Greetings Stacey & d.school Team!

I was delighted to see an opportunity emerge for a Design Lecturer with the d.school as I have been eager to return to academia since my time teaching as a Course Assistant at Stanford’s Product Realization Lab while in the Design Impact program. I bring more than 7 years’ experience in Product Design Consulting guiding startups to Fortune 500 companies through the process of human-centered product development from concept to manufacturing. Coupling this with 3 years of teaching experience at Stanford, I believe I can provide relevant and insightful lessons to position students at the cutting edge of design education.

For the better part of the last decade, I have worked in product design consulting as a ‘Full Stack’ Product Design Engineer, contributing on a technical level while operating on a product level. The majority of my career has been with the firm Delve working on high impact products in the medical sector and emerging markets and has allowed me to diversify my skillset into a multidisciplinary approach to solving complex problems. I believe in the importance of coupling blue sky thinking with rigorous engineering realities to produce the most creative and innovative solutions that ultimately become products that can have real impact. This process has proven valuable in projects from the redesign of insect repellents for users in extremely low income contexts to the development of a novel electromechanical device for minimizing blood loss in during blood clot removal. Presently, I employ this broad set of design and technical skills for my independent product development consulting practice as well as in the commercialization of my graduate work, the Stylo Board, with funding from the TomKat Sustainability Center.

During my time in Stanford’s Design Impact Master’s program, I served a CA appointment in the Product Realization Lab helping to teaching 4 courses to Undergraduate and Graduate students over the span of 3 years (ME102, ME103/203, ME128/318, ME325), which was a transformative experience for myself in igniting my desire to pursue teaching further. As with any design problem, I’ve learned the teaching process is not about propagating my view of the world, but rather understanding where each student lies and figuring out what is the best way to further their educational journey. I admire Stanford’s culture of empathic and creative educational approach and I am excited to impart my experience as a designer and engineer through this lens.

While at the PRL, I worked with Director Craig Milroy to design a course that would better integrate the d.school and PRL. With an ever-increasing complexity in the world, more than ever, we need to approach problems with a multidisciplinary toolkit and the way we view prototyping and design needs to evolve to match it. We no longer can create innovative and compelling design work by prototyping ideas with just static UIs and 3D printed mechanisms, but need students to be developing the tools for exploring and prototyping complex experiences. When problems transcend discipline, how can we develop the prototyping and design tools for students that enable them to operate across boundaries?

To that end, I think my experience and academic interests are most suited for DESIGN 141 where I can employ my experience in product development and teaching in the PRL to design a course focusing on the human element in product design. I believe my professional expertise in product development, coupled with my recent experience mentoring and teaching Stanford undergrads, gives me a unique position to provide guidance for product design students through well-tailored and relevant coursework. I encourage you to explore my experience further through my portfolio, as well as reach out to my references, but would love the opportunity to discuss this role and my experience further, so I can see how I might help contribute to the future of Design education at Stanford.   

Hope to chat further soon,

Jack Boland

CV

You can find my CV listed here: https://bolandcommajack.com/pagecv

Teaching Evaluations

 While at Stanford’s Design Impact Master’s program, I served an appointment in the Product Realization lab for 3 years from 2019-2022. During this time, I assisted in teaching the following courses:

  1. ME102 - Foundations of Product Realization

  2. ME103/203 - Product Realization: Design and Making

  3. ME128/318 - Computer Aided Design

  4. ME 325 - Injection Molding

I have collected the Teacher Evaluations I have access to HERE. I have also requested the remaining evaluations from Frances Yang (who is currently out of office but will collect them when she returns).

