Jacob Waites
I design, prototype, and build brands and interactions full of expressive type, fun motion, bold colors, and minimal line-work. Sometimes I write and speak about design. My craft is the way I speak to the world, I work to help others find their voice and make them successful.
IDEO CoLab
IDEO's collaborative innovation lab, built as a network, an analog to digital converter for the human race.
I was part of the IDEO CoLab core team, leading Interaction and Visual Design for the east coast studio. CoLab is IDEO's collaborative innovation lab, which was built by our small team into a tri-coastal (Boston, San Francisco, and London) design studio that engaged member companies in a yearly membership model to come together on hard, systems level problems to collaborate and prototype new products and solutions using bleeding edge technologies.
A fundamental element that made CoLab unique was our engagement model and design culture. Our work was carried out in sprints during the year, and project teams were made from a combination of member company industry experts, academic fellows (selected through a highly rigorous makeathon process), and IDEO designers. We would pool the prototypes created between member companies, and have large industry leaders work together to forward a new solutions and products rather than service a single companies needs.
During my 5 year time as a Design Lead in the studio, I worked on and guided hundreds of small prototype executions every year. Many were placed into the shared IP pool for members, and some sparked internal projects within member companies that have become products on the market today.
About CoLab
CoLab Brand and Evolution
The CoLab Website over time
As CoLab's offer and focus areas changed every year, our site did too. Our initial site design was featured on fontsinuse for our use of the Cera typeface in our brand activations. We eventually evolved to use HK Grotesk when shifting towards systems change focus areas.
During the year CoLab would hold an annual membership event that was open to both existing and prospective new members, Blueprint. During these events, fellows and IDEO designers would showcase the work happening in the lab from all coasts, and we would host workshops to plan new focus areas and technologies to explore.
Footage from Blueprint 2017
You can see all work from the Blueprint Annual events we hosted here.
I was a lead proponent in establishing a craft-focused culture in the lab, hosting sessions after hours called CoLab After Dark to help to educate and acclimate fellows into working inside of shared design tools like Figma (at the time very early stage) and to safely work inside of the IDEO Cambridge shop. These sessions, alongside office hours during sprints, helped to give the CoLab core team time to mentor younger industry professionals, and talk about our shared crafts in an open and level playing field. It also helped fellows share their broad knowledge, many were focused on different aspects of design or technologies, and all brought a unique viewpoint to the cohort.
CoLab After Dark Samples
You can see an archive of the CoLab After Dark Site here.
Day to day I would create a multitude of different products, brands, and interactions. CoLab prototypes were always designed to bring an answer to a question to life, and combine physical hardware and experiences with digital technologies. Our science fairs were often filled with laughter and joy at seeing our hard work coming to life as we experienced glimpses of future technologies.
Photos from the lab
CoLab Turns 5
For our 5th birthday in 2018, I created a 5 year in review site, which showcased highlights from CoLab as it stood. View it here.