uh my name is matt cressey i am the director of the program and um pretty much one of the co-founders of the program uh i'm joined by the ibm staff uh tony hoos our faculty director andy mcginnis is our uh amazing can make anything uh instructor we have shauna bushfenty and grace agusto who are our fabulous program manager and uh event planner extraordinaire so we're all very excited to have you we have some students joining us as well they're going to introduce themselves a little bit later uh and give you some more details but um for now what i'll do is what we're going to do is i'm going to start out with first of all we're recording this so i just want you all to be aware of that if any of you um are maybe being pursued by law enforcement this would be the time to turn off your video or just get off the call altogether um but we are recording uh the um the schedule of events is that i'll probably talk for about 40 minutes and then when you're really good and sick of me we'll open it up to q a and then the student panel discussion and you can actually ask the students what they think about idm which is always insightful we like hearing what they think about ibm sometimes it's the first time we get to hear uh that they actually like the program no i'm just kidding we hear that now and then um so uh without further ado let me share my screen and get going all right does everybody see a slide that says mit idm yes great okay all right so um i like to start with this slide uh these are in my opinion just really phenomenal products and experiences uh you know so you know we have the eems chair in the upper left-hand corner we have you know bang and olson audio we have apple products we have tesla products but we have pixar and we have starbucks and uh and you know i could put all kinds of various companies up here but all of these companies have this one thing in common and that is that they provide a really beautiful emotional experience to their customers and that's just so important you know because you can actually create products that solve for functional needs but these companies have really excelled in not only meeting the functional requirements of a product but also really dazzling us emotionally really making their products you know just a beautiful experience that we crave right um and you know idm uh is i i just answered that question uh but basically they have a wonderful user experience they all have profitable business models uh and tesla just recently and they have exciting technologies and those three elements are really essential for a successful business and at ibm we combine those three disciplines that are responsible for those things design business and engineering we have this venn diagram that maybe some of you have seen where we say that look the design disciplines are responsible for creating a desirable product engineering is responsible for making sure that those products are feasible they're repeatable they're robust they're they're you know safe and then business uh is responsible for making sure that you know money is handled correctly supply chains and partnerships are created distribution chains are created and maintained and so on and so forth and really when you have those three kind of activities going on together in a company you have a very powerful combination i think what i uh kind of unique about idm is this balance you won't see a balance like this very often in business or in academic programs usually it's you've got two of these circles right and maybe one of them is really small or maybe you only have two altogether right but we have worked very hard to make sure that not only is our fact our curriculum balanced in design business and engineering but we even made sure our faculty are balanced with designers uh business faculty and engineering faculty and we go one step farther where we make sure that our cohort our students are equally balanced so we have one third of our cohort have design backgrounds one-third have business backgrounds and one-third have engineering backgrounds and so we're really really true uh to that concept of a balanced approach to creating inspired experiences this slide is really to say yeah we do all those things but we're really trying to create leaders we're not trying to create a better engineer or a better designer or a better business person and i'm sure that we do right when we when when our alumni go off into the world they're better at their disciplines no doubt about it but we really hope that what we're creating are leaders that know how to actually compose a team that's balanced that know how to construct an organization right that know how to use design and business and engineering to inspire people to achieve better products better results better profits and better things for the earth and for society and you know hopefully have a big heart when they do that which is why we use the heart so often uh we really think that all these things we talk about are really fantastic but if they're not working towards a greater good if they're not connecting us and bringing us together if they're not causing us to celebrate all the beautiful diversity in the world um then you know why bother with any of it so we really kind of try to think about the big picture uh in ibm so we want to create people with vision people with passion uh people with love and then we try to give them skills and philosophies and concepts where they can go out and achieve fabulous results idm is a leadership program that uses human-centered design as a foundation for thoughtful inspired leadership you know one of the things that i think is so powerful about human centered design is that before you make a decision you actually talk to other people first right and get their feelings about that decision and if you're a leader you could do that with your various uh parts of your organization and in that process of using human centered design to make a decision you actually become inspired yourself and a vision may come to you from all the ideas that you're kind of collecting in that process of talking to your staff or your department heads or whomever right so um you we talk a lot about how can i be a better leader you know and everybody takes like some executive education workshop or whatever to build out leadership qualities in themselves well human-centered design just sort of naturally does that and so i we we really love how powerful that is so we we try to talk about that and so this is our mission um idm's mission is to enable the learning and development of extraordinary innovative leaders that will bring new levels of creativity vision and integrity to business and society and this is uh not our most this is uh our second to most recent cohort and you know i just i love it every time we we have a cohort and we take this photograph you can see the amount of energy and passion and um i don't know they just kind of glow and you know they they're just very our our students are just the most precious beautiful thing in the world of the idm faculty and staff it's all we it's all we concern ourselves with for the most part and protecting them um so at idm we try to create this culture uh that is all about innovation and you know improving things right so innovation sort of means change uh but we assume that that change is good right innovation doesn't always mean good or result in good things so we always try to really think about let's innovate but let's do it so that it causes good goodness we use the design process we think about design processes a lot we do it in an inspiring environment you can see andy teaching a session