Emeritus Professor Vesna Popovic

PhD (University of Sydney), MFA (Industrial Design) (University of Illinois), DipEngArch (University of Belgrade)

Vesna Popovic, PhD is a Professor Emeritus in Industrial design at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and she is the founder of the Industrial Design infrastructure in Brisbane, Australia. She has made an international contribution to product design research where she has integrated knowledge from other related areas and applied to the artifact design (e.g., human factors/ergonomics, product usability, design and cognition, expertise and experience and applied design research) to support and construct design applications. She has successfully integrated the industrial (product) design research agenda with diverse disciplines such as transportation, medicine, science, engineering, humanities, and information technologies to enhance or change their practices. In particular, she has been a forerunner of human-centred design research as applied to industrial (product) design. The impact of her work lies in the cross-fertilisation of knowledge across humanities and technology to design and produce humanised artifacts as well as to enhance our culture by facilitating the understanding between professionals with diverse expertise and experience. She is recipient of four ARC (Australian Research Council) grants. Vesna supervised 38 PhDs and Research Masters students to successful completion. She has published widely and is recipient of numerous awards. She is a Fulbright Scholar.

Career higlights:

Selected designer to participate in Natural Disasters Relief international studies conducted by WDO (World Design Organisation) former ICSID (International Council of Societies of Industrial Design), UNDRO (United Nation Disaster Relief Organisation) and The League of Red Cross Societies. She was UNIDO Expert for Developing Countries.

Electied to the World Design Organisation (WDO) Executive Board (former ICSID) from 1997–2001, where Vesna demonstrated an outstanding contribution to international policies and procedures and the promotion of Industrial Design Education as the Education Chair. She was instrumental in winning for the educational institutions full voting rights in WDO.Vesna was the first WDO Board member elected from Australia. Currently she is WDO Regional Adviser.

Initiative of QUT (QIT) Corporate Identity in 1984 that generated the QIT/QUT logo and Identity Manual. The corporate identity development enabled the establishment of a publication section at QUT. This manual has been used for QUT branding and application since.

Co-Founder/developer of the Industrial Design program at QUT and development and leadership of the Industrial Design Discipline. Vesna’s main contributions have been the setting of teaching standards of excellence and leading the discipline towards design research and innovation. It has been one of my main goals to both model and to embed opportunities for leadership and initiative in the teaching/learning process. This has given graduates the body of knowledge needed to create their own opportunities and recognise new market niches. This led to the development of Industrial Design Profession in Queensland.

Founder and Director of People and Systems (PAS) Lab Research Domain in Industrial Design within and beyond QUT (2003-2015). The initial funding ($200,000) was granted by BEE Faculty Deans’ initiative fund. The PAS Lab’s mission was to create ‘enriching experiences’ with systems and services – rather than to simply ‘design objects’ – and to develop new ways of understanding and modeling these experiences. Over a period of twelve years, the PAS Lab research group has achieved a national and international reputation in the focussed research areas of: (i) Intuitive interaction; (ii) Experience and expertise; and (iii) Context-of-use. The Laboratory included the physical infrastructure with state-of-the art technology. PAS Lab was the foundadtion for adavancing the Design Reserach to the Design Lab across the School of Design.

Initiative, leading, and winning QUT’s bid to host the International Association of Design Research Congress (IASDR) in 2015.  Reflecting the current trend for interdisciplinary research in the area, the conference theme was INTERPLAY: Design, Science, Technology, Arts. This continual INTERPLAY provided opportunities to explore interaction between cross-disciplinary knowledge and various design research approaches.The outcome of the congress is published in INTERPLAY Proceedings, 2015.

Chief Investigator and Human System Program leader at the Airports of the Future project (ARC Grant). Human System was dedicated program within the Airports of the Future project aimed to improve the safety, security, operational resources, and passenger experience. Human Systems Program has looked in depth at a broad range of passenger and staff activities and interactions in the airports. The basis of this research was close observation of people and their activities. From this, the maps of activities that illustrate the relationships between systems, processes, technology, people, and their experiences were developed. This enables to draw conclusions about activities and interactions that people engage in and level of passenger facilitation.  The recommendations were timely and had impact on the airport planning. This was collaboration between six research organisation, airports, airlines, stakeholders, government, and other aviation industry bodies. This program received two awards: 2018 DMI Design Value Award-Honorable Mention for Human System Program leadership, and 2011 Engineers Australia Queensland Division Engineering Excellence Awards, (Research and Development), Airports of the Future Pilot Project Team.

Vesna Popovic was Visiting Research Professor at the Centre for Design Research at Stanford University, 2000; Senior Research Fellow (Carnegie-Mellon University), 1995; Visiting scholar at Tsinghua University, China (several occasions latest in 2013); Visiting Scholar at Milan Polytechnic, 2012. From 2001- 2006 she was Design Research Adviser to NID (National Institute of Design), Ahmedabad, India.

Vesna has been keynote or invited speaker at major international design and design research conferences in Austria, USA, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Mexico, Germany, Chile and Cuba and over the past 25 years has delivered around 100 presentations nationally and internationally.

Additional information