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Laura Forlano
Laura Forlano is an Assistant Professor of Design at the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. From 2009-2011, she was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Interaction Design Lab in the Departments of Communication and Information Science at Cornell University. Forlano´s research is on the role of information technology in supporting open innovation networks in urban environments with a specific emphasis on the use of mobile, wireless and ubiquitous computing technologies to support collaboration. Her current project “Design Collaborations as Sociotechnical Systems,” which is funded by the National Science Foundation, is an international comparative study that focuses on the role of technology in supporting networks of designers in New York, Barcelona and Brisbane. Forlano received a 2011-2012 Fulbright grant to study social innovation networks in Toronto. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, Microsoft Research, the Urban Communication Foundation and the American Council on Germany. She is co-editor with Marcus Foth, Christine Satchell and Martin Gibbs of From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen: Urban Informatics, Social Media, Ubiquitous Computing, and Mobile Technology to Support Citizen Engagement, which is to be published by MIT Press in 2011). Her research and writing has been published in peer-reviewed journals including The Information Society, Journal of Community Informatics, IEEE Pervasive Computing, Design Issues and Science and Public Policy and she has been published chapters for books including editor Mark Shepard´s Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space (MIT Press 2011) and The Architecture League of New York´s Situated Technologies pamphlet series and is a regular contributor to their Urban Omnibus blog. Forlano received her Ph.D. in Communications from Columbia University in 2008. Her dissertation, “When Code Meets Place: Collaboration and Innovation at WiFi Hotspots,” explores the intersection between organizations, technology (in particular, mobile and wireless technology) and the role of place in communication, collaboration and innovation.
In 2008-2009, while a Kauffman Fellow in Law at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, Forlano was part of a collaborative project “Breakout! Escape from the Office” that was included in The Architecture League of New York´s Toward the Sentient City exhibition. From 2007-2011, Forlano was an Adjunct Faculty member in the Design and Management department at Parsons and the Graduate Programs in International Affairs and Media Studies at The New School where she taught courses on Innovation, Technology and the City, New Media and Global Affairs, Service Design, and Design and Everyday Experience. She has also been active in research on public policy issues related to telecommunications and information technology. In 2011, she co-authored with Alison Powell a study “From the Digital Divide to Digital Excellence: Global Best Practices for Municipal and Community Wireless Networks,” for the New America Foundation. Forlano served on the Federal Communication Commission´s Consumer Advisory Panel from 2005-2007. She serves as a board member of NYCwireless and the New York City Computer Human Interaction Association. Forlano received a Master´s in International Affairs from Columbia University, a Diploma in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor´s in Asian Studies from Skidmore College. She studied at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan from 1993-4. Forlano speaks Japanese and has studied French, Spanish, Italian and German.
Research Interests: Organizations, technology (especially, mobile, wireless and pervasive computing technologies) and the role of space/place in communication, collaboration and innovation; open innovation systems and social innovation/entrepreneurship; social computing, urban informatics, ubiquitous and pervasive computing; media, telecommunications and technology policy; socio-technical systems, values in design and science and technology studies; ethnographic, qualitative and design research methods; and cross-cultural comparisons.
Vijay Kumar
Vijay Kumar is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Design. His teaching and
research focus on strategic innovation, innovation methods, information structuring,
and human-centered product/communication systems. He has over 22 years of experience
in consulting, teaching, and research and development in these areas worldwide. As an
innovation planning leader at Doblin Inc., Kumar spent more than 12 years consulting on
customer-centered innovations for companies such as Alamo, Amoco Oil, Cummins Engine, Hallmark,
Lenscrafters, McDonald´s, Monsanto, Motorola, Perot Systems, Pfizer, Royal Dutch Shell,
SAS Airlines, Steelcase, Texas Instruments, Weirton Steel, and Wells Fargo.
Kumar is adept at working with multi-disciplinary teams to use structured planning techniques to
transform user insights into innovation systems and strategic plans for companies. He is the inventor of
many methods, frameworks, tools, and software applications designed to extend innovation capabilities;
students, researchers, consultants, and business executives worldwide have been successfully using some
of his tools, such as Analysis and Transformations (A&T) and Innovation Landscape, for many years.
Kumar has taught at the Institute of Design since 1993. He is also an alumnus of ID's Masters program,
where his research focus was on information visualization tools for planning and is published widely.
Kumar received his undergraduate degree in product design from India´s National Institute of Design in 1979.
Afterward, as a principal in Kumar Group, a systems design consulting firm in southern India, he consulted
with companies in product design, environment design, architecture, and environmental planning.
