Product Design and Technology

Last Thursday, our Sixth Form DT pupils were lucky enough to meet Joe Cooke, Lead Designer of the innovative footwear company, Mahabis.

Mr Cooke, introduced himself and his background and continued to give his presentation in our DT lab. After working in sports technology, he worked with Puma before joining an e-commerce footwear start-up before it launched in 2014. With a million products sold in more than 80 countries, he certainly knows a thing or two about product design.

Joe explained the process required to bring a product to life and shared his wisdom with the pupils. He explained that a product must fulfil a demand; people must want to buy it. Next, he identified that products need testing; will they work in doing what they set out to do? Perhaps some of the best advice that he gave – fail! He quoted Elon Musk, who famously said,‘Failure is an option here, if you’re not failing, you’re not innovating enough.’

He placed particular emphasis on this point, and explained that no product worth buying was perfect the first time. Following this, he described the process of creating an experience rather than a product. This is, essentially, why the consumer will buy a product, because of what it will do for their lives rather than what the product itself is.

Head of Design and Technology, Mr Alex Hunt said, ‘Thank you so much to Joe for coming in and sharing his industry knowledge. We hope to be able to welcome him back in the not-too-distant future.’