right there in the background on uh how to mix up a thermo set resin i think that's a rubber uh that he's that he's mixing up um and then we try to select extraordinary people to get that energy um and i think that's one of the most special things about idm is is the people that we happen to have all around us that we work with all all day long the students and the faculty and staff we are very excited uh about a major achievement uh this is something i've been working towards for six years now and that is a dedicated space at mit for idm so this is our new studio it's being constructed as we speak it's right in the heart of mit underneath the dome we are so proud and excited and and flattered that we are given the space and uh and it's going to be beautiful so we're very very excited and uh covid uh you know uh with permission from covid if it will kind of leave us we will all be in this space next fall a little bit about where students come from they come from all over the world we love that we love diversity we love the perspectives and the lenses in which our students see things that's what really makes um creativity come to life um and you know so we have this little map here you know you can see they come from all over the world the size of the heart is kind of the number of people coming from those regions uh this is growing all the time is this probably needs to be updated but we work very hard to make sure that we are pulling in people uh from all over the world a little bit about our demographics uh so idm is a two-year program therefore we have two cohorts uh currently uh we have a cohort with 26 students in it and another cohort with 27 for a total of 53 students in the program next year we're probably going to grow that to 33 students coming in because of our new studio space we can actually take more students so we'll probably target 33 i think we'll probably end up with 33 or 30. i reserve the right to change those numbers but that's that's sort of the preliminary thinking at this point as i mentioned uh we we try to populate the cohort with a third engineering background the third business background and third design backgrounds and we like people with work experience because a lot of things that we teach in idm um are actually methods to deal with working with other people and grappling with big bureaucracies and cultures that are loath to try anything new that are risk adverse right i mean those are really the things that prevent great ideas from coming to life it's not the ideas the quality of the ideas it's not the quality of the ideas it's the culture in which those ideas are born and how that culture is so risk adverse that they prevent those ideas from making it to market so we uh talk about those things a lot if you have no work experience a lot of things we talk about will have very little value to you you'll be like this seems to have not matter when for those of us who have uh worked in in organizations we know how much that matters our average eight is uh age is 28. and uh since uh i founded the program i made a strong commitment to always having 50 percent or more women in the program and we've always been true to that currently we have 65 percent women and 62 percent of our students are international this is a quick snapshot of our curriculum uh both years so the top horizontal bar is our first year at ibm and the bottom bar is the second year everyone arrives in august uh in normal times and we kick things off with a uh about a a one week orientation that involves all kinds of activities that are designed to allow people to connect and to get to know each other and develop sort of very human connections and appreciation for each other uh come september we then start the semester and uh the first year everyone takes what's called the idm core we call it id lab integrated design lab and that's 15 units and then in addition to that uh you'll take uh a required elective or two okay up and um so that would be up to 21 units of electives for a total of around 36 units okay in january at mit we have this very unique and wonderful uh kind of mini mini semester it's uh about a month long and it's a time when you can explore any course you want it's sort of unrelated to your to your degree requirements unless you want it to be um but you can go take glassblowing or you could go take um i don't know you know uh drum or you know a music course or or whatever you know and um so it's a wonderful time to explore uh in the spring then you'll take the second half of of id lab the idm core curriculum and you'll keep working on your required electives uh most students will do internships or some sort of summer experience it's not required you could just go sit on a beach that's fine by us i don't think we've ever had a student do that almost all of them are just way too motivated to do something like that they might do that for a week or two but by and large most people are doing something extremely productive uh in that in that summer between the first and second year uh the second year um we we have uh idm seminar that's about three units and then students have to do a thesis and finish up any required electives um one thing that you'll see there is we have these projects and so going back to the first year in the first year you'll do uh three projects um the first and i'm going to talk about those in a minute in more detail but um yeah so why don't we hold off on the projects those are really the most important element of your learning in the core curriculum at in idm uh that is the the vehicle in which i'd say 95 of your learning takes place all right so i think i mentioned some of this stuff but the idm core is 30 units id seminar is six units in total you'll have to take 27 units of management electives uh and we have a list of electives there there's hundreds of courses on this list to choose from uh but they to meet your uh idm required requirements you have to take the courses off this list and you'll have to take 27 units in management at the sloan school of management or 27 units in the engineering school okay and then you'll do 24 units of thesis this all adds up to about 114 units and you'll have about 30 units that are free and you can use those units if you want to take anything you you you'd like okay we do have a balance requirement but um we'll talk about that uh another time uh so in the id lab we have all kinds of activities going on in that lab um you know first this is sort of your place to work as your team it's your headquarters uh and we provide space for your team to to work there and and really immerse yourselves in the work that you're doing um there's a makerspace that's a part of the lab we do design workshops obviously you know with andy teaching about how to make almost anything we have guest lecturers that are you know from all walks of life we try to bring in a whole diverse set of of guest speakers this is confusing at times i think to students but we think it's important to really see different ways of being as a creative person or an innovator or a thinker and so so those guest lectures are always kind of interesting uh we this is a place where we practice human-centered design and user-centered research you know where you can do interviews and observations and learn about ergonomics and things like that and then of course we do all our kind of really more um rigorous lecturing there by mit faculty and those topics will be mostly on engineering design and business um the schedule uh tends to look like this in normal times uh from 1 to 2 30 we'll have that lecture i just mentioned and that might be on these topics listed you