Christopher Noessel

Christopher Noessel has shaped interaction design for over 30 years, designing products and services across diverse domains. Back in the dot-com days, he directed information design at marchFIRST, establishing their interaction design Center of Excellence. As a founding graduate of Italy’s legendary Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, his thesis project, Fresh—a service design for lifelong learners—was presented at London’s MLearn conference in 2003. He’s since visualized counterterrorism futures, prototyped forthcoming technologies for Microsoft, and designed telehealth devices. After leaving Microsoft, he joined a boutique San Francisco agency for a decade, where he led the “generator” practice and became their first Design Fellow. At IBM as a Design Principal, he ran the worldwide Design for AI guild, as well as a team on the guild. He also developed core AI training for designers and delivered global workshops.

Christopher’s publications include Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction (2012, with Nathan Shedroff); the 4th Edition of About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design (2014); Pair Design (2016, with Gretchen Anderson); Designing Agentive Technology: AI That Works for People (2017); and Designing Assistant Technology: AI That Makes People Smarter (2026). He maintains scifiinterfaces.com and occasionally posts to Medium and LinkedIn as the mood strikes. He was one half of the world’s first AI-married couple in 2018. His family have what they believe to be the first AI-designed winter holiday sweaters. They are awesome. 

His published science fiction includes “Oddments, Pasha’s Autodiary of 07 MAR 2032” (Escape Pod, 2021)—about a drag queen’s encounter with a reclusive artist—and “On the Eve of the Cumberland Incursion” (Dark Matter Magazine, 2021), depicting a tortured drone behind enemy lines. He has more short stories that no one wants to publish. :) 

Ask him about his forthcoming books on generative randomness and designing technology for animals and what each might mean in a world of AI.