IA 2000 Session:
Designing Effective E-Business Systems
Thursday, October 26, 2000
9:15 - 10:30 am

Terry Swack is a 19-year veteran of the design profession as well as a leading Internet strategist and designer. Formerly, Terry was founder and CEO of TSDesign, an Internet strategy and product design firm that was acquired by Razorfish in December, 1999. As VP of Experience Design at Razorfish, her role is to ensure that the company delivers a holistic approach to designing effective experiences for clients and their customers.

Founded in 1985, her vision for TSDesign - from its early days of building strong brands and compelling experiences in retail environments, through the 90's, creating and facilitating e-business solutions - had always focused on the use of design as a key business strategy. To that end, she led the development of the firm's methodology, Design for Intentional User Experiences (SM), an advanced process for synthesizing business strategies, user needs, organizational change, and technology into useful, usable and compelling solutions. The development of the User Experience Audit (SM) in 1996, was the first offering of its kind and positioned TSDesign as an industry leader in design analysis and user experience management. Clients included .com's and Fortune 500 companies such as 3M, Compaq, BankBoston, WebCriteria, Tripod, Dell, PlanetAll, and Cendant Mortgage.

Terry has been active in the establishment of several industry organizations. She was president of the Boston chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) from 1990-93. In '94 she became a founder and was Vice President of the Webmasters' Guild (now the Association of Internet Professionals), the first national organization to bring together people from all domains of Internet development. In 1998, Terry, with Clement Mok, Sapient's CCO, organized the Advance for Design Forum, an initiative of the AIGA. Its purpose is to create a forum for the advance of experience design in the network economy and to define and build a community of practitioners who will shape and advocate for the role of design in a world that is increasingly digital. Terry is an expert in experience strategy and design, which includes the synthesis of product and brand strategy, qualitative research, design planning, visual systems, information architecture, and interaction design.

She has been quoted in publications such as Forbes, CIO Web Business, eMarketer, WebReview, Internet Week, Internet World, XNet, Computerworld, Mass High Tech and others. She is also a frequent speaker and panelist at conferences in the design, business and technology industries including Seybold Publishing; CIO's xNET; the Direct Marketing Association; Miller Freeman's Web Design and Development; the Design Management Institute; the American Institute of Graphic Arts; the Industrial Design Society of America; MIT's Sloan School of Management; and the ACM's SIG/Chi.

She has authored papers and articles on designing effective online business systems, and is a contributing reviewer for Internet World's Deconstructing column.