Ep. 161: Designing Ideas with Visionary Design Entrepreneur Yves Béhar

Industrial designer & entrepreneur, Yves Béhar, grew up in Switzerland on a steady diet of punk and windsurfing. After graduating from ArtCenter in California he moved to the Bay Area and got his professional start designing for The Burdick Group, LUNAR and frog. He founded fuseproject, his industrial design and branding firm, in 1999 and since then has been responsible for groundbreaking contributions to the design landscape across the fields of product design, brand development, business strategy, environments, and social impact. A pioneer of the “design venture” business model, he has also had a hand in redefining the way designers do business, enabling early-stage creative investment in startup projects. His new book, Yves Béhar: Designing Ideas is a comprehensive retrospective of his 20+ year career.

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Read the Transcript

Yves Béhar: I’m Yves Béhar. I'm a designer and I work in San Francisco. I lead a team of multi-disciplinary designers here at fuseproject, and we work on a lot of firsts that are human-centred. That's why I get out of bed every day, is to make a difference in people's everyday lives. 

Amy Devers: I love that. Let's talk about your everyday life starting from the ground up. Can you paint the picture of your early childhood for me?

Yves: I grew up in a small town on the French side of Switzerland called Lausanne. It's a cultural city with a lot of outdoor opportunities, too. It's a very calm place which is great when you're a child, and it drives you a little crazy when you're a teenager. 

Amy: (Laughs) I recognize that feeling. 

Yves: I have two siblings, we're three boys. My siblings and I are two years apart and we're all big into sports, swimming specifically. We're very close, but we're quite different. My brothers are more in the CEO/Management side of things, and I'm on the creative side.

Amy: And where are you in the birth order?

Yves: I'm the oldest.

Amy: Oh, that's interesting to me. I find a lot of youngest who end up in the creative industries. So you really are a pioneer in many ways. Growing up in the French side of Switzerland, a lot of outdoor activities to begin with. Did you start skiing? And at what point did you get into surfing?

Yves: Well, skiing was the sport of choice in the winter. We swam throughout, competitively, my brothers and I. I sort of fell in love around 16 years old with wind surfing which I could do on Lake Geneva which is our lake in Mousanne, and it was an amazing escape. You live in a landlocked country surrounded by very large mountains, and being able to just escape the slightly conservative Swiss mindset and do something that felt a little crazy and dangerous at times was how I survived my teenage years.

Amy: (Laughs) Something a little crazy and dangerous at times is also punk which I understand was another one of your escapes in your teenage years. Can you talk about how punk was formative for you?

Yves: Absolutely. I was lucky to grow up in the punk era. It was a time when it was not only just a defiance to the existing order, it was also very much for me a permission to try things, to be creative. During the punk era you didn't have to be trained as a fashion designer or an industrial designer in order to create. 

You could just build things. They didn't need to be perfect. They needed to be an expression of who you are how you are feeling. I built my furniture in my house, I made clothing, I spray painted. It was a good way to rebel, but also put that rebellion at work, create with others and really start to develop my sense of design at that early age.

Amy: Yeah, I was going to ask about at what point did your interest in these punk ideals of making [0.05.00] and inventing and rejected the status quo, and tinkering with the system translate into an understanding that that is what design is and that that could be something that you could pursue. 

Yves: I see myself as being very fortunate because I really found my passion; I found what I wanted to do at a very early age. I think I was 15 years old and making really felt like the best way for me to express myself, to put ideas to work, and creating a point of view is sometimes a counterpoint to what's being made, what's being presented to us as that status quo of industry. It really became a vehicle for me to draw and to build. I had a little workshop in my parents rental basement, and I think maybe my present for a 14 year old birthday was a workbench. That's how I spent a lot of my time.

Amy: So even though there's something kind of defiant about this, you're feeling supported from your family system?

