Gallery: This Is How You Get a Kleiner Perkins Design Fellowship
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Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers is launching a fellowship program for design students, announcing today the [assignments awarded](http://kpcbfellows.com/meet-the-fellows/) that will connect some of the best students from some of the best schools with some of the most design-influenced startups (and not-so-startups) on the venture capital giant's client list for 3-month appointments. The venture capital giant has an increasingly design-friendly bent, which they hope to foster through the program. From Nest to Jawbone to Twitter, the students will be working entry-level jobs at Kleiner Perkins companies, as well as engaging with senior design mentors as the VC firm tries to build a global design network. "What we wanted to do was to really support the field, we wanted to make sure that we helped our companies gain access to the best designers, and we wanted to continue to, ourselves, learn as the field of design innovation unfolds," says Juliet de Baubigny, a partner at Kleiner Perkins who helped build the program. "I feel that design is going to be the key differentiator with many entrepreneurial ventures going forward." These juniors will be back in school next year, with some real-world experience from important companies. But that's not to say they haven't been busy already -- their work showcases what talented design students are accomplishing at schools across the country. Here are the 12 fellowship winners, the companies they're paired with, and examples of the work they're already building, for school, self, or startups. Aaron Otani, IIT Institute of Design, Opower -------------------------------------------- In September, an exhibit called "City of Big Data" is opening at the [Chicago Architecture Foundation](http://www.architecture.org/exhibitions/current), which will visualize how access to vast amounts of information will transform cities. Otani designed the visuals and animation for a web app "#Happiness in Chicago" that scrapes and analyzes geotagged tweets. "The goal for this project was to connect visitors with the 'human' side of big data, while allowing them to discover hidden patterns of the city they may have never seen before," he says. *Image: Courtesy of Aaron Otani*
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Kai Kight, Stanford, Shopkick ----------------------------- Kight incorporated behavior design strategy in his group wellness program based on card scanners that are already in place at many offices. Employees just swipe their cards at the door and at predetermined checkpoints along a walking route to earn points and share their routes. *Image: Courtesy of Kai Kight*
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Jocelyn Lui, Rochester Institute of Technology, Luvocracy --------------------------------------------------------- Strava tracks your rides, RunKeeper keeps your runs. But what about Fido? [Pawprints](http://pawprintsapp.com/), put together by Lui and her classmates lets doting owners track and share their pet-related activities -- everything from feeding to walks to social interactions (human, canine, and cross-species). The app is in development, as the creators refine it and tweak the design. "We wanted a specific place where users could tell their stories and share them with other dog owners so they can create new relationships," says Lui. *Image: Courtesy of Jocelyn Lui*
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Heather Tompkins, Academy of Art University, Klout -------------------------------------------------- "The Bear and the Picture Camera," Tompkins' MFA thesis, is an interactive children's book for iPad -- through the camera, the reader and the main character explore and draw together. Designing user interface and experience for kids helped her learn non-verbal design and engagement. *Image: Courtesy of Heather Tompkins*
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Amrit Mazumder, Rhode Island School of Design, Flipboard -------------------------------------------------------- Useful.me is Mazumder's peer resource and service sharing app. Designed for close knit communities -- like RISD students -- the platform allows users to exchange skills, notes, and material goods for money or barter. "At a primary level, the app aims to create a culture of sharing owned resources (think Airbnb) over the repossession of resources (second hand stores, majority of Craigslist)," says Mazumder. "On a secondary level, the app would be hyper-local and hence curated to the community it's deployed in." *Image: Courtesy of Amrit Mazumder*
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Zachary Schiller, Yale, Square ------------------------------ An iconography specialist, Schiller took a classic fictional brand -- Jurassic Park -- and [reimagined it](http://jurassicpark.asia/) for an upcoming (someday, we can only hope) opening. From signage for the Engineering, Genetics, and Hatchery departments to iPhone app icons, Schiller's design features modern, minimalist, easy-to-understand imagery. While attractive, the subtlety lets the dinos stand out. Basically, you should always get out of their way. *Image: Courtesy of Zachary Schiller*
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Matt Safian, Connecticut College, Luvocracy ------------------------------------------- Safian, a member of Connecticut College's all-male *a cappella* group Co Co Beaux, redesigned the group's website to reflect its growing prominence. The site, which is scheduled for launch in late summer or early fall, includes social media integration, an event calendar, and opportunities to purchase music. *Image: Courtesy of Matt Safian*
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Louis Harboe, University of Chicago Laboratory High School, Square ------------------------------------------------------------------ Harboe conceived, designed, and built this tide visualization app. Following the trend of text-free visual-based weather apps, it uses time and location to show the water level through a skeumorphic porthole. "Today the average tide app on the App Store is just a two-dimensional 'tide table,'" he says. "I'm trying to take a tedious everyday task and make it really simple and fun." *Image: Courtesy of Louis Harboe*
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Zachary Hamed, Harvard, Jawbone ------------------------------- Rough Draft Ventures is a Boston-based VC firm, run by students, that supports student-built companies. Hamed designed the site, [roughdraft.vc/](http://roughdraft.vc/), to reflect the company's message. "I really wanted to communicate how vibrant a community Boston is for student startups and how many successful entrepreneurs have Boston roots," he says. "Using a story-like format and large, high quality images, I tried to visually walk student entrepreneurs through our fund and explain to them how we can offer value." *Image: Courtesy of Zachary Hamed*
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Alex Moffit, Yale, Jawbone -------------------------- As a design strategy student, Moffit's role is a bit different -- he tends to focus on the wide-angle view. "I like thinking about the big questions, like what is the soul of a product, what’s the narrative of a product, trying to think about use cases of a certain product," he says. When a professor asked him to design a jukebox app that would access all recordings and video from the last 100 years, he used that perspective for this early-stage sketch, which divides the user experience into known media, via a library, and discovery. *Image: Courtesy of Alex Moffit*
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Viraj Bindra, Stanford University, Nest --------------------------------------- Bindra's Kards for Klout, an exercise built as part of his fellowship application, combines social media leverage with interactive business cards that are customizable, shareable, and searchable. It's a complement to Klout's existing serveces, as the cards themselves are a measure of influence, and also a way to make Klout's user engagement more consistent. *Image: Courtesy of Viraj Bindra*
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Willa Tracosas, School of Visual Arts, Twitter ---------------------------------------------- The Book Wall, Tracosas' collaboration with fellow School of Visual Arts students, represents digital books in a user interface. It's an interactive system for bookstores, homes, cafes, and schools that lets users explore and share books through touch, gestures, and voice. On the left, an early paper prototype; on the right, a screenshot of the concept video. *Image: Courtesy of Willa Tracosas*