know anything from uh you know business modeling uh to marketing to product architecture to concept generation to needs research whatever then there is this time about two hours where teams will work together the project teams are working all together and the faculty are there to kind of walk around and check in and and mentor there's a lot of contact time between students and faculty and that's something that i really felt was important during my time in art school at risd and so i carried that over when we were designing this curriculum to make sure we had that same sort of faculty student involvement um i think it's just a really uh precious thing and then from 4 30 to 6 is workshop and that's where um you learn how to make things and um you know this is just so important i think it's so important as a leader to understand and have sensitivity for what it takes to actually build and make things uh it gives them respect for those people that do that for their company it allows them to have credibility with those people um and you know just they just really need they should have empathy for every single person in their company and so um this is something that does that but more importantly it also enables people to be creative and to realize their visions right personally not have a team of people do it for you but for you to actually be able to get in there and do it um so uh we feel this is one of another uh part of idm that's that's really important all right so as i was mentioning before you have three projects in your first year that are required uh your second year your thesis could be a project you might have your own sort of business you're trying to start up that second year sometimes we call the incubator year um but in the first year i'm going to talk about the first three projects so we call them p1 p2 and p3 p1 is really all about focusing on deep connection with your users and customers and stakeholders and that's done using interviews and other ethnographic methods you know observational research things like that um so we have this one project where that's all you do and the deliverable for that is really a presentation that makes us the audience feel empathy for the people that you interviewed and and this and and explored okay so that's how important we think understanding people and connecting with people is we have one project that's just focused right on that um the second project is about manufacturing and sales you know i think a lot of programs even a lot of consulting firms a lot of businesses are in the business of really kind of creating a concept and never does it make it to market and then they market the fact that they created this concept and that's their business model and they get paid fee for service uh we believe that the best thing to do is to actually do design work that makes it to market so it actually has a positive impact on on people you know otherwise it's just a science project for you forever right perpetual site and so to do that you really have to understand manufacturing and you really have to understand sales so we make everyone may design a product a very small one they have to manufacture 50 units this is done in a team and then they have to sell all 50 units and that's our second project and from the beginning that project you're a student at the end of that project you're in business you're an entrepreneur and it's really fun to see this happen in you know about eight weeks and i think it gives confidence and inspiration to everyone that you know what i'll never ever be unemployed because i can just create a business in eight weeks if i need to p3 is about product development and contract manufacturing so if you think of that first first if you think of project two is sort of the experience of an entrepreneur who's in a cottage industry p3 is about an entrepreneur who's going into more of a high volume uh venture where you're going to make tens of thousands of units using a contract manufacturer as opposed to manufacturing it yourself it's a different sort of process there's different considerations it happens to probably be more likely that that's what you'll do when you leave uh idm uh you'll be probably operating in this mode uh but that's why we do p3 p3 is a whole semester that's 14 weeks um the projects are student generated or they're industry sponsored we have you know companies that love to partner with us and so they will sponsor a student team and the team will work with that industry sponsor and hopefully develop something that's really cool otherwise the projects are ideas that students have had and they all coalesce around an idea and they they work on that for 14 weeks uh the pro the projects can really be anything uh they can be obviously hard products tangible products physical objects uh but many of them are digital products so it could be a a new platform digital platform it could be a new app it could be a new financing instrument it could be a solution to a social problem it could be solving for you know refugees and refugee camps uh it could be all kinds of things so there's the sky's the limit and we encourage uh anything um okay and then uh when we do have sponsors those relationships are usually pretty intimate they're ongoing the sponsor is very involved and the students own any intellectual property that comes out of that uh sponsored project and that's very unique it's an mit kind of thing and it's a wonderful thing so you know if you develop something that's amazing uh it doesn't just belong to the sponsor and you get nothing it actually belongs to you and the sponsor has to negotiate with you to get that ip and then bring it to market all right so um i have some uh examples of project one this is a really nice one that uh you can see susie who's uh third from the left sitting there and she really wanted to understand what it was to be homeless and susie was incredibly brave and courageous and she really went out into the streets of boston and immersed herself in sort of the homeless culture that is out there and saw a lot of stuff you know that she was kind of shocked by but it was a phenomenal experience she developed uh you know very deep connections to many of these people and she came back and gave a presentation that was really quite um moving uh project two uh as i mentioned is all about manufacturing so this is chin chin is up to her eyeballs almost literally uh making her product for uh actually her team's product so there's there's teams of three people and um she's working on making her 50 units and uh this is what it's like and it's really you know to be honest it's just a ton of fun uh to do this um and this is another team that was working on what they called the saturn bowl which was this bronze casting that they made with a beautiful kind of hardwood i think that was ash kind of ring that was bonded to it to create this bronze and wood bowl just really beautiful all of these products are sold in this idm event that we call the ibm sales gala and it happens every year and i think a lot of people really look forward to it around mit now which is kind of cool um and so here's a team at the sales gala selling their uh botanica whoops got away from me they're botanica uh planter okay and so you know this is a whole room just uh filled with you know probably a few hundred people uh buying products from all our teams and this is a photo i think from last year and at the end of the night the cohort project three is all about you know going very deep on the full product development cycle and process this was a project for oath pizza where the students developed a better pizza box for