Out of Procter & Gamble and IDEO’s ongoing collaboration have come a number of new products, from savvy overhauls of existing offerings to totally novel inventions. Included in the latter category is the Swiffer CarpetFlick—a new product going after a totally new market.

Read the article here.

There’s more to the design world than the design of objects. On September 21, as part of the series “Why Good Design Matters” at the Apple Store in San Francisco, Fred Dust, Smart Space Practice lead at IDEO, described how his firm uses innovative design methodologies and applies them to housing, cities and even governments.

Dust presented a design process that IDEO deploys on projects that are “bigger than a breadbox.” These large-scale projects include fresh takes on failing neighborhoods, the reinvention of government services for Finland and the creation of immersive interactive spaces for the likes of the Gap, Prada, BBC and Virgin. Dust ascribed IDEO’s success in this wide range of activity to its development of what he calls “design as an investigative process.”

By Tim Brown

At IDEO, we manage a constant stream of experimental projects designed to expand our knowledge and create new intellectual property valuable to us and our clients.

Read the article here.

IDEO’s LifePort Kidney Transporter chosen as final nominee in Body category.

The INDEX: awards were held for the first time in 2005, initiated by the City of Copenhagen and the Danish government. Intended to create a global event that demonstrates the capacity for design to improve life, INDEX: has been described as the “world’s largest design awards.” The first occurrence saw entry of 538 designs from more than forty-three countries, nominated by influential individuals, and leading design centers, organizations, universities, and institutions from around the world.

Divided into four major categories, Body, Home, Work, Play, and Community, INDEX: Award 2005 celebrated the various approaches and outcomes that have come to make design so valuable on a global scale, including human centeredness, prototyping, multidisciplinary collaboration, and technological expertise. With these principles in mind, the jury—composed of design practitioners, writers, and thinkers from Europe, the US, and Asia—chose 118 top nominees after seven months of nominations and review.

Included in the final nominees was IDEO’s LifePort Kidney Transporter. Nominated in the category of Body, the design has been proven to successfully preserve 50% more donor kidneys while in transport, and to increase valuable travel time from eighteen to thirty-five hours.

In September 2005, the jury announced the five finalists at the INDEX: 2005 Award ceremony in Copenhagen. Following the ceremony, the 118 nominees were included in an exhibition in Copenhagen that attracted more than 150,000 visitors.