For Immediate Release: March 25, 2009
HGA Hires Suzanne Currie as a User Experience Designer
Minneapolis, MN - Suzanne Currie has joined HGA Architects and Engineers (HGA) in the firm's User Experience and Lean consulting practice to focus on healthcare, higher education, and the arts. Currie will apply her background in anthropology, experience design and human factors in furthering HGA's experiential design services, part of the firm's innovative pre-design and planning work.
Focusing on the relationship between people and their environments, Currie has worked collaboratively with strategists, product planners, industrial designers, visual designers and engineers to shape designs that improve the customer experience. She employs observational research, emotion design, rapid prototyping, and Voice of the Customer to understand how people use spaces and products.
"The combination of experiential design services with the best of Lean consulting results in innovation that is relevant and outcome-driven" Currie says. "We call this approach applied innovation at HGA and use it as the catalyst for the design process. We work collaboratively with our clients to crystallize an ideal future experience, ultimately improving people's lives and creating designs that really work."
Before joining HGA, Currie was with Medtronic in Minneapolis, where she conducted research into the patient experience and applied the findings in the design of medical products. She previously worked with Navman GPS consumer products in New Zealand, among other national and international firms as a social scientist, user experience designer, product designer, and human factors engineer.
Currie has a Master of Arts in Cultural Anthropology and Museum Science from the University of Denver, and a Bachelor of Arts in Educational and Industrial Technology from the University of Maryland.
She is President of UPA Minnesota (Minnesota Chapter of the Usability Professionals' Association). She is also a member of ACM's CHI (Computer Human Interaction SIG); User Experience Network's Medical Industry Group; and PDMA (Product Development Management Association).
HGA Contact: Julie Luers (612) 758-4000 e-mail JLuers@hga.com
Media Contact: Susan Evans, Evans Larson (612) 338-6999 e-mail susan@evanslarson.com