News Release

Ford Innovation Symposium Features Iain Roberts

University of Detroit Mercy in conjunction with Ford Motor Company are sponsoring the 2009 Ford Innovation Symposium on will take place on Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 6 p.m. in the Ford Life Sciences Building, Room 113 of the McNichols Campus.

This years’s symposium is entitled “The Design of Experiences and the Use of Design Thinking as Tools to Develop and Deliver against Strategic Business Goals” The keynote speaker for the event is Iain Roberts, associate partner of IDEO, a design and innovation firm in the firm’s Chicago office.

Based in Palo Alto, California, IDEO helps design products, services, environments, and digital experiences for businesses. Additionally, the company has become increasingly involved in management consulting.

Roberts graduated with an MA in Industrial Design Engineering from the Royal College of Art and Bachelors in Aeronautical Engineering from Southampton University. His duties include building client relationships across industries, which include telecommunications, consumer electronics, transportation and financial services. He also works with project teams on designs that are relevant to the consumer public.

His talk will include the strategies used to comply with specific business goals. His work with AT&T and the in-vehicle experience with Ford prove him to be an expert in the field.

At the symposium, winners will also be announced from the UDM/Ford Innovation Contest. The contest challenged full-time UDM undergraduate students from all majors to develop a three-minute digital presentation for a possible Ford SYNC system application. The contest teams were judged by leaders at Ford and IDEO, UDM faculty and a member of the automotive media.

For more information, contact Melanie Dara at 313-993-1218, or by email at darame@udmercy.edu.

Release date: October 15, 2009

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