Jan Čtvrtník

MgA. et Mgr. Jan Čtvrtník

I was born on March 10, 1975 in České Budějovice. I graduated from SUPŠ in Prague, majoring in Promotional Graphics. After graduation and basic military service, between 1995-2000 I studied Teaching for Primary Schools at the Faculty of Arts of the University of South Bohemia. In 1998 I started studying at the Academy of Performing Arts in the field of design of means of transport in the studio of Prof. Škarka, from where I transferred in 1999 to the studio D3 of Jan Němeček and Michal Froňek. In 2004, after finishing my studies at VŠUP, I received a scholarship from Ingvar Kamprad and started studying industrial design at IKDC at Lund University (SWE).

Since 1993 I have been working as a freelance graphic or product designer. In 2002 I co-founded the design studio File. In 2003 I was behind the founding of the Tactoo project, where I started designing titanium jewellery. After studying in Sweden, I lived in England for a year where I worked as a designer for hire for various companies, mainly for Lunar Design, developing an all-in-one computer for HP. In 2007 I moved to Italy where I got a job as an industrial designer at Elektrolux. Here I worked successively for various brands and product lines owned by Electrolux (Electrolux, Zanussi, AEG- cookers, ovens, microwaves, fridges, dishwashers, hoods, hobs etc...

Due to restructuring, I left Electrolux in 2014 and started working at Liebherr Hausgeräte. Since then I have been living and working in Germany, designing refrigeration equipment.

During my career, the products designed by me have received countless awards: the Red Dot Design Award, IF Design award, German Design Award, Good Design, Good and Excellent Design, Student Design, etc. In 2009 I received the title of Designer of the Year and Grand Designer of the Year 2008.

Professional profile and almost the whole portfolio can be found at www.coroflot.com/naj.

PhD project:

Laziness and Intuition. What influences user interfaces.

In my dissertation I would like to research user interfaces (UI). I would like to study what and how influences our intuitive understanding of user interfaces. Is intuitive understanding due to innate responses to stimuli, or is it gradually built up from experience with similar objects? Can common ground be found for interaction across the sociocultural diversity of all human society?

How to design AI to be understandable to the widest possible range of users? Will our desire to control things eventually be humbled by our desire to live effortlessly and automate everything? Will freedom of control triumph over the reluctance to click extra? What will the user interface look like in the future?