College of Design 25th Anniversary Lecture - The Flashlight and the Owl

Brenda Laurel is chair of the graduate Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She has worked in the area of human-computer interaction since 1976, for companies including Atari, Activision, Epyx, Apple, and Interval Research, where she led a three-year research program to explore gender and technology. She was the co-founder of Purple Moon, a transmedia company devoted to girls, based on her research at Interval. She also works as a consultant, designer, speaker and researcher, focusing on the cultural aspects of technology. Laurel is the editor of The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design and Design Research: Methods and Perspectives, and author of Computers as Theatre, and Utopian Entrepreneur. She holds an MFA and doctorate in theatre from the Ohio State University. She serves on the boards of Cheskin, the Comparative Media Studies Program at M.I.T., the Digital Storytelling Association and the Communication Research Institute of Australia.