Tom MacTavish is a visiting Associate Professor at the Institute of Design and teaches courses related to Interaction Design history, theory, and practice. He holds Master’s Degrees from the University of Michigan (Library and Information Science) and University of Iowa (English) with a Bachelor’s Degree (English) from Central Michigan University. For the past nine years, he directed Motorola Labs’ Center for Human Interaction Research with research laboratories in Phoenix (AZ), Schaumburg (IL), and Shanghai (China). In prior years, he led the Human Interface Technology Center based in Atlanta (GA) for NCR Corporation and served as Director of Engineering for NCR’s Wireless Communications and Networking engineering group in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

As a member of the Human/Computer Interaction research community, Tom has participated in the full range of product conceptualization and development phases including strategy formulation, user and technology research, concept development, and product implementation. These activities resulted in delivered projects and products using many methods and technologies including recognition technologies (handwriting, speech, and image), interaction technologies (synthetic speech, multimodal interaction, and context aware systems) and experience design and prototyping (design research, user centered design, usability evaluations, and rapid prototyping).

Tom has maintained strong ties to university research throughout his career and has served as corporate liaison and advisor to the IIT Institute of Design, Georgia Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the Korean Advanced Institute for Science and Technology.