A Conference on ‘Consumer-Oriented’ Product Design

Speakers

Steven Bishop focuses on applying design thinking to the issues of sustainability for IDEO clients as well as IDEO itself. As a lead in both product and interaction design, Steve's experience ranges across several industries including automotive, consumer products, and medical devices. He's helped design high end office furniture, packaging, instrument panels for hybrid electric vehicles, and medical injection devices, for which he holds patents. Steve currently leads sustainability efforts at IDEO's headquarters in Palo Alto. Since earning a Masters in Product Design from Stanford University, Steve has returned to teach design engineering. In 2007, he launched a new course at Stanford on sustainable design in and is developing a sustainable design program for the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (the "d.school"). He regularly speaks on sustainability at other universities and conferences. Steve holds a BA in Film and Media from the Univeristy of Texas, Austin and a Master's Degree in Product Design from Stanford.

Frédéric F. Brunel, Associate Professor of Marketing & Dean’s Research Fellow, earned a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, a M.B.A. from Illinois State University, and a B.S. degree from Ecole Supérieure des Sciences Commerciales d'Angers (ESSCA) Angers, France. He is an applied consumer researcher dedicated to informing two main domains of marketing practice: consumer relationships and product design. His research strives for theoretical and substantive contributions and focuses on concepts of direct relevance to marketers. These include, for example, consumption communities on and off-line, word-of-mouth dynamics, customer relationship management (CRM) and aesthetic response styles and skill sets. In order to inform these domains, Frédéric Brunel is committed to developing a deep and contextualized understanding of the various social-psychological and cultural factors that can guide and moderate consumers’ responses in these marketing applications. Thus, his scholarly work resides at the intersection of social-psychology and cultural anthropology and focuses comprehensively on culture, group/community and personality/gender levels of analyses. He has published extensively in journals such as Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, and Psychology and Marketing. He has presented his work in numerous forums including conferences. His research has also appeared in book chapters, managerial articles and in a series of articles in conference proceedings. He has been a reviewer for all of the major journals and conferences in his field of specialization, a track chair and a member of the program committees for several conferences. His work is used by some of the largest corporations and he is regularly quoted and interviewed in a wide array of print, radio, TV and electronic media outlets. At Boston University, Professor Brunel teaches in the undergraduate, MBA, doctoral and executive programs. His teaching emphasizes the interdependences and connections between marketing and other business functions. He has been a leader in the design and implementation of the integrated cross functional undergraduate core curriculum (SM323) at Boston University School of Management. Professor Brunel has extensive international teaching experience, including Europe, Latin America and Asia. Over the years, his commitment to higher education has been recognized through several teaching and service awards.

Darren Dahl is the Fred H. Siller Professor in Applied Marketing Research at the University of British Columbia. His research interests are in the areas of new product design and development, creativity, consumer product adoption, the role of social influence in consumer behaviour, and understanding the role of self-conscious emotions in consumption. His research has been presented at numerous national and international conferences, and published in various texts and such journals as the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Management Science, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Marketing Letters, Journal of Business Research, and the Journal of Advertising Research. He currently is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Consumer Research. Professor Dahl teaches courses in Consumer Behaviour, Marketing Research, and Strategic Marketing Analysis at the undergraduate, MBA, and executive education levels. He has won awards for both his research (e.g., Marketing Science Institute Young Scholar) and his teaching (e.g., CGA Graduate Teaching Award) efforts.

Before coming to UBC he held a faculty appointment at the University of Manitoba for four years. He also has been a visiting professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (in 1997 and in 2001) and the Thammasat University in Thailand (2005, 2006). He has been an invited speaker at Harvard, Chicago Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, University of Southern California, the London Business School, National University of Singapore, and at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. Before entering academia Dr. Dahl worked with Coopers & Lybrand chartered accountants in the areas of audit and insolvency. He has consulted and organized education programs for a number of non-profit and for-profit organizations such as Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Xerox, General Electric, Vancouver Public Health, NRC Institute for Biodiagnostics, Manitoba Public Insurance, Teekay Shipping, Hagensborg Foods, Lulu Lemon Athletica, Agent Provocateur, Terra Housing, Daehong Advertising – Korea, LIC India, and the Government of Kuwait. Professor Dahl received his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia.

