Name

Jan-Christoph Zoels

Role

Professor

Academic year

2011/2012

Bio

Jan-Christoph Zoels is Experientia’s founding partner in charge of user experience design. Originally from Germany, he lived for many years in the USA, where he taught at RISD, and was director of information architecture at Sapient and a senior designer at Sony. He was a co-founder and senior associate professor at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, where he ran the business innovation workshops called Applied Dreams. In his work Jan-Christoph focuses specifically on people experience of mobile services and applications to support sustainable lifestyles. He advocates a strategic integration of user experience modeling, design, prototyping and iterative testing to improve the desirability of products, environments and services. In his consulting activities he specializes on experience prototyping, foresight scenarios, design and service concepts. Clients include Alcatel Lucent, Condé Nast, CVS Pharmacy, Fidelity International, Intesa SanPaolo, Kodak, Max Mara, Microsoft, Nokia, Research in Motion, Samsung, SITRA, Swisscom, Tre Spade and Vodafone. In 2009 a multi-disciplinary team of engineers (Arup, UK), architects (Sauerbruch-Hutton, Germany) and Experientia won the international Low2No architecture competition for Helsinki former docklands (www.low2no.org). The sustainable building block uses low carbon emission construction techniques, with completion in spring 2013. Experientia focuses on behavioural change initiatives, stakeholder engagement, participatory design processes and sustainable demand management solutions. Previously he was director of information architecture for Sapient (New York), and senior designer at Sony Design Center USA, responsible for strategic product development. He holds four patents.