IDEO Shopping Cart Project

9 in the morning day one and these people have a deadline to meet so welcome to the kickoff of the shopping cart project this is Paulo Alto

California in the heart of Silicon Valley and these are designers at idio probably the most influential product development firm in the world designers

are the reason TVs have square screens chairs four legs and toothbrushes nowadays those squishy Handles in fact it was idio that designed those squish

she handles Ido has designed everything from high-tech medical equipment to the 25- Ft mechanical whale in the movie free Willie and the first computer mouse for Apple Smith ski goggles Nike

sunglasses NEC computer screens hundreds of products we take for granted this is a called the neat squeeze squeeze tooth uh toothpaste tube which you invented

that the man who runs Ido is Dave Kelly a Stanford engineering Professor with a Groucho marks mustache a dab of genius and an approach Innovation that usually works well thank you Fred but not always

thanks a lot I can show you some products that failed came up with this idea called Monster shoes where you take these little monsters and Lace them into your shoes like this and we built a

bunch of them and um I didn't want those either so mostly what Ido designs though does work and it works very well Dave and his design teams create about 90 new

products every year the point is that we're not actually experts at any any given area you know we're kind of experts on the process of how you design stuff so we don't care if you give us a

toothbrush a toothpaste tube a tractor a space shuttle you know a chair it's all the same to us we like want to figure out how to innovate in in by using our

process applying it and so for the next 5 days the team will apply that process to bringing the supermarket shopping cart into the 21st century I think first we should maybe all acknowledge that

it's kind of insane to do an entire an entire project in a week project leader is Peter skilman a 35-year-old Stanford engineer project leader because he's good with groups not because of

seniority he's only been at Ido for six years the rest of the team is eclectic but that's typical here Whitney Mortimer Harvard MBA Peter Coughlin linguist Tom

Kelly Dave's brother marketing expert Jane Fulton Suri psychologist Alex kazak 26 a biology major who's turned down medical school three times because he's

having too much fun at IO kids climbing up and doing this kids do that safety emerges early as an important issue

22,000 child injuries a year which is and so they're hospitalized injuries I mean there are many others not reported in the store that's you actually have to

hospitalized right and theft it turns out a lot of carts are stolen you know what is the average life of a car does it last 2 years years 5 years 10 years

and and how big is this theft thing 10: a.m. as the team works it becomes clear

a.m. as the team works it becomes clear there are no titles here no permanent assignments the other side says gives us a lot of help says be

safe everyone appears to be equal and they love to mock Corporate America I'll give you status I'll give you a big red ball on a on a on a on a post and that says you're a big guy if you got a ball

you're a senior vice president you know what do I get the desk red ball it's all same in a very Innovative culture you can't have a kind of hierarchy of here's the boss and the next person down the

next person down the next person down because it's impossible that the boss is the one who's had the insightful experience with shopping carts it's just not possible according to Kelly even

employees who merely listen to the boss don't add that much either so you got to hire people who don't listen to you and that I don't think Corporate America wants to hear that right yet I think we

ought to start making those lists about the kinds of questions that we're going to ask the team splits into groups to find out firsthand what the people who use make and repair shopping carts

really think okay go the problem with the plastic cart is the wind catches it yeah and these things have been clocked at 35 across the parking lot man that's actually a pretty good

point the the trick is to find these real experts and so that you can learn much more quickly than you could by just kind of doing in the normal way and and trying to learn about it yourself from

everything I read these things aren't that safe either you know um so probably the seat itself is going to have to be redesigned what you're seeing here is the kind of social science like

anthropologists you know like you go and study tribes what is it that that they do that we can learn from that will help us design a better cart one of the interesting things for me is looking at how people really don't like to let go of the cart except for the professional

shopper whose strategy is to leave the cart at various places 3:30 in the afternoon and the group is back at idio there is no set up each team is going to demonstrate and

communicate and share everything that they've learned today um people went off in the four corners of the earth and are coming back with the golden keys to the to Innovation we were in the store what two hours and and it was truly

frightening just to see the kind of stuff going on you got to designate some people to make damn sure that the store owners point of view is represented after nine straight hours the team is

tired they call it a day so um cool well uh that's great thanks a lot we had a great time today want to get together and start here day two and the start of idido's unique brand of

brainstorming they call it a deep dive a sort of total immersion in the problem at hand idido's mantra for Innovation is written everywhere one conversation at a

time stay focused encourage wild ideas defer judgment build on the ideas of others uh that's the hardest thing for people to do is to uh restrain

themselves from U uh criticizing an idea so if anybody starts to nail an idea they get the Bell you know the Deep dive begins and for the next few hours the ideas pour out and

are posted on the walls oh the blind the the Privacy plan like when you're buying six cases of condoms you no one see nesting is it sort of has to nest if it

doesn't Nest we don't have a solution how about velcro pants and and velcro seats for the kids and you drop them down on there velcro seats velcro pants

for kids yeah see you have to have some wild ideas if then you build on those wild wild ideas and they end up being better ideas than if you said if you if everybody only came up with samean

things you know kind of appropriate things you'd never like have any points to take off to to build a really Innovative idea

organ organized chaos it's not organized um what it is is it's focused chaos by 11:00 a.m. the group begins narrowing

