Scot Herbst is one of the most prolific designers in Santa Cruz. In his design studio - Herbst Produkt - we see creations ranging from home decor to autonomous underwater robots, there is no limit to his imagination and talent.

We caught up with him in this interview to learn about his latest works, and a new book.

SC Works: Let’s start with the new book: No Excuses Innovation.  Who is Walter Herbst?

Scot Herbst: Walter is my father. He lives in Chicago where I grew up. I went to grad school at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena CA, then stayed on the West Coast and started our California-based design studio. So he's sort of my design partner. He had a studio for many years in Chicago. He's getting a little older now. He's 85, but yeah, he's a little bit of a design icon. He was one of the very first industrial designers in the United States, started designing in the late 50s, early 60s. He has a massive amount of experience, and some very funny stories. But yeah, he's a really neat guy, quite a character. He gets out here every couple of months to visit our studio – over in the Sashmill behind Patagonia. We're tucked back in one of those really neat buildings.

He had always wanted to write a book and been chipping away at it for the past few years with Stanford University Press. They really wanted to publish a book from him. So he partnered with them and was able to kind of piece together this collection of stories from various projects that he's worked on. Some of them involved more recent work that we've done here in Santa Cruz, which is really neat. But there's a few anecdotal things from just his kind of historical past with some funky design stuff that he's done.

SC Works: What are the key messages and advice one can glean from his experience and book? 

Scot Herbst: He's a really big proponent of the design process and design thinking. I would say that his big motivation is just sharing that point of view with people and emphasizing the importance of the design process. And that's something that we've always been very keen on in our studio, is developing and establishing a really healthy process because the design effort can get pretty messy pretty quickly. There's just a lot of variables and lots of technical challenges, and you've got the whole consumer piece, which can be, you know, you have to navigate around a lot of things. And so when we rely on process, much like Jim Whitehead at UCSC does with game design or software development.  I think everyone in the innovation space encounters the same general needs: we all fall back on process –  that really important foundational aspect that keeps everybody sane and makes sure that the end result is really great.

SC Works: How does that compare to Design Methodology? Remember the SC Works event on Design Thinking with Dave Evans and Dean Hovey? 

Scot Herbst: Yeah, definitely. That was a great talk. We're seeing now more than ever in history that all of us as consumers are becoming more savvy with the products we use, the experiences we expect from products. We are surrounded by this new expectation of great design and great experiences. I think Dave and Dean apply a lens of taking a step back and really defining the objective , the goals, the happiness factors for your life. In product development and innovation, it's the same thing. It's taking a step back, really defining the opportunity, understanding all those variables, and then reassembling all those pieces and parts into something that's really meaningful and makes sense. It is now more of a fundamental part of everyone's awareness. There is new passion or desire for better products, better services, better experiences. Design thinking / methodology has upped the game for everybody.

SC Works: Tell us about this new coffee maker.

Scot Herbst: Brewbird, Brewbird is a startup in the Bay Area, a really sharp group of young guys that have deep experience with mechanical hardware development as well as software. Combining those two attributes together with a passion for coffee, they identified a gap in the marketplace – otherwise known as a white space on the spectrum – and noticed that there were simply two options that existed for really good coffee. You could either leave the house or the office to find a coffee shop and go through that whole ritual; or, you could try and sort of concoct it on your own with grinders and brewers and cold brewing and all sorts of things. They isolated two challenges. One, they wanted to eliminate the friction in the pursuit of coffee: how do we make it as seamless and enjoyable as possible? And two, how do we develop a solution that extracts the very best flavor out of a coffee bean?

There is a sophisticated science behind how you brew perfect coffee. It includes the temperature that's associated with the chemistry of the beans, as well as a pressure component. Brewbird developed a smart system that identifies the strain of roasted beans, and a bean’s characteristics associated with how to brew it. The machine starts with the fresh whole beans, because pre ground beans lose flavor within hours. Brewbird developed a really sophisticated mechanism that extracts the beans, puts them into the grinder within the coffee machine, then brews it according to the specific bean characteristics, and produces this amazing cup of coffee. We've seen some sort of coffee aficionados and brand name roasters use the machine. And they've actually remark that that machine brews their coffee better than they've been able to do on their own.

We partnered with them to do all the industrial design and a lot of the user experience associated with the system. We designed a paper pulp based coffee pod that gets inserted into the machine that was really important for us because we're really trying to combat that what they call a curing effect, where people are disposing of plastic cups on a daily basis. It is really mind boggling to understand the magnitude of waste that accumulates over time - 7 cups of coffee a week on average ends up being billions of plastic cups that go to landfill every year. So with our paper pulp-based coffee pod, it can go right in your compost bin. 

SC Works: Tell us about the beautiful design.

Scot Herbst: Yeah, thanks. And that's kind of a beauty. Going back to the design process, you take something really, really complex, then find a way to reduce it down to something that's very approachable and user friendly. The end result is very intentional,  inviting and easy for anyone to use. 

SC Works: And the commercial model seems to be the same as a razor and razor blade?

Scot Herbst: Yeah, that's a great point. That really is their business model. It's kind of predicated on the coffee pods. But what is really unique is they've begun partnering with craft roasters all over the US. They started with a series of them here in the Bay Area. It is a very symbiotic relationship because on the one hand, Brewbird wants to make craft coffee accessible to their customers to support their business. But simultaneously, craft roasters also want a platform that is able to reach a broad audience because traditionally craft roasting has been a little bit of a geographic limitation in that there is a time association with fresh roasted beans. And so while you can go into Whole Foods and certainly get counterculture coffee that's come from far away, there's a shelf life to it and also it's just geographically limited. With the Brewbird system, these craft roasters have an opportunity to reach a much broader audience. Pretty cool.

SC Works: How long did the design process take from scratch to completion?

Yeah. Cool. And roughly how long did the design process take for you from scratch? They gave you a call, I'm sure, and then now it's done. It's manufactured.

Scot Herbst: From the time they reached out to us to now was about 18 months. We find that to be pretty typical of some of these more complex hardware programs. Brewbird has invested a year and a half to two years prior to engaging us, developing a proof of concept, which is a Frankenstein kind of hacked together thing that does what they need to do to, so they could raise funding. 

SC Works: What can you tell us about the Brewbird team?

Scot Herbst: Yeah, they're growing rapidly. About 8 months ago, they raised a huge Series A round with Sequoia Capital. I think their biggest need right now is on the engineering side for firmware and hardware engineers. They are a very diverse group of people located in Redwood City and San Mateo. All powered by their united passion for excellent coffee.