Speakers

Katherine and Michael McCoy
High Ground

The McCoys are internationally recognized for their unique multi-disciplinary design education methods that give designers the tools and methods to collaborate in creating compelling design experiences.

As Directors of Design at Cranbrook for 24 years, Distinguished Visiting Professors at London's Royal College of Art, Faculty at IIT's Institute of Design in Chicago, Directors of Professional Programs at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design (RMCAD) in Denver and principals in High Ground Design Workshops (www.highgrounddesign.com) they have developed effective methods for designers to work together to create visions for the future.

They have received over 200 awards for their work in graphic, product, furniture, signage, exhibit and interior design including the IDSA Gold Award, I.D. Magazine's Best of Category, Interior Design Magazine's Best Office Design, The IBD Award, and The European Ergo Design Award. Michael's work (with his partner Dale Fahnstrom) includes Knoll's best selling Bulldog Chair, Details Accessories for Steelcase and electronics for Philips and NEC. Katherine's graphic design work includes "Graphic Radicals" for Chronicle Books, "Cranbrook Design/The New Discourse" for Rizzoli and many posters and publications for Cranbrook Academy of Art. Their work and writings have been widely published and exhibited and they lecture on design theory at conferences around the world.

Their pioneering methods in design education have earned them the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design, The Industrial Designers Society of America Education Award, The American Center for Design Education Award, The American Institute of Graphic Arts Gold Medal (for Katherine), Honorary Doctorates from Kansas City Art Institute and the Smithsonian Institution’s first ever “Design Minds” National Design Award.
www.highgrounddesign.com

Fred Murrell
chair of design, RMCAD

Fred Murrell is the Chair of Design at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design and works as a design consultant to major corporations. He left Sapient in 2002 where he was vice president of experience design in the Denver, Colorado office. Partnering with Clement Mok, he helped build a global design leadership team that created design communities, creative design strategy and experience design initiatives for Sapient worldwide.

For over 20 years Murrell has been providing senior management for major corporations a new understanding of the value of strategic design programs by implementing integrated identity systems, interactive web experiences, information design environments and user centered design programs. He has held the position of director of design worldwide at Texas Instruments, Corning Incorporated and Tenet Healthcare where he managed internal design teams that worked closely with design consultants like Doblin Group, IDEO and Meta Design, to produce integrated communications programs, user interactions and product experiences that created breakthrough design solutions to business problems.

Murrell has served on the AIGA National Board, American Center for Design National Board, Design Management Institute Advisory Board and the AIGA National Experience Design Steering Committee and was the first President for the New York AIGA Chapter (Rochester, NY). Design awards for his work have been awarded from AIGA, ACD, Graphis, New York Art Directors Show, Print, Communications Arts, United Way, and Creativity. He has lectured at the IIID (International Institute for Information Design) in Schwarzenburg, Austria; UIAH (University of Art & Design), Helsinki, Finland; AIGA National Conference, Seattle, WA; AIGA Business Conference, New York, NY; Design Management Institute, Corporate Identity Conference, Montreal, Canada; Rochester Institute of Technology and SUNY Fredonia, New York. Fred was also the first Director for the School of Design at the Kansas City Art Institute as well as the Joyce C. Hall Distinguished Professor, and Chair of the Design Department. Previously he has taught at Alfred University, Rochester Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University.

Currently, Murrell is President of AIGA Colorado and on the Board of the Design Council for the Denver Art Museum. He is a graduate of the University of Washington, in Seattle, Washington and the College of Design in Basel, Switzerland. He presently lives in Englewood, Colorado with his wife and three daughters.
www.rmcad.edu

Michael Arnold Mages
RMCAD

Michael Arnold Mages is on the cutting edge of new media communications and design theory, has taught at University of Denver, University of Colorado-Boulder and is now teaching new media and leading the digital communications strategic development initiative at RMCAD.

Chris Conley
director of product design, Institute of Design, IIT Chicago

Chris Conley has more than 15 years of experience in the theory and practice of product design, consumer experience research and their implications for business strategy. Conley is the founding director of Gravity Tank, an innovation consultancy based in Chicago, as well as the director of the Human Centered Product Design program at the Institute of Design. He is widely regarded as an expert in new product and service conceptualization and the leadership of cross-disciplinary teams engaged in innovation efforts.

As a pioneer in the application of design to new business creation, Conley has worked with such clients as Palm, McDonald's, Steelcase, Goodyear and Samsung on a wide range of innovation programs. While Director of Global Design Planning for Motorola, Conley established a research and planning process that enabled the company to better understand users' experiences and sociocultural trends in key regions around the world, shaping the marketing, product management and industrial design of Motorola's Global Product Portfolio. He currently serves on Unilever's R&D Global Trend Panel helping the packaged goods firm connect technical and consumer trends to emerging product opportunities.

Conley has taught product design, design strategy, and user-centered methods to design and business students for more than 15 years, and is currently the tenured director of the Institute of Design's product design track. His academic leadership was recognized by the National Science Foundation in 2004 with a grant to study the thorough integration of design principles in undergraduate engineering curricula. He is currently developing a book for MIT Press entitled "Design Integrations: Research, Method, Collaboration", and has been a guest lecturer and critic around the world, from Delft University in the Netherlands to the Hong Kong Polytechnic.

