Duane Bray featured speaker at joint ALCTS/ACRL President's Program

CHICAGO – Duane Bray, a partner at IDEO, a global innovation and design consulting firm, is the featured speaker at the joint President’s Program of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). The program is Monday, June 25, 2012 during the Annual Conference of the American Library Association in Anaheim, Calif.

Bray’s presentation, “Future of the Book: Innovation in Traditional Industries”, will delve into the challenges traditional industries often face when experiencing disruptive change. He will share concrete techniques for recognizing and harnessing opportunities for innovation.

Duane heads the firm’s Global Digital Business. He joined IDEO in 1995 to lead and develop the discipline of interaction design, now one of our most sought-after capabilities. Duane’s experience includes the development of major software and hardware programs and the integration of emerging technologies into human-centered products and services. He routinely explores the intersection of technology and people, revealing and elevating the emotional connections that we forge with digital media.

As part of a project to explore the potential of book publishing in digital formats, Bray and his group developed “The Future of the Book”, “a design exploration of digital reading that seeks to identify new opportunities for readers, publishers and authors to discover, consume and connect in different formats. As more people consume pages in pixels, IDEO designers wondered why we continue to discover and consume the written word through the old analog, page-turning model. We asked: what happens when the reading experience catches up with new technologies?

The team looked at how digital and analog books currently are being read, shared and collected, as well as at trends, business models and consumer behavior within related fields. We identified three distinct opportunities—new narratives, social reading with richer context and providing tools for critical thinking—and developed a design concept around each one. “

Bray has led or contributed to scores of design projects, including product interaction, interactive exhibits and software for desktop PCs, the Web and mobile devices. His most recent endeavors have focused on larger clients and strategic programs, such as design-language initiatives that address a range of platforms and customers. He assisted SAP in forming a human-centered division for sustained innovation and has worked closely with Microsoft for more than a decade. His client list also AT&T Wireless/Cingular, BMW, Texas Instruments, United Airlines and Xerox.

Prior to joining IDEO, Bray worked for Pentagram Design, where he established an interaction design practice in its San Francisco studio. He holds a master of fine arts degree from the University of Florida and, as an alumnus, received an Outstanding Achievement Award. He counts bubblegum pop music and his customized Mini Cooper among his leisure-time passions and pursuits.

ALCTS is the national association for information providers who work in collections and technical services, such as acquisitions, cataloging, metadata management, collection management, preservation and continuing resources in digital and print formats. Visit the ALCTS website at www.ala.org/alcts

ACRL represents more than 12,000 academic and research librarians and interested individuals. ACRLis the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products and services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians. Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning and research environments. ACRLis on the Web at www.acrl.org/ and Facebook at www.facebook.com/ala.acrl.

ALCTS and ACRL are divisions of the American Library Association.