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Mike Kuniavsky

Mike watched his father's life change almost overnight when some of the assembly work at Ford was automated. As he continued to explore his interest in the way that people interact with (and have to adapt to) computers and technology, Mike stayed strongly enmeshed in the worlds of art and personal expression. This magical mixture of interests stayed with him as he helped to launch one of the very first ecommerce sites, build giant robot puppets, and co-found Adaptive Path. He's practical - he wrote Observing the User Experience, after all - but that doesn't hinder his creativity in the slightest. Today, Mike is thinking about how technology is showing up (and carefully hidden) everywhere in our lives.

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Excerpts From the Interview

The thing that most influenced me was essentially art. The use of technology in art, and all the different projects that were coming out of art; out of Ars Electronica, out of Burning Man , out of ISEA, out of ITP at NYU. All of those things that use technology as an expressive medium - or as part of a personal expression - as opposed to just productivity or information. Objective support of productivity is kind of a fiction in a lot of desktop computer design. Technology art was much more about embedding technology into everyday things as a form of expression.

Emotional design is good design. That's what I learned at the Milan Furniture Fair. It had plenty of bad design, but there are some beautiful, beautiful things there. The reason they are well designed is not because there's a lot of splash. It's because they've been thought through and they connect with us on an emotional level in addition to a functional level.

More About Mike Kuniavsky

Mike Kuniavsky researches, designs and writes about people's experiences at the intersection of technology and everyday life. Companies and universities around the world use his 2003 book, Observing the User Experience, to understand and teach techniques that bring the design of products closer to the people who use them. His next book, Smart Things, expected in 2007 from Elsevier, will discuss user experience design for mobile devices and ubiquitous computing. He has also contributed to a number of other books, including the encyclopedic HCI Handbook (also to appear in 2007) and his articles regularly appear in MAKE magazine. He is a regular presenter at academic conferences focusing on user experience design and ubiquitous computing. In 2001 he cofounded Adaptive Path, a leading San Francisco internet consultancy. Previously, he founded the Wired Digital User Experience Lab for Wired Magazine's online division, where he served as the interaction designer of the award-winning search engine, HotBot.

photo of Mike by Cassidy Curtis