Matt Cottam
CEO, Part-time Faculty, Tellart, Rhode Island School of Design and Umeå Institute of Design

Website | @cottam | Attendee Directory Profile

CEO, Tellart, Faculty, Rhode Island School of Design and Umeå Institute of Design

Matt Cottam graduated in 1999 from the Industrial Design department at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2000, Matt co-founded Tellart, a product and service design firm specializing in the development and prototyping of web, mobile and embedded systems. Tellart’s projects range from museums to medical simulators, from ambient game interfaces to mobile phones. Tellart’s clients include international manufacturers and service providers such as Nokia, Humana, Novartis, Otis Elevator, the Wright Brothers Museum, and Stanford University. Matt serves as Tellart’s CEO, building strategies and tactics for design, and working closely with clients to discover opportunities for innovation. For the past ten years he has also been teaching courses at RISD on topics including product and service design, physical computing, design for emergency medicine, and design for human habitation in extreme environments. Besides his work as a designer and teacher, Matt is a Paramedic for the US Department of Health and Human Service’s National Disaster Medical Team, as well as the National Ski Patrol. Since 2004 he has been an adjunct faculty member at the Design Institute Umeå in Sweden, where he teaches Experience Prototyping. Matt is also a visiting Instructor at The Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing (China), and the Oslo School of Architecture (Norway).