Yves: Yeah, I was supported certainly in terms of me finding my own way, but it wasn't easy growing up in a conservative environment being and feeling different, or looking for other outlets. For context, most people didn't know what industrial design was back in the 80s when I was a teenager, and there were no really well known schools for design in Switzerland. You had to look out to Paris or London to find design schools.

It felt very much outside of the realm of the expectations of both my teachers and my parents because in Switzerland schools basically offered all the traditional liberal professions, being a lawyer, being a doctor, being a businessman. And I was looking for something outside of that. So yes my parents were supportive, but they were a bit confused and maybe shocked at times about (laughter) about me wanting -

Amy: They had no frame of reference, means they're maybe a little nervous about what this could become. (Laughs)

Yves: Exactly.

Amy: Did you have any role models for making even? Any craftspeople in your family? Or were you the only maker as well?

Yves: I think I was the only one. My father and my mother didn't work closely at all to a creative field which meant that also felt at times unable to help me or connect me in their traditional circles. And I wasn't even that great of a draftsman. I grew up with kids. My best friends were incredible cartoonists, were great artists. 

It was more like a hard decision to become a designer to find something I really wanted to pursue, but I had to apply myself for a good part of four or five years to become a good draftsman because that's how designers express themselves. At the other end of a lot of drawing and a lot of calluses on my fingers from doing that non-stop, it turned out it was something I could actually do well. 

Amy: How did you discover and make your way to Art Center to pursue industrial design, given that it was something we hadn't heard of back then and certainly not something that was local?

Yves: Yeah, there again I feel [0.10.00] the stars aligned for me in a way that really changed my life. Art Center was not on my radar because it was so far away, it was in Los Angeles. I was looking at schools in England and suddenly I heard, I saw through the newspaper that Art Center was opening a European branch about 20 minutes from my home. So that was the big click. I applied; I got into a preparatory programme for Art Center, and then studied two years in Switzerland and transferred and did the rest of my studies in Los Angeles in Pasadena.

Amy: So that really was fortuitous. You've been in California ever since, so California must agree with you.

Yves: Moving to California was so interesting, I think so fundamentally different from Switzerland in every way possible, especially when you land in Los Angeles from a small Swiss town (laughter) I think I was 20 when I arrived in LA. Then discovered San Francisco through a family trip and it was clear that San Francisco was more the scale and maybe more the cultural background at the time that was the right fit for me. It was also a place where design was emerging as I would say a counterpoint to the New York design scene, the San Francisco design scene was starting to grow in the early 90s. So it became the logical place for me to come. Plus, I have to admit one of the big draws to San Francisco was the fact that it was a wind surfing paradise and that's how it became a very easy decision for me.

Amy: With a degree in industrial design from Art Center and you had studied industrial design, were you drawn to the technology side of design that was emerging in San Francisco at the time? Or were you thinking more along a different line and technology seduced you later?

Yves: Technology was very interesting in those times because it was almost devoid of design. It was often impractical; it was focused on enterprise applications. The early 90s was really when technology just started; it was just starting to emerge for personal use outside of the enterprise applications. It really was evergreen in terms of what design could do in the area. I guess I was interested in being useful and putting my studies to use and with so much demand in the Bay area, it completely made sense for me to be here.

Amy: What were the first few steps into the professional world like for you as a designer before you founded fuseproject?

Yves: When I graduated from Art Center I felt it was just the beginning of my training. I was actually not comfortable at all being on my own, being a business owner. I really felt working for good firms, great firms, was the best way forward for me to continue to learn. Also being a recent immigrant with just barely the papers to stay in the US (laughter) it took a while until I was comfortable both with the language, with my then very thick French accent speaking English, [0.15.00] and my status to start fuseproject.

So I worked at the Burdick Group with Bruce Burdick who was doing a lot of furniture with Herman Miller for example. Then I worked at Lunar Design. Then got hired at Frog Design. Those experiences were very formative in terms of learning how to be a designer, both from a technical standpoint, but also being comfortable with this incredible openness that was the early 90s in the Bay area.