oath pizza that dealt with issues uh like keeping pizza warm for a longer period of time and also making sure the pizza didn't get soggy so it had to deal with humidity issues uh you know here's the team giving their final presentation and showing their their innovation this was a really well done project here's another team that created a device that allows you to brew a cup of coffee drip coffee in a very accurate way and it gave you a user interface and instructions on what to add and how much at what point in time very clever you know using leds and an away scale uh this is another project that uh was really created to help teams develop more empathy uh within the uh teammates the team members so this was an example of a product that really was a digital product um this is a more a project that really focuses more on a social problem uh so in africa you know there's issues with uh how to deal with sanitary pads or napkins and so this was a redesign of that that was specifically for that market and for a supply chain that happened to be available in that location um this is another project that was all about creating security and ease of use for elderly people using the internet and email um and you know so uh for for a lot of us managing passwords and login account information is getting very cumbersome and for the elderly it's even worse right it's almost debilitating to the point where they can't even use their email so this was a solution that made it easier to use yet it was still secure and these projects all are presented in a final presentation this is uh in our our current space where the teams give basically a presentation that talks about the need about the problem about what the stakeholders are experiencing and then talks about how they've created a solution that meets those needs and how they've created a business model that makes uh it all sustained financially sustainable we have crazy people like this brian matt who is the ceo and founder of altitude just recently acquired by accenture you know one of the best product design firms uh in the world and you know brian is just so excited to he's always we keep him very involved with idm he's you know for me personally a great sounding board and um one of our greatest fans so we have lots of people like this that are just really uh important thought leaders that are they just hang out with us because they love what we're doing they and you know brian is providing opportunities for students constantly through his amazing network uh we have all kinds of companies that now look to idm to hire they love the idea about human centered design improving their work so they they come here we have all kinds of students creating companies about 40 percent of our alumni uh start companies so they become entrepreneurs 60 go and work for the companies in the slide i just showed you but these are some of the companies that our students have created um some of them are you know billing millions of dollars a year already others have been acquired others are still in the sort of startup phase and and and in that very exciting stage where they're suffering but having fun and then when everyone uh graduates we have i think one of the most special graduation ceremonies uh and that we charter a boat this beautiful boat we use it every year uh in boston harbor and we bring peop everybody out families and and of all the students and we have some very kind of uh touching moments and um it's just a very beautiful experience and uh you know it's just a very tight program we're very connected it's um we're very close and and i think we all very much appreciate that uh is one of the most amazing things about idm so uh okay so just some some uh details here if you are going to apply our deadlines january 15th uh and as a reminder you know we're looking for at least three years work experience we're going to need three letters of recommendation um they don't have to be that lengthy we we look for gre and gmat scores but they're optional uh this year i would say include them if you think there's something that would would shine a favorable light on you otherwise you don't need to we like we used to require else and toefl scores those are optional also this year we're if you make it to the final round you'll be invited for an interview and that's a really great way for us to truly assess uh your command of english language because those are what those tests are for we're going to need a resume we're going to need a very beautiful inspired vision statement and we're going to need a portfolio from you okay and as i mentioned finalists will be required to attend an interview that we prefer to be in person but it could also be by zoom which is obviously what we'll have to do uh until covet is is is moved on all right and if you have this is our contact information and uh i think for once i am almost on time okay so with that um i'd like to open it up to uh any q a uh when are we gonna have our panelists now or in a few minutes guys in about 20 minutes great so we got 20 minutes of q a for for me uh and our staff uh faculty would love to hear from you guys your thoughts feelings questions uncertainties anything you got hey man andres here how's it going very well how are you i'm good yeah thank you for the information very very good uh talk i was curious about the portfolio aspect of the application uh and specifically how um i can you know show my my work um that is still proprietary uh so i do work for startup now and a lot of what i do is kind of uh held under lock and key so um yeah could you offer any any guidance there well that's a great question and that's uh you know that can be tricky um what i would recommend uh you know i've been in the same situation where i've had to give presentations to clients because i have my own little practice and where i have to show them work i've done but it might be proprietary so what i do is i i show them the value of the work i don't show them the details of how uh it works you know so um i might focus on uh the needs that i discovered and how we met those needs with certain features in the product but i won't get into the mechanics of the product itself and how the that the performance of that product was achieved i don't know if that makes sense or not but yeah i think i understand yeah and so that that will be sufficient we'll we'll now if if in your let's say you're a mechanical engineer and you know you've got some sort of kinematic innovation right uh that you think is just phenomenal that can be a little problematic right so another option would be that you could present a the concept of that kinematic innovation and um and and talk about it without going into maybe some of the nuances like maybe it was the tolerances that you were able to manage very successfully to allow this this thing to happen don't talk about the tolerances or don't talk about what they are you know just talk about yeah yeah great yeah thanks so much a quick follow-up uh you know when it says like four to six pages slash slides does that mean and or or or is the format really just up to our imagination well the idea there is that um we'll have a portfolio that is broken into two parts the first part is a part that focuses on maybe a project that you are particularly proud of or maybe was this epic adventure right and you tell the story in four to six pages of that project you know about your process we want to see how you think we want to see how you approach the problem what was the journey that you that you traveled um and then at the end of those on that sixth page we want to see where you where you resulted where you