Better Mousetraps: At Product Design Fair, Student Ideas Get Real

by Margie Kelley

"Actually, we like to see them fail as often and as early as possible," Assistant Professor Stefan H. Thomke said with a wink as he watched students in his elective MBA course Managing Product Development (MPD) set up their display booths at the eighth annual MPD Design Fair. The fair, held in Kresge Hall last December, is where students present their final projects—the culmination of a semester spent learning to design and develop products and services and get them to market. "Hopefully it is here that any shortcomings in understanding, practicing, and managing product development will become apparent," Thomke elaborated, "rather than out in the real world, where millions of dollars are potentially at stake. They get a lot of theory in class, but here they learn by doing."

Indeed, some of the eighty students may well reap commercial benefits from their concepts, which ranged from dot-coms, to security windows, to a PC for children, to a gadget that makes the knot in neckties. Nine corporations, including General Motors, Veridicom, Anderson Windows, FitSense Technology, and Lynx System Developers, sponsored student teams. For some teams, the design firms IDEO and Design Continuum served as consultants, facilitating interactions between those teams and their corporate sponsors.

For a project with General Motors, Dorothea Carraway (HBS '00) and her teammates took their cues from GM's Adam D. Bernard (MBA '90) and Janet Goings, who were interested in creating a "lifestyle" vehicle for the under-24 set, loosely termed "Generation Y." "We're specifically looking at what interior features the younger buyers want," said Bernard. "We wanted to hear the MPD team's ideas and get a perspective from outside Detroit." The GM team's colorful storyboard mapped their semester's work: from initial research phases, to brainstorming, to concept development and prototyping. The results? A car that might feature a personalized hood ornament and an interior with pulsating floor lights, customized seat covers, and an onboard computer with MP3 technology that downloads music from the Internet.

And yes, Carraway said her team had its share of failure in the process. "After we conducted our market interviews, we realized that some of our questions were leading and that we hadn't thought to talk to people while they were in their cars. So we decided to do that part all over again. It delayed our timeline two weeks."

A few tables away, Christopher Gilligan (HBS '00) was dressed in hospital scrubs, reeling in passersby to show them his new service, EKGStat.com. The brainchild of Gilligan, a surgical resident at Brigham & Women's Hospital, and Nate Quigley (HBS '00), it is a Web-based data service that will allow health providers to have instant access to patients' past EKG records, enhancing their ability to furnish appropriate care.

"If you came into the ER with chest pain, the doctor would get an EKG," explained Gilligan. "But it would also be helpful to see an old EKG if you'd ever had one before." Gilligan noted that of the six million people going to hospitals with chest pain each year, 80 percent are not having a heart attack. "EKGStat.com lets the doctor see what's normal for you, by comparing the two EKGs," he said. "It will save health providers a lot of money in unnecessary admissions and treatments, and save patients from dangerous procedures they may not need." Gilligan is already talking with several hospitals and HMOs to get the service off the ground.

Taking a step away from high tech, a team working for sponsor OXO International, which manufactures Good Grips brand kitchenware, focused on building a better squeeze bottle for use in bathing babies. To demonstrate the new easy-grip bottle, Wes Owen (HBS '00) stood at a table giving a bath to a baby-sized doll in a little tub. "The baby market is a big category," noted OXO president Alex Lee (MBA '94). "We're looking into which part of it is relevant to our customers."

The HBS Board Game, with the objective of graduating, caused a buzz at the fair, as did the ShowMe Slate, a Web-enabled interactive drawing tool for children that would be linked to parents' computers, enabling instantaneous communication using voice, pictures, and free-form drawing. "Our main goal is to let busy parents connect with their kids," said design team member Debbie Umbach (HBS '00).

Whether or not these products will make it to market seems less important to the MPD students than the experience they had in designing them. "I don't know what GM will do with all of this," said Carraway, "but I learned how to have fun with innovation and to take chances. It was a very creative process."

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From the Harvard Business School Bulletin, February 2000