What Google’s Cafeterias Can Teach Us About School Lunches. Fifty years ago, a cheap lunch ladled onto a tray was a decent enough perk at premier American companies, such as Ford or Eastman Kodak. Today, that wouldn’t do in Silicon Valley, where in-house “cafés” have become a microcosm of modern cookery: a dedicated staff of bakers at Cisco, for example, or an Indian chef at eBay preparing curries spiced by decades of experience. It’s tempting to conclude that American firms have simply gotten richer, as have blue-chip workers.
But this shift from an industrial approach towards food, in favor of one that’s more handcrafted, illustrates how American ideals about labor have changed—and also, how institutional food went haywire in the bargain. “Food service used to be purely about workplace productivity,” says Fedele Bauccio, the founder of Bon Appétit Management, a company that quietly staffs many of Silicon Valley’s swankiest corporate cafeterias, including eBay, Oracle, and Yahoo! , and over 200 universities. [Illustrations by Peter Oumanski.] The 7 Biggest Challenges in Merging Design and Business. Recently, I gave a speech at the RGD Design Thinkers event here in Toronto. For a first-ever keynote, I think it went ok, though I probably relied on reading out my notes too much.
But given that I used this forum to tell designers they can be ? Dictatorial, inflexible, snobby? , people were pretty friendly. It's super long, but here's the text, along with the beautiful typographic slides designed by my friend Timothy O? A couple of weeks ago, I was discussing coming to this event with a designer friend of mine. Now bear in mind that this was a designer talking! That he didn't was more than just an affront to my ego. And yet, we know in reality that they were never actually handed over. In fact, if we take a close look at our world and environment and businesses and systems and services, we must accept that we're not generally surrounded by gloriousness, at least any more than we were before this supposed grand renaissance. ?
Design has been democratized. The Future Of College: Forget Lectures And Let The Students Lead. "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and forgotten the gift. " -- Albert Einstein In human-centered design observing how users modify a tool so that it takes on a different function or better addresses a need can be the basis for innovation. As we strive to design new learning systems, the same idea applies: We can also look at the learners?
Dynamic ability to self-organize and adapt institutional learning. Higher education is approaching a tipping point that will necessitate massive change. Tuition is climbing impossibly high, while academic content maintains a static level of relevancy and applicability to the world beyond campus. To redesign this system, we can observe the "end users," the students, and identify how they use the institution in a way that was not originally intended. Higher education is nearing a tipping point that will require massive change. [Top image by fdecomite] American Design Schools Are a Mess, and Produce Weak Graduates. As head of a major Silicon Valley industrial design studio, I review hundreds or even thousands of portfolios every year. It is an essential part of my job as I look for the best people to join our growing team.
Because the right mix of talent is so crucial to our success, I make it a principle to review every portfolio sent to us myself. That commitment puts me in a bit of a tight spot, as I struggle to find the right way to say the right things to people whose high hopes I'm forced to dash. Despite the recent surge in interest in design careers, the quality of candidates' portfolios seems to have stagnated or even diminished. The problem has become increasingly acute. The quality of recent grads has stagnated or even diminished Simply put, the design education system today is failing many aspiring young students.
Mind you: I'm no academic snob. The schools are a muddled mess, the end result of programs pulling in every direction. What Starbucks Taught Us About Redesigning College Campuses | Co. Design. Equating education with a cup of coffee might seem like a stretch, but your choice of college, much like your choice of coffee, says something about the ability of a brand to transform your day, and for that matter, your life. When Perkins + Will was offered the chance to help re-think the learning spaces of Miami Dade College, we started by thinking about how our choice of morning coffee has changed over the years, and how we could apply those lessons to education. The Starbucks Experience Before I became one with the Starbucks brand, I used to find comfort and delight in a cup of coffee from my corner deli: There were no changes and no surprises.
It was sustainable and utilitarian. It did its job. Then came Starbucks, that great paper cup of coffee that came in three different sizes, a huge range of flavors that could accommodate any mood, and that was available any time of day. What a concept! Our Challenge ? Incorporating the Starbucks Experience into Education ? Reinventing education. School Without Walls Fosters A Free-Wheeling Theory Of Learning. Sweden loves its experimental education, but here’s a venture that’s far-fetched even by Swedish standards: It’s a school without walls.
