Jan-Christoph Zoels
Jan-Christoph Zoels Senior partner Biography “White spaces are our friends.” Linkedin Biography Jan-Christoph Zoels is a founding partner of Experientia. In his work, Jan-Christoph Zoels focuses on people’s service experiences to support sustainable lifestyles. Originally from Germany, he lived for many years in the USA, where he taught at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and was director of information architecture at Sapient and a senior designer at Sony Electronics. He was a co-founding member and senior associate professor at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII), where he led the ‘Applied Dreams’ initiative — collaborative innovation workshops with industry leaders such as Nokia, Alcatel, Sony, Hitachi, Mattel, Orange, Fiat and Telecom Italia. He currently holds four patents. Jan-Christoph has presented as a keynote speaker at Aedes Berlin, Banff’s New Media Institute, BECC in Washington, Bloomberg Media Futures in London, BMW’s Marketing Innovation Lab Forum in Munich, China Productivity Center in Taipei, DPPI in Milano, IIID in Vienna, Lift in Geneva, MediaLab Prado in Madrid, Mobile Nation in Toronto, UX conference in Lugano and at multiple design colleges. He received his master’s degrees in Industrial Design from RISD, Providence, USA, and Academy for Art and Design in Berlin, Germany. He has taught at RISD, the Jan Van Eyck Academy (Maastricht, Netherlands), at Samsung’s Innovative Design Laboratory (Seoul, Korea), CIID Copenhagen, and Domus Academy, Milan. With Jan-Christoph as design lead, Experientia won the Italian National Award for Innovation in Service Design as well as the Holcim Award for Sustainable Construction for the design of a sustainable building block using low carbon emission construction techniques in Helsinki’s former docklands (www.low2no.org). His leadership has seen Experientia excel on behavioral change initiatives, stakeholder engagement, participatory design processes and sustainable demand management solutions. Additional awards include: 2014 ADI Index award – UniCredit ATM interface design 2013 Nordic Built, Finland – Joint 2nd place 2011 Italian national award for innovation in service design – Low2No2011 Holcim Acknowledgement Awards Europe – design of SITRA Headquarter building for Low2No carbon neutral district in Helsinki 2010 Fredericia C Denmark – finalist: Arup, Effekt and Experientia 2009 Low2No Helsinki -1st place: Arup, Sauerbruch Hutton and Experientia – sustainable development design competition for low2no carbon emissions block in Helsinki Harbor The leadership All Services Behavioral design Research and assessment Strategy Mark Vanderbeeken CEO and senior partner, strategic communications Michele Visciòla Experientia Global CEO, President of Experientia srl Jan-Christoph Zoels Senior partner, user experience design Go back to our about page
Michele Visciòla
Michele Visciòla Experientia Global CEO, President of Experientia srl Biography “Collaboration will always prevail over conflict and prejudice” Linkedin Twitter Biography Michele Visciòla is President and founding partner of Experientia. Michele’s core activities range from leading the growth of the company to pursuing strategic conversations with the market, by helping Experientia clients to integrate UX research insights and design deployment with the business analysis and modeling. Michele is personally involved in projects that deals with the following topics in a variety of industries: digital transformation of services; behavioral modeling and culture evolution implied in service innovation; behavioral economics; user-centered design and policy making. Michele has an international curriculum and extensive experience in strategic user experience analysis and modeling. His career started as research fellow at the Italian National Research Council and focused on the digitalization of services in complex systems, like process control industries and avionics, with a specialization in human error analysis and information design. Thanks to his work, Michele was granted an MIT Sloan School fellowship on “International Management for the Future”, during which he designed the prototype of a Human Factors data-base of aircraft accidents and incidents centred on analysis narratives. Michele served as researcher in Finmeccanica and as manager at Etnoteam, and has consulted for top European industries. As entrepreneur, Michele has founded a pioneering start-up on usability and human-factors consultancy and was part of the team that founded the World Usability Day. Michele has more than 10 years of teaching experience divided between Politecnico di Milano (“Digital culture for designers”) and Bicocca University (“Evolution of User Research Methods”), has written several scientific publications, articles and books; he is a renowned speaker, traveling extensively between Europe and Asia; he is a DeTao Academy’s Master in Behavioral Modeling and Design. 3 Questions Where do you find inspiration? Looking at people collaborating in their typical daily life; individuals, small groups, families, teams working together can express the core of what being human means: collaboration will always prevail over conflict and prejudice. You’ve been invited to the next TED Talk. What’s your talk about? I would talk about the silliness of dividing disciplines into academic silos and then pretending to have the most appealing view of humanity. Specialized investigation techniques and rigourous methodologies are of outmost importance and yet, they are just lenses: I would claim that their abuse can deform reality. Biology, Economics, Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology and Neuro-science all have a role to play in understanding behaviors and cultures. For me being a designer means being able to cultivate a more intimate relationship with the variety of disciplines dealing with humanity.. What’s your favorite foreign dish? I like educated (meaning resulting from good experiments) fusion cuisine: the mix of mediterranean and asian (expecially Japanese and south-east asian) cuisine is my favorite… and of course it has to be well combined with a good selection of wine and olive oil. The leadership All Services Behavioral design Research and assessment Strategy Mark Vanderbeeken CEO and senior partner, strategic communications Michele Visciòla Experientia Global CEO, President of Experientia srl Jan-Christoph Zoels Senior partner, user experience design Go back to our about page
Mark Vanderbeeken
Mark Vanderbeeken CEO and Senior Partner Biography “Experientia worked out beyond what I ever could have imagined. It has become a deeply exciting and profoundly gratifying endeavour.” Linkedin Twitter Biography Mark Vanderbeeken is a founding partner of Experientia and became its CEO in June 2014. As CEO he is in charge of management, administration and business development, in intense collaboration with the other partners. In addition, he also leads individual client projects and project teams, guaranteeing the quality of project delivery and managing strategic client relations, with a particular focus on service design and business strategy design. His remaining time is focused on editorial contributions (particularly on the Experientia blog Putting People First), occasional lecturing, design policy, and communications. Prior to starting Experientia, he was communications manager of Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (Ivrea, Italy), European communications coordinator for the World Wide Fund for Nature (or WWF, Copenhagen, Denmark), marketing director of Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects (New York, USA) and chief press officer of Antwerp 93, Cultural Capital of Europe (Antwerp, Belgium). He studied visual and cognitive psychology at the University of Leuven, Belgium and obtained a master’s degree in cognitive psychology at Columbia University, New York. He speaks English, French, German, Italian and Dutch. 3 Questions What’s the most interesting thing about UX for you? It takes a human and cultural perspective to innovation, and as such provides a valuable addition and even alternative to mere technocratic and business thinking. Where have you lived? In Belgium, USA, Denmark and Italy. In villages and big cities (Copenhagen and New York). And mainly always in old places with lots of character (and work). What’s your dream design challenge? Having a positive social impact in the lives of people who are often outside of our typical professional design lives: the elderly, the disadvantaged, children, the immigrant communities, etc. They open up your mind and are often more innovative than one might imagine. The leadership All Services Behavioral design Research and assessment Strategy Mark Vanderbeeken CEO and senior partner, strategic communications Michele Visciòla Experientia Global CEO, President of Experientia srl Jan-Christoph Zoels Senior partner, user experience design Go back to our about page