landed and but that's really the story of that journey in the development of that particular result then the subsequent pages might be one let's say that you know if you're like me you've developed hundreds of projects right products so you would you would pick your favorite four or five projects and just do a picture of those five one page for each one to say yeah and i did this and i did this and i did this and i did this and maybe a few bullet points about what's special about each of them so one page per per project to show some of your other work but you don't have to tell the story about those like you did that first part of the portfolio is that somewhat clear i feel like that wasn't clear but yeah claire's bud no that's great thanks matt sure uh hi matt uh can you guys hear me yes okay perfect um so i uh was wondering about the work experience i know you said on average about like five six-ish years um so i like graduated a year and a half ago and i've been just like working on my first job at accenture as a tech consultant um so i was just wondering like if i don't have about like five six years should i not apply or or like yes okay great question thanks for asking that so um we really uh well not so we have a three-year requirement so um i would say natalie maybe hold off for another year uh it would be good for you to have at least three years uh some of our students have 20 years of experience so that's why the average is more like five um but i'd say uh you know the bell curve is more probably around four or five four years you know maybe in there but um yeah unless the only exception we'll make to this rule is if let's say you have one and a half years of experience but that experience was epic like you almost died we'd be interested in talking to you okay intensity can sometimes make up for duration right so that's that's sort of the philosophy there okay and i guess also someone commented too that i was going to ask as well would like internship or freelance also count as part of that uh work three-year work experience requirement not really no we try to yeah it really needs to be sort of full-time you're on your own you're paying all your bills you know what i mean you're you're balancing uh you know if you if you if you don't need a job to survive you treat the job differently but when you're dependent on it right and all of a sudden you see it much different it's like whoa this this matters right and it may stink and you got to figure out a way to make it work or you got to find another job so we want that whole kind of experience to happen for a few okay years makes sense great and you'll appreciate ibm better as a result i believe you great matt youssef has his hand up oh great use it can i hear you youssef oops is my does my voice come through gotcha yeah awesome so my question was how much of the course is focused on obtaining hard skills as opposed to soft skills and by the i mean things like coding or cad modeling things that students might use practically for their design projects and they might not have gained when they were doing their undergrads for example or even from their jobs great question so um hard skills uh i would say we have a ton of that right um and soft skills we uh i would say if i had to break it into percentages i would say 75 hard skills 25 soft skills uh i could be wrong about that um and i wouldn't mind um turning down the hard skills and turning up the soft skills a little bit but that's kind of to be you know just being completely honest i think that's about where we are at the moment that makes a lot of sense makes sense and and if i may add another question is there a focus on for the students to take up the projects that they um i guess make during the course and then maybe spend them out into startups and during their time at the course is that encouraged and as opposed to maybe going towards a corporate route beyond after graduation yeah totally encouraged um uh yeah i think i i'll just admit right now i'm an entrepreneur okay i've never really worked for anyone the closest thing i have ever come to working for someone is the job i have right now so i really feel strongly about entrepreneurship about people um as individuals expressing themselves and doing that in a financially sustainable way and i think that just makes the world so much richer and and amazing and so we're all about that we'll do whatever we can to support our students in that endeavor but if people want to go work for tesla or apple we're all for that too and we have students that do that so that's awesome um and then just the final small question when it came to some of the engineering modules or the electives that students can take and are those from specific engineering department or is it abroad so maybe part of the design school and i tony i'm gonna let you take that one sure so we we teach a variety of uh engineering topics i provide a lot of those lectures we also have guest lecturers and then as part of your electives you'll take a lot of elective classes half of them will be in the school of engineering could be from mechanical engineering electrical engineering computer science there's 400 plus classes to choose from so no lack of classes and half your electives will be in the sloan school of management i understand thank you so much thank you guys you're welcome matt chloe has a question hi yeah so my name is chloe um so i'm interested in the design cohort but i my undergraduate degree is in physics and i've been working as a essentially a synthetic chemist for about four years so my portfolio wouldn't have a strong design component even though i you know took some studio art classes and things like that um is that going to sort of be a problem if i'm interested in the design section or should i maybe try to develop that side a little bit more um okay um so first of all there's no not just just to clarify i'm not sure if this is what you mean when you say section but in ibm we don't have sections we what we have are um sort of a population of students that we like to be balanced and they happen to have backgrounds in design engineering or business everyone learns the same curriculum there's only one section and that is the the core right and everybody kind of does so really the question i think is which bucket would you be in as we're kind of doing our admissions would you be in the design bucket or would you be in the engineering bucket right and so um the short answer to that is uh don't worry about it we'll figure it out okay i guess just because on your admissions web page i mean maybe it's been updated since i last looked at it it kind of made it sound like you needed to enter a certain focus area you will you'll you'll have to put that in you you just pick one that you feel that you identify with okay but that's okay you know we'll we'll look at you and we'll we'll either keep you there or as we get through the process we might shift you into another one depending on kind of what we see and things like that okay um i also saw that on the i guess the approved electives um there's only like one or two material science courses um is it possible to discuss with an advisor like approving alternative engineering electives um or i have i just i have a certain idea of i guess a project focus in mind which i know is subject to changing um as things can be serendipitous but i'm also really interested in doing some material science to aid in my design ideas so okay um just to give myself a rest and and i'm going to hand this off to tony as well who do i bump this over to oh no there should be there should be plenty of material science