David Richter-O'Connell

Assistant Professor Dave Richter-O’Connell has been a practicing Industrial Designer for the past 25 years and has worked in the areas of home products, plumbing fixtures, cabinetry, furniture, toys, games, vehicles, juvenile products and orthodonture! Dave received his BSID (BS Industrial Design) from the Institute of Design at IIT in Chicago and his MFA in Design Studies from the University of Wisconsin Madison. He has been won both Gold and Silver IDSA IDEA awards and has 22 US design and utility patents and numerous associated international patents.

Dave has been a member of the IAPD faculty family since the fall of 2011 and teaches lectures and studios in Product Design and Design History. He has lived in a teepee, a yurt, a mobile home, and a few real houses, in Wisconsin, Boston, Chicago, Vermont and now Manhattan, Kansas.

Professor Richter-O’Connell’s research interests include exploring the historic ‘flows’ and ‘fluxes’ of environmental and product design for the last 2.5 million years of human development and working in the multi-disciplinary ‘near environment’ design-space that includes products, furniture, atmospherics and spaces and the resulting human experiences.