Rolf A. Faste (1943–2003)
Was an American designer who made major contributions to the fields of human-centered design and design education. He was a professor of industrial design at Syracuse University from 1971–1984, and professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Stanford Joint Program in Design from 1984–2003. He is best known for his contributions to creative design practice, or "design thinking," which he pioneered as a 'whole person' approach to problem solving centered on the perception of needs.
Early Life and Education
Faste was born in Seattle, Washington, the eldest child of Andreas Faste, a naval architect noted for his work on the MV Coho ferry, and Edith Morch Faste, an artist.[3] Interested from a young age with the intersection between art and engineering, he earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1965, a master's degree in engineering design from Tufts University in 1971, and a second bachelor's degree in architecture from Syracuse University in 1977. Faste's graduate thesis work at Tufts on engineering creativity was advised by William J. J. Gordon, the originator of Synectics, and demonstrated a correlation between an individual's creative ability when working on science and engineering problems and their capacity to visualize solution concepts.
