About Karel

Karel has spent his professional career dealing with design, technology, human affect, cognition, and behavior primarily through the human interface to technology.

His current interests are in advances in user experience research, design practice, design-based organizational transformation, the innovation ecosystem (design school, business school, university, entrepreneur, and enterprise), and the ways in which technology can extend, optimize, and improve work, play, relationships, education, health, and overall fulfillment.

Karel is currently IBM Global Vice President, Client Insights and Research and responsible for leading the company’s global team of researchers and the insights they provide to product, services, and executive teams.

Karel has led design and research in various roles worldwide at IBM for most of his three decades with the company.

Karel joined IBM in 1988 after having done graduate studies, research, and teaching at the University of Toronto. He introduced User-Centered Design at IBM in 1993 and assumed a company-wide role in 1995 leading IBM's community of designers, leading the development of design methods, languages, and technologies, and leading the design of the commercialization of the IBM Watson. In 2013, Karel help found a new IBM Design program together with General Manager of Design, Phil Gilbert, and IBM Fellow, Charlie Hill. Karel personally introduced the new design program which included Enterprise Design Thinking to IBM product development laboratories worldwide and introduced a tailored version of it to IBM consulting services and technology services organizations worldwide from 2014 through 2016. He next focused on the development and activation of Enterprise Design Thinking for client facing professionals worldwide and rolled that to IBM’s top client accounts in 2017 and 2018. He has also conducted workshops with the c-suite and senior executive teams of hundreds of industry leading companies worldwide as well as with startups, scale-ups, and public organizations. 

Karel has written over 100 conference and journal publications, a book entitled "User-Centered Design: An Integrated Approach" and contributed chapters to other edited books. He is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist at industry conferences and on university campuses.

He co-developed the Innovation by Design programs for the DeGroote School of Business and Medicine, the Health Leadership Academy, the Collaborative Health Governance, and a pan-university course at McMaster University. He currently teaches in the Digital Transformation Executive MBA program, the Directors College, and the Collaborative Health Governance program. Karel together with Don Norman founded the Future of Design Education project which aims to develop a framework of new design curricula for the world of the future.   

Karel has spent much of his life observing people interacting with others, their world, and their technology; read widely about improving the human condition, optimizing the interactions between people, and driving effective organizational change; and has practiced what he's learned. Karel has undergraduate, master's, and doctoral level training in Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Human Computer Interaction, has taught university, conducted research, and worked at IBM for more than three decades. He has taught, led, managed, and mentored thousands of people over the years and he shares what he's learned here on this blog and in his Life Habits Mentoring podcast.

Having been vegetarian for 40 years, Karel and his entire family went vegan 8 years ago and created a website icouldgovegan.com to advocate for, outline the benefits of, and provide guidance to adopt a plant-based vegan lifestyle. He also serves at the Vice President of the VegTO Board of Directors, a nonprofit organization which inspires people to choose a healthier, greener, more compassionate lifestyle. He also uses his Instagram account for outreach and regularly gets DMs saying that yet another of his followers have been inspired to go vegan from his posts.

The views expressed in this blog are Karel's own and don’t necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of his employer.