This is really where I think the biggest mental change happened for me. Usually when you're a young professional in Europe back then, it took you a very long time to be listened to, to be respected, to be invited to the critical meetings, etc. Whereas in San Francisco, in the Bay area, I was thrown as a junior designer into senior meetings. I would be surrounded by people much older than I with PhDs in science and engineering and technology.

Amy: Oh man. That's awesome.

Yves: And they would still listen to you. They would look around the table and they would see the designer sitting there and they would invite me to state my opinion, to participate. The beautiful thing as a designer is I could translate some of the diverse ideas around the table through drawing. I could give voice to people's dreams and aspirations with a few drawings, and in a way create a consensus very quickly about where things could go.

That was such a powerful experience. Actually I think it reorganised my brain because when you think about it, I spent 20 years as a Swiss person in a completely different environment from the very welcoming and very participatory, where all the San Francisco and Silicon Valley. That was a shock of my early 20s that was for the better.

Amy: Wow! That does sound transformative. It also sounds like an incredible example of how drawing really can be another language in the room that everyone can understand, where there isn't a language barrier as long as the ideas can get communicated and we can have kind of a rough visual and consensus of what we're talking about. Then you can communicate in a way that is often much more effective than words.

Yves: For me that became a way to communicate for the rest of my career. I can illustrate this point with, for example, my relationship with Samsung. At Samsung I've worked with the teams there for about 12 years almost continuously which is pretty unique. I've interacted with I think three different CEOs (laughter) so I have a longer stint there than some of the top management. 

What was really unique was there was a gentleman there who was chief designer of the company and we became very close friends, but we could never exchange a word with each other directly because he didn't speak English and I didn't speak Korean. So for about 10 or 11 years we communicated through sketches, through seeing and listening to each other's body language while always having translators in the room obviously. Drawing is an incredibly powerful way to get close to people and people's ideas.

Amy: Yes. Yes. So you founded fuseproject in 1999 and over the last 20+ years the studio has been responsible for so many [0.20.00] innovative and pioneering projects, including... I don't need to tell you, but just for our listeners' benefit. The Sayl Chair for Herman Miller, Jambox, One Laptop Per Child, and Happiest Baby Snoo amongst so many others.

I know you've just released a book called Designing Ideas which we're going to get into. But looking back over the last 20+ years of this studio, I am wondering in terms of you growing the business, growing the field, being able to participate in projects that are really important and meaningful to you. What were the stress points and exhilarating highs along the way?

Yves: I think starting your own business is a huge step for anyone and it certainly was a very big step for me. I tend to be more of the creative, rambling mind in the room and starting your own business requires a different type of focus. For me the big discovery was that we would get these projects and maybe initially they were not that exciting or they weren't projects you would think are the typical industrial designer projects with high visibility, but then we would turn them on their heads and create something that was so unexpected that these projects would become very well-known and recognized for how they changed the field.

That was a very powerful moment, it was a very powerful lesson, which is you don't have to look for the big project, the car and the aeroplane or some very famous brand approaching you, you can actually build things from the ground up. You can help entrepreneurs, you can help scientists and visionaries build their dreams and become a part of that dream.

This is very much what happened with some of these early endeavours that were risky and had a lot of uncertainty, but at the same time, were tremendous opportunities to create new directions in the market, create new experiences for people, and maybe hopefully transform people's point of view and people's likes a little bit.

Amy: There's a couple of examples that come to mind. I'm thinking of JimmyJane and the work you did there as really transformative. But before we get into your creative process and some of these specific examples, one thing that you've cited as maybe being actually helpful for you to be able to work with some of these scientists and visionaries on building ideas from the ground up, is the venture design business model that you started to employ at the studio. 

