The audience was rapt as David Kelley presented his lecture on Design Thinking. It is obvious that Kelly's attentive and empathetic nature has made him a world-class public speaker, professor, and designer. David Kelley is the founder of the design firm IDEO and professor at The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the d.school) at Stanford University. IDEO and the d.school are renown for development of innovative thinking and design.

Kelley introduced a tripartite model of a good design team (or designer). The d.school focuses on the development of T-shaped minds or teams. Kelley's thought is that Empathy is as important as acumen (skill) and integration (engineering). The Empathetic designer doesn’t only rely interviews of users. Kelley has found that users will almost unknowingly give false information about their experiences. When he observes the user in action he can make notes about the awkward experiences or obstacles that users will gloss over.

In the pursuit of good design, they spend time watching and listening to the user during the use experience. Kelly said he and IDEO's teams spend a lot of time in this kind of anthropological observation. He stressed that it was important to spend time not only with a target audience but also with extreme users. He said in the design of footwear it would be important to spend time with both those who don't wear shoes and the shoe fetishist to gain observations fresh perspectives.

Kelley shared another reflection that the sooner one can develop a prototype, the better the resultant product/design will be in the end. Prototypes don't need to be extreme, it is better to fashion something of out office supplies on your desk than send it to the machine shop. Kelly made clear that the machine shop is still important but it comes after the freeform and improvisation of those formative moments of the project.

Kelly's firm uses tools such as iMovie to quickly visually present the possible future of a design idea. These prototypes are meant to be rough and to be learned from; they will often look amateur. This is fine as that is their stage in development. The days of the velvet drape over the perfectly fashioned model should be left behind.

He also pursues 'Radical Collaboration'; when clients come in he puts them on the ground. They interact directly with simple prototyping tools. Kelley's belief in wide latitudes appears in these collaborations as well. He repeatedly mentioned that it was significantly valuable to have a diverse skill set and how he enjoys letting the students or team members have a chance to show off the skill they are most adept with.

And Kelley is a practitioner also. Kelley does not practice the 'Sage-on-the-Stage' teaching at Stanford University's d.school. Kelley and two other faculty are in the class with the students. The peers are allowed and encouraged to question statements of the instructor delivering the lecture. This often leads lively debates in the class. Kelley said that it is good for the students to see the opposing notions immediately. These alternative ideas give the students access to a wide latitude of thought immediately not semester by semester. He said that there is a de-brief session after class which is once again open to the students.

To encourage these radical collaborations in the commercial and design world, Kelley endorses team-oriented rewards. He values rewarding the team over the individual. Instead of rewarding members with corner offices, which might separate the valuable synthesis of minds and skills, he prefers to build a 'team' lab with high end equipment to encourage the members to spend more time together.

The first 5 candidates for the C5 Quest for Success met in the South Hall today to go on a two hour quest for a chance to pitch a proposal to a committee of five curators in the hopes of winning an artist residency at the Montalvo Arts Center in Los Gatos.