December 2008
School of Visual Arts (SVA) announced the hiring of eight faculty members in the MFA Interaction Design Department, which will begin enrolling students in the fall of 2009.
The new hires are: Steve Duenes, graphics director for The New York Times; frog design’s Robert Fabricant, Josh Musick, and Clay Wiedemann; researcher Rob Faludi; OZOlab’s Managing Director Tamara Giltsoff; interaction designer Phi-Hong D. Ha; and Rebekah Hodgson, designer at Etsy.
“Interaction designers must be fluent in diverse skills--from user research to lightweight prototyping to designing interfaces to building a business strategy,” says Liz Danzico, chair of the MFA Interaction Design Department at SVA.
“What is common to all interaction designers, however, is an understanding of human behavior, and these new faculty members bring an awareness of the human-centered design process to the classroom.”
As graphics director for The New York Times, Steve Duenes manages a group of 30 journalists who research and create the diagrams, maps and charts for both the newspaper and the website.
Building on his work at the Times, Duenes will teach a course in information visualization for the program.
As designers at frog design, Executive Creative Director Robert Fabricant, Principal Designer Josh Musick, and Associate Creative Director Clay Wiedemann work with leading companies to help them create meaningful products, services and experiences that improve people’s lives.
Frog design is a global innovation design firm with a multi-disciplinary team creating experiences that span multiple technologies, platforms and media whose clients include Disney, GE and MTV, among others.
Rob Faludi is a researcher whose area of focus in the MFA program will be physical computing. At NYU’s Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, he investigated the connections between visual perception, motor action and the mathematical properties of environmental affordances.
At NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program Faludi specialized in physical computing, dense social networks and networked objects.
His projects include Social Genius, a multimedia name-learning game; BlueWay, a networked location and wayfinding system; and Botanicalls, a system that allows thirsty plants to place phone calls for human help.
OZOlab’s Managing Director Tamara Giltsoff has led strategy and sustainable innovation for the company since its inception.
OZOlab is a leading innovation lab and business incubator that exists to identify, create and market a new breed of sustainable businesses with mass consumer appeal.
She has worked for clients such as L’Oreal Paris USA, Pepsi Co, Kraft, Unilever, Virgin Mobile USA, the UK Public Sector and the Swedish Energy Council.
Phi-Hong D. Ha is an interaction design and strategy consultant for products, services and digital interfaces.
Her clients include Clinique, CNN, Comcast, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, FrankFirst, The New York Times, GOOD magazine, and TED.
Rebekah Hodgson is a senior user interface designer at Etsy, leading UX and visual design for the online global marketplace for handmade goods.
She has led teams for a wide range of companies in the development of visual and interactive systems that inspire.
Most notably, Hodgson led UX and visual design at Blurb, a self-publishing company based in San Francisco, where she designed the award winning e-commerce site, Blurb.com.
............................................................................
Read SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS ARTICLES on TAXI Design Network
............................................................................
Want to see what 24 hours of creative awesomeness look like? Click here.
This news message is supported by The Creative Finder, an online platform for photographers, illustrators, designers, and art directors to promote their portfolios towards new clients and collaborators. Creatives who wish to sign up for an account can save 10% off annual fees with promo code 'designtaxi'.