In that way you've enabled a kind of collaboration that maybe wasn't or wouldn't have been as easy or possible before, and also enabled yourself to do better work. Can you break that down for us so we can really understand how it empowers you and also elevates the whole field?

Yves: Absolutely. Early on, after two or three years of fuseproject, in 2002 or so I met some entrepreneurs and I realised that they could only afford us for a brief amount of time if they could afford us at all. We would create a new project, a new product, and then that one would go out in the world and sometimes be successful and the company would be sold or acquired. I felt like wow, I was a big part of this, but only for a brief amount of time for a very small fee (laughter) and -

Amy: It's a little unsatisfying. (Laughs)

Yves: Mostly my focus was how do we do better work, how do we support entrepreneurs over the long term. What I knew from observing the more traditional design world is the best [0.25.00] work has been done by designers like Richard Sapper and others over long periods of time where the more you collaborate with a company, with an entrepreneur, the better the work gets because you both bring that outside perspective, but you also have a deep understanding of the goal, the aspirations, the insights of a certain field.

For me, thinking around Design Venture which was this new business model for us, was a way to really do better design work and in the process we also found success, we also found a new way to run a design company from a business standpoint with an emphasis on the mid and long term value that we're creating, not just the short term revenue we can make in fees. That was a cornerstone for us and of course we were in the right place at the right time (laughs) being in San Francisco in the early 2000s.

Amy: I mean I'm interested in this also and how it might ripple out and affect other industries. I've often felt like artists get a raw deal when they create a work of art and sell it once for some fee that may or may not represent the long term value of the work. The idea of having a little piece of ownership really appeals to me. I think NFTs are related in that this little piece of ownership that also channels the revenue obviously, back to those who were really instrumental in the DNA of creation. 

Then also with that little piece of ownership everyone is, or at least those people are invested in the long term performance of this. That means you have a lot more investment in whether it is extractive to the planet, how it functions, whether it lasts, if it's truly iconic. All of those things. The better work that you're talking about seemed to be driven by the idea of being able to get in, not get in, but collaborate from the very beginning and develop these long term relationships and then be invested in the long term of the product or project. 

Yves: For me the meaning of design, the original meaning of design, is about the plan, about the intent. Being able to work long term with entrepreneurs means that we can really get into those discussions early and then we can carry them forward over years and years of an evolution of the brand, the evolution of the products, the evolution of technology that enables both of those things. 

I would say the first few years I was able to collaborate with a large number of companies and help really understand better the process of carrying forward strong ideas, a strong mission, and a strong vision. Later on I was lucky to become a co-founder in a few companies, as well. Now we look back and I think we've been a part of, in some partnership, in some co-founding function, or equity owner function, in about 70 companies over the last 18 years or so.

Amy: Wow, that's sort of mind boggling and pretty cool. I'm excited to talk about your creative process and this book that you've just released in September of 2021, Designing Ideas, is a great showcase of that because not only does it go through many of the projects over fuseproject's history, but it details the thinking behind them and some of the contextual information around which they were conceived. [0.30.00] 

I also just want to give you a shout out for the way it's organized because I feel like organizing it into the sub-headings of reducing, sensing, transforming, giving, humanizing, and scaling, also with a mixture of your own oral history plus some contextual information from an outside source makes it infinitely digestible and also fascinating in a way that means you don't have to read consecutively, but you still get the full picture and you can kind of organize it in your mind. 

So, very nice. Love that. I also think it's a great window into the way you work. There are a couple of ideas I really want to pick apart with you. We mentioned it earlier, but under the transformation category your work with JimmyJane, a sexual wellness company in which you did a rethink of the sex toy category and in turn designed some products that really changed the conversation and reduced the taboo around female sexual health and vitality, or at the very least mirrored modern attitudes in a way that forced the sex toy industry to evolve. 

You acknowledged that sometimes the greater purpose of design is to change hearts and minds and if you're understanding this in the project, how does it actually look in the creative process?

