Harvard business publishing
Fall 2020
Iovine & Young Academy: Impact Lab
Team Project
problem
Our team of Iovine & Young Academy undergraduate and graduate students were presented with Harvard Business Publishing's challenge of expanding the reach of their rich library of 27,000+ business case studies to a younger, undergraduate audience. We set to analyze, critique, and expand upon the early prototypes of HBP's current solution.
solution
The team research and ideated creative responses to the prompt, finally deciding to perform extensive pilot testing and go deeper in 4 new directions. I co-led two of these directions, one focused on a standardized assessment for responsible business, and the other focused on making learning more engaging by implementing interactive media and project-based learning into the lessons and assignments.
why
The motivation behind the responsible business initiative stemmed from the understanding that Harvard Business Publishing is an entity that so many people to look to to learn how to do good business, with "good business" meaning successful business. With awareness that the movement for responsible business is increasingly being highlighted, the influence that HBP has inspired me to think about the impact the institution could have if they took this opportunity of expanding their reach to an audience of younger entrepreneurs to influence and train them on the standards of socially responsible business that all businesses should be held to.
‍
The motivation behind the interactive media initiative was understanding the pros and cons of virtual and in-person learning and recognizing that there is potential for further optimizing virtual learning when it comes to student engagement.
process
1.

brainstorming
Given the prompt of designing a shoe, my CCA Industrial Design classmates and I began brainstorming problems and use-cases for shoes.
2.

DEFINING & IDEATING
I chose to innovate upon ballet pointe shoes because of my previous research in how pointe shoes are currently made and my experience as a user of them.​Thinking about the current pointe shoe, I thought about the issues I have encountered with them as well as those that I have observed other dancers experience.​I began ideating solutions to these problems by visually sketching out some ideas.
3.

CLAY PROTOTYPE
After finalizing my idea, I created this hand-sculpted clay prototype that was at about 40% scale of the actual size. The malleability of the clay enabled me to play around with different components and see how they would look and act in 3 dimensions.​In order to give the prototype the feel of being on a real foot, I paid attention to the creases and indents of a real foot in the pointed position and textured the clay using the grip of a sculpting tool.
4.

orthogonal sketches
Referencing my clay prototype, I created these higher resolution orthogonal sketches that show the front, side and top views of the product. Being able to hold my clay prototype and observe it at a certain angle helped to visualize how this very organic shape and unstructured object would look and behave at those angles.
5.

FOAM PROTOTYPE
As a higher resolution prototype, I carved the Pointe Sock on a foot, out of foam. I traced the outlines of the orthogonal sketches ​above and used the band saw to cut down the major chunks of foam.

I then used hand-carving tools to remove the foam that I didn't want. Only being able to remove material without being able to add it on was a challenge that I had to learn how to work with when carving.
6.

infographic
Shown to the right is the the informational poster that demonstrates the purpose and key value points of this product.