Three steps to GoldieBlox's Success

GoldieBlox, a construction toy aimed at young girls that teaches the basic principles of engineering, has been in the news lately due to their Super Bowl ad sponsored by Intuit’s Small Business Big Game contest. I had the privilege of working for GoldieBlox almost two years ago. (In fact, the first post I wrote about it is here.) I’ve been delighted to watch its success, including Fast Company’s recent nod as one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2014. The award is well deserved, but founder Debbie Sterling’s innovative approach to creating GoldieBlox is a lot deeper than one amazing idea. Not surprising given Debbie’s degree from Stanford in Product Design, her process for creating GoldieBlox was intentionally designed. Debbie is the type of client every designer is lucky to work for because she understood the work that is required to make innovation happen.

Step One: Research
Before Debbie created the toy that now is GoldieBlox, she started by understanding her audience. Debbie read research and spoke with child development psychologists to understand the way that young girls want to play. She realized that many young girls enjoy story based play and start reading at an early age. It was from these initial conversations that she came up with the building set and story combination.

Step Two: Bring others into the process
Debbie reached out to broad swaths of people. She rejected the celebrated trope of a lone creator, understanding that innovation is made better by having ideas get beaten up and improved. I was always impressed by how willing she was to talk to anyone interested about her idea and through that she was able to build a strong team.

Step Three: Test and revise
Even after initial user research proved that young girls were responding positively to GoldieBlox, Debbie continued to ask the design team to identify ways to revise the toy to enhance the learning experience. She was not satisfied by merely proving her initial concept but pushed to make the best possible toy before launching the Kickstarter campaign, and has continued to improve the toys and expand the line. I look forward to seeing what comes next.

my secret is out- goldieblox is live!

[I can't believe I finally get to share this picture!]

I'm please to announce that GoldieBlox is here! Back in March I posted my excitement to be working on a secret project, now I'm finally able to share the details. 

GoldieBlox is a construction toy for girls, that is going to inspire the next generation of female engineers. Their mission is to get little girls interested in science, technology, engineering and math the way Lego, K’Nex, Lincoln Logs and Erector sets have done for boys for over 100 years. The idea behind GoldieBlox is genius: it is a construction set + book series starring Goldie, the girl inventor who loves to build. As girls read the book, they get to build along with Goldie. 

GoldieBlox is on its way to being commercially produced, but we need your help. There are three simple actions you can do to bring Goldie to life:

1. Visit the Kickstarter page right now and make a contribution.

2. Like GoldieBlox on Facebook, Follow on Twitter, and Join the email list.
3. Reach out to your personal, professional, and social networks to spread the word.

goldie blox launch

Not too long ago I wrote a post about a new project that had inspired me. I'm excited to say, that project is now publically launched! Check out more at www.goldieblox.com. A cross-post of my original post will go up on Friday but each day this week there is a new post from a member of the founding team. We're busy exchanging multiple emails a day, about to start product testing and always, always coming up with ways to make our ideas better. Sign up on the Goldie Blox website to stay updated!

design is in the... big picture

[Image from The Society Pages]

I recently started working on a very exciting, unfortunately top secret, project with an amazing company called Goldie Blox. While I cannot get into specifics, it tackles several issues very close to my heart. Goldie Blox's mission is to encourage young girls to be engineers through designing a way show girls their potential.

Young girls today are told that they can be anything that they want. This is the message I grew up with,  the message that inspired me to work hard and pursue my dreams. It is an incredibly positive thing, and one that should be a given.  The problem is that while girls are told they can be anything they want to be, we are not always inspiring girls to look at the broad array of things that they could be. This is particularly troubling in comparison to the things that boys know they can be and the things that boys already have role models in place to admire.

How does this relate to design? The messages that girls receive are typically subtle and unintentional. Even when the decision was intentional, the resulting message was unintentional. For instance, think of the books you were assigned in school. Many of those books had male protagonists. Teachers know that girls are able- perhaps through conditioning- to relate to male characters, while young boys have difficulty relating to female characters. As a result, girls read stories in which the male characters achieve much more than the female characters. Design is a process of recognizing a problem and working to create solutions. We can design products, stories, and educational systems that change the message that girls receive. That adapt to the differences in development and learning styles in young children without dividing. Or defaulting to pink and purple.

What excites me most about Goldie Blox, other than its massive big mission, is the consciousness of the founders to the role of design in the process- from the details up to the big picture. I get to play a teeny part and am so excited to watch this project grow.