Xiaoyan Deng is a Doctoral Student of Marketing at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. She is expected to graduate in 2009. Prior to joining the Wharton doctoral program, she received a M.S. in Advertising from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also received a M.A. in Environmental Design and a B.E. in Industrial Design from Hunan University in China. Her research interests focus on design issues in marketing and consumer self-design behavior. Current research projects include investigating how consumers respond to the visual aspects of marketing stimuli such as product design, packaging design, and their self-designed product.

Steve Diller, who leads Cheskin’s Experience Design Studio, has more than 20 years of innovation and marketing consulting experience and drives the firm’s innovation practice. Steve is an “experience strategist,” believing that the most effective way for companies to deepen relationships with their customers involves the development of meaningful experiences, be it through branding or product usage. Such experiences constitute the cornerstone of effective brand and product innovation in an era of rapid technological change.

Steve is the co-writer, with experience designer Nathan Shedroff and Cheskin CEO Darrel Rhea, of the book “Making Meaning.” Recent clients include: The Washington Post, Gannett, Mastercard, Microsoft, Del Monte, Humana, and Procter & Gamble.

Prior to joining Cheskin, Steve was responsible for media research at Continental Bank. He has also been a professor at Columbia College, Chicago teaching courses on advertising and marketing psychology, social marketing, market research, media, and political propaganda. Steve also has owned a film production company and has produced and directed several feature films.

Steve received a Bachelor’s Degree in History from Carleton College in 1980, a Master’s Degree in Public Policy Studies from the University of Chicago in 1984, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Film from Columbia College in 1990.

Peter Hall is a design critic and educator who focuses on cross-disciplinary projects and strategies. He recently joined the design faculty at the Unversity of Texas at Austin, where he teaches undergraduate studio and seminar courses in UT’s trans-disciplinary program. Prior to moving to Texas, he wrote and taught in the vicinity of New York City. He has been a contributing writer for Metropolis magazine since 2000 and has written widely about design in its various forms, including gaming, elevators, building graphics, bridges, neon lights and office chairs, for publications including I.D. Magazine, Popular Science, The New York Times, and The Guardian. Between 2001 and 2007 Peter was Senior Editor and Fellow at the University of Minnesota Design Institute, where he co-edited the book, Else/Where: Mapping - New Cartographies of Networks and Territories and organized several symposia and workshops on mapping. He taught a seminar class on design theory and writing at Yale School of Art between 2000 and 2007. He was an editor at I.D. Magazine from 1993-2000, when the magazine garnered multiple awards for editorial and design excellence. He has published essays in several anthologies on product designers, including Boym Studio and Emilio Ambasz, and wrote and co-edited the books Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist (1998) Sagmeister: Made You Look (2001)and Pause: 59 Minutes of Motion Graphics (2000).

Wes Hutchinson is Stephen J. Heyman Professor and Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, he taught at the University of Florida. He received a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Stanford University in 1981 and a B.S. in Psychology from Duke University in 1975. His research interests focus on consumer and managerial decision making, particularly the interrelationships among attention, learning, confidence, decision making, and expertise in repeated choice environments. Current research projects include aesthetic reactions to new products, consumer self-design of products, models of visual attention in point-of-purchase marketing activities, intuitive statistical reasoning as part of decision making, assessing advertising effectiveness using statistical models of jointly observed choice, latency and confidence, and heterogeneity in human decision processes. He has published articles in a wide variety of journals in business and psychology, including Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Marketing Letters, Harvard Business Review, Psychological Review, Psychometrika, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, and Memory & Cognition. He is a two-time winner of the JCR Outstanding Article Award (1985 - 1987; 2000) and was a finalist for the JMR O’Dell Award (1992 - 1994). He is on the editorial review boards of the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing Research, and Marketing Science (Associate Editor 1994 - 1999). He was President of the Association for Consumer Research (2003). His current teaching interests include new product development, marketing management, and behavioral research methods. Industry involvement includes positions as a Visiting Scholar at SAMI/Burke Marketing Research Inc. and as the Research Director of the Center for Retailing Education and Research at the University of Florida (in addition to a variety of consulting and applied research activities with companies such as 3M, Comcast Cable Communications, Datatel, Finish Line, Hewlett-Packard, Intel Corporation, Mary Kay Cosmetics, U-Haul, and Verizon, among others.). His free time is spent with his family and in the water surfing and fishing. Significant personal failures include never really learning to speak Spanish or play the guitar, among others too numerous to list.

