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Jon Kolko

Vice President of Consumer Design | Blackboard

Jon Kolko is Vice President of Consumer Design at Blackboard; he joined Blackboard with the acquisition of MyEdu, a startup focused on helping students succeed in college and get jobs. Jon is also the Founder and Director of Austin Center for Design. His work focuses on bringing the power of design to social enterprises, with an emphasis on entrepreneurship. He has worked extensively with both startups and Fortune 500 companies, and he’s most interested in humanizing educational technology.

Jon has previously held positions of Executive Director of Design Strategy at Thinktiv, a venture accelerator in Austin, Texas, and both Principal Designer and Associate Creative Director at frog design, a global innovation firm. He has been a Professor of Interaction and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he was instrumental in building both the Interaction and Industrial Design undergraduate and graduate programs. Jon has also held the role of Director for the Interaction Design Association (IxDA), and Editor-in-Chief of interactions magazine, published by the ACM. He is regularly asked to participate in high-profile conferences and judged design events, including the 2013 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards. He has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the Center for Design Studies of Monterrey, in Mexico, and Malmö University, in Sweden.

Jon is the author of three books: Thoughts on Interaction Design, published by Morgan Kaufmann, Exposing the Magic of Design: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis, published by Oxford University Press, and Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving, published by Austin Center for Design. His fourth book, Well Designed: How to use Empathy to Create Products People Love will be published by Harvard Business Review Press in November, 2014.

    In an excerpt from his new book, Well Designed, Jon Kolko outlines a powerful design process.

    Article by Jon Kolko
    Share:From Design Thinking to Design Doing
    7 min read
    design-doing-to-design-thinking-small

    For technology to truly improve education, design needs to be the centerpiece for innovation, making the value proposition a better experience.

    Article by Jon Kolko
    Share:Why Investment in Design is the Only Way to “Win” in Education
    11 min read
    design-will-win-education-small

    Design should be supportive of users, but as design collides with sales and marketing, manipulative techniques are wielded with other goals in mind.

    Article by Jon Kolko
    Share:Manipulation and Design
    9 min read
    manipulation-and-design-small

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