DRS2008 » keynotes

Keynote Speakers

We have invited three speakers who represent different facets of the mixture of disciplines and ideas that make up today's design community. We have asked them to talk about their perspectives on disciplinarity and rigour to inform our thinking about the conference theme.

Steve Portigal (USA) is the founder of Portigal Consulting, a San Francisco area company that brings together user research, design and business strategy. Portigal Consulting helps clients to discover and act on new insights about themselves and their customers. His clients include international names such as Belkin, Chevron, France Telecom-Orange, GE, Hewlett-Packard, Nestle, and Sony.
He studied Computer Science at the University of Toronto and Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Guelph. He has taught Design Research methods in the Department of Industrial Design at the California College of Art and is very active in promoting research thinking to professional design audiences.
Steve is an avid photographer who has a Museum of Foreign Grocery Products in his home.

Alan Blackwell (UK) is Reader in Interdisciplinary Design at the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory, with qualifications in professional engineering, computing and experimental psychology.
He had 12 years experience of designing industrial systems, electronic and software products before resuming academic research in 1995. He has taught design courses and supervised postgraduate design research students in Computing, Architecture, Psychology, Languages, Music and Engineering. He is a fellow of Darwin College Cambridge, founding director of the Crucible Network for research in Interdisciplinary Design since 2000, and a director of the public cultural consortium Living East. His research involves the development of technologies for home automation, visual representations and end-user programming, based on empirical and critical research into the human and social contexts of technology.

Christoph Zellweger (Switzerland/UK) is one of the most thought provoking contemporary jewellery designers in Europe. In 2007 he published Foreign Bodies which extends the definition of body adornment today.
Christoph worked for several years in the trade in Switzerland before attending the Royal College of Art in London. Besides running his studio and exhibiting internationally, he lectures in Europe's leading Design and Art Colleges and holds a Professorial research post at Sheffield Hallam University.
He has developed work at the European Ceramic Work Centre in Holland, haute-couture textile at Jakob Schlaepfer in Switzerland and work for the technology-led venture company Scintillate in London. He recently directed the Pro Pueblo Sustainable Design project in Ecuador for the University of the Arts in Zurich. His work features in museums and collections in Europe and in North America. Beside other prizes he has won the Swiss Federal Prize for Design three times.