Barbara A. Karanian, Ph.D.
Barbara is a Lecturer and formerly Visiting Professor (2008 and 2009) in the School of Engineering in the Mechanical Engineering Design Group. Her teaching background includes: Psychology, Indurstrial-Organizational Psychology, Behavioral Aspects of Design, and Leadership. She studies the ways teams discover yet-to-be satisfied customer needs by using and teaching validated applied psychology, leadership and design thinking methods, that she has developed and refined over the past few decades. In addition to helping teams find the questions that provoke change and uncover new information, the teams she has worked with eventually can say that they learn tangible ways to generate a culture of creativity.

She also teaches some of these methods to graduate students from diverse backgrounds—Engineering, Computer Science, Design, Humanities, Business, Law, and Medicine— in ME378 Tell/Make/Engage - Action Stories for Entrepreneuring. The focus of this class is on the relationship between active storytelling and individual response. Engagement is defined and evaluated by variations in response to an ineffective or effective story delivery. A mixed method approach uses multiple strategy factors of socio-cognitive influence, along with self-reflective observation of participant work. Factors of imagination, motivation, perception, cognition, social dynamics, leadership and mood are considered as students learn to discover and define story as they go through it. By making storytelling personal, they find their user, in their stories.

Other teaching includes leading Cliff Nass' inspired Communication class research projects, Product Design Thesis and Design Garage, and the REVS/Cars class, Tales to Design Cars By.

Barbara is interested in bridging the gap between Hollywood and Silicon Valley with an entrepreneurial leadership streak. She strives to help others change by using story as one dimension to design across the developmental stages of a project and life path.

Education
Ph.D. Educational Studies in Organizational Behavior, Lesley University
M.Ed. Art Therapy, Lesley University
B.A. Psychology; Fine Arts, College of the Holy Cross

Awards
Teaching Fellowship in Leadership: Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, 1991-1992
Best Paper: Teaching Strategies in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, ASEE, 2012
karanian@stanford.edu

Inspired by the energetic teaching and engineering design thinking of Professor Larry Leifer, and the engineering education leadership and practice of Professor Sheri Sheppard, the team is facilitated by the co-founders of the Design Entrepreneuring Studio and a cast of participant observers. One industry leader, Ramy Katrib, Founder and CEO of Digital Film Tree, Hollywood, helps us chase to the discovery, with his modern post house, color and creative approach.

Former students and alumni include Mona Eskandari, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, UC Riverside, Ville Taajama, D.Sc., Greg Kress, Ph.D., David Sirkin, Ph.D., Becky Currano, Ph.D., and Ateeq Suria, Ph.D. Special thanks to the empathy and excitement in the storytelling guidance of Professor David Kelley. He helps us commit on a daily basis to the shape and design impact of entrepreneuring.