11:00 a.m. the group begins narrowing down the hundreds of ideas written or drawn on the walls how by voting for them vote with your poit not not with an

idea that's cool but with an idea that's cool and buildable um if it's if it's too far out there and can't be built in a day then I don't think we should vote on why not have you be the judge you're

the because because I'm I'm going to be wrong it's the team that that's able to really judge with the best ideas otherwise ideas wouldn't come out that's right and enlightened trial and

error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius if anything sums up idido's

approach that is it that and the focused chaos that seems to go with it um I took a point of view I call it the sport utility vehicle cart it is noon worried

that the team is drifting what can only be called a group of self-appointed adults under Dave Kelly holds an informal side session we don't want to tell what to build or else we take away

the benefit of the whole thing what needs should they optimize their solution to the purpose is to refocus the Deep dive maybe we arbitrarily say we can do five teams four or five teams

four five four or five teams and we and we give each team a need area hey can we uh grab everybody over to the uh wall here there has to be a Command Decision

it becomes very autocratic for a very short period of time in defining what things people are going to work on like it or not the team is told it will split into groups to build mockups covering

four areas of concern that have been identified shopping safety checkout and finding what you're looking for I noticed that toward the end of the

process the adults took over yeah that's because we we have no choice but to to stop that cycle I mean there's um if you don't work under time constraints you

you could never get anything done because it's a messy process and go on forever while the team starts building prototypes Dave Kelly takes me on a tour

of the rest of IDE what's happening in here is uh that's a client meeting that's a first client meeting that's the first time we met with a client so we haven't trained them

yet if if we took them straight from there into a room where music was blaring and everybody was throwing Nerf darts at each other that would be a little hard to take you know so um we're

warming them up but this is this is where the crazies live this is where we do our work it's different you can tell whether place is playful in about the first 15 minutes as you walk down the

hall being playful is of huge importance for being Innovative I mean if you go into a culture and there's a bunch of stiffs going around they're not I can guarantee they're they're not likely to

invent anything invent anything like this futuristic looking instrument for kids so no matter what you do with that thing you always you sound great got

these little wings and no matter what you do I in trouble here it's always a spiral at idio they found that fresh

ideas come faster in a fun place not only is the furniture on Wheels to suit the needs of the moment but people are encouraged actually to build their own work areas and they were designing this

space and they said to me you know we'd like to have you know $4,000 extra in our budget for a DC3 wi and I said uh DC you have to have that and they said yeah they have to have it so that's that's a

DC3 WI piece of a DC3 wi yeah and that's just Decor that's Decor that's um Ambiance you know that says we're weird and we're proud of it umbrellas on the

ceiling to shade computer screens from direct sunlight and bicycles on ropes to prevent clutter the first guy who hung a bike up on a thing he didn't come to me and ask me he didn't ask some facilities

person it was okay he tried it and then like he waited and SE if anybody complained if nobody complained another guy hung a bike up and pretty soon everybody's got their bikes up and nobody's complained right so it's that

whole thing of trying stuff and ask forgiveness you know instead of asking permission is the way people come up with new ideas Ido has such a reputation for Innovation that client companies are

increasingly asking Dave not just for new products but also to remake their corporate cultures you may be looking at the workplace of the future here it's one thing to be able to do a product

once in a while but if you can build a culture and a process where you routinely come up with great ideas that's what the companies really want okay Peter done back at the shop it is

6:00 and the four mockups are ready for showing baskets also can be if you think you will have more volume baskets can be put in a modular shopping cart you pile

hand baskets onto a high tech cart that gets you through the traffic jam a checkout that you could mount a scanner on the shopping cart so that you as the

customer as you pull it off the shelf would scan each item one that's built around child safety here and another that let Shoppers talk to the

supermarket staff remotely uh yeah where can I find the yogurt the yogurt but the adults again decide more work needs to be done before the mockups can be

combined into one last prototype why don't we have all the carts come up here for a second I think you'd take a piece of each one of these ideas and kind of back it off a little bit and then put it

in the in the design the design is still not there but there's another motto at Ido fail often in to succeed sooner and some of the team will be up half the

night trying to put together a design that finally does work it is day five and Dave Kelly has no idea what the final cart looks like only the team does if they kind of got their heads down

they don't look at me I'm nervous you know if they say wait till you see it then I know we're in good shape so I'm getting wait until you see it I think it's that'll be good there it

is there it is so we took the best elements out of each prototype designed this entire cart in a

day and then this cart was fabricated in a day with an amazing team of people in our machine shop pulling this off working in shifts throughout the night

wow I'm impressed so are we the cart which is designed to cost about the same as today's carts is different in every other way hand

baskets that stack in a metal frame and major improvements for all think well I'm very proud of the team I think it's it's great this does this work for you works for me great it's

also beautiful I mean let's you know take it over to a local supermarket and see what they say yeah it works really well the cart's wheels turn 90° so it can move sideways no more lifting up the

rear in a tight spot and you shop in a totally different way but the bags are hung on hooks on the cart's frame remember there is no basket here talk to

me about theft there's no value in this cart without the basket because you can't carry anything in it it's useless to anybody you can't use it a barbecue so it's not

going to get stolen that's right so this ought to appeal to store owners then yes I love it I think it looks great at first I was a little shocked but I think it's you have some fantastic ideas here

it needs a little refining but I think that it's great I mean we would we would want them it makes us feel great uh and she also gave us some really good comments about how we can make this thing better just wherever you are look

around the only thing that's not designed by somebody i' like is nature so the trees are not designed by us but everything you see everything you see every light fitting every flower vase

every scale every stand for fruit everything is designed has to go through this kind of process and they can do a better or a um a better or worse job of innovating or improving but everything

is designed has to go through this process it wasn't this effortless oh my God so that's how it works thing that I saw there it was actually hard work it's a lot of hard work um we all love it so

it doesn't look like it's hard work but it's a lot of hours a lot of hours also an open mind a boss who demands fresh ideas be quirky and clash with his a

belief that chaos can be constructive and teamwork a great deal of teamwork and these are the recipe for how Innovation takes place