{"id":1752,"date":"2016-06-29T17:19:15","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T17:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/autodesk-university\/?p=1752"},"modified":"2016-06-29T17:21:57","modified_gmt":"2016-06-29T17:21:57","slug":"waffles-nike-and-the-future-of-product-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/autodesk-university\/waffles-nike-and-the-future-of-product-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Waffles, Nike, and the future of product design"},"content":{"rendered":"

Great innovation begins with inspiration, which can strike at any time. We all know iconic inventor stories like Sir Isaac Newton\u2019s falling apple and Benjamin Franklin\u2019s electrified kite. You may remember last year\u2019s AU Las Vegas Innovation Forum, when Roman Mars told us the incredible story<\/a> of Almon Brown Strowger, the Kansas City undertaker who invented an automatic telephone switching system to outsmart his rival\u2014whose telephone operator wife was sending all the funeral business in town to her husband\u2014and revolutionized the telephone system in the process.<\/p>\n

But have you heard about Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman\u2019s breakfast? In honor of National Waffle Iron Day (yup, it\u2019s a thing<\/a>), here\u2019s the story:<\/p>\n

The legendary University of Oregon track and field coach and \u201cborn tinkerer\u201d found inspiration on his plate 1 morning in 1971. He\u2019d been looking for a way to make his team\u2019s running shoes better grip the newly finished artificial track surface at Oregon\u2019s Hayward Field. When his wife Barbara served him a homemade waffle, Bowerman saw a design that he thought \u201cjust might work.\u201d He used her old waffle iron to press 2 rubber soles, which he then glued to nylon uppers to make the world\u2019s first pair of surface-gripping running shoes.<\/p>\n

\"Nike<\/p>\n

Bowerman may have ruined his wife\u2019s waffle iron but he created the prototype for Nike\u2019s Waffle Trainer, which debuted in 1974 and changed the running world (and arguably the wider world) forever. This unique approach laid the foundation for Nike\u2019s innovative design process that continues today. The process involves working closely with athletes to define performance goals and designing new products to meet them.<\/p>\n

Autodesk is honored to have Bill Bowerman\u2019s original waffle iron on display in the Autodesk Gallery. If you\u2019re in San Francisco, stop by and see the Nike exhibit<\/a> for yourself.<\/p>\n

From Nike\u2019s original waffle sole, it\u2019s just a hop, skip, and a jump (well okay, maybe there were a few more steps) to the new face of footwear innovation: mass-personalization. At AU last year, we introduced you to Matthew Flail and Timothy Ganter of Footprint Footwear who create customized footwear using 3D scanning, generative modeling, and 3D printing to fit your shoes perfectly to your feet. Check out their talk to get a glimpse of the future of your feet<\/a>. (We\u2019d love to know what Bill Bowerman would have to say about it.)<\/p>\n

As technology continues to evolve, so does product design\u2014and Autodesk is committed to helping you bring every great idea to life. We haven’t crossed the innovation finish line yet\u2014in fact, the race is just getting started.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Great innovation begins with inspiration, which can strike at any time. We all know iconic inventor stories like Sir Isaac Newton\u2019s falling apple and Benjamin Franklin\u2019s electrified kite. You may remember last year\u2019s AU Las Vegas Innovation Forum, when Roman Mars told us the incredible story<\/a> of Almon Brown Strowger,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":296,"featured_media":1755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,32,8],"tags":[117,123],"class_list":["post-1752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-au-2015","category-au-2016","category-au-speakers","tag-autodesk-gallery","tag-product-design"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/autodesk-university\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/autodesk-university\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/autodesk-university\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/autodesk-university\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/296"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/autodesk-university\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/autodesk-university\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/autodesk-university\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/autodesk-university\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/autodesk-university\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/autodesk-university\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}