Kelley named to national
academy
BY DAWN LEVY
What do the lavatory sign
on an airplane, the three-ton mechanical whale in Free
Willy and the original Apple computer mouse have in
common? They are all brainchildren brought to life by
David M. Kelley, Stanford associate professor of
mechanical engineering and founder of IDEO Product
Development. Kelley is among 78 engineers and eight
foreign associates elected to the National Academy of
Engineering on Feb. 17.
Election to the academy is
one of the highest professional distinctions that an
engineer in the United States can receive. Membership
honors those who have made "important contributions
to engineering theory and practice," including those
who have demonstrated "unusual accomplishment in the
pioneering of new and developing fields of
technology." Kelley is cited for the creation of
diverse products and for affecting the practice of
design. His election brings the number of Stanford
academy members to 80.
Related
Information:
Kelley grew up in a small
Ohio town with little exposure to art. Like his father,
he studied to become an electrical engineer. As a student
at Carnegie Mellon University, Kelley agonized an entire
summer over switching his major to fine arts but decided
to stick it out in engineering and received his
bachelor's degree in 1973.
Upon graduation he worked
briefly as an electrical engineer for Boeing, where he
designed and analyzed lights and lighting systems for the
747 aircraft. He also worked at National Cash Register
(NCR) on circuit boards containing the then-just-invented
microprocessor. But the focus on problem solving rather
than innovation made him miserable. When a friend told
him about Stanford's then little-known product design
engineering program, which offers a combination of
business, art and engineering courses, he enrolled. He
earned a master's degree in 1977 and has taught in
Stanford's Mechanical Engineering Department since 1978.
In 1990, he earned tenure.
In 1978 Kelley founded
IDEO Product Development (formerly David Kelley Design)
in Palo Alto, Calif. He serves as chief executive officer
of the 350-employee company, which has designed more than
3,000 products. He also founded Onset, a venture capital
firm, in 1984.
At IDEO (ideo- is the
combining form of the word idea, from the Greek
"idea"), products range from highly
sophisticated technologies to consumer toys. Some IDEO
creations include an inflation device for balloon
angioplasty, snug-fitting Smith ski goggles, wrap-around
Nike sunglasses, the Medtronic portable pacemaker
programmer, fishing rods for kids, an instant cholesterol
meter, rubber grips on toothbrushes, the Polaroid I-Zone
camera, steering controls for Caterpillar earthmovers,
multiple laptop computers (including the first-ever
laptop, the GRiD), charging systems for GM's EV-1
electric car, Internet appliances including the Audible
MobilePlayer and SoftBook electronic book, Steelcase
office chairs and the underwater vehicles in the movie The
Abyss. In the 1999 Industrial Design Excellence
Awards, the company won 12 awards -- double the amount
won by any other firm.
Kelley creations such as
the Enorme telephone (designed in 1984 for an Italian
company) and the GRiD Compass computer have even made
their way into the permanent collections of the Museum of
Modern Art in both New York and San Francisco.
Kelley's Stanford courses
take a multidisciplinary approach to design by blending
engineering innovation, human values and manufacturing
concerns. They focus on product-design methodology,
techniques of quick prototyping to prove feasibility, and
design through understanding of user needs.
"I team-teach in the
Art Department alongside Matt Kahn, in the Computer
Science Department with Terry Winograd, and lecture
extensively in the Business School every year,"
Kelley says. "My students must take classes in all
these disciplines, as well as in psychology and other
subjects. Design engineering is no longer a single
discipline, where students can focus on a narrow set of
skills. Empathy for all the other disciplines associated
with product development is essential to
innovation."
Design engineering
students in Kelley's program are trained to be
generalists, not experts. "We teach them to be
experts at the methodology of design. In every class, I
try to build an internal step-by-step process into their
heads, so that when they are given any problem to solve,
they have the confidence to jump right in and apply the
design process they have learned."
And jump in they do. Last
February, Ted Koppel brought his ABC
"Nightline" show to Stanford to show how
product design worked. He asked students to perform an
impromptu product design: Build a shopping cart. Students
went to stores to interview and observe shoppers and test
carts. Then they built a cart that featured racks for
small plastic baskets, hooks for plastic bags, a crossbar
for child safety, electronic gadgets to scan purchases
while shoppers wait in line, and wheels that let the cart
move sideways with a simple push. They showed it to store
owners, who were impressed by the innovations.
Kelley teaches six classes
a year -- one "Human Values in Design" class
(ME116), two "Human-Computer Interface" classes
(ME447 A and B), and three "Master's Project in
Design" classes (ME211 A, B and C). The classes are
based on projects, not lectures and problem sets.
"Students work as individuals and as teams to tackle
projects that have no right answer," Kelley says.
"They learn to develop a point of view and visualize
their concepts through building prototypes."
His "Human Values in
Design" class "centers on observing actual
users or potential users of products as a way of getting
ideas for new concepts through understanding the latent
needs of people," Kelley says. "Students
sometimes find themselves spending a day with a tugboat
captain, or a fireman, or watching people eat in their
cars. Product design students are required to be need
finders as well as problem solvers."
Students engage in quick
prototyping through a process Kelley calls
"enlightened trial and error." Says Kelley:
"Stanford has a wonderful history of teaching quick
prototyping as a way of quickly building innovation into
product concepts. We have a world-class prototyping
facility, and my students spend much of their time
building one prototype after another, taking it out and
showing it to potential users, bringing them back and
refining them over and over again."
Kelley is faculty adviser
for Stanford's student chapter the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers. As a graduate student, he
co-founded Stanford's mechatronics program, the
brainchild of his faculty adviser, Larry Leifer. The
course teaches mechanical engineering students about
electronics, and it is one of the most popular classes on
campus. Students build, for instance, robots that shoot
Ping-Pong balls at each other.
"People ask, 'What do
you design?' and they expect you to say cars, toothpaste
tubes, whatever," Kelley told a writer for Stanford
Magazine in 1996. "But we're not experts at any
of those things. We're experts at the process of
designing stuff."
Kelley's innovations as a
product designer have earned him extensive national and
international recognition. Many consider him a major
contributor to the success of the Silicon Valley. San
Francisco Focus magazine listed him in an article
titled "Bay Area Brain Trust: 101 Achievers Who Make
This the Smartest Place on Earth." The San Jose
Mercury News named him in "100 Most Powerful
People in Silicon Valley," and Esquire
magazine pointed him out in "21 Most Important
People of the 21st Century." He was invited to brief
Clinton's transition team on design issues.
Kelley is a member of the
Industrial Designers Society of America, the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers. SR
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