Kos Ishii Memorial Session
M2-EP1: Design Skills – In Memory of Kosuke "Kos" Ishii
Opening Remarks
August 24, 2009
ICED’09 Conference, Stanford, CA
Dear Naomi, Dear Friends and Colleagues:
It is with a mix of emotions that I stand here today to say a few words about the life and work of our friend Professor Kos Ishii. On the one hand there is deep sadness since Kos left us so unexpectedly and much too early at the age of only 51 in early March. On the other hand there is also joy about the many lives he touched and the many people he has inspired through his research and teaching and his unconventional and inclusive approach to product design. His personality was friendly, open, inquisitive and inclusive like none other. Kos was unique in every way.
I first met Kos in 2001 when he gave a guest lecture at MIT in our systems architecture class ESD.34. Within the first five minutes it became clear that this was not your standard lecturer. As you may remember, Kos was rather short in physical stature but – like Napoleon – he had very effective ways to make up for this. Kos stood up on the podium to make a point early in the lecture and every student was riveted. “Wow” … a professor that was not afraid to show both his knowledge and his emotions at the same time. Impressively, he showed innovative product examples from his Stanford DfM class from Japan, the U.S. and Europe. Then, he randomly invited two students to come up to the front of class to reenact a live situation about the design of a robotics automation project that had gone badly. One student had to play the design firm, the other one a supplier and Kos himself was posing as the demanding customer who kept calling with unusual requests. The point soon became very clear: the true requirements for product design are often hidden under the surface. I also first learned about the Ishii Matrix during this lecture. This prioritization tool is a simple way to articulate what are must-have requirements, secondary objectives that one can optimize and those things for which one accepts whatever the outcome is. This lecture was unforgettable. After that day it was clear to me that I wanted to work with this man and that I needed to learn from him as much as I could.
An opportunity to do so was the new Active Learning Project Sequence (ALPS) capstone course that Kos created and that we taught together with Japanese colleagues such as Professors Ohkami, Haruyama, Maeno and others, as well as Stanford and MIT colleagues such as Kurt Beiter, Sun Kim, Whit Fowler and Tak Ishimatsu. This project is part of the new Graduate School of System Design and Management at Keio University in Japan. Work on this started back in 2007. We will report on ALPS later in this session, so rather than give details now, I just want to emphasize that Kos was the driving force behind ALPS. The key idea underpinning ALPS is to address problems of societal importance through innovation and what he called “amorphous design”. Amorphous design encompasses not just physical artifacts in the traditional sense. Amorphous design is much broader and includes all kinds of services and value-added interactions between people, objects and processes. Amorphous design requires a broad set of stakeholders with various backgrounds beyond engineering.
This opportunity for diversity exists at Keio University and of course here at Stanford. Everywhere Kos went he created such interesting situations. He was able to attract not only engineering students and designers but also people from marketing, finance, corporate planning, as well as the media and arts. He had the rare ability to bring all these people together in the university environment as well as in industry. His strategy was to first make them feel comfortable, then to motivate them to work hard and finally to set them in motion towards a common and beneficial design goal. Once this was accomplished he stepped back to see the magic unfold.
We had just completed the first year of teaching ALPS in Tokyo in late February of this year, when Kos passed away 5 days later. This was a shock and somehow I still have not accepted this as fact. I vividly remember my last meeting with him at the beautiful new Collaboration Complex at Hiyoshi campus. He showed no signs of fatigue or illness, he was full of energy and the focus of the meeting was on the future as we sat down to plan for ALPS 2. He left our encounter in high spirits to attend a family reunion, an event that he was very much looking forward to. Kos had a healthy sense of balance between his scientific work, his family and leisure and his students and clients. In a way he treated us all as part of his extended family.
In terms of his scientific legacy Kos is and will remain a giant in the engineering design community. He is best known for pioneering the DfX approach to design. DfX means, “Design for X” … and this goes well beyond designing for manufacturability. Examples of what X can stand for are Design for Assembly, for Variety, for the Environment, for Inclusiveness, for the Lifecycle, but also for Profit. However, let it be clear, Voice of Society (VOS) was as important to Kos as Voice of Customer (VOC). In his career in industry, at Ohio State University and at Stanford and in his travels across the globe he interacted with hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals. He left his unforgettable mark as a husband, family man, researcher, teacher, consultant, advisor and friend. We have an obligation to carry on his legacy, here at Stanford University, at Keio University and wherever people care about design.
I have no regrets when I think about Kos except for one. There is one thing we had always wanted to do together, but alas we ran out of time. We had discussed a mountain hike together in Zermatt. We both loved this place in the Swiss Alps with its pure mountain air, stunning views of the snow-capped Matterhorn and the creaking of the majestic glaciers. Naomi and Kos loved to be in this environment of mountain solitude and natural beauty. Kos, my friend and mentor, I will be thinking of you during my next expeditions in thin air.
Thank you.
Olivier de Weck, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
