Cooper is pleased to announce the arrival of our newest directors: Kendra Shimmell, Director of Design Education & Training Services, and Tamara Wayland, Director of Client Relations. Kendra and Tamara will spearhead important initiatives for Cooper’s growing strategy and design consultancy. We are excited about the skills, talents, and energy that they bring to Cooper’s mission of helping clients create products and services that delight users.
About Kendra Shimmell
As Director of Design Education & Training Services, Kendra Shimmell will lead initiatives for training and mentoring in the practice of design. She will oversee our design practicum, Cooper U, which includes popular courses on interaction design, visual design, and design communication. Kendra also plans to expand our training and mentoring offerings to include courses and workshops on research methods, interaction design techniques, service design, agile design practices, and the integration of design into organizations of all sizes. Kendra plans to reach out to the broader design community, sharing Cooper’s proven design practices with the community, as well as searching out innovative research and design strategies to fold into the Cooper design practice.
Kendra is excited about her new role: “The design community has multiple challenges: How do we respond to the demand for ‘quicker, faster, now’ while maintaining the integrity of the user experience? How do we fold design into the new organizational model of integrated development teams? How do design teams understand the shifting contexts of design problems that involve mobile design, service design, interaction design, and industrial design? I see Cooper U as a place for us to experiment with ways to meet these business and design challenges within the context of the design community.” She is especially excited about working on these challenges at Cooper: “Cooper is a firm investing in the articulation of the practice of design, and sharing with and learning from the greater design community.”
Kendra has over ten years of design experience across a broad range of products, including health care systems, retail environments, medical devices, durable goods, consumer electronics, financial services, and enterprise management applications. She has extensive public speaking, facilitation, and training experience, including talks at SXSW and the IXDA Interaction conferences. Kendra joins Cooper from Adaptive Path, where she was Lead User Experience Designer.
About Tamara Wayland
As Director of Client Relations, Tamara Wayland will nurture client relationships, making sure that Cooper does great design work that meets client needs. At Cooper, Tamara will work directly with clients to identify their underlying business problems and to strategize on how design can help solve those problems. Tamara is looking forward to strengthening Cooper’s client relationships: “I see myself as a partner with our clients. My goal is not just to move the client’s project forward, but to to help the client move their business forward.” Tamara is excited to join Cooper: “Cooper has a great history in interaction design, and does a great job of articulating how design impacts business. I’m especially excited about Cooper’s focus on bringing together design and development.”
Tamara has over 18 years of experience in the interaction design space. Tamara joins Cooper from Adaptive Path, where she served as Director of Client Relations. Prior to Adaptive Path, Tamara worked with several firms in the branding, marketing, and design industries, including frog design, Young & Rubicam, and CKS.