Conley is also a sought after speaker and juror to international design competitions and conferences. He has most recently spoken at the Danish Design Council, and the Future Ground Conference in Melbourne, Australia, and will serve on the jury of the Japan Design Foundation's 2005 Osaka Design Award. In 2006, he will serve as the Jury Chairman for the BusinessWeek magazine/IDSA awards, the premier product design and innovation awards forum in the United States. He is the past President of the American Center for Design. He has been published and quoted widely, in professional journals and the popular press alike, and was the subject of a recent feature profile in ID Magazine. Conley holds a Master of Science of Design degree from the Institute of Design and an engineering degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Moira Cullen
design director, Coca Cola North America

Moira Cullen has built a career directing creative business solutions that honor the essence and heritage of organizations, institutions and brands. A design strategist, writer and educator, she has been creative director and U.S. representative for one of Japan's leading fashion specialty retailers; design research manager at Pentagram; marketing director at The Pushpin Group; director of programs at AIGA, the professional association for design; and chair of the Communication Arts department at Otis College of Art and Design. As creative development strategist, she built and led the corporate design group at Hallmark Cards, Inc. and focused on leveraging design as a corporate asset. Her essays and criticism have been published in leading design publications and anthologies. A former president of AIGA’s Los Angeles Chapter, she serves as a director on AIGA’s national board and as president of AIGA’s Center for Brand Experience.

Hugh Dubberly
Dubberly Design Office

Hugh Dubberly is a principal in Dubberly Design Office, a San Francisco-based consultancy that focuses on making software easier to use through interaction design and information design. At Apple Computer in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Dubberly managed cross-functional design teams and later managed creative services for the entire company. While at Apple, he co-created a technology-forecast film called "Knowledge Navigator," that presaged the appearance of the Internet in a portable digital device. At Netscape, he became vice president of design and managed groups responsible for the design, engineering, and production of Netscape's web portal. In 2000, he co-founded DDO. In addition to his practice, Dubberly also teaches. While at Apple, he also served at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena as the first and founding chairman of the computer graphics department. He has also taught classes in the Graphic Design Department at San Jose State University, at the Institute of Design at IIT, and in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University.

Hugh Graham
Hugh Graham Creative

Hugh Graham is an interaction designer and creative strategist who uses narrative techniques to craft user-centered design solutions. His focus on the intersection of story and design comes from extensive experience in film, video, music and theater, including projects for MGM/Universal, Paramount, Viacom, and the Walker Art Center, combined with a dozen years working in interaction design, including projects for Universal Studios, US West, Qwest, Janus, Aspen Ski Company, the Limited Express, American Friends Service Committee, Maytag, Virgin, the Colorado Rockies, Budget Rent A Car and Heifer International.

Graham is a former Director of User Experience for Sapient Corporation and Director of Content Strategy at iXL, and is an award winning performance and media artist, including awards from the Denver Mayor’s Office of Art Culture and Film and the Colorado Council for the Arts. He has served as Director of Strategy for the American Institute of Graphic Arts Colorado Chapter, and is the principal of Hugh Graham Creative. Graham is also an active digital storyteller, and is pursuing this interest through "Mile High Stories", a collection of stories about the City of Denver, its inhabitants, landmarks and history.
www.hughgrahamcreative.com

Chris Hacker
design director, Johnson & Johnson

Rick E. Robinson, PhD.
global director, NOP World, design director of Sapient and co-founder of E-Lab

Rick E. Robinson is the Global Director for NOP World’s observational and ethnographic practice. For nearly 15 years, Rick has been a leader in developing and applying observational research as a basis for new product, service and strategy solutions. Robinson is an interdisciplinary social scientist who holds a Ph.D. in Human Development from the University of Chicago. He was a co-founder of E-Lab, a research and design consultancy, which pioneered ethnographic and observational research approaches for understanding the interactions between people and products. In 1999, E-Lab was acquired by Sapient, where he became Senior Vice President & Chief Experience Officer. Among his clients have been leading companies in many different business sectors, including BP/Amoco, BMW, Ford, General Mills, General Motors, Hallmark, Intel, McDonald's, Nabisco, Samsung, Schick, Sony, Tropicana, Unilever, Warner-Lambert and Wells Fargo. His contributions to the development of business applications for ethnography have been written up in academic and marketing publications, profiled in Business Week, Fast Company, Business 2.0, The Financial Times and many others, as well as on CNN’s Business Unusual.

Robinson publishes and lectures widely on ethnographic practice and design research methodology, the value of understanding everyday life, and the role of social theory in design. He is the co-author of The Art of Seeing with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He is on the editorial board of Design Issues and the advisory boards of the Design Management Institute and the California College of Arts and Crafts.

Tucker Viemeister
FIDSA: vice president, Creative, Rockwell Group

Tucker Viemeister has created memorable and compelling brand experiences and products for Coke, Joe Boxer, OXO Good Grips, McDonalds and many others as President of Springtime-USA, vice president of Product Design for Razorfish, vice president of Design for frogdesign, co-founder of Smart Design and now as vice president, Creative, Rockwell Group.

A graduate from Pratt Institute, he was president of Springtime-USA, a partnership with the young Dutch industrial design company, he helped to found Razorfish's physical design capability, frogdesign's New York office and Smart Design where he helped design the widely-acclaimed OXO "GoodGrips" universal kitchen tools. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Architectural League of New York, chair of the Rowena Reed Kostellow Fund and president of the International Design Network Foundation. He produced and designed a book written by Gail Greet Hannah, Elements of Design: Rowena Reed Kostellow and the Structure of Visual Relationships . BusinessWeek called him “Guru,” “scruffy brand-meister” by the Architect’s Newspaper (2/06), and dubbed "Industrial Design’s Elder Wonderkind" when I.D. Magazine included him in America's hottest 40. He teaches at NYU's ITP, holds 32 US Utility Patents and was named after a car.