Silicon Valley ‘secret weapon’ Ideo drawn to county’s high-tech surge

BOULDER — Ideo, the Palo Alto-based innovative design firm that has won awards for developing the look and feel of such products as the Apple mouse, Nike sunglasses, Polaroid’s I-Zone instant camera and the Palm V, has opened an office in Boulder.

In other words, to steal a phrase from Fortune Magazine, “one of Silicon Valley’s secret weapons” has decided this area is ripe for its services.

“A lot of people see this area as the way Silicon Valley was 12 years ago,´ said Chris Cowart, studio lead at Ideo Boulder and a native of Colorado.

“I thought the time was right and so did Chris, so we took the plan (to open a Boulder office) to Ideo,´ said Director Pete Simpson.

Considered to be the world leader in user-centered design, Ideo has taken many of Silicon Valley’s fledgling concepts and products, and morphed them into innovative designs that now are being used in the home, at the workplace, for medical purposes, in retail environments and in entertainment.

With 360 employees worldwide, Ideo’s offices are scattered around the globe. The firm has offices in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, London, Tokyo, Milan and Munich. Ideo’s Boulder office currently has six employees.

Although the company grew up in Silicon Valley, its presence in the design market has had an impact on several continents. “I spent all of 1999 in Munich,” Cowart said, who was working on a project for BMW. “A lot of the time spent there was looking at their burgeoning economy and start-ups.”

Cowart said Ideo is very selective about where it sets up shop, noting that most of the cities are surrounded by an eclectic cultural environment that nurtures Internet start-ups and has a prolific sector of sporting enthusiasts. “They are places that Ideo employees are inspired to live in,” Cowart added.

“We have a number of clients for this office that are not local,” Simpson said. “Our goal is to have the majority of them be local.”

Ideo integrates three main disciplines when designing client products, services and environments: user research, industrial design and mechanical engineering. “You’ve got to have all three of those working together at once to be a success,” Simpson said.

“Just this morning we were unpacking our Huddle Boards,” he added. Ideo was asked by a client to produce the white-board system so that it is very mobile, versatile, can be hung on other surfaces and incorporate graphical overlays like photo albums employ. “They have to be inexpensive to be viable,” he said.

The end result is similar to TV-tray holder, where several white boards (costing only a few dollars apiece) can be plucked by workers and taken off to other areas of the workplace.

Ideo’ s Boulder office is located in a newer suite with a loft at 2010 Eighth St. right off the west end of the Pearl Street Mall. The environment there seems something akin to James Bond’s colleague Q’s prototype-development area. Lots of colorful gadgets and futuristic devises abound.

Last March, Ideo announced its ambitious Project 2010, a six-month project focusing on predicting technological evolutions and products that consumers will have 10 years from now. For one, Ideo is banking on the prospect that wireless technology is here to stay. The firm currently is developing prototypes of products that would delight Captain Kirk and his crew, including a personal digital assistant (PDA) that only recognizes the owner’s thumbprint, organizes information in a database, secures doors for cars and facilities, and forwards messages.

Some of Ideo’s other pacesetting projects have included a 25-foot mechanical whale for the movie “Free Willy,” 3Com’s Ergo Audrey Internet appliance, the Handspring Visor and its eye module digital camera, the Leap Chair for Steelcase, insulin pens for Eli Lilly, Crest’s Neat Squeeze stand-up toothpaste tube, and Oral-B’s soft-grip toothbrushes for kids, to name a few.

A few of Ideo’s big-name clients include Agilent Technologies, Amtrak, BMW, Canon, Gillette, IBM, Nike, Pepsi-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, Sony and Xerox. “Our plan is to have 25 people in two years,” Simpson said of Ideo’s Boulder office. “At that point, we’ll decide how big we need to be. We know 25 is a bare minimum for us.”

Ideo was founded by David Kelley, a tenured professor at Stanford University and the company’s chief executive officer, and Bill Moggride, who is regarded as a preeminent thought leader in the design industry. Ideo’s President Tim Brown is the company’s former European director. Tom Kelley, Ideo’s general manager, recently released a book on design called “The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO.”

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