EunSook KWON is associate professor and the director of the industrial design program at the University of Houston’s Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture. She has developed the curriculum of the new program and built the program as a hub for the design community in the southern United States. Kwon has published and lectured throughout the world about creative design thinking and design strategy development. She has consulted to numerous corporations, including Amore Pacific Co., and Samsung, and has conducted private educational programs for government agencies and corporations. Kwon holds a BFA in industrial design from Seoul National University, two master’s degrees in industrial design from Seoul National University (MFA) and the Ohio State University (MA), and a PhD in arts education from the Ohio State University.

Michael Luchs is a Phd candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include product design strategy, ethics related decision making and creativity. In addition to receiving a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a B.A. in Psychology from Tufts University, Michael also received an MBA from the University of Virginia. He has over a decade of work experience including 6 years in various product management and marketing roles as well as 6 years of consulting experience across a wide range of consumer and B-to-B oriented companies.

Art Markman received his PhD from the University of Illinois in Psychology in 1992. Since that time, he has served on the faculty at Northwestern University and Columbia University and is now Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a fellow at the IC2 institute at the University of Texas. Art's research explores cognitive and motivational processes including analogical reasoning, categorization, decision making, and the influence of incentives on cognition. He has published over 100 scholarly works including 7 books. He has received research grants from NSF, NIH, and AFOSR. Art is a past Executive Officer of the Cognitive Science Society. He is currently executive editor of the journal Cognitive Science.

Page Moreau is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado. She received a PhD in Marketing from Columbia University, an MBA from Tulane University, and a BA in economics from Davidson College. She conducts research in the area of new product development, creativity, and consumer learning to better understand how manufacturers can improve the design and positioning of new products to meet changing consumer demands. She has published in the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing, and the Journal of Consumer Psychology. She is (or has been) on the editorial review boards of the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Product Innovation Management, and the International Journal of Research in Marketing. Page was recognized as a Marketing Science Young Scholar in 2003 for her contributions to the field of Marketing, and was recently awarded the Provost’s Achievement Award for Research at the University of Colorado.

Raj Raghunathan earned his PhD from the Stern School of Business at New York University and is currently employed as assistant professor of marketing at the McCombs School of Business, the University of Texas at Austin. Raj’s work juxtaposes theories from psychology, behavioral sciences, decision theory and marketing to document and explain interrelationships between affect and consumption behavior. Raj’s work has been published in top marketing and psychology journals such as, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Marketing, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Motivation and Emotion, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. His work has also been cited in the popular press, such as The New York Times, the Austin American Statesman, and Self magazine. Raj was recognized as a Marketing Science Young Scholar in 2005 for his contributions to the field of Marketing, and was recently awarded the prestigious NSF Career Award (for $440,000).

Rolf Reber earned his PhD at the University of Bern, Switzerland, was postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan and in France, and is currently employed as professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Bergen, Norway. His research at the crossroads of cognitive and social psychology explores the role of feelings – especially processing fluency – for different kinds of judgment. Rolf’s work has been published in top psychology journals such as, Psychological Science, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Perception & Psychophysics, Learning and Instruction, and Music Perception. He is further interested in science teaching, which resulted in POSbase, a database of Powerpoint presentations of scientific studies, which was featured in Science. Recently, he published a popular science book in German about psychology in everyday life.

Violina Rindova is an associate professor in strategy at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas-Austin and the Dennis Clark Ambasador Fellow. She holds a JD from University of Sofia, Bulgaria, MBA from Madrid Business School-University of Houston, and a Ph.D. from the Stern School of Business, New York University. Her research focusing on how firms develop intangible assets and manage perceptions of value has been published in the top journals in management and strategy and has been covered by various business media including Business Week, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and the Economist. She is currently working on the role of design in influencing the meaning of products and the emergence of “celebrity firms” and the sources of market popularity. She has taught courses in entrepreneurship and strategic management at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive levels while on the faculty of University of Washington, University of Maryland, and University of Texas-Austin. She also teaches executive educaiton for arts leaders through National Arts Strategies.

Bernd Schmitt, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership and Professor of Business at Columbia Business School in New York.

