"You'll always end up going it alone. At some point in the process of design, sone person, one individual, needs to make a thing. And at that point it's an execution problem. It's an operational problem. But leading up to that you'll always need to collaborate and that really plays well with others. Are you charismatic? Are you somebody that other people want to be around? And are you able to get your ideas through the chopper and get your ideas into some representational form without pissing off everyone around you? That's the challenge." -- Jon Kolko
When do you collaborate and when do you go it alone?
Jon Kolko is the Executive Director of Design Strategy at Thinktiv, a venture accelerator in Austin, Texas. Jon is also the Founder and Director of Austin Center for Design, an educational institution teaching interaction design and social entrepreneurship. He has worked extensively in the professional world of interaction design, solving the problems of Fortune 500 clients. His work has extended into the genres of consumer electronics, mobile, web, supply chain management, demand planning, and customer-relationship management, and he has worked with clients such as AT&T, HP, Nielsen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Ford, IBM, Palm and other leaders of the Global 2000.
Prior to joining Thinktiv, Jon has held positions of Principal Designer and Associate Creative Director at frog design, a global innovation firm. He was also a Professor of Interaction and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he was instrumental in shaping 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.
Jon is the author of the book Thoughts on Interaction Design, published by Morgan Kaufmann, and Exposing the Magic of Design: A Practitioner's Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis, published by Oxford University Press.
