Jon Kolko
Jon is a partner at Narrative, a design strategy consultancy. He is also a co-founder of Modernist Studio, which was acquired in 2021, and is the founder of the design school Austin Center for Design.
He was previously the Vice President of Design at Blackboard, the largest educational software company in the world. He joined Blackboard with the acquisition of MyEdu, a startup focused on helping students succeed in college and get jobs.
Jon has also held the positions of Executive Director of Design Strategy at Thinktiv, a venture accelerator in Austin, Texas, and both Principal Designer and Associate Creative Director at frog design, a global innovation firm. He has been a Professor of Interaction and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he was instrumental in building both the Interaction and Industrial Design undergraduate and graduate programs. Jon has also held the role of Director for the Interaction Design Association (IxDA), vand Editor-in-Chief of Interactions magazine, published by the ACM. He has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the Center for Design Studies of Monterrey, in Mexico, and Malmö University, in Sweden.
Jon is the author of a number of other books, including:
- Exposing the Magic of Design: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis, published by Oxford University Press
- Creative Clarity, published by Brown Bear Press
- Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love, published by Harvard Business Review Press
