Pittsburgh's MAYA Design is juicing innovation by teaching techies design basics.
MAYA ("most advanced yet acceptable")--a mashup of design firm and tech-research lab--has seen great success in recent years with its "design boot camps" for clients such as Emerson, Bayer, GE, and Whirlpool.
MAYA's 50-member team of computer scientists, psychologists, designers, engineers, and anthropologists dedicates 30 percent of its resources to researching how humans and technology will interact 10 years from now, thanks in part to $20 million in funding from the Department of Defense. The other 70 percent goes to applying those lessons for MAYA's corporate clients.
Nearly 700 students have completed the three-day design course, helping to increase MAYA's revenues 60 percent in 2007 and an additional 10 percent in 2008. This summer, MAYA will spin the boot camp off into its own division, Luma Institute, and enrollment is expected to increase this year.
"Taming complexity is what we do," Maya Design's Mickey McManus says. "The biggest question we're trying to answer is, Where does the disconnect occur between humans and technology in product design?"
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