Sarah Rottenberg

I am the Associate Director of the Integrated Product Design Program, a Master's Program that brings together design, business and engineering, and a Lecturer in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. I also consult with companies who are interested in improving their customer centered design processes.

I specialize in bringing people and perspectives together for the purpose of creating products, experiences and businesses that are feasible, viable, desirable and meaningful. In this work, I draw upon expertise as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, offering robust and explicit processes and tools for design. In my work as an innovation strategy consultant I have worked with clients in a broad range of industries including automotive, financial services, food and beverages, consumer packaged goods, pharmaceuticals and retail to create new products, services and businesses.

In addition to running the Integrated Product Design program, I teach several courses at Penn. The IPD 799, Final Project, is a project based course in which students design and develop a new product, paying attention to industrial design, technology, manufacturing, marketing and their business strategy. In IPD 509, Needfinding, I teach students to use social research methods, particularly ethnographic field research, to understand people's needs and translate them into implications for design. IPD 552, Problem Framing, trains students to bring together insights about people, the business context, and technology to redefine design problems and identify new opportunities.