He is widely recognized for his major contribution to branding, marketing, and management through his unique focus on the customer experience. His frameworks and tools are used worldwide by companies committed to delivering value and a great experience to their customers.

Schmitt has authored or co-authored more than 50 articles in marketing and psychology journals and six books which have been translated into 16 languages. In his acclaimed “Experiential Marketing” he provided a framework for an integrated marketing approach that moves beyond the functional features and benefits of a brand. His book “Customer Experience Management” provides a five-step process for connecting with the customer at every touchpoint. His new book “Big Think Strategy: How to Leverage Bold Ideas and Leave Small Thinking Behind” will be published in December 2007 by Harvard Business School Press.

Schmitt has consulted and developed brand and experience strategies for clients in consumer package goods, automobile, electronics, software, financial services, pharmaceuticals, beauty and cosmetics, hospitality, and media industries. His consulting and seminar clients have included more than 50 companies in both consumer and B2B markets including Dupont, Ericsson, Estee Lauder, Henkel, Hilton Hotels, Intel, LVMH, McKinsey & Co., Microsoft, Motorola, Philip Morris, Pfizer, Procter and Gamble, SAP, Siemens, Sony, Telefonica, Unilever, Vodafone and Volkswagen.

He is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences worldwide. He has been profiled on CNNfn’s “Business Unusual” show and in several articles in business journals around the world. He appeared on BBC, CNBC, CNBC-Asia, CNN, NHK and on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He has contributed articles on business issues to the New York Times, the Asian Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times.

For more information, please visit www.MeetSchmitt.com

Carolyn Conner Seepersad is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She received a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2004, an MA/BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University in 1998, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from West Virginia University in 1996. She is a former Rhodes Scholar, Hertz Fellow, and NSF Graduate Fellow. Her research interests include multiscale and multidisciplinary design of complex systems and materials, product evolution and customization, robust design, topology design, and design for solid freeform fabrication. Her current research sponsors include the National Science Foundation, Schlumberger Corporation, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Seepersad teaches courses in the areas of engineering design methodology and simulation-based design of complex engineered systems. She is the author of over 50 technical publications, including more than 30 peer-reviewed publications.

Raji Srinivasan is an Associate Professor of Marketing and Spurgeon Bell Centennial Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business. She received her MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in 1983 and she has been with UT since receiving her PHD from Pennsylvania State University in 2000. Raj has extensive industry experience in senior management positions including in management and advertising. She also founded and successfully managed an advertising agency. Her research focuses on the areas of marketing strategy, organizational innovation and marketing metrics. Raji has published several research publications in leading marketing journals including the Journal of Marketing, Management Science, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and International Journal for Research in Marketing. Raji received the CBA Foundation Research Excellence Award for Assistant Professors and the Trammell/CBA Foundation Teaching Award for Assistant Professors by the Red McCombs School of Business in Spring 2006

Ask Rob Wallace what he does for a living and he’ll tell you that he has the world’s most engaging job. As Managing Partner of Wallace Church Inc., a Manhattan-based brand identity strategy and package design consultancy, Rob works with some of the world’s smartest and most successful consumer brand marketers.

Current Wallace Church clients include P&G, Gillette, Unilever, Nestlé, Kraft, Heinz, Colgate, Miller Brewing, Samsung, The Home Depot, Brown-Foreman/Jack Daniels, and more than a three dozen other fast moving global consumer brand corporations of equal caliber.

Rob began his career at Grey Advertising, then the world’s ninth largest advertising agency. He quickly rose through the creative staff and became a brand strategist. He then worked for three marketing consultancies before joining Stan Church in 1985, bringing his strategic insights to the firm’s award-winning creative process.

Rob is among the Board of Advisors of the Design Management Institute, the leading global design strategy consortium. He is among ten members of the Distinguished Faculty of the In-Store Marketing Institute and a speaker at more than two dozen Institute of International Research events. He lectures annually at Columbia Business School and Georgetown University.

Brand identity is not just Rob’s job; it’s his passion. Often referred to as “the thought-leader on design’s return on investment”, Rob sees his primary goal as proving that brand identity/package design is a marketer’s single most effective tool, the one that generates the highest ROI.

When he’s not traveling or entertaining with his wife and three daughters, Rob plays a wicked blues harmonica and a truly terrible game of golf. Rob can be reached at 212-755-2903 or Rob@wallacechurch.com.