Helping Startups take off at Cornell Tech
The Runway Startup Postdoc Program teaches postdocs how to be both scientists and entrepreneurs. We worked as strategic designer-in-residence with post-doc startups to help them take flight: zeroing in on inventive applications and service concepts, developing meaningful end-user experiences, and scoping paths to investor value.
Some ways we supported the program's startups: 
1. Vision refinement
We use visual tools that broaden the opportunity space and help companies narrow in on a concrete vision. With F!ND Genomics startup, Strategic Design first provided divergent thinking at the intersection of mobile DNA sequencing, algorithmic analysis, and program development. Later, as F!ND Genomics refined their vision, we helped illustrate how on-site DNA sequencing could facilitate time-sensitive field identification. 
2. Identifying the needs of end users
User personas and use-case scenarios are tools that allow for iterative exploration. Through their use, product implementations can be visualized and various marketplace implementations vetted. For Biotia, we generated user scenarios to help them refine their thinking and communicate how their methodologies and algorithms prevent the spread of dangerous contagions in hospital environments. This visual communication proved valuable when offering this capability to third world countries with a challenging language barrier. 
3. Illuminating the new product landscape
By generating context-setting visuals, teams are better able to apply their thinking to real-world problems. At the same time, “visual” brainstorming enables much broader interpretative solutions than language, making features and ideas far more visible to casual review. For example, to facilitate thinking about NYC entrepreneurial tech opportunities, cityscapes were populated with current and future robotic solutions along with prompts to drive ideation. A Robots-in-the-City context setting image. 
4. Providing visual artifacts that support pitches and partner communication
Sometimes the underlying technologies themselves are difficult to describe. And without them, there’s a risk that a pitch will get lost in abstractions and go into free fall. For CEO Tomer Morad’s Concertio startup, the challenge was to describe an AI-enabled, network optimization system. For CEO Neel S. Madhukar’s One Three Biotech startup, it was to describe a system that uses artificial intelligence to accelerate drug development.