Co-founder and Principal, ThingM

Mike Kuniavsky researches, designs and writes about people's experiences at the intersection of technology and everyday life. Companies and universities around the world use his 2003 book, "Observing the User Experience," to understand and teach techniques that bring the design of products closer to the people who use them. His next book, "Smart Things," expected in 2007 from Elsevier, will discuss user experience design for mobile devices and ubiquitous computing. He has also contributed to a number of other books, including the encyclopedic "HCI Handbook" (also to appear in 2007) and his articles regularly appear in MAKE magazine. He is a regular presenter at academic conferences focusing on user experience design and ubiquitous computing.

In 2006, he cofounded ThingM, a ubiquitous computing user experience design and development company, with Tod Kurt. In 2001 he cofounded Adaptive Path, a leading San Francisco internet consultancy. Previously, he founded the Wired Digital User Experience Lab for Wired Magazine's online division, where he served as the interaction designer of the award-winning search engine, HotBot. He has worked as a consultant and designer for companies such as PacBell, Crayola, National Public Radio, McGraw-Hill, Cypress Semiconductor, Whirlpool, Macromedia, Corel, Qualcomm and Yamaha.

In 1994 he was the design and production director of the team that developed HotHotHot, the second ecommerce website, which launched two months before Amazon.com.

He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), and the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). He serves on the advisory boards for QBOX, a mechanical, electronic, and kinetic art organization, Rosenfeld Media, a publisher, and the Long Now Foundation's Rosetta project. In 2006, he served as co-chair of the International Symposium on Electronic Art/ZeroOne San Jose art festival, for which he curated a cafe of technologically augmented objects.

Mike lives in San Francisco and blogs at orangecone.com. He has been to the Burning Man festival eleven times, for which he has built everything from giant flamethrowers to balloon rooms to solar-powered medicine cabinets.