Mark Rolston (designer)

Not to be confused with Mark Rolston.

Mark Rolston is a designer. He is the co-founder of Argo Design, along with Mark Gauger, both of whom worked for Frog Design Inc. previously. Rolston joined Frog in 1994 and co-founded its digital media group in 1996. He worked at Frog for nineteen years, serving as chief creative officer (CCO) for eight. He has written about design and technology for a variety of publications, including Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, Wired, and ZDNet.

Career

Main articles: Frog Design Inc. and Argo Design

Before joining Frog Design Inc., Rolston worked at Virtual Studios. There, he worked with two more of Frog's first seven employees, including Collin Cole, who would later serve as Frog's vice president of new media. In 1997, Cole and Rolston denied rumors and inaccurate reports that Frog had purchased Virtual Studios.

Rolston began working at Frog as a "software guy" in 1994, in the company's new studio in Austin, Texas. In 1996, he co-founded Frog's digital media group, "helping clients leverage emerging technologies and setting the tone for user interface design and e-commerce platforms". He worked for the company for nineteen years, serving as chief creative officer (CCO) for eight. Rolston has been credited for expanding its portfolio beyond just industrial design by focusing on software innovation. He designed the Windows XP and Media Center experiences and touchscreen interfaces for Citibank and Microsoft, and led Dell.com's growth to becoming one of the top-grossing e-commerce websites in the world. Rolston also created General Electric's global user experience (UX) and worked on analog and physical hybrid projects like Disney's MagicBands, which he oversaw in the role of CCO.

The Austin-based design consultancy Argo Design was co-founded by Rolston and Gauger in 2014, and focuses on user experience (UX). Rolston is the CCO of SmartHome Ventures, as of 2014. He is also CCO of PEQ, and also works for the San Francisco-based company Wrap, as of 2015.

Works

Rolston has written about design and technology for a variety of publications. In 1997, he wrote a guest column for ZDNet, in which he discusses Frog's evolution from a product design firm to an innovation firm that creates products where the "software and the physical experience and the social experience are all intertwined". He also calls Microsoft's Kinect a "fascinating emerging technology", predicts the likelihood of creative firms entering the software industry, describes "gesture-based computing", and shares Frog's experience entering the Chinese market. In June 2013, MIT Technology Review published an article by Rolston called "Today’s Phones and Tablets Will Die Out Like the PC", in which he opines that the personal computer's function as society's primary means of computing is ending. He wrote:

... the future of computing is at a very large scale. I am not referring to the room-size monstrosities from computing's dawn in the 1960s. I'm talking about a diffuse and invisible network embedded in our surroundings. Chips and sensors are finding their way into clothing, personal accessories, and more. These devices are capturing information whose impact is not yet meaningful to most people. But it will be soon enough.

Furthermore, Rolston said, "The next wave of computing devices will be different because they won't wait for our instructions. They will feel more like natural extensions of what we do in our lives. The hardware and software technologies behind this ubiquitous-computing model will become the focus of a radically changed computing industry." In September 2013, Fast Company published an article written by Rolston called "The 3 Future Waves in Design, and How to Ride Them", which outlines the evolution of product and software UI designers into experience designers, and eventually systems designers. Fourteen months later, Wired published Rolston's article "The Next Era of Designers Will Use Data as Their Medium", in which he says the software industry needs a "new kind of designer: one proficient in the meaning, form, movement, and transformation of data". He describes how so-called "data designers" will use big data to create the "same humanistic outcomes that we have in mind when we shape products through the user interface or physical form", and we will see the emergence of a new discipline of design, "one that specializes in data as the medium, with a humanistic sense of purpose". In December 2015, Fast Company published Rolston's article "The New Story of Computing: Invisible and Smarter Than You", in which he says, "in pursuit of simplicity, we've actually made life more complex". He argues, "We are in need of a radical solution, a way to engage an ambient, context-aware machines that can give us the best answer in any dynamic situation ... And to get there, we must design an entirely new user experience, one that works invisibly alongside us, and behaves almost human."

Bibliography

• Kaplan, Melanie D.G.; Rolston, Mark (30 March 2011). "Frog Design: 'Chinese soccer moms' and why software is king". ZDNet.
• Rolston, Mark (26 June 2013). "Today's Phones and Tablets Will Die Out Like the PC". MIT Technology Review. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• Rolston, Mark (20 September 2013). "The 3 Future Waves in Design, and How to Ride Them". Fast Company.
• Rolston, Mark (27 November 2014). "The Next Era of Designers Will Use Data as Their Medium". Wired. Condé Nast.
• Rolston, Mark (17 December 2015). "The New Story of Computing: Invisible and Smarter Than You". Fast Company.

Further reading

• Kuang, Cliff (6 April 2010). "A Conversation with Jan Chipchase and Frog Design's Chief Creative, Mark Rolston". Fast Company.
• Woyke, Elizabeth (20 April 2011). "Frog Design and Design Innovation in China". Forbes. Forbes, Inc. ISSN 0015-6914.
• Jablonski, Chris (11 November 2011). "frog creative chief: think outside the computer box". ZDNet.
• Ingram, Mathew (28 November 2011). "The future of technology means making the computer disappear". Gigaom.
• Risen, Clay (3 June 2012). "Morning Routine; The Mourning Multitasker". The New York Times.
• Martin, Scott (11 September 2013). "Apple's iPhone marketing takes fashion catwalk". USA Today.
• Dolcourt, Jessica (25 September 2013). "What it really takes to make a flexible phone (Smartphones Unlocked)". CNET.
• Laopwsky, Issie (12 June 2014). "Tiny Startup Completely Reinvents How We Use Touchscreens". Wired.
  • Laopwsky, Issie (13 June 2015). "Teaching touchscreens the difference between fingers and knuckles". Wired UK. Condé Nast.
• Lawson, Stephen (12 November 2013). "The Internet of things needs a lot of work". PCWorld. International Data Group.
• Katz, Barry M.; Maeda, John (11 September 2015). Make It New: The History of Silicon Valley Design. MIT Press. p. 162. Search this book on

External links

External video

frog design's Mark Rolston and Jared Ficklin (29 November 2011), MIT Media Lab

Mark Rolston: The Shapelessness of Things to Come, 2014 International Conference, Industrial Designers Society of America

Mark Rolston: A Vision of Our Evolving Mobile World, FORA.tv

Frog Design Edge: Innovation from Walkman to Today, Innovators, Bloomberg Television

• Mark Rolson at Argo Design
• Speaker Details: Mark Rolston: The Shapelessness of Things to Come Midwest UX Conference (2014)

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