courses i can take a look with you um and it is possible to petition for a course to be accepted as an ibm elective it's a bit of a process so definitely not everyone that's requested gets approved that we have a process of looking at the professor looking at the content how much engineering content there is search that sort of thing but certainly possible and remember you units of free electives you can take anything you want you can take materials you can take dance whatever strikes your fancy but if you have a specific need we can talk offline about what that might be okay thank you great leandra is next hey um i guess this is a question for like the students here as well um so i'm curious as far as like structural projects that are more focused and social problems which ones have sort of stood out to you or been your favorite um on the site it's really easy to find more like products but harder to find those sorts of examples great so yes students i'm rutha leroy nahara i think i think i can answer that because i'm working so a project like that right now the project i'm working right now is not a physical product we are trying to create a system or an um place a digital place where we could make serendipity happen like because of covert we lost that we are not meeting anyone in the hallways and things like that so we are trying to bring that to the digital world yeah i'm curious like um that example that you showed where that that woman went out and interviewed the homeless community um like what was her sort of project at the end like what was the what was the project that was sort of associated with that research so that uh year we we we i think the uh the prompt or the topic was um carrying things okay and the idea was to go interview people various market segments and interview them and find out what they carry right and how far and how heavy and all that stuff and so susie uh wanted to figure out what homeless people carry around with them but the the end result uh was not so much a product solution it was the end result is this presentation that susie gave and the idea is that if you're a good uh if you practice human centered design well that presentation will be moving right will transfer the empathy that susie got to the audience to all of us and if you can do that successfully not only are you doing good things for the world and are you commanding the human center design process but you're also practicing skills that are necessary to be a great leader awesome thank you sure okay harish is next hey how am i um um yeah so so um so i'm an engineer of education so i for coming to graduation like four years back and i've transformed myself into a designer right after my college i'm currently working as a product designer or ux designer at honeywell so my question here is uh let's say i finish the course because um so formally i don't have a design educational background but let's say if i uh attempt this course uh what is that one thing that i would be i could be looking forward to like at the end of this because like uh professionally i am like kind of settled right now as a designer but what on top of it can i be like achieving after this completion of the course because this this has been always always my dilemma whether i should be taking a formal design education or something of that sort so yeah yeah well i think the question harish is what do you want to do what is your dream for yourself if i understand that i think i can tell you better whether idm is the right kind of path for that so what is that what can you want you to share that with all of us just tell us what what's your dream well that's a that's a good question but yeah so i've begun my transition from engineering background to design thinking that i would make some difference or in terms of the experiences i create i mean initially i had no idea what design is all about right but when i've got into that i've just figured out that problem solving something which is really making me like go to work every day and be it uh any any sort of problem i've worked for around like 15 plus digital products and varying from different backgrounds so i'm very adaptable in nature so so the only question here is uh the the the confusion that has come to me is like i really wanted to move further like uh go into a role where um or where design has a word in the room right um because there's i've seen products where uh mostly business and technology take over whereas design like could be a secondary thing so i was just trying trying to especially in india i'm from india so that's yeah yeah okay well let me let me answer this the best i can in the period of time we have so um you know the way to see this is a couple of ways first of all um you know there's those people in the world that really want to go to a studio every morning and have their cozy desk and chair and all their materials and a beautiful environment and they want to just immerse themselves in the details and the nuances of creating beautiful experiences for people and that's all they want to focus on and that's the role of a designer or it could be an engineer right yeah but it can be very siloed and or it can be solo it can be you could just have your studio and be alone right it's like almost like an artist then there are those people who want to go and create an organization that creates products that employs people like the person i just described and that person is going to have to construct an organization that values those people like i just described and allows their work to make it into the product line that they sell to the world so that it can benefit other people so i think that's the first question is if you want to do the former go to design school if you want to do the latter then come to idm and let me just also say this not many organizations will give designers that kind of beautiful lifestyle you're going to be most likely under time constraints compromising the quality of your work all the time and arguing with engineering and marketing about why your design is important and they're going to dismiss it and do something else altogether so that's why we want people have work experience because that's the reality yeah and so so i think that's probably some good information for you to think about what you should do all right awesome great question thanks man um jennifer hi hi i'm jennifer um thank you again for the information uh my question is regarding portfolio too and so many of my work experience it's been under um confidential agreements and i would like to know if you will also uh are will be interested in seeing the work i've done but like just experimental work not in the industry but like to develop form and function experimental things to be able to show you some renderings and some more deep concepts not just the writing i will be able to show because of these confidential things yeah that would be wonderful we'd be happy with that no problem yeah so it doesn't they don't necessarily have to be real products um your portfolio could have um concepts that you've developed you made one of them and it's sitting in your house right or your apartment uh it doesn't have to be you know marketed or shipping at the moment so don't worry about that thank you sure uh sebastian do you have a question hi guys can you hear me yes hi from monterey mexico everyone uh and thanks for the information i guess my question is i saw you have students from everywhere and i think that's uh that's lovely i saw some mexicans too even so i'd love to know if there is some way i can connect with mexican students that that have gone to the program or even