Can you tell us a bit about your childhood and whether you draw connections between your early years and what you ultimately chose to do for a living?

I was just a very arty kid; I was interested in every single kind of arts and crafts, from drawing to sewing to ceramics to origami to macrame to woodworking.  I just really liked making things with my hands, and I see my practice as a designer as having really grown out of that interest in making three-dimensional things. 

After starting your career in industrial design, what first inspired you to explore movement as a design element? 

Before studying industrial design, I studied sculpture, and most of the things I made moved in some way and would have been classified as Kinetic Sculptures.  In addition to my studio practice, I worked for the production designer, Michael Curry, who makes extraordinarily sophisticated puppets, most famously for the Lion King stage productions.  I was very passionate about objects and experiences that not only looked cool, but transformed or interacted with a user/viewer in some way.

When I began studying Industrial Design at Pratt Institute, I carried this interest in physical movement into my design work.  When it came time to write my graduate thesis, I chose to explore how physical movement in three-dimensional products could be approached aesthetically rather than technically.  I believed that if we could draw a distinction between Sculpture and Kinetic Sculpture, why shouldn’t we consider a similar distinction between Design and Kinetic Design? 

This question really birthed the idea of Kinetic Design, and my thesis gave me a precious window of time in which to explore this space; it was here that I was able to develop some of the tools and ideas that make up this approach to design.  After graduating, I just continued to develop the idea; I wrote and spoke about it at conferences, I invented and put out kinetic products of my own, and I consulted with companies to develop kinetic products.  

I also started teaching Kinetic Design at Pratt, which was really exciting. This not only allowed me to share this idea with other designers, but to really explore it in new ways and across many different projects with students.  After six years teaching at Pratt and six years teaching at the Savannah College of Art and Design, I established the first degree program in the world in Kinetic Design at SCAD in 2020.