LIZ BACON
Extraordinary Design Considerations for Medical Devices
Elizabeth Bacon is a practicing interaction designer with over 12 years of professional experience. She began her career at Cooper, where she got her “post-grad” education in interaction design while working across a variety of domains. She then was a “Human Factors Design Engineer” for over five years in the Cardiac Rhythm Management Division of St. Jude Medical, a Fortune 100 company. She designed multiple products around the clinical systems that handle implanted pacemakers and defibrillators, and formalized a process that blended interaction design methods with traditional human factors engineering approaches. Liz has been running her own design consultancy, Devise, for the past several years. She’s also a Director Emeritus of the Interaction Design Association. On the personal side, she loves to draw, write poetry and race cars, although not usually at the same time.
ROBERT BRUNNER
Ideas, Not Objects
After graduating in industrial design from San Jose State University in 1981, Robert co-founded the design consultancy Lunar. Subsequently, he was hired as Director of Industrial Design for Apple Computer where he served for 7 years. In 1996, he was appointed partner in the international firm Pentagram, helping lead the San Francisco office. In 2006, Brunner launched the start-up Fuego, a new concept in outdoor grilling. In 2007, Robert founded Ammunition, focusing on the overlap between product design, brand and experience. Around the same time, he helped launch the Beats by Dr. Dre brand of headphones with Interscope chairman Jimmy Iovine and hip hop icon Dr. Dre.
Robert has received numerous awards for his work in product design from prestigious organizations such as IDSA, Red Dot, Good Design, and iF. His work is also included in the Museum of Modern Art product collections in New York and San Francisco. In 2008, Robert co-authored the book Do you matter? How great design will make people love your company along with Success Built to Last author Stewart Emery. He has also taught advanced product design at Stanford University.
CHARLES GORAN
Bringing the Sidekick Back
Charles Goran has over 25 years of experience designing and delivering user experiences for devices, games, the Web, TV and everything in between. He has led award winning design and development on projects for companies like Apple, Microsoft, Motorola, AT&T, 3COM and T-Mobile. Charles is currently helping lead UX for T-Mobile USA and recently helped deliver the new Sidekick 4G.
KAREN KAUSHANSKY
Designing Talking Devices
Karen Kaushansky is a Principal Interaction Designer at Jawbone where she creates rich interactive experiences for Jawbone devices. Karen is formerly of Microsoft/Tellme and is a 14 year veteran of the speech recognition industry. Over the years, her work has spanned from traditional phone-based speech recognition applications, to voice biometrics, to multimodal experiences which included Ford’s in-car Traffic, Directions and Information Services , and Microsoft’s speech-integrated mobile phone applications.
Now, Karen works with the team at Jawbone to create products and services for the mobile lifestyle unparalleled in their innovation, ease-of-use and sophistication of design. Jawbone is the creator of an award-winning, best-selling line of intelligent Bluetooth headsets (Jawbone ERA & ICON), and of JAMBOX, the first intelligent wireless speaker and speakerphone.
MIKE KRUZENSKI
The Elements of Interactive Style
Mike is a Design Lead on the Windows Phone design studio in Redmond. Before joining Microsoft, Mike worked at the Design Strategic Projects studio at Nokia Design in Los Angeles. His focus has been on pushing the boundaries of mobile experience, exploring the language and cultural roles of user interface, and methods for taking product concepts to production. Mike has a Master’s degree in Interaction Design from the Umeå Institute of Design in Sweden, and a Bachelor of Industrial Design from Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada.
BRANKO LUKIC
NONOBJECT: The Space Between You and the Object
An entrepreneur and master of new experiences, Branko is a design and business visionary and author of NONOBJECT ‐ a design and innovation book that explores the future of product experiences – published by MIT Press in November 2010. Prior to NONOBJECT, Branko was a lead industrial designer at frogdesign and IDEO, where he directed projects for clients like Nike, Sony, Adidas, Samsung, Intel, Motorola, HP, Pepsi, Starbucks, Ford, and other international companies.
Branko won his first design contract at the age of 18 in Serbia. Since then, he has created work in a wide range of areas, including industrial and product design, branding, sustainable design, digital media, and conceptual design. Branko holds many patents and has won numerous national and international awards, including the IDSA/IDEA Gold Award, International Design magazine awards, Red Dot awards, Good Design awards, and many others. In 2009, he was named by the European Centre for Architecture, Art, Design, and Urban Studies and the Chicago Athenaeum as one of Europe’s “40 under 40,″ and was designated a finalist at the 2009 World Technology Awards Ceremony which recognizes individuals and companies doing innovative work “of the greatest likely long‐term significance” in their respective fields. Branko earned a BS degree in Industrial Design from the University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia. Branko is currently teaching advanced‐level design at Stanford University.
JODY MEDICH
Making Technology Tactile
In her 15 year career as a visual and sensory designer, Jody has created strategy driven projects including advertising, mobile, consumer products, and applications for over 300 companies. Most notably, she was the Global Design Director for Cadillac.com, Creative Director at Yahoo!, and a member of the interactive team at TBWA/chiat/day/tequila in Los Angeles. Some of her past clients include: National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, Sony, Get Statisfaction, Playstation, Masterfoods, Nissan/Infiniti, Adaptive Path, and StubHub.
Jody is also a practicing artist. She has an MFA in Painting and Design & Technology from the San Francisco Art Institute, is represented by Mercury20 Gallery in Oakland, CA, and works with the art crew FiveTonCrane. She is a painter and builds robots and rockets in her spare time.
CORI SCHAUER
Knobs, Buttons, & Dials: A Brief History of NASA Johnson Space Center’s Mission Control Center
Cori Schauer is an ethnographer in the User Centered Technologies group at NASA Ames Research Center. Most of her projects focus on helping the flight controllers NASA Johnson Space Center understand and visualize their processes, culture, and position in the aerospace market so they can prepare for future missions. Currently, Cori is working with the Planetary Data System, the archive for all NASA funded planetary science missions, to help them understand and serve their customers better.
Cori has 12 years experience in qualitative research methods for a wide range of sectors and clients including the American Cancer Society, The New York Times, Kraft, and Radio Shack. She has a B.A. in Professional Writing, English, and Cultural Anthropology and a Masters of Design in Communication Planning and Information Design from Carnegie Mellon University.
LEILA TAKAYAMA
Personal Robotic Devices
Leila Takayama is a research scientist at Willow Garage, where she studies human-robot interaction. Her interests lie in the intersections of ubiquitous computing, embodied cognition, and personal robotics. Her work focuses upon the behavioral, cognitive, and social implications of technologies that influence one’s own sense of agency by becoming invisible-in-use. It also focuses upon how people make sense of and interact with agentic objects.
Prior to joining Willow Garage, Leila completed her PhD at Stanford University in the Department of Communication. She also holds a PhD minor in Psychology from Stanford, an MA in Communication from
Stanford, and BAs in Cognitive Science and Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. During her graduate studies, she also worked a research assistant at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Her PhD thesis, titled Throwing Voices: Investigating the Psychological Effects of the Spatial Location of Projects Voices, won the Nathan Maccoby dissertation award.
