What We Do
Scott Minneman
Research Affiliate
Scott Minneman is an engineering designer whose work probes the intersection of collaborative practices, emerging technology and new forms of storytelling.
Scott was named a Presidential Scholar, and holds degrees from MIT and Stanford, as well as 12 or so US patents. Scott’s master’s thesis at MIT was a telecommunication aid for the deaf population that allowed communicative partners to type their messages on a Touch-Tone keypad without their needing to do anything special to distinguish which particular letter on a given touch-tone key they intended. The invention was awarded first prize in the Rehabilitation Engineering Society of North America's annual student design competition. This system is the predictive text ad keyboard disambiguation algorithm that has become known as T9, used on many cellular handsets today.
Scott worked at Xerox’s famed Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), beginning as a student intern and then working in a variety of research capacities over his 15-year tenure there, always focusing on designing and prototyping novel systems that demonstrate the potential for using new technologies in real-use settings. As part of the PARC Artists in Residence (PAIR) program, Scott collaborated on art installations at Siggraph, Ansel Adams Center for Photography, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Scott’s work has won Gold, Silver, and Bronze Awards in ID Magazine’s Interactive Media Design Review. Scott left PARC in 2001 to co-found Onomy Labs, Inc., where he is a creative principal as well as serving as Chief Technical and Chief Executive Onomist.
Scott is also Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Interaction Design and User Experience major in the Graduate Design department at the California College of the Arts, Mechatronics Guru at Scientific Art Studio, Director of Engineering at Blue Sky LightGrid, and Affiliate Researcher at the Institute for the Future. Blending art with technology, he creates innovative collaborative systems and new forms of immersive, interactive storytelling.