Thomas Joins Open Innovators

Hi there. My name is Thomas Maiorana and I thought it’d be a good idea to introduce myself since I’ll be posting here regularly. I promise, there won’t be this much of “me” in any of the following posts.

My educational background spans the humanities, creative writing, anthropology and American culture, but professionally I’ve found a way to bring all this together as a visual designer. For the past 10 years, I’ve developed websites, user interfaces, stories and interactive experiences.

Last June I finished up an MFA in Design at Stanford University. The program is technically called the Joint Program in Design. Joint, because the program brings together folks from the Art Department and the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Since I’d always felt comfortable bridging disciplines, this type of setting quickly became a home. And although I’d been creating solutions which addressed user needs for some time, at Stanford I was able to get a deeper understanding of how to connect with users and address their latent needs.

Which is where my interest in crowd sourcing or participatory design comes in. I’m fascinated by the ways in which co-authorship offers us new ways to understand and communicate with users. I’m interested in how large corporations outsource innovation, but also the systems which must be put in place to allow for efficient collaboration across distances and disciplines. I’m interested in the ways that a more collaborative model will challenge designers’ sense of control, the ways corporations define their relationships to consumers and the ways co-creation will offer users a new way to describe their needs. These relationships are shifting, and I’m thrilled to explore the ramifications as they unfold.

A final note: I come to this as a designer. I hope to be able to lend that perspective to these questions and I look forward to learning from the other disciplines as well. I’ll be posting soon. Take care.

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