Beth Altringer

Beth Ames Altringer is an American designer and academic in user-centered design and design education. She is the director of the Master of Arts in Design Engineering program at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Altringer previously ran the Design Lab at Harvard University and taught design and innovation at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Harvard Business School.

Beth Ames Altringer
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge
University of Cape Town
Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
Barrett, The Honors College
Known forUser-centered design
Design education
SpouseNathan Eagle
Scientific career
FieldsUser-centered design
Institutions
Doctoral advisorMark de Rond

Education

Altringer earned a Master's degree in Architecture from the University of Cape Town and a PhD in the psychology of design from the University of Cambridge at Emmanuel College. During a visiting scholarship at Stanford University's Computer Science Department in human-computer interaction she quantified the benefits of parallel prototyping[1] and taught at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she developed new active learning courses to improve user-centered design and emotional design pedagogy for engineers and product designers.

Design career

Altringer was an early advocate of user-centered design[2][3][4] and emotional design.[5] In 2010, she joined Jochen Zeitz to develop the 2025 strategy for the luxury group, Kering, including a sustainable materials design lab and the first environmental profit and loss account.[6] In 2015, Altringer joined the founding team of Piaggio Fast Forward as Chief Design Research Officer, to develop the Gita (mobile carrier) robot.[7][8][9] Her design studio develops learning products including the Flavor Genome Project[10] and Chef League[11][12][13] that explore how to help users learn their own preferences.[14][15] Her studio is the technical launch partner for Off Their Plate, an initiative providing economic relief to restaurant workers, while providing meals and care packages for frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. In its first six weeks Off Their Plate provided emergency workers with 340,000 meals and $1.7 million in economic relief to restaurant workers.[16]

Academic career

Altringer joined the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 2014. She teaches several Harvard courses, including the Innovators' Practice[17] and Product and Experience Design: Experiential Lessons in Design for Desirability.[18] In 2016, students voted her one of Harvard's top 15 professors.[19] She is a founding faculty member of Harvard's joint Master of Science in Engineering and MBA Program[20] and helped launch the Undergraduate Technology Innovation Fellows Program.[21] She has published on topics including human-centered design,[22] creativity,[23] motivation and social psychology in creative work (with Beth Hennessey and Teresa Amabile),[24][25][26] innovation methods beyond design thinking,[27] and digital nomadic creative work.[28]

In 2021 she joined Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design as professor of practice and director of their joint Master of Arts in Design Engineering program.[29]

Awards and honors
  • 2018: Top 50 Thinkers: Emerging thinkers with the potential to make lasting contributions[30]
  • 2016: Professors of the Year[31]
  • 2005: Holcim Awards for Sustainable Construction[32]
  • 2003: Fulbright Program, Fulbright Scholar[33]

References
  1. Dow, Steven; Fortuna, Julie; Schwartz, Dan; Altringer, Beth; Schwartz, Daniel; Klemmer, Scott (2011). "Prototyping Dynamics". Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '11. p. 2807. doi:10.1145/1978942.1979359. ISBN 9781450302289. S2CID 14028649.
  2. "The intended and actual impacts of mega events". S2CID 158512814. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  3. "Tsoga Project". Yumpu. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  4. Altringer, B. (2010). "Engaging with care: A vision for the health and care workforce of England". Journal of Health Services Research & Policy. 15 (3): 174–7. doi:10.1258/jhsrp.2009.009064. PMID 20203081. S2CID 23501816. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  5. Altringer, B. (2010). "The emotional experience of patient care: A case for innovation in health care design". Journal of Health Services Research & Policy. 15 (3): 174–7. doi:10.1258/jhsrp.2009.009064. PMID 20203081. S2CID 23501816. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  6. "New standard in luxury-sport lifestyle retail sectors". Kering. Retrieved 13 January 2020.
  7. "Piaggio Fast-forwards to a new era". Smart Cities. Retrieved 4 November 2017.
  8. "Startup pioneers human-centric urban travel". Tech Explore. Retrieved 4 November 2017.
  9. "Gita robot". Gita website. Retrieved 4 November 2017.
  10. "Flavor Genome Project". Flavor Genome Project. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  11. "Chef League interactive flavor learning". Chef League. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  12. "Chef League challenges you to improvise recipes like the pros". VentureBeat. 31 May 2019. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  13. "Cooking up an educational competition". Harvard University. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  14. "Tech that helps us understand ourselves". Digital Initiative. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  15. "Smart kitchens need to smarter ideas to solve real problems". Fortune. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  16. "Off Their Plate". Off Their Plate. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  17. Berrett, Dan (11 December 2014). "How Big Money Can Encourage Calculated Risks in the Classroom". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  18. "Harvard Class Teaches the Design of Desirability -The unique course teaches students how to design attractive products and services". Boston Magazine. 12 February 2015. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  19. "15 Professors of the Year". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  20. "Harvard University MSMBA in Engineering Sciences Faculty". Harvard University. Archived from the original on 8 April 2020. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  21. "Undergraduate Technology Innovation Fellows Program". Harvard Business School. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  22. Habbal, Fawwaz (2016). "Embedding Design Thinking in a Multidisciplinary Engineering Curriculum at Harvard University". Creating Innovation Leaders. Understanding Innovation. pp. 149–162. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-20520-5_8. ISBN 978-3-319-20519-9.
  23. "Present at the Creation". Boston Magazine. 26 March 2013. Retrieved 13 April 2020.
  24. Hennessey, Beth; Moran, Seana; Altringer, Beth; Amabile, Teresa M. (2015). "Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation". Wiley Encyclopedia of Management. pp. 1–4. doi:10.1002/9781118785317.weom110098. ISBN 9781118785317.
  25. Hennessey, Beth A.; Altringer, Beth; Moran, Seana (2017). "Social Psychology of Creativity". Encyclopedia of Creativity, Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. pp. 1–7. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-6616-1_390-2. ISBN 978-1-4614-6616-1.
  26. Creativity across cultures. Retrieved 13 April 2020. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  27. Altringer, Beth (19 November 2013). "A new model for innovation in big companies". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 13 April 2020.
  28. "Are digital nomads the future of work or too good to be true?". Forbes. Retrieved 13 April 2020.
  29. "Beth Altringer, Ph.D." scholar.harvard.edu. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
  30. "Top 50 Thinkers: Emerging thinkers with the potential to make lasting contributions". Thinkers 50. 6 February 2018. Archived from the original on 2 February 2020. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  31. "Professors of the Year". Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  32. "Tsoga Project". Yumpu. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  33. "Award Recipients 2002-2003". The Lorraine W. Frank Office of National Scholarship Advisement. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
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