Qualifications
Certified Scrum Master
Masters of Design by research project. Spatial Information Architecture Lab
RMIT University School of Architecture & Design, Australia.
Collaboration in Sonic Design: frameworks for the design of interactive sound environments
Bachelor of Design Studies. University of Queensland, Australia.
Key Roles
Director, Interaction Design Association
http://ixda.org
2008 – 2010
The IxDA is a member-supported organization committed to serving the needs of the international interaction design community. With the help of more than 15,000 members worldwide, they provide a forum for the discussion of interaction design issues.
In addition to secretary, my strategic roles within IxDA are to grow the association in the Educational sector and Asia Pacific region.
Program Manager, Multi-user Environments.
Australasian CRC for Interaction Design
2005 – 2010
ACID is established and supported under the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme, teaming an Industry consortia with researchers from universities across Australasia.
The Multi-user Environments program of ACID researches opportunities for integrating expertise in the areas of online social networking, interaction design, social science, and rapid prototyping into our partner industry sectors, resulting in richer interaction paradigms for workplace collaboration and community-capacity building.
Working on a quarterly review cycle, I have represented the program of research projects at conferences, internal presentations and international review by the centre’s Scientific Advisory Board. I have mentored project members, developed prototypes for deployment and evaluation, strategically focused the research direction of the program and, in turn, ACID. I’ve done all this with distributed multidisciplinary teams – by actively working with current project members, encouraging and supporting collaborative research, and seeking to define and fill gaps wherever possible.
Senior Lecturer, Communication Design.
RMIT University
2000 – present
In 2000 I began coordinating a stream of undergraduate major subjects in Digital Media. At the time, these subjects were seen as instrumental skills and training parts of the Graphic Design program. I strategically positioned the stream as a research-led series of linked Interaction Design studios that concentrate on teaching students how to manage their own learning, engage in critical practice, and make the transition from static to dynamic environments for design.
This shift was effected through a combination of finding people who could balance cutting edge practices with the sensitivities of education & research, setting a high level agenda for the stream that we could all flexibly work toward, and encouraging all the new staff to incorporate their practice-led research into their teaching. As a result, we introduced Interaction Design, including user-led methodologies like scenarios, personas and basic forms of ethnographic enquiry, into undergraduate studios and postgraduate project work.
Interaction Designer
Since the late 90’s I have undertaken diverse work spanning commercial, government and artistic projects, where my role varied from high level strategic advice on technology, artistic direction, research, design and presentation to prototyping and programming with new technologies.
A common thread of collaboration runs throughout these projects; I’ve worked with a range of different people, from Creative Directors of the Museum of Victoria, to international artists, to marketing and communications giants, to multidisciplinary teams at the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) and engineers and sociologists from Nokia Research Labs. In these projects I invariably find myself taking on the role of translator, or interdisciplinary sense maker for many different stakeholders.