About The course

The Design for Extreme Affordability course (officially listed at Stanford as ME206a-b/OIT333-334 and affectionately known as Extreme) is a two-quarter course hosted by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (aka the d.school) and listed by the Graduate School of Business and the Department of Mechanical Engineering. This multidisciplinary, project-based experience creates an enabling environment in which students learn to design products and services that will change the lives of the world’s poorest citizens. Students work directly with course partner organizations on real world problems, the culmination of which is actual implementation and real change. In 2023, projects were in the Bay Area.

Each year, up to 40 Stanford graduate students and seniors from across campus engage with global partner organizations to produce 10 transformative projects, the culmination of which is actual implementation and real change. The students participate in a human-centered design process that leads them to establish deep empathy with their users while using radical collaboration to iterate on seemingly impossible and extremely affordable solutions.

Solutions create impact either through implementation by the partner, new independent student-led organizations, or through another appropriate organization.

Student teams can continue working on their projects in the summer Social-E program and from September- June in the Design Lab.