That’s right. Vittra Telefonplan, in Stockholm, was designed according to the principles of the Swedish Free School Organization Vittra, an educational consortium that doesn’t believe in classrooms or classes. So instead of endless rows of desks, it’s got neon-green “sitting islands” and whimsical picnic tables, where students and teachers gather. Instead of study hall, it has “Lunch Club,” a smattering of cafeteria-style tables on a checkerboard floor for working or eating (or both). And instead of an auditorium, it has a faceted blue amphitheatre that rises up in the middle of the school like a giant floating iceberg. The place resembles a mini amusement park, only with laptops (yes, each student gets his or her own laptop). Sounds great for the kids, but yikes, I feel sorry for their teachers. Design and education. Start An Education Revolution In Seven Steps.
First, a little background: We’re three undergrad industrial design students at the University of Cincinnati who teamed up for an experiment in education. We set out to partner with our university, a high school, and several footwear companies to create a curriculum that would engage and empower inner-city youth through footwear design. We titled the experiment the Tread Project. The pitch was simple: Tread wanted to create an engaging curriculum that would channel these urban students’ passion for (and sometimes obsession with) footwear into their high school education. The result was a program aimed at giving these kids an intro to design thinking, creative problem solving, and the footwear-design process in seven weeks. Along the way, we discovered a few things that could help other grassroots projects get off the ground.
We’ll get to those tips in a little bit. Once the Tread Project idea was born, we pitched it to several global footwear brands. What’s the Point? 2.) 3.) 4.) 5.) How Design Can Get Kids On the Path to Tech Careers. "Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it? And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world?
Nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world. " --Hannah Arendt Her name comes up in almost any discussion about transforming education: Dr. Stephanie Pace Marshall. Dr. Marshall is the founding president (1986-2007) and president emeritus of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA), an internationally renowned, publicly funded residential high school (10th to 12th grade) that emphasizes a curriculum in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Dr. How can the entanglement of design and education move the unmovable object -- i.e. the established, staid institution of education?
Design enables us to encode our stories and create our maps. Teaching Kids Design Thinking, So They Can Solve The World's Biggest Problems. You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it. ? Albert Einstein Assessment The test scores are out again. And once again, American kids aren't doing so well. You can choose any of the international standardized tests and on average, American children will always be stuck in the middle, compared with their peers in other countries. A Vision We all recognize a need for massive change in American education, but is our ultimate goal to outrank other countries in assessment tests and to beat the Chinese in math scores? We need new minds equipped with new ways of thinking. Our world desperately needs leadership in achieving sustainable social justice, not simply learning the answer to a test question. Future generations will be called to solve some of the most challenging problems ever created and faced by man. Design Camp To find a new set of solutions for our education system, let's begin by asking the generation that is most affected by the current state of education.
Teaching Moments: A New Era for Design Education. Taking the time to teach is one of the most rewarding ways of contributing to the growth of our profession. Through the years, I've been fortunate enough to teach and speak about design and design thinking at schools that include Harvard, SCAD, and Art Center College of Design. This past spring, I was honored to be invited to Savannah to speak at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). It was no surprise that I was impressed with the students in the program run by Victor Ermoli and Tom Gattis under the leadership of Paula Wallace [one of Fast Company's guest bloggers]. Like at SCAD, I see the quality of graduates from all design schools getting more impressive every year.
But what's different today is that the instructors of these programs are helping to redesign the direction our industry is taking. [Image via Hoefler & Frere-Jones] Read more of Ravi Sawhney's Design Reach blogBrowse blogs by other Expert Designers. How Does Europe's Design Education Differ From Ours? On February 17th, New York's Museum of Art and Design is presenting The Home Front, a panel discussion about the triumphs and tribulations of being an independent designer.
Moderator Jen Renzi pre-interviewed some of the panelists, and this is the first conversation, with Alissia Melka-Teichroew. Tickets, offered in partnership with Co.Design, are available here for just $9, with the offer code HOME. Alissia Melka-Teichroew is something of a hybrid: Her mom is French, her dad is American, she was raised in Utrecht, the Netherlands; educated in both the U.S. (RISD) and Holland (the famed Design Academy Eindhoven); and speaks three languages.
Her New York design practice is similarly polyglot: she's designed glass and ceramic tableware, high-concept acrylic jewelry, tongue-in-cheek USB sticks, and sells her work in shops ranging from MoMA Store to Target. How do you think design? In general, I find the design scene to be friendlier here than in the Netherlands. Yes! Still curious?