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

At IDEO, “What if we…?” is a phrase you hear a lot. This “What if?” mindset, plus our love of playing around with new ideas, can lead to some fun experiments. A few months ago, for example, we used agar as a design medium to grow and biohack an electrical circuit.

It all started on a day when Matt Brown and I (Rodrigo Martinez) were both playing around with some sensors, resistors, batteries, and speakers. Matt was building a prototype for a new synthesizer, and I was sketching a biological circuit.

At some point we began discussing how we might make a living circuit.

“What do you mean living?” asked Matt.

“What if we grow a part of the circuit, you know, as in grow rather than buy?” I said.

For a while we discussed how the “living” dimensionality of the circuit would influence our own perception of the exercise and its implications. Yup, at that point we were over-thinking the whole thing.

Finally we just decided to make it.

We asked five designers at IDEO to submit a pattern they thought was interesting. Here is what they came up with:

(more…)

Hacking and building new ways for Chicagoans to eat, move, and learn.

Inspired by the IDEO Make-a-thon prototyped in the London studio, our Chicago studio launched the first IDEO Make-a-thon in the US as part of Chicago Ideas Week—a city-wide celebration of “sharing ideas, inspiring action, and igniting change to positively impact our world.”

Our goal: use design thinking and rapid prototyping to hack and build solutions to some of the big gnarly problems that Chicago faces around healthy food, urban cycling, and public education. In partnership with Feeding America, Alta Bicycle Share, and Chicago Public Schools, we chose three themes for our day-long maker fest: “Eat,” “Move,” and “Learn.” Together we created three multi-disciplinary Make teams, composed of IDEO designers, outside experts, and special guests. (more…)

Test-driving the usability of a food-tech startup’s new API.

When the Food Genius team moved into an empty project space at IDEO Chicago to become our first Startup-in-Residence, we were cautiously optimistic. This co-locate-with-startups thing was new to both of us. Would they like us? Would we like them? It was like meeting our first college roommate all over again, only this one had a complex algorithm that tracked and classified more than 14 million restaurant menu items. Swoon! We love nerds who design with data. (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…)