At the d.school we’re all about giving students a chance to tap into a powerful resource: their own creative confidence. We encourage other people to create change in their communities and in their ways of working. One way to help students to discover their creative edge is to shake things up. As Scott Doorley & Scott Witthoft have shown in their book, Make Space, changes in your work environment such as, furniture and floor plans, help nudge people into more collaborative and creative behaviors. The red couch is a bright physical reminder to keep ourselves in a design mindset. For us, it’s become a symbol of design thinking and design doing.

We sat down with Charlotte Burgess-Auburn (she’s the one getting rolled away at the end of the video) to learn more about what the red couch is really about and to hear some of her stories.

I’ve seen t-shirts, stickers, posters idolizing the subject in question. It’s kind of weird. What makes the red couch so special?

The Klippan loveseat from IKEA is really one of the world’s least impressive couches. It transcends its humbleness in two ways that have made it into the icon of creative thinking that it is today. It’s red, and it’s practically indestructible. Let me explain.

The shape of the couch itself is quite basic. It’s a rectangle, with some more rectangles attached to it. It’s comfortable and simple. Its boldness comes from its color. The choice to make something red is always intentional. And in choosing a red couch we were saying, “This place needs energy and vibrancy, and we’re not afraid to make bold choices.”

The red couch is our longest living prototype. It’s relatively cheap, for a leather couch, so you don’t feel bad about trying something that might not work. It’s a prototype at just the right resolution. Bright and dynamic enough to say what you want to say, practical and hardy enough to win the Darwinian war of evolution in our continually changing landscape. That thing is indestructible. The number of half-eaten burritos I’ve seen that just wiped right off with a damp cloth… The red couch entered our lives, and then it just stayed and stayed. We bought one, and it looked good a year later, so we bought a few more. We moved to another building and they still looked great, so they just kept coming. They are easy to clean, easy to modify, and easy to fix. And when they do get broken and too roughed up to use, we skin them and save the leather to use for projects and keepsakes. We try to get every last bit of life out of them.

So, how did it begin?

The date on my picture says it was January 2, 2006. This was just a few days before our very first d.school class, held in the Birch modular trailer out by the Medical School. We were expecting 60 students to arrive in a just a few days, and we needed furniture for our classroom ASAP! d.school fellows, Coulter Leyes and James Monsees and I went to IKEA (the go-to source for cheap, hackable furniture) to look for chairs. And instead, we found this.

Actually, we found the cheaper version of it, covered in orange fabric, which only cost $300. We thought couches would be a good signal about how learning at the d.school would have a different feel. And then Colter and James saw this one, which cost $500, and it was love at first sight. So of course, I said “No way are we going to buy a bunch of expensive leather couches for our prototype classroom!” We bought three of the cloth ones. And then I relented and told them we could buy one of the red ones for the teaching team working area. I mean look at them, they were so excited about it.

Anyway, it turns out that the cloth couches were what I call “fast-nasty.” The red couch, with its smooth leather exterior, was the only piece of furniture to repel the dirt that was tracked in throughout the rest of the school year.

What’s next? I heard a rumor about blue chairs… can you confirm or deny?

Actually, I think it’s time to design our own. We’ve been working with a great prototype for over a decade now. Let’s put everything we’ve learned about it into a brand new plan just right for where we are now, and where we’re going.