Yves: Let me answer the two parts to your question. The first part about the book, about designing the book and the format, was really an interesting one for me. I'm more interested in storytelling than the notion of marketing projects or marketing our practice. So in (laughs) typical designer fashion I guess, I had to rethink or reinvent what the coffee table book format might be about. 

Rather than doing something purely chronologically or something that just presents each project in a problem/solution marketing work to it, I felt it would be more interesting to tell the stories of how things came about. Also gave a journalistic context for what was happening then. What was the industry like? How were people thinking of a certain field at that particular time? It felt more humble to do it that way, it felt more true. Ultimately it felt it was a better reflection of the adventures that we went on, and those journeys around these products and these stories.

Thinking now about JimmyJane, the way you present it, it was certainly one of these fields that was a little bit embarrassing to talk about back then. Things have been quite different now. I think when we started working on it it was 2008 and a very good friend of mine, Ethan Imboden, decided to start a company focused on pleasure and vibrators were the outcome of that.

We clearly saw that the industry was full of clichés and the industry was using materials and manufacturing processes that weren't particularly healthy, for some of the most intimate moments that we have as individuals or as couples. So we talked about it for about a year and then we started working on a vibrator and it actually became a line of vibrators. It became three different ones. 

It was not just one of the most interesting projects in terms of challenging the norms, but it was also very interesting from a human standpoint because not everybody was comfortable working on the project even though in our studio it fused [0.35.00] both women and men were interested in discussing it. We created this environment where we could talk about things that were quite intimate. We could put on the table our reservations and our funny stories (laughter) around the field, and I don't think I've had brainstorms where we'd laughed as hard (laughter) and shared as much of our lives ever before or since in fact. I loved the project because of how it brought us together as a team and how we were able to build something that, to this day actually, the Form 2, the first one we launched, the JimmyJane Form 2 is regarded as a top seller and a top quality product out there. So it was really fun.

The premise was let’s create things that are beautiful, work well, are healthy, and that don't perpetuate these clichés. So the objects are, for unaccustomed eyes, unrecognizable in terms of what they do to you. (Laughs) They're not anatomical copies I guess of our fantasies. Yeah, that made it a bit of a classic and certainly a departure.

Amy: I really appreciate you sharing that story. I love thinking about the team getting together and being vulnerable with each other and laughing really hard and being brought closer together through this adventure in designing for pleasure. (Laughs)

Yves: Absolutely.

Amy: Also in the book you talk about your work in robotics which we've seen with the Snoo and with ElliQ, and you are very vocal about the imperative that designers imbue robots with as much compassion as intelligence and I think that's a really important subject right now, the idea of ethical AI. I just wonder what the creative process is around that. The obvious fear is that we're going to automate the human experience and accidentally end up with more isolation than connection if we design our robots so well. I'm wondering how you approach that and how you draw those lines in the process.

Yves: Yeah, I think the words you used are the accurate ones. How do we draw lines as designers? I think technology has presented to us such challenges. Most, I wouldn't say most, but a lot of AI, at least a lot of the AI we experience on a daily basis tends to take away our attention, tends to distract us, tends to take us away from reality and from the important people around us in our lives.

Most of technology really is designed for the comfortable, middle part of life. When we're healthy, when we are in good shape, and a lot of it tends to be taking advantage, in a way, of our participation. The value that we create through our participation is really extracted not to our benefit. To me that's not the best part of technology and certainly not the best part of what it can do.

I've been very interested in the last 10/12 years in technology that really addresses the extremes of life, early life, or ageing, or when we have health [0.40.00] challenges or education challenges. Technology there can serve us so well, not by replacing humans, but by complementing us by creating a partnership between humans, their needs, and what technology can provide. 

In so many ways it's easier, too. It's much easier to train AI and technology to address very specific needs and to address these well and solve for a particular audience, than it is to just create general purpose robots and AI out there.

Amy: What does designing a collaboration mean between a robot and a human?

