Barry Kudrowitz, IDSA
University of Minnesota
Dr. Barry Kudrowitz is an associate professor and Director of the Product Design program in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota (UMN). He also is associate editor of the International Journal of Food Design.
Kudrowitz received his PhD from the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), studying humor, play, and idea generation. His research aim is to better understand how creativity is evaluated, perceived, and learned. In this research, Kudrowitz focuses on the discipline of product design; however, this work can be applied generally to creative thinking in other domains of design, art, engineering, humanities, business, and public policy.
Over the past nine years, Kudrowitz has developed a dozen undergraduate and graduate product design classes for the UMN College of Design, in addition to the undergraduate and graduate majors. Kudrowitz is the course instructor and co-creator of a project-based class at both MIT and UMN, Toy Product Design, where he uses play as a means of getting students exposed to product design processes. In the class, cross-functional teams of students take their own toy ideas from concepts to functional prototypes with the help of volunteer industry mentors. Kudrowitz also currently teaches classes in Creative Design Methods and Food Design.
He co-designed the Nerf Atom Blaster toy, an elevator simulator that is in operation at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., and a ketchup-dispensing robot that was featured on “The Martha Stewart Show” and “Conan.” More information can be found at www.wonderbarry.com.
