[UNOFFICIAL] STANFORD PD PRODUCTS GUIDE

Cube&Corner Design

Cube & Corner Design

Cube&Corner Design is the product design arm of Thomas Both’s work.

ooma is the bowl designed to be held. The ooma is a double-chambered ceramic bowl designed for use while eating without a table. It is in balance when held, is ergonomically comfortable because it keeps the wrist in a neutral position, and allows the separation of two types of food in the same container.

The ooma bowl started as Product Design class project (class known as ME216B: Implementation). After graduation Thomas created a more refined model, had tooling made, found a manufacturer in LA, created the branding and started selling the ooma in stores and online. The ooma is now licensed to UncommonGoods, and is made in Arizona.

PD Founder

Thomas Both (08) is Fellowship Director at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (the d.school). The core of his work is to design immersive hands-on learning experiences that allow fellows, students, and executives to try on new behaviors of innovation work. In addition, Thomas serves as a chief curriculum developer at the d.school. He has created, developed and led the d.school workshops for accomplished professionals, including the highly praised Design Thinking Bootcamp Executive workshop. He also teaches the d.school quarter-long fundamentals course for Stanford graduate students, Design Thinking Studio.

Thomas holds a Master degree in Design from Stanford, achieved after a prior career as a mechanical engineer.

See the ooma bowl for sale here

HIPP & Kirk

HIPP & Kirk is inspired by the casual elegance of beachside living. Our bags are made for a woman who heads poolside for an after work cocktail party or jumps on a plane for an exotic getaway. She’s playful, relaxed and chic. She likes to wear functional, fun pieces and never compromises on quality.

All our bags are manufactured in California using high-quality canvas and metal hardware. They are made to last a lifetime. We hope you’ll love them as much as we do!

PD Founder

HIPP & Kirk founder and designer Lauren Milroy’s (09) journey is hardly typical. Born and raised in California, she first studied mechanical engineering and worked in the aerospace industry before attending Stanford University’s graduate program in Product Design. She honed her skills as a designer at an outdoor gear company, creating bags and researching color trends. On her time off she started her blog, Hippanonymous, where she shared her favorite finds in design, fashion, cocktails and travel.

Lauren loves bags, and she knows many women do too. Her designs are heritage classics with a twist of color. They are inspired by the sunkissed glamour of Manhattan Beach, where the designer once lived, and by L.A’s laid-back, fun loving lifestyle – from barbecues to rooftop parties and Bikram sessions. Lauren prototypes new designs from her home studio using a 40-year-old industrial sewing machine.

Visit Hipp & Kirk

Paww

Paww is a brand new, design-focused pet products company driven to make smart gear for pets and their humans.

We are dog lovers by nature and product designers by training. We are constantly thinking about how we can improve the lives of people and pets through the products they interact with. All of our products strive to address an unmet need, either in the human, the animal, or, ideally, both. We spend a lot of time getting up close and personal with dogs and their owners to gain real empathy for the design challenge at hand.

At the end of the day, a leash connects two beings. We try our best to design amazing products that make life better for both of them.

PD Founder

Chris Miksovsky (02). Hi, I’m Chris. I’m the Chief Executive Human here at humangear and Paww. When I’m not coming up with clever titles for myself, I like to spend time designing humangear’s products. I have a Masters in Engineering – Product Design from Stanford and worked for several years at IDEO before starting humangear in 2007.

Our design process starts with me looking up and out my desk window, putting a hand lightly to my chin, and thinking: “What if? What if the world had a better travel tube? What if we could revolutionize the portable utensil category? What if I had an even catchier title?” Then after a short while a brilliant idea pops into my head, I scribble it onto a napkin, and tell our amazing team to call me when it’s on the shelf. When that method doesn’t work, we spend countless hours obsessing over every millimeter of a product. We strive to make products that are simple, useful, considered, and hopefully even a bit delightful. Basically we try to give a damn about the things we make. I feel lucky to be at humangear and
hope they never fire me.

I’m also a firm believer that there’s more to life than work. In my free time I like to mountain bike,
motorbike, go backpacking, and torture anyone nearby with my guitar playing. My favorite candy
bar is a Reese’s peanut butter cup. I wish they sold them in three packs called “Threese’s.” Call
me when it’s on the shelf.

