User-Experience Design

Ron Frantz
Associate Professor, University of Oklahoma

Ron Frantz is a licensed architect who specializes in historic preservation and community revitalization. He holds Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Architecture degrees from the Tulane University of Louisiana in New Orleans, Louisiana. For over 34 years, Ron focused his work on “forgotten places”—those inner city neighborhoods, older commercial districts, and smaller towns that once were beautiful places but are now a little tarnished. Much of his work was through the Oklahoma Main Street Center at the Oklahoma Department of Commerce where he received extensive training and experience in helping grassroots organizations approach a comprehensive, incremental approach to downtown revitalization. This approach is known as the “Main Street 4-Point Approach” that includes organization, promotion, design, and economic restructuring.  As a community volunteer, Ron works with almost three dozen organizations. In all, he has worked with citizens in over 100 Oklahoma communities.

Notable communities that Ron worked in over the years include being a pioneering homeowner in the Paseo Neighborhood of Oklahoma City; serving as a team leader for Team II (now known as Automobile Alley) following the 1995 truck bombing in Oklahoma City; overseeing the façade restorations of the territorial capital of Guthrie, Oklahoma; and now serving as a board member for the great 1960’s Camelot Neighborhood in north Oklahoma City.

As a public speaker, Ron presented during more than 125 conferences in 25 states. As a writer, he has written or co-written almost a dozen books and contributed to over 40 magazine articles and a number of special issue magazines. These articles appeared in Preservation Forum, Main Street News, The Craftsman Homeowner, Traditional Building, Old-House Journal, Oklahoma Today, as well as many local periodicals.

Currently, Ron works at The University of Oklahoma College of Architecture. He has positions as a faculty member (Associated Professor, Division of Architecture); staff member (Institute for Quality Communities); and coordinator (Bachelor of Science in Environmental Design). His wife and he have a small Oklahoma based consulting firm, The Frantz Alliance, LLC.

Geoff Parker
Adjunct Instructor, University of Oklahoma

Geoff Parker is a licensed architect with over 14 years of experience. During his career, Mr. Parker has designed and worked on a wide range of projects including single family residences, restaurants, retail centers, multifamily residential projects, commercial office buildings and master planning projects. Additionally, Geoff has taught for eight years as an Adjunct Instructor at the University of Oklahoma’s College of Architecture, teaching first, second and third year design studios. Geoff received the Outstanding Adjunct Award from the College of Architecture in 2014.

Mr. Parker specializes in conceptual and schematic design, employing a hybrid of manual techniques and computer applications to produce high quality contextual designs and unique architectural graphics. Geoff’s drawing skills have been widely recognized locally with over thirty different illustrations published in magazines and newspapers. His work has also been recognized nationally in Architectural Record Magazine, receiving an award of merit in the Cocktail Napkin Sketch Competition in 2010 and also receiving the overall professional winner honors in the 2012 competition. Mr. Parker has sold hundreds of custom sketches and works of art to clients all over the country.

Devin Pauley
Apple

Devin Pauley is a current Apple employee and former senior product design engineer for Amazon. Pauley regularly meets with engineering students and faculty on campuses to share his stories on designing cell phones, e-readers and ecosystem products and to offer advice and encouragement on career advancement.

Pauley holds three patents and is a two-time recipient of the BRAVO! Award from Motorola, where he worked from 2004 to 2008 as a product design mechanical engineer. He is also the engineering program manager behind the development and launch of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus silicone cases.

Pauley received his Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering in 2004 from the University of Oklahoma. While pursuing his studies at OU, Pauley was involved in several leadership roles with the Sooner Racing Team, a Formula SAE international student-engineering competition team. His roles on the team ranged from managing its engine systems, driveline integration and brake system leader to president. Under his leadership, the team won multiple awards, including a first-place finish in the Continental Teves Break Systems category. Also while at OU, Pauley was active in Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, the National Society of Black Engineers and the Society of Automotive Engineers. Since 2009, Pauley has served on the OU College of Engineering Dean’s Advisory Board on Diversity.

Carolyn Seepersad
Associate Professor, University of Texas

Carolyn Conner Seepersad is an Associate Professor and General Dynamics Faculty Fellow of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2004, an M.A. and B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University in 1998 and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from West Virginia University in 1996. She is a former Rhodes Scholar, Hertz Fellow, and NSF Graduate Fellow.

Dr. Seepersad's research involves the development of methods and computational tools for engineering design and additive manufacturing. Her research interests include simulation-based design of complex systems and materials, design for additive manufacturing, innovation and environmentally conscious design of products and energy systems.

In 2009, Dr. Seepersad was the inaugural recipient of the International Outstanding Young Researcher Award in Freeform and Additive Manufacturing from the additive manufacturing community. In 2010, she received the University of Texas Regents' and Dean's Awards for Outstanding Teaching by an Assistant Professor; the Regents' award is the highest teaching award for faculty in The University of Texas System. Dr. Seepersad is the recipient of a Best Paper Award for the 2009 ASME Design Theory and Methodology Conference and two best paper awards for the 2010 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition. She is also the author of more than 70 peer-reviewed conference and journal publications and one book. She annually organizes a DAC special session on Design of Multiscale Engineering Systems, and she co-organizes the annual Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium.

Diana Bairaktarova
Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech University

Understanding user needs and customer preferences is critical to the design process. The engineering design community has produced various models, techniques, and approaches to build creative understanding of user's experiences for new product development. Implemented within industry and academia, these methods prove to be impactful as they have been shown to influence market capture and product similarity.

Dr. Diana Bairaktarova is an Assistant Professor in the College of Engineering, Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. Diana completed her Ph.D. in Engineering Education at Purdue University. She received her S.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Technical University in Sofia, Bulgaria and an M.B.A. degree from the Hamline School of Business, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Diana has over a decade of experience working as a Design Engineer. Her research focuses on human learning and engineering, i.e. understanding how individual differences and aptitudes effect interaction with mechanical objects in engineering education instruction and how engineering students' personality traits influence decision-making process in engineering design.