latin american to understand like their experience uh the scholarships they tapped into the maybe what what are they doing right now uh when they've come back to to any latin country and just to get to know them if they have any tips is there a way to do this is there a right way to do it absolutely we're happy to connect you with those folks and they're happy to talk to you too so um just send us an email um and just uh tell us remind us what you want to do and then um probably grace will make it happen she'll make those connections for you grace thanks thank you now we're we're deep yeah go ahead tony finish to finish your thought i wouldn't say that we're kind of in this it's time to hear from our students um so unless there's a burning question for me i'd love to just sort of transition to questions for the students that are here with us so that is the fabulous cat the fabulous uh leroy fabulous amrutha and was the fourth one ihara and oh the fabulous yuanbo and the fabulous nahara great awesome so uh you guys these are uh a rare moment where you can get the honest truth about idm from the students although we're watching them so we know what they're gonna they're gonna be on their best behavior but so please any questions for them let's hear it yeah i got one all right uh it's just in terms of like funding this type of education uh you know the price tag is pretty dang steep um are there opportunities um for fellowships for you know paid research opportunities what have you to kind of help students along um you know i think i read on the website there wasn't actually financial aid of any sort offered to the program itself but maybe there is some sort of work around where uh you know i don't have to be living you know hand to mouth is that for us the students yes yeah yeah okay education sure absolutely um hi i'm catherine i'm a second year at the moment i'm happy to talk through some of the financial options so um as you've identified so um is a little um in terms of the funding option so there's a few things so there's fellowships um there's research and teaching um and so the fellowships there's only one fellowship that you can apply to before you get to idm for the first year and that's the legatum fellowship um and you can find a lot of information about that online um the other rest of the fellowships you generally need to wait until um i think you can apply for like september october of your first year uh and that's eligible for the second year they're pretty competitive but again you can find lots of information about that uh on mit's um funding website uh there's also a database of external fellowships and grants um often those are like uh companies that are willing to sponsor you know a couple of thousand dollars that won't pay for your entire tuition but every little bit helps um but uh the way that most people fund their tuition is um through research or teaching positions um it is a little difficult to get those in your first term but not unheard of um we had one classmate who got a teaching position by being on the waitlist for a class and then um the t the professor just asked like hey you know if you're already on the waitlist do you want to take this class for free um we also had another classmate who just hustled the you know the step the summer before coming in um wrote to every single lab and was like hey i'm a really awesome designer uh do you need any design work done and he managed to actually get a full uh research assistant position um before he even landed so um you do have to be a little bit entrepreneurial and look out for the information um make form relationships with professors and and people around mit but certainly you can definitely get some help yeah thank god uh just second what catherine said by speaking about the ra ships it's the research assistantships is what as what they call them they're not completely unheard of um i'm actually one of the students who was able to get one just before coming um to mit and so it's not completely unheard of there is that that need to reach out and to look out for those opportunities to seek to make connections with faculty because you don't have the advantage of the other students of having taken their classes before but it's still possible um and i can speak to some of that you know i forgot to have our students introduce themselves uh would you guys mind just introducing yourselves uh just a couple of moments to do that when we start with cats and she went first sure um as i mentioned i'm a second year student i came in from a business background mostly doing product management product marketing and software before this um and i really wanted to take some time at mit to explore different kinds of products and explore sustainability a bit more so i'm happy to talk through pivoting product management and all those happy things um later in the q a awesome all right nihara how about you yeah um hi everyone i'm nihara i'm from india and i have a design background i'm in my first year with ibm idm um i have an industrial design background uh in like in terms of my education and i was actually using experience designer for the past four years before i joined idm um so i've practiced various aspects of design methodology user research uh prototyping and i've facilitated design thinking workshops as well um yeah so i came to idm to to actually find out how i can make a positive impact in the world uh by understanding uh the spheres of design of business and engineering and how i'd be able to actually cater to gearing my solutions for success thank you it's great leroy hi so i'm uh leroy i'm from zimbabwe i um my background is in engineering largely um i spent a lot of my time post undergrad working at a product design consultancy so running the gambit off you know interfacing with design teams and business related teams but i think i came to idm to kind of get a more holistic perspective on leadership within within that and uh allow for taking the impact that i wanted to create and making it actually you know viable in in the real world thank you um i'm ruthan hey everyone i'm amrita i'm also from india and i have an equal experience in engineering and business work and education too i came to ibm because essentially i did not find human centered thinking in any business decisions that i have worked in companies and organizations that i've seen so i wanted to learn the design part of it that's why i'm here at ibm and yeah right now i mean i'm learning so much about design because i had zero experience in it when i started here yeah awesome thank you and last but not least yuanbo hey everyone uh i'm yuan bull i'm originally from china but i've lived in the us for the past nine years um my background is in engineering and psychology even though i applied through the business cohort but i'm assigned to engineering so you know there's flexibility in there um so what brought me to idm was to and so so my work experience before coming back to school was in entrepreneurship and product development in digital behavioral health and what brought me back to school is to to explore using human centered artificial intelligence to drive health behavior change so i'm doing researches related to kind of the affected dynamic behind habit formation i'm working to understand better understand the landscape of behavior chin jai i'm having a lot of fun and i'm happy also to connect with any of you if you want to ask more questions thanks thank all of you okay so let's get back to some questions i think yusuf has his hand up so yourself hi guys thanks for introducing yourselves um i have a question perhaps for the second