Professional Practice
The Business of Creativity
Creativity is the foundation of my life. I am a divergent thinker and creative connector. I possess the skills to research and frame activities for consensual and strategic innovation. My interpersonal skills inspire others to access their passion, discover connections, recognize gaps, and identify resistance that holds outdated modalities in place.
I have 15 years experience in product development for Gingko Design, Inc., an industrial design consultancy I co-founded in 1991. We translated user needs into branded visual signatures that we coined Iconic DNA. My responsibilities included strategic initiatives for client deliverables along with fiscal growth. I lead our team in brainstorms, user-centered research, rapid prototyping and product differentiation. Our clients ranged from small start-ups, large corporations and international OEM manufactures. A few project achievements follow:
• Jet Cell, who came with a napkin sketch of an VOiP antenna. Gingko's initial prototype featured cast metal heat fins to isolate and cool the radio chip. Based on the product differentiation, Jet Cell was purchased by Cisco within two years.
• Sony Corporation hired us to design an electronic wallet. Our deliverable included a financial framework, definition of internal components, user-interface scenario's and physical prototypes.
• A half dozen teams within BART could not resolve contradictory requirements when asked to draft a procurement specification for the Warm Springs San Jose extension in late 1999. After interviews with riders, operations, maintenance, and marketing, Gingko complied Future Vision for board approval. In 2000, we were awarded a contract to design the new trains.
• HP AiO (All in One) division hired Gingko Design in 2001 to redesign it's single SKU. We were the dark horse in a bake off between Frog, IDEO and Lunar Design. By 2006, Gingko had designed HP's family of professional and personal AiO Printer, Scanner, Copier. As a participant in a strategic branding initiative called Attitude, a conceptual design was patented.
I was the primary rainmaker who built the company from a sole propitiator to a corporation. In 1997, as testimony to these successes and others, UMAX Technology took an ownership stake in Gingko Design. This achievement opened the door for me to begin a new career as a design educator and to pursue an MFA.
I taught undergraduate senior Product Design IV at the Academy of Art. Within six months, I became the first Director for the Masters of Industrial Design and taught masters courses in design research, industrial design process and thesis. As director, I was responsible for pedagogy, course syllabi, performance rubrics, matriculation and graduation requirements and preparations for WASC accreditation. I expanded ESL instructors in the classroom, stressed experiential learning, visual mapping and structured exercises in creativity to meet the diverse student population learning goals. The pedagogy communicated design as a language that transposes culture, economic and aesthetic differences into systems for living. In May I graduated with an MFA from California College of Art. My educational experience has expanded my capacity to interpret cultural paradigms and research organizational structures as a visual thinker.
Creativity is the foundation of my life. I am a divergent thinker and creative connector. I possess the skills to research and frame activities for consensual and strategic innovation. My interpersonal skills inspire others to access their passion, discover connections, recognize gaps, and identify resistance that holds outdated modalities in place.
I have 15 years experience in product development for Gingko Design, Inc., an industrial design consultancy I co-founded in 1991. We translated user needs into branded visual signatures that we coined Iconic DNA. My responsibilities included strategic initiatives for client deliverables along with fiscal growth. I lead our team in brainstorms, user-centered research, rapid prototyping and product differentiation. Our clients ranged from small start-ups, large corporations and international OEM manufactures. A few project achievements follow:
• Jet Cell, who came with a napkin sketch of an VOiP antenna. Gingko's initial prototype featured cast metal heat fins to isolate and cool the radio chip. Based on the product differentiation, Jet Cell was purchased by Cisco within two years.
• Sony Corporation hired us to design an electronic wallet. Our deliverable included a financial framework, definition of internal components, user-interface scenario's and physical prototypes.
• A half dozen teams within BART could not resolve contradictory requirements when asked to draft a procurement specification for the Warm Springs San Jose extension in late 1999. After interviews with riders, operations, maintenance, and marketing, Gingko complied Future Vision for board approval. In 2000, we were awarded a contract to design the new trains.
• HP AiO (All in One) division hired Gingko Design in 2001 to redesign it's single SKU. We were the dark horse in a bake off between Frog, IDEO and Lunar Design. By 2006, Gingko had designed HP's family of professional and personal AiO Printer, Scanner, Copier. As a participant in a strategic branding initiative called Attitude, a conceptual design was patented.
I was the primary rainmaker who built the company from a sole propitiator to a corporation. In 1997, as testimony to these successes and others, UMAX Technology took an ownership stake in Gingko Design. This achievement opened the door for me to begin a new career as a design educator and to pursue an MFA.
I taught undergraduate senior Product Design IV at the Academy of Art. Within six months, I became the first Director for the Masters of Industrial Design and taught masters courses in design research, industrial design process and thesis. As director, I was responsible for pedagogy, course syllabi, performance rubrics, matriculation and graduation requirements and preparations for WASC accreditation. I expanded ESL instructors in the classroom, stressed experiential learning, visual mapping and structured exercises in creativity to meet the diverse student population learning goals. The pedagogy communicated design as a language that transposes culture, economic and aesthetic differences into systems for living. In May I graduated with an MFA from California College of Art. My educational experience has expanded my capacity to interpret cultural paradigms and research organizational structures as a visual thinker.
