Jon Kolko

Medea is a collaborative media initiative where most of our interaction design teachers are involved. The have a huge, bright studio (much better than our basement-like studio -i’m jealous, yes) and seem to have a lot of money to do things. This month they brought Jon Kolko as an “entrepreneur in residence”. He works for Frog design as associate creative director. He also founded the Austin Center for Design, where he wants to use design to solve big social problems.

He gave a general talk one of the first days he was here. Not so much new but it is nice to listen again the same thoughts about design that are quite related with the stuff we’ve been learning. It means that this is the right direction. On his talk, he argued that design used to be about square things or rounded things, about aesthetics and doing cool shapes. 15 years ago companies like HP or Honda would have go to a design company to ask things like: Transform my ugly computer box into a nice one or make the car more rounded and sexy. Now they go and ask for “magic feelings” in the use of the products or ways to improve the information about the oil consuming.
Here it is the whole talk:

So the world is full of opportunities for good designers.

Furthermore he is acting as a teacher/consultant, so we can talk with him about our individual projects. I quite often found that the “swedish feedback” is too soft. They don’t want to say that something is wrong, and always see the good side, so sometimes it becomes useless. Jon gives his opinion directly and it is something that I really appreciate now.
He also coordinates a “Synthesize discussion Series” where we talked about different design related topics. Is quite nice to have him here, sad it is only for a month.