Back to the Future with OFS Brands at Kansas State

The older I get the more pleasure I derive from spending time with bright, energetic young people. Ironically, it doesn’t make me feel older, but younger – as if their enthusiasm somehow crosses my blood-brain barrier! And so it was, when recently I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days at Kansas State University hanging around the College of Architecture, Planning and Design.

I was on the K-State campus in Manhattan, Kan., at the invitation of OFS Brands’ Doug Shapiro to sit in on a formal review panel critiquing the workplace furniture designs of three teams of two students each who were in the midst of a semester-long project to design furniture solutions to problems set for them by OFS Brands.

2015/2015.0406.KState3.OFSLogo.jpg2015/2015.0406.KState4a.IAPD logo.jpg2015/2015.0406.KState4.KSULogoType.jpg

 

 

The company had agreed to set separate design problems for each team, just as it would if working with an outside product designer. It also agreed to provide interim critical reviews and then to entertain a “final” presentation by each team to a group of senior OFS managers engaged in the company’s new product design and development process.

In an extraordinary move to double down on motivation for the students beyond getting a grade for the class, OFS has upped the ante by agreeing to negotiate a royalty-bearing contract with them if their design merits development into a commercialized product.

This real-world collaboration with a company from our industry, while unique in its particulars, is a hallmark of the Department of Interior Architecture and Product Design at K-State. Since its inception in the early 70s under visionary founder Jack Durgan, the unusual combination of interior architecture and product design has benefited from a close working relationship with the business community.

2015/2015.0406.KState2.deNobleAnkerson.jpg
Professor and Dean Tim de Noble, AIA & Professor and Department Head, Katherine Ankerson, IDEC President

Under the direction of the current dean of the college, Tim de Noble, AIA, department Head Katherine Ankerson and their faculty have built upon the legacy they inherited and worked to maintain a productive relationship with the industry. Steelcase, Nemschoff, Herman Miller and Hawker Beechcraft have all participated to varying degrees in past research and design projects, giving students the benefit of exposure to the kinds of issues they will face when their coursework is done.

The program itself is unusual in several ways. Beyond the uncommon combination of interior architecture and product design, it is a five-year program leading to a Master’s Degree in Interior Architecture and Product Design (MIAPD). First year students in the College of Architecture, Design and Planning take general courses that are a mixture of normal college “general Ed courses” – English and the like – and courses designed to give them an overview of the various fields and degrees available in the college. At the end of the first year, students choose to enter one of the four master’s degree programs available: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Regional and Community Planning or Interior Architecture and Product Design.

I was joined on the review panel by three practicing alumni and holders of the MIAPD from K-State: Amie Keener, Gensler Dallas, Adam Stover, Populous Kansas City and Erin Hurd, also with Populous. It was pleasing to see the warmth with which the alumni were remembered by faculty and staff, considering they had graduated as long ago as 15 years.

Brian Graham of Graham Design in San Francisco was a perfect choice as a member of the panel given his own background as an interior designer who now primarily practices product design, and that symmetry with the department’s curriculum wasn’t lost on Ms. Ankerson, who scheduled Brian for a department-wide presentation of his work and career after the design reviews. She also invited Ms. Keener to discuss with the gathering the importance of professional certification and how best to prepare for the various exams involved.

And finally, Mr. Shapiro of OFS Brands and I rounded out the panel, representing the viewpoint of the manufacturer and the market.

Early in the semester Ms. Ankerson, Neal Hubbell, lead faculty member of the course, and the three teams traveled to Huntingburg, Ind., where they toured the OFS facilities. Mr. Shapiro said, “We wanted to give them the same experience we give outside designers working with us. It’s important for them to see our facility and the products we make and to understand the way we manufacture if they’re going to be successful designing for us.”

Of course, the students loved the experience – the chance to see a mass production facility in action, the showroom with so many cool products, the side trip via ATV to the skeet shooting range for a little practice with a shotgun and especially, I’m told, the dinner at the Schnitzlebank – de rigueur for clients and designers alike visiting the Huntingburg/Jasper area.

According to Mr. Shapiro, the design briefs themselves were left quite open-ended. While each brief addresses a product category of particular interest to OFS, “We wanted to make them less prescriptive than we usually do with designers so as to allow the teams as much room for creativity as possible.”

2015/2015.0406.KState5.Brainstorm.jpg
An example of the students’ brainstorming output

So the design challenges set for the three teams were: private office, waiting room and touchdown space. They were to research user needs and the products already on the market then design a new solution.

On a tour of the department studios, we saw for ourselves the extraordinary level of one-on-one mentoring the students receive from the faculty on a day-to-day basis. And prior to this crit review, the teams had benefited from an interim review by the alumni subset of our review panel. To maximize the learning, all the teams attended our entire review session, so the students could experience the presentations and critiques of the other teams as well as their own.

2015/2015.0406.KState12alt.Brian and Amie.jpg
Amie Keener and Brian Graham
2015/2015.0406.KState11.Brian%27s audience.jpg
Members of the Department of Interior Architecture and Product Design enjoyed presentations by panelists Amie Keener, Gensler Dallas and Brian Graham, Graham Design

The presentations consisted of slide shows wherein each team presented its research and proposed solutions. The “order of battle” was as follows:

>Private Office: “The Adaptable Private Office” by Rachael Mayhill and Rachel Botten

>Waiting Room: “The Waiting Landscape” by Sarah Swaim and Aaron Bisch

> Touchdown Space: “Redefining Spatial Lifestyles-Touchdown” by Brianna Stevens and Dylan Howe

 

2015/2015.0406.KState8.Third up.jpg
Students Brianna Stevens and Dylan Howe
2015/2015.0406.KState7.second up.jpg
Students Sarah Swaim and Aaron Bisch
2015/2015.0406.KState6.First up.jpg
Left to right: Adam Stover of Populous, and students Rachael Mayhill and Rachel Botten

Having sat in critical reviews of student work before, I was very impressed by the professionalism of the presentations. In all cases both team members contributed, and the research each of the teams had done was cogent, thorough and presented a good rationale for their designs.

2015/2015.0406.KState9.Critique.jpg
Brian Graham of Graham Design offers input

On the jury, the criticism was kind but forthright, suggesting ways to improve the designs and make them more appealing to OFS from an engineering/manufacturing standpoint as well as from a market appeal/functionality standpoint. I can’t think of how it could have been any better.

2015/2015.0406.KState10.alot to absorb.jpg
While the panel was kind, the input could be a lot to absorb

Now the teams are fine-tuning their designs and presentations for one final interim review before the big day of presentations to the OFS executive team. Personally, I’m hoping for an invitation to that one! But I doubt if OFS will invite me…Mr. Shapiro has already witnessed the freedom with which I offer my advice and that might not be so welcome in the next round!

I’m sorry I can’t include images of the designs in this article, but that would not be in the interest of the students or the possibility that OFS Brands might want to develop one or more of them into an actual product.

Win-win is such a tired cliché I’m embarrassed to conclude my story with it, but I can’t think of a better expression to describe this course. It’s a wonderful introduction to the real world that awaits the students upon graduation, its an innovative and pretty risk-free way for OFS Brands to get a look at some fresh thinking about solutions to workplace issues, and it would be a huge win for everyone involved if OFS were to fall in love with one or more of the projects and follow through with launching it.

2015/2015.0406.KState13.Panel.jpg
The panel L to R: Katherine Ankerson, Amie Keener, Neal Hubbell, Brian Graham, Erin Hurd, Bob Beck, Adam Stover and Doug Shapiro