years so i was wondering coming into the course you had a particular hypothesis i suppose for what you wanted to get out of it and now that you're perhaps a year-end has that plan changed that you had in mind and based off of what you learned and uh great question and i love that you use the word hypothesis because i actually uh like a typical product manager um has several hypotheses basically about what i wanted my life to be like after the program um and i basically have been using this time to test each of those hypotheses so for example in the first year in the first term actually um i was testing the hypothesis about wanting to work in energy um and so was able to you know do hackathons to a sustainable energy class um work at a on some student um groups and so on and realized actually that's not the place that i wanted to be um but the kind of uh industry that i want to work in full time and so um in terms of hypotheses i think this has been a really great time to test those um has idm held true to i guess my initial hypotheses well my and what i wanted to get out of it well i wanted to better understand that direction and narrow down and focus and build networks so definitely on that side yeah awesome thank you tony you just became transparent um yeah who does that so i i probably forgot to mention that i'm also second year um i i had some pretty strong ideas in terms of what i wanted to explore um so i'm i'm roughly on that path of exploring the things that would support me and gain more knowledge and network and kind of experiences in term to to to further develop that idea but i can also share a bit of um kind of what all our classmates have been doing it's really all over the place uh you come in you you have some really strong ideas and then you figure out oh there's so many shiny things or relevant things or very different things i didn't realize i'm that's so exciting so we are spread out in different kind of the whole spectrum of you know sticking to the the mission things that in our mission statement uh personal vision statement or um kind of trying out different things i'm sure thank you for that great do we have more questions for the students i guess i have a really quick one um when did you guys uh i know there's a lot of resources on the website for housing and things like that but when did you guys get to the boston area which i mean i guess you may or may not be there right now given the circumstances but like how much time did you give yourselves to acclimate to the area if you weren't already there oh i think i might not be the right person because i've lived here for three years before i uh applied to the program and joined but maybe nihara or likely i can take it um unfortunately because of kovid um like it probably won't be the same experience but i had anticipated that i would be here uh a month before the the course had begun but actually because of visa issues i had to come like a month after it began so maybe i i shouldn't be speaking to it either um catherine maybe or you wanna i'm probably the only one who was authorized to come in um because because we're second years um uh i i came in the day before orientation week and i don't recommend that um on the flip side i guess because i'm an international student i was coming into student housing which made life a lot lot easier um so how is the student housing um student housing oh there's a lot of graduate housing you can see lots of photos on the internet i think they're in the process of um they're revamping eastgate which is one of the family housing um buildings uh and they built yeah they're building a lot of new housing at the moment um i guess cost wise it does make the most sense um you get a lot of different configurations in terms of sharing your kitchens or bathrooms and so on so um it's i guess good to um if you narrow it down you can always reach out to us and we can tell you what that particular building is like i could have something i'm sorry i just keep asking project questions um but i guess uh so it looked like there were four total like three the first year and then your thesis um what has been like your favorite project that you worked on and that you sort of felt the closest to um and so far uh that's a really good question sorry i feel like i'm doing all the talking um that's a really good question uh i had a huge range of of projects uh so i was actually working on the halo pad project with jumbo um we did coasters for a kitchen product and then i was looking at um petron sport for the for the first research project but i think um at the moment i've just confirmed my thesis topic which is probably been the the one i feel closest to so far and that is really looking at how to empower decision makers for um complex problems um through software tools to find the best configuration of collective decision making and artificial intelligence um it's a pretty broad problem and something that's still kind of scoping down but um something that i think is really interesting and also gives me the opportunity to uh work with real users and um see some really interesting case studies and how artificial intelligence and collective intelligence are being used in industry so i worked on very diverse range of projects and i worked on for my p1 i worked on the farewell experience in the airport and the kitchen project our team actually worked on a clock um very strange clock if you ever see a photo of a clock with this sliver that has um uh only has that one hand to show you time it's something that we worked on and then then can i we worked in the same team to work on halo sanitary pad and then now i'm working on kind of a technology road mapping um using human centered ai to drive health behavior change it's this is kind of where you get to explore different kind of interests and and sharpen different skill sets um [Music] so you mean this is also where someone asked the question about kind of how how you explore this is part of how to explore you try these you try all these different kind of projects um is that answering the question or yeah yeah i mean so everyone's coming in from really different backgrounds would you say i guess for because people might have different answers um like has more of your learning happened in like the core or the elective classes or like in these group projects sorry you can't can you uh ask that again yeah so um out of like the core curriculum and then the electives and then the group work where do you feel um like you've learned the most i mean i don't know what other people's experiences are to me those are kind of complementary skills so i took a bunch of ai related classes um and those are things that i wanted to learn in the core class we we teach the whole kind of human centered design process it it's kind of the old skill sets that i wanted to learn maybe kind of that's how i think of it um if that makes sense and then for stone classes we can also learn about for me i took some kind of soft skill classes about negotiation and leadership so i think that's i mean that's part of the appeal of idm you get to choose these diverse classes to to help you learn different skills that could be useful for you i would agree with that um i think the the learning is there it's all different things that you're learning and it's all complementary uh like for example i'm running program management for mit hyperloop team which is incredible right we're getting to make these incredible new technologies and new things happen um but i wouldn't be able to do that without the skills i learned in core without going to the hardware boot camp in hong kong
2020-12-20