Donald Norman

Photo by Solve Sundsbo.

Don Norman is the Breed Professor of Design at Northwestern University, cofounder of the Nielsen Norman Group, and former Vice President of Apple Computer. He serves on many advisory boards, including Encyclopedia Britannica and the Industrial Design department of KAIST, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He was awarded the Benjamin Franklin medal in Computer and Cognitive Science. He has honorary degrees from the University of Padova (Italy) and the Technical University Delft (the Netherlands). He is the author of “The Design of Everyday Things,” “Emotional Design,” and “The Design of Future Things.” He is now working on a book tentatively called “Sociable Design.” He lives at www.jnd.org.

 Donald Norman will talk about: Sociable Design

How do we know what to do in novel situations? Sometimes we ask, sometimes we watch. And at other times we make inferences, sometimes by what I call social signifiers. A “signifier” is some sort of indicator, some signal in the physical or social world that can be interpreted meaningfully. Signifiers signify critical information, even if the signifier itself is an accidental byproduct of the world. All sorts of arcane knowledge combine to help: perceived affordances, knowledge of the culture, the actions of others, or just plain trial and error. These and related observations give guidance to how a product, service, or environment might be designed to guide people appropriately.

Social affordances and social constraints act as enablers and restraints, guiding behavior. Trails are important signifiers allowing us to follow in the footsteps of others, whether walking through the woods, listening to music, or buying books. Design theory is mostly silent about the social world, yet services are primarily social interactions. The work reported here is part of my forthcoming book, Tentatively called Sociable Design.

Jan Chipchase

Human Behavioural Researcher, Design Team, Nokia

Jan Chipchase is one of a team of researchers and anthropologists working at Nokia. Based within the design organisation at Nokia, his job is to study people around the world – how they behave, communicate and interact with each other and the things around them. He shares his observations and insights with Nokia designers, who often accompany him on field trips, helping them to create new ideas for how mobile devices will look, work and will be used in the future.

Most of his time is spent in the field conducting research projects. This takes him out onto the streets, into people’s homes and public spaces to observe, document and analyze the rich tapestry of everyday life. Recent projects include visiting Uganda to look at shared phone use, several trips to India to look at how design can make mobile devices more accessible to people with low or non-existent levels of literacy, and a study in South Korea looking at how early adopters were reacting to the then recently launched mobile TV.

His research focuses on the future 3 to 15 years from now – understanding today’s base human motivations, detecting early signals of new trends and combining this knowledge with an understanding of where technology is heading. The research is used by the design team together with a suite of other tools to help inform and inspire the design of future products, features, applications, services and platforms. In 2006 alone this took him to 15 different countries, helping Nokia understand both the similarities and differences between cultures.

Jan has a Masters in User Interface Design, and a degree in Development Economics. He is half British half German by nationality, and is based in Nokia’s Insight and Innovation Studio in Tokyo, his home since 2000. He has had 3 patents with a further 25 pending on topics that range from interaction methods, ubiquitously connected societies and seamless communication.

For more information about Jan’s work and to catch up on his latest research you can visit his blog at http://www.janchipchase.com/

Jan is part of a team of more than 300 people, representing 34 different nationalities, working around the globe. This includes industrial designers, colors and material experts, graphic designers, psychologists, researchers, anthropologists and technology specialists.

Prof. Lorraine Justice
 

Professor Lorraine Justice was named one of the top 40 influential designers in the world by I.D. Magazine in New York City in 2006. She is currently the Director of the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Prior to joining PolyU, Professor Justice was Director of the Industrial Design Program in the College of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). She has served on several international design juries such as Design of the Decade and the Asia Design Awards. She currently also serves as Executive Board of Directors for the Icsid and is a Fellow of the Industrial Design Society of America.

Prof. Lorraine Justice will talk about: the link between the cultures we come from, and the beliefs we form (and make up ourselves!) and how that impacts what we want in our life. 


Raman Hui

For over 19 years, Raman Hui has been a major force at PDI/DreamWorks, guiding the animation team from commercials and shorts to feature films. He started at the studio in 1989 working on various commercials and award-winning short films, which led to his position as Lead Character Designer/Supervising Animator on PDI/DreamWorks’ first full-length computer-animated feature film, “Antz.” From there he went on to serve as Supervising Animator on the Academy Award®- winning blockbuster “Shrek,” as well as the follow up Universal Studios theme park attraction “Shrek 4D.” He also went on to serve as one of the Supervising Animators on the blockbuster sequel, “Shrek 2,” which went on to become the highest grossing animated film of all time. For a year he served as Director of Animation on DreamWorks Television & NBC’s prime-time animated comedy “Father of the Pride.” He recently completed his first co-directing debut on “Shrek the Third” and is now directing the studio’s Kung Fu Panda animated short, “Secrets of the Furious Five”.

During the past decade at PDI/DreamWorks, Hui has worked on a variety of 3D characters, including a CG Mickey Mouse for Jim Henson’s “Muppetvision,” the first CG Pillsbury Doughboy and a helmeted Martian who interacts with a live-action earthling for Hanna-Barbera’s television special, “The Last Halloween.” Hui also directed, wrote and produced the celebrated PDI/DreamWorks short film, “Sleepy Guy,” which has been screened at the Sundance Festival and has received awards at the London Animation Festival, the Niccograph in Japan, the US International Film & Video Festival and won first place at Imagina in 1995. His latest in-house short, “Fat Cat on a Diet,” has been screened at many festivals and conferences, including the London Effects and Animation Festival (LEAF), Anima Mundi and the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival. Hui graduated from The Hong Kong Polytechnic in Design and began his animation career in Hong Kong at Quantum Studio where he worked as a traditional animator. Later, he moved to Canada to study computer animation at Sheridan College.

Prof. Bill Green 

Bill Green is Professor of Industrial Design at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA since 1993. He has degrees in Architecture, Industrial Design and Industrial Technology from University of California at Berkeley and Western Washington University. He has lectured worldwide in Industrial Design History. He is the designer of the high milege automobile "Avion" which is an entry in the Automotive X Prize Competition.  

Prof. Bill Green’s talk for Design & Emotion 2008 is entitled: "The Pursuit of Happiness through Industrial Design"