Hasso Plattner Institute of Design


The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, commonly known as the d.school, is a design thinking institute based in Stanford University.
David M. Kelley, the program's founder, stated; "What we, as design thinkers, have, is this creative confidence that, when given a difficult problem, we have a methodology that enables us to come up with a solution that nobody has before.”
Bernard Roth, a co-founder of the program, echoed Kelley's observation about creative confidence; "In the Stanford d.school we attempt to bring students through a series of experiences that change their self-image so that they think of themselves as being more creative. We call this boosting their creative confidence".
Referring to the d.school's shift from designing objects to focusing on organizational processes, Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, said; “They concluded the same principles can be applied to the design of, say, emergency-room procedures as a shopping cart.”
According to the New York Times, the d.school has become one of the most highly sought academic programs at Stanford.

History

The Institute was founded by Stanford mechanical engineering professor David M. Kelley, six other professors and George Kembel in 2004. The program integrates business, law, medicine, the social sciences and humanities into more traditional engineering and product design education.
The institute got its current name from Hasso Plattner, co-founder of SAP SE software, who contributed $35 million towards its founding. The institute cooperates closely with the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany.

Products

Among the products launched from the Institute are the Embrace blanket, a low-cost alternative to neonatal incubators and the d.light, a solar-powered LED light now in use in some rural communities in the developing world. The Pulse News Reader was developed in a d.school class in 2010, and became the highest-selling application at Apple's App Store.

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