Mixing makers, hackers, designers, and OpenIDEOers in IDEO’s London studio

Way back in December, some of us in the IDEO London studio started talking in a pub about some of the ideas arising out of OpenIDEO and its challenges for social good.

We wondered: How could we help the digital community build out more of these winning tech and design solutions? What would happen if we got passionate designers, hackers, and digital community members in a room with no distractions one weekend, all working towards creating physical & digital prototypes for social good? And, could we all play around with Arduino and the 3-D printer while we were at it?

Originally we thought of doing a hackathon. Then we decided to push the concept to its next iteration. How could we bring together multidisciplinary weekend project teams—not just software engineers and digital designers, but also industrial designers, architects, and problem solvers from different backgrounds? Could we create a new kind of design-driven collaborative event? Inspired by IDEO’s own maker culture, the DIY community at Maker Faire, and Silicon Valley hackathons, we decided to experiment with the concept. We called this prototype event a “Make-a-thon.”

The result was a unique London pop-up event that produced some truly original concepts and meaningful digital and physical prototypes. We hosted about 60 makers and hackers in the IDEO London studio—including 1/3 IDEOers and 2/3 UK creative community members. We used EventBrite to keep track of invitations and had a waiting list of about 65 people. Here’s what we made in a 1.5 days—and what we learned.

(more…)

If you create something with Arduino and put it out into the world, there is no well-established link to the source. If you personally made the device, the source can get lost over time. If you didn’t create it, you could have a tough time tracking the source down. You have the physical device, why can’t it tell you where it’s code lives?

I made a tool for Arduino called “Upload-And-Retrieve-Source” that for the most part solves this problem.

Github page here, direct download link here

For background on the project and details on how it works click through to the full article.

(more…)