Below I have included a handful of the ones that I am most proud of:

“Jack is an incredible teacher and mentor! He always looks on the bright side of things and helps students go through with their initial plans (with help if they need to be readjusted). He makes coaching a warm, welcoming, and fun environment. This quarter was particularly overwhelming due to covid and countless other factors (on top of the class just being difficult), and Jack made it so much less stressful. Perhaps one of the most caring CAs I’ve ever had at Stanford (or really anywhere)!” - Winter 2022

“Jack has guided me throughout the entirety of the course and helped my project stay in the right trajectory the whole time. He has not only been very willing to help but also gave very helpful feedback and ideas when I ran into challenges during my design process. Jack also creates a very welcoming and comforting ambience during coaching meetings, so it has been a joy to go to the coaching meetings every week.” -Fall 2022

“Jack was very understanding and patient. Always kept a positive attitude and seemed genuinely invested in students projects. Always asked for updates on mine from the prototype phase till the very end, which is something small that could've easily gone unnoticed, but I really appreciated”. - Fall 2019

“Besides being very helpful with technical support, Jack has been supportive in our general well-being. Every week during coaching, he opens up our session by asking about how our weeks have been going outside of school, inside of school but outside of this class, and in this class. He always brings a smile into the session despite the energy of us students :) He's also super responsive to any emails I send asking for advice outside of his coaching session hours.” -Fall 2021

“Jack’s enthusiasm and encouragement made a huge difference in my ME 103 experience. When I was unconfident about my projects, Jack’s positivity and belief that everything will work out reduced my stress greatly. Jack made sure he was super available to help whenever we needed help and was very responsive on slack and email. Jack’s expertise in many manufacturing techniques helped students consider all possible ways to construct their products.” -Fall 2022

Sample Course Syllabus

In 2022, I worked with PRL Director Craig Milroy to develop a course that would help provide a transdisciplinary prototyping toolkit for design students to explore questions around experiences that span physical, electrical and digital mediums. The course was design as an advanced course for graduate students, but could be tweaked and simplified to fit the undergrad curriculum.

You can find more details and a sample of the syllabus here.

I also gathered feedback from students on the course which can be found here

Portfolio

You can find the entirety of my portfolio located at www.bolandcommajack.com, but I would like to highlight three projects below as a starting point (click on a image to learn more).

  1. Blot Clot Removal Device // Our client’s process for removing blood clots involved pulling them out with a vacuum through a catheter. And when this is done without being able to see what is happening, there is a risk of pulling out too much blood. We worked on a device that would detect whether it was pulling on just blood and stop the suction. The crux was that it needed to be incredibly intuitive and done without the affecting the way the surgeon conducted the procedure presently.

  2. Stylo Board // For small brick and mortar businesses, the options for in-store signage and displays are between poorly drawn, tedious chalkboards and sterile, digital displays. Stylo Board is designed to fill this gap with a low energy, no waste, display board that perfectly draws out messaging like a self-drawing chalkboard. Store owners simply toggle through the templates available on the app, customize with their text and press print as they walk away.

  3. Kijani Forestry // Kijani Forestry works with farmers in Uganda to pack seedpots, nurse seedling and then grow trees that can be used for cooking fuel. A small team of us worked with them to help alleviate the bottle neck of placing that first handful of soil into a fresh bag through the development of a custom, ultralow cost device that allowed them efficiently pack multiple pots at the same time.

References

I would like to recommend the following references as I believe they may be the most insightful but can certainly provide more as needed:

Craig Milroy [Director, Product Realization Lab] - milroy@stanford.edu - 650.302.2475 // I worked extensively with Craig in the PRL and not only can speak to my experience as a CA but I also worked with him in designing a course that was intended to bridge the gap between the PRL and d.school

Marlo Kohn [Associate Director, Product Realization Lab] - marlod@stanford.edu // Marlo can speak to my experience in the PRL as a CA

Brett Swope [Principle, Swope Design Solutions] - brett@swopedesignsolutions.com // Brett is a Stanford alum that I have worked extensively with in a professional setting who can speak to my practice in product development


Additionally, there are various other members of the Stanford/d.school community that may be able to provide additional insight into my character or experience to varing degrees:

Carissa Carter - Leticia Cavagnaro - Dave Beach - Dan Somen - Sean Follmer - David Kelly - Stuart Coulson - Manasa Yeturu