Yves: There's a number of principles that I put forth about five or six years ago about design in the age of robotics and AI and smart environments. One of them is that robots and AI should never replace the human connection, and we should never create things that make the robots or the AI more connected to the human than other humans or animals. So not creating emotional dependence is a critical principle that we use.

When I think about one of the initially maybe more controversial projects I was working on which is the Happiest Baby Snoo, I worked on it for five and a half years before it came out, which is a pretty long amount of time to work with an entrepreneur (laughs) trying to put their idea out in the world. One of the critical elements of the project is how does the function of the Snoo really complement parental needs and help them cope with the stresses of lack of sleep for example. 

Post-partum affects 25+% of parents and that's mostly been recognized as due to lack of sleep. What the Snoo does is it replicates Dr Harvey Karps, who is the founder of Snoo, it replicates his method for keeping babies asleep and as a result parents get one to two more hours of sleep, as do babies. That has a tremendous amount of positive health implications for parents.

But there was so much uncertainty when we started, so much reluctance to think of it in this way, I actually used that a little bit. For those five and a half years people would ask me what is one of the most interesting projects you're working on today which is a very common question I get, and I would say, “Well, I'm working on a robot that will take care of babies.” People would look at me with their eyes open and with their questioning -

Amy: I mean it sounds sort of dystopian. (Laughs)

Yves: They had questioning faces and they would be, “That will never work!” “I would never do that!” So I think what design can do is really address the idiosyncrasies and the problematic parts of a project and address it in a human way, both in the way that the product functions, in the way that the product looks, and in the way that the product enters your life. 

That's what we did with the Snoo, and it turns out it's an incredible new tool for parents, for hospitals, we're in 100 NICUs. In fact I want to say this, because today is the 5 year anniversary of the launch of the Snoo, so it’s a special day indeed for this miracle product.

Amy: Oh, happy birthday, Snoo! I was going to ask you if there's anything in place to track any sociological [0.45.00] information from the invention of the Snoo through to like long term development?

Yves: There is 15 clinical studies going on with the Snoo. The Snoo is used in NICUs in about 100 hospitals and that's because premature babies need sleep in order to grow, so adding sleep to premature babies has long term benefits. They get out of the NICU and out of the hospital faster. I can't speak to the clinical studies, but what I can say is from feedback from users I did get letters and we did hear from many parents who said based on their experience of the Snoo they're thinking about having another baby. (Laughter)

Amy: We might have a baby boom on our hands and it might be your fault. (Laughter)

Yves: So you know, you go from JimmyJane to thinking about babies. 

Amy: (Laughs) Right!

Yves: There are always long terms effects and connections in our work. (Laughter)

Amy: Oh, that's wonderful. I'm seeing how the dots connect there. (Laughter). I always like to ask personal questions in this podcast because I believe that in order to humanize design we need to also humanize designers. With that in mind, I would love to know if there is a chapter or an incident in your life that you would recall that might count as a devastating heartbreak? 

I don't necessarily mean romantic, but one of those moments where the wind is just knocked out of you and you're required to pick up the pieces and re-galvanize your sense of self. I ask that because I think that those challenges often inform the nature of our drive and our strategy for resilience.

Yves: Hmm, that is a very interesting question. Resilience is critical, especially in the days that we live and the experiences that we've had in the last 18 months with the pandemic. For me there's heartbreaks quite often as a designer because most of the things you work on don't work until you make them work. So grit and resilience are key. I'm often being told that I have a lot of endurance (laughs) in that process. 

Let me think about a particular heartbreak. I think very early on in my career. I'll share something that I haven't told anyone. Very early on in my career in my very first job I was actually not very good at it. (Laughs) It was a job in exhibit design and it took me a couple of decades to figure out how exhibit design really works. It wasn't about creating that singular moment and that singular 'wow' moment that sometimes design does.