Research Interests:
Strategic Innovation Planning; Innovation Methods, Tools, and Frameworks; Information Structuring and Complexity
Visualization; User-centered Systems Conception
Tom MacTavish
Tom MacTavish is an assistant professor at the IIT Institute of Design and has taught courses related to interaction design history, theory, and practice since 2008. He holds master´s degrees in library and information science from University of Michigan and in English from University of Iowa, with a bachelor´s degree in English from Central Michigan University. For nine years before coming to ID, he directed Motorola Labs´ Center for Human Interaction Research with research laboratories in Phoenix (AZ), Schaumburg (IL), and Shanghai (China). In prior years, he led the Human Interface Technology Center based in Atlanta (GA) for NCR Corporation and served as director of engineering for NCR´s wireless communications and networking engineering group in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
As a member of the human/computer interaction research community, Tom has participated in the full range of product conceptualization and development phases including strategy formulation, user and technology research, concept development, and product implementation. These activities resulted in delivered projects and products using many methods and technologies including recognition technologies (handwriting, speech, and image), interaction technologies (synthetic speech, multimodal interaction, and context aware systems) and experience design and prototyping (design research, user centered design, usability evaluations, and rapid prototyping).
Research Interests: Persuasive interaction design and adherence, social media/networks and their role in behavior change, business and design strategy development
Stan Ruecker
Stan Ruecker is an associate professor with current research interests in the areas of humanities visualization, the future of reading, and information design. He comes to ID from the University of Alberta’s interdisciplinary humanities computing program where he was also an associate professor, supervising graduate students and leading seminars on experimental interface design, knowledge management and analysis, research methods, interdisciplinary research project management, and critical discourse analysis. His students have gone on to work with major research and development projects in fields ranging from medical imaging to oilfield decision support.
He is a major grant holder, and his research teams have presented their findings at over one hundred international conferences in design, computing science, educational technology, literature, communication technology, library and information studies, and humanities computing. He was the principal investigator of the SSHRC SRG Humanities Visualization team, and he currently leads the interface design unit of the SSHRC MCRI Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) project.
His work to date has focused on developing prototypes to support the hermeneutic or interpretive process, and he has published extensively on interdisciplinary project management, text encoding theory, affective design, interaction histories, electronic books, information design, issue crawling, and experimental interface design. His book Visual Interface Design for Digital Cultural Heritage, co-authored by Milena Radzikowska and Stéfan Sinclair, was released in 2011 by Ashgate Press.
Stan holds an interdisciplinary PhD in humanities computing from University of Alberta, an MDes from the same, an MA in English literature from University of Toronto, and undergraduate degrees in English literature and computer science from the University of Regina.
Research Interests: interactive visualization, digital humanities, information design, rich-prospect browsing, structured surfaces, supporting interpretation, new knowledge environments, interactive visualizations for mediating conversations
Keiichi Sato
Keiichi Sato is a professor with Charles L. Owen Chair and Coordinator of Ph.D. program at the Institute of Design, IlT. His research and teaching focuses on design theories, methodologies and tools that facilitate the development of interactive systems, products and services with convivial qualities as well as effective performance. His current areas of interest are Human-Centered System Integration methodology, context-sensitive system design, product architecture, and design knowledge representation and management. The recent projects include robotics and information technology application to health care and elderly care environments, systems concepts for future automotive systems, Ambient Interactive Systems, context-sensitive service systems, and Design Information Framework (DIF) applications to system design tools. With his long time multi-disciplinary experience in developing new areas and enhancing the quality of design research, he has been interested in developing research initiatives in new interdisciplinary areas as well as enhancing core areas of design research.
He has been on editorial boards for Design Studies and International Journal of Design. He has published over 80 papers, articles and book chapters. He received many awards with his students for academic and professional work including Best Paper Awards at ASME-DTM Conference, IEEE Robotics and Human Interactive Communications Symposium, and ACM-IEEE Design Automation Conference. His professional design work with his colleagues also received Design Innovationen award at Haus Industrieform Essen. He is Fellow of Design Research Society, a member of IEEE, ACM, ASME, Design Society, Japanese Society for Science of Design. He has been Visiting Professor at Darmstadt University of Technology, and Musashino University of Fine Arts. He has taught design and engineering at Kyoto Institute of Technology and Osaka Institute of Technology. He studied systems engineering, human factors and product design and holds BS and MS in Engineering and MS in Product Design.
Research Interests:General Design Theory and Methodology, Human-Centered System Integration methodology, Context-Sensitive Design, Design Information Framework (DIF) and DIF-based methods and tools, Product and Service System Architecture, Ambient Interactive Systems
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Institute of Design, IIT