Visit Paww

Integral Design

Located in the San Francisco bay area in California, Integral Design was founded in 2005 with a mission to develop “tools for your mobile lifestyle.”

At Integral Design, we’re passionate about creating functional and fun products that help with your everyday life. We always start with understanding people and pinpoint pain points and needs. We prototype, listen to feedback, and strive to provide simple, yet elegant solutions to everyday problems.

Use code “youarehere” to get any keyprop for $9. (regularly 12.95)

PD Founder

Integral Design’s founder, Alison Wong (06), is a seasoned product designer and has worked at many product companies including Motorola, Apple, Ford, and IDEO. Alison has a BS in mechanical engineering from MIT and a masters in product design from Stanford.

Visit Integral Design

Hummus Apparel

The Hummus Apparel adventure started in September of 2012 while eating some good Hummus over lunch. We quickly found that Hummus Apparel gave us a way to reconnect with our roots as designers, engineers, and builders. We started doing what we found most energizing — making stuff. And we did it relentlessly. T-shirts, stickers, belts, you name it.

And that’s exactly how The Booyah Belt came to life.

The Booyah Belt also helps people breeze through security. The TSA folks can scan your buckle along with your shoes while you keep the rest of your belt (and dignity) intact. Booyah!

The Booyah Belt is more than a belt. It is a reflection of our core beliefs as a company:

1. Mix it up – we strive to turn moments of frustration into moments of delight through good design. Life is too short to comply with the absurdity of the everyday.

2. Build, build, build – we believe in the power of making stuff. No PowerPoint decks around here. We think with our hands and act with our hearts.

3. Act local – we are committed to sharing our adventure with local partners as much as possible. Our buckles are manufactured in Santa Clara, CA; our straps come from Calera, AL and stitched in Oakland, CA; and everything is designed and assembled in the SF Bay Area.

PD Founder

Tom Maiorana (07) has been designing products and experiences for over 15 years. His work ranges from early-stage concepts to products that are used by millions of people every day.

Hummus Apparel picked up on Tom’s Master’s Thesis, a type of modular shoes that would allow the user to create her own. During the bulk of his time, Tom runs Red Cover Studios (www.redcoverstudios.com), an innovation consultancy and he is a Lecturer at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University. (the d.school)

Tom has an MFA in Design from Stanford University.

Visit Hummus Apparel

Furnace

Furnace is an outdoor equipment & apparel company. Born from the cold waters of the Northeast, we seek to improve product performance with a focus on staying warmer longer.

PD Founder

Yona Belfort (03). As an experienced coldwater surfer and product designer, Yona sees an opportunity to design, build, and sell the world’s best coldwater gear in Maine. Yona oversees new product design, manufacturing, company strategy and operations. Yona holds a B.S. in Engineering and Applied Science from the University of Rochester and an M.S. in Product Design from Stanford.

Visit Furnace

RedStart

Founded in San Francisco in 2004, RedStart is run by Amanda Knox Sather and Sara Shaughnessy who began collaborating as graduate students at Stanford University (Design and Mechanical Engineering, respectively).

RedStart Design originated from our desire to create jewelry lines reflecting our aesthetic vision that were both meaningful and wearable. Many of these pieces are now a part of our Basics. As our skill set grew with experience, we found ourselves becoming not just better designers, but increasingly interested in helping clients translate custom requests into truly unique pieces.

Fortunately, our broad design abilities and open approach suited the needs of a growing clientele who were looking for pieces that they could not find anywhere else.

Today, we primarily focus on custom work. Each day brings new clients to engage us and new projects to challenge us.

PD Founders

Amanda Knox Sather (03) is a Midwest native and second-generation artist. After earning two degrees from Stanford (a BA in Art History and an MA in Religious Studies) and a period of designing jewelry and teaching metalworking in Florence, Italy, Mandy returned to Stanford for a Design MFA that would allow her to pursue her growing love of teaching.

She always envisioned for herself the life of the lone creative — until she met her cofounders.

Now, Mandy and Sara see their collaborative relationship as an important reason they’re able to work so well with their clients. They approach the work without ego from a problem-solving perspective and use a dialog of back-and-forth critique to arrive at the perfect solution and fine-tune the design. This practice primes them to thrive on the same kind of feedback and energy from clients.