I wasn't very good at it and I was told that I was going to be let go, (laughs) but in a gentle way. I was given a few months. Hence began, this is still in the day of payphones and I remember every single lunch I would get some quarters and I would get to the payphone nearby the office that I was working at, and I would call two or three offices that had told me they may have a position for me in the future.

I literally, I think for about a period of three or four months, [0.50.00] I made hundreds of calls to the same person, to the same receptionist at those (laughter) offices. Eventually one of those two gave me a job. But it was a time when with the uncertainty of being an immigrant and having a visa on the line and not knowing if I was going to have to go back to Switzerland and how I was going to get through that transition. 

It was certainly a big awakening and something that has made me very committed to our international designers at fuseproject, to the system of getting visas, of getting people permanent status and I would say of all immigrants and refugees in general. Even though I'm sure my experience was much more privileged than most, there was a time when I was in this uncertain time where I may as well go back home and live with my parents. And I'm really glad it didn't happen. (Laughs)

Amy: Thank you for sharing that, I really appreciate it and I can feel not only the uncertainty of perhaps having this new land that you call home kind of yanked away from you, but the uncertainty of having had a career blow or maybe even working at exhibit design and not excelling. I don't know, did that erode your confidence in some way? And now that you look back at it are you kind of glad that you were gently (laughs) encouraged to pursue a different aspect of design?

Yves: Absolutely. I think every one of those big heartbreaks and there's a few that came after that, when I look back I can still feel the anxiety or the pain around them, but I can also see how I pick myself up and the outcome was for the better. There's no doubt that these failures can lead to much better outcomes in the mid or long run. That gives me certainly a little bit of a philosophy in life, is that things do happen for a reason and by putting our energy and our attention and our heart in the right places, we can do better on the next round.

Amy: That's beautiful, thank you. From your vantage point, looking far off into the future, what do you see? And what do you want to see?

Yves: We're at the crossroads right now from an environmental standpoint. As human beings there is a tremendous amount of transformation that has to happen over the next 10, 15 years. That means every industry, every human activity has to be rethought. It doesn't mean that we remove pleasure or we remove enjoyment, which by the way, that's what humans are built for. We're not built for long term thinking obviously because we've been told about this (laughter) climate emergency for about 30 years and we've done almost nothing about it.

We can rally and we can enact change and I also believe that design has a huge role to play in that. This will be a time when companies, large and small, will be tested. It's certainly a time also where industry is far behind what the desires and the wants and needs of the consumers. 

The role of industry is to fulfil those needs and wants for a more conscious level of consumption. Industry has a lot to do to catch up, tremendous structural, logistical changes, experiential changes need to be made, and [0.55.00] design has a key role to play in that transformation. The winners and losers will be very clear, but hopefully designers answer that call, as well.

Amy: Yes, I think it's baked into most designers' ethos. Hopefully we can continue to really put our hearts and minds in the right direction. 

Yves: That's the hope. (Laughter) That's what we have to do.

Amy: Yes. Well, thank you so much for talking to me today and for sharing your story and your philosophies. I really enjoyed it and I feel so enlightened to know that the sexual pleasure from JimmyJane is actually being followed up with the extra sleep that Snoo provides, and I think you are making the world a better place just, you know, through a pleasure standpoint alone. (Laughter)

Yves: Well, thank you for that. I enjoyed the conversation, as well.

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Yves family photo

Yves new book, Yves Béhar: Designing Ideas

Yves surfing

fuseproject

Intuition Robotics

Snoo

On Laptop Per Child (OLPC)

Jambox

Jimmy Jane

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Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.

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Clever is produced by 2VDE Media. Thanks to Rich Stroffolino for editing this episode.
Production assistance from Ilana Nevins and music by El Ten Eleven—hear more on Bandcamp.
Shoutout to Jenny Rask for designing the Clever logo.

Clever is a proud member of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit airwavemedia.com to discover more great shows.

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