UXPA Boston Board Nominee: Lou Susi

As a lifelong creative professional, my 20+ years as a human-centered design and research practitioner and design educator grew out of my childhood passions for drawing and writing and play.

Looking back at my undergraduate work — the ecclectic array of transdisciplinary expressive artmaking paints my story as that of a restlessly curious young person ‘in search of’ meaning through poetry, music, installation art, sound design, performance, and mixed media. In my 20s, The Work largely served to ‘search for self,’ to understand and make for me.

The transformation from Art to Design was a natural progression for me as a person that always steeps myself in a passion to understand other people by asking myself and others ‘What might it be like to be …?’ This critical question drives me to apply empathic storytelling and visual thinking as my primary approaches to HCXD practice.

Over the course of my UXD career journey, I’ve had the distinct pleasure to contribute to design excellence at organizations like, GoldK, Monster, Avid, Mobiquity, NETSCOUT, Mercury — while also developing design courses and teaching at University of Massachusetts Lowell, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Endicott College, Brandeis GPS, SNHU, and Northeastern’s College of Art, Media and Design.

In 2008 I started graduate work at Dynamic Media Institute, MassArt’s future-forward MFA grad program in Communication Design, Tech and Society. By 2012, my thesis ‘Confounded: future fetish performance intervention for human advocacy’ collected my research, work, writing, and design philosophies — establishing the richly fertile roots for 3 areas of my continuing personal design research ‘streams’.

Today my life’s work includes an even split between teaching IXD at Northeastern University, strategic independent design consulting for niche clients and causes, public speaking, design leadership coaching, and digging into problem-first ‘nontrepreneurial’ innovation initiatives, with my most recent specific focus being in eldercare support communities, services, and systems.

My wife Carol and I live on The North Shore of Massachusetts. We have 4 children and 6 grandchildren, all of which live close enough to us to keep life fun, real, and fully human.

I find UXPA Boston to be a positive force in the area for the Design, Innovation, and Tech Communities.

Over the years I have always experienced UXPA Boston as a community-driven environment that always thoughtfully has ‘others in mind,’ meaning … when I think about people like Raissa, Amy, Rich, and Rob, Chris, and any other person involved with the organization — at the board level or otherwise — that world class inclusive, intelligent, and openly collaborative feeling that’s emitted matters tremendously. It always has for me. Its a ‘way of being’ that I can think of and personally leverage as a model to follow … a model for excellence and success … there’s an integrity and decency to the feeling I get from UXPA Bostin and its leadership, and I’d like to contribute to that same spirit and energy in my own unique ways.

As far as the timing — I’ve done aLOT of work on myself over the last 10+ years, work that I am confident to say that, after all of this work and me ‘working on my act,’ I am finally ready and willing and able to join at a board level. For me, the timing is right. My mind, heart, and soul are aligned perfectly to contribute to the org and our community in a meaningful and impactful way.

I currently mentor a grad student through the MS in UCD at Brandeis GPS. I’ve vunteered at UXPA Boston for the annual conference a few times over the years, in a variety of capacities. I had the experience of coaching a group of 6 people at Lanfmark in Quincy, resulting in each person completing a community-driven project. In 2024, I started volunteering to help at Essex County Habitat for Humanity, at various construction sites and at their ReStore in Lawrence. I was on the board at Mobius and also volunteered at Art Interactive in Cambridge, working with both organizations to plan, coordinate, and host events, publish newsletters, promote each org, and expand membership and sponsor-related relationships.