As a designer, Mandy is intuitive and fluid. She sketches and carves by hand, relying on her eye and instinct. Her techniques create pieces that are sculptural and flowing, and which often have gentle variations and unexpected turns that infuse the metal and stones with life.

Sara Shaughnessy (00) is a polymath who is driven to learn new skills at every opportunity.

Growing up, she dedicated thousands of hours outside of school to the study and practice of art, particularly watercolor and acrylic painting. She shifted focus in college, simultaneously earning a BA in Biology and a BS in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

She arrived at Stanford for grad school with an NSF grant and a plan to pursue smart products, biomechanics, andMEMS. True to form, she managed to squeeze in an elective course in metalworking — in the very lab where Mandy worked.

Sara’s adventurous, entrepreneurial nature helped spark the creation of RedStart Design, and her affinity for new ideas and techniques compliments RedStart’s unique niche of designing from scratch with their clients.

Aesthetically, Sara is drawn to pattern, precision, and ordered complexity. She starts with sketches but quickly takes the process digital to create designs with flawless curves and exact angles. Perhaps informed by her earlier nano-scale work, she finds deep satisfaction in “making tiny things perfect.”

Visit Redstart’s site

Unplugged Goods

We all need one. You know, that pal who watches our back, softens the blow, untangles our problems, helps us clean up messes, or just makes us laugh when we need it.

At Unplugged Goods, we think our digital devices need friends, too. And with that sentiment in mind, we created a line of low-tech companions for our high-tech devices.

You know, unplugged goods for our plugged in friends.

PD Founder

Dante Pauwels

Crave

CRAVE

For people who go after what they want. At Crave, we believe that sexual pleasure, intimacy and satisfaction are at the core of being human. We believe that sex is healthy, wholesome and playful, that delight and flirtation provide vital sparks to everyday life.

We believe that people crave a variety of sexual experiences and that there should be no judgment, stigma, or shame about that desire. We believe that women have been underserved in the market for quality toys, accessories and devices.

The design, manufacture and material choices for sex toys have been poor, and the shopping experience has been off-putting for many, which has created a longstanding perception of a lack of quality in the category at large. With Crave, we want to change the way women experience sex toys.

PD FOUNDER

Michael Topolovac (PD 92) is a serial entrepreneur with a serious underwater photography habit.He is the co-founder and CEO of CRAVE, a San Francisco-based company specializing in discreet and beautifully designed luxury sex toys. Michael co-founded the company with the mission to solve for the extreme disconnect between the quality experience women want from intimate products and what has been generally available. The company’s first product, the CRAVE Duet, debuted as a crowd-funding project that secured over $100K from 900 donors. Since that time, CRAVE has continued to bring innovative design, engineering, manufacturing, and retail experiences to a previously stigmatized industry.

Prior to CRAVE, Michael co-founded and led Arena Solutions, one of the pioneers of cloudbased computing. Today, the company helps some of the world’s most innovative brands, such as Fitbit, GoPro, DirecTV and Sonos, develop and manufacture their products.

Michael’s entrepreneurial journey began in his Stanford dorm room when he founded Light & Motion Industries (LMI), a leading manufacturer of underwater video, photo, and bike lighting products. Through his decade-long tenure as CEO, Michael led the company from supplier of underwater lights to manufacturer of a full line of high performance underwater imaging products and bike lights.

He continues to serve on the Board of LMI, has been a featured speaker at notable universities, technology conferences, and panels across the country, and has secured multiple hardware and software patents.

Michael holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering/product design from Stanford University. He grew up in San Diego, California and has been enjoying life and work in the San Francisco Bay Area since studying at Stanford.

Visit Crave’s site here

Neri

NERI

Neri was founded by the mother and son team Anina and Elijah Woolery.

Nina has been a lifelong creator, and Eli is a Stanford-trained product designer.

Together, they create products that are simple, durable, and beautiful.

We donate 10% of our profits to the Navajo Adopt-an-Elder program.

Use the code STANFORDPD for 20% off of products for Stanford Product Design friends and family.

PD Founder

Eli went through the PD program in 1998. He currently lectures at Stanford in the PD department, helping to teach ME216B & C along with Bill Burnett and Kathy Davies.

Visit Neri’s site