Christian Palino

Christian Palino is a design strategist for Adaptive Path. He has broad experience as an interaction designer and art director crafting solutions where service, environment, business, and communications meet to create empathic experiences. Christian is interested in design's ability to uncover and influence the cultural, social, and psychological implications of emerging technologies and business practices.

Professional Background

Christian is currently engaged in exploring ideas of service design, design abuse, and sustainability in the pursuit of designing uniquely human experiences. Prior to joining Adaptive Path, Christian worked at Microsoft on the redesign of Windows Live Hotmail, helping to integrate calendars and define relationships between private information and social contacts. As an independent consultant based in Italy, he lead design projects across multiple disciplines for clients including Limited Brands, Orange, Henri Bendel, Telecom Italia, Vodafone, Experientia, and Continuum.

Christian received his Masters in interaction design from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea where he focussed on enabling 'peripheral' needs: dispositions, motives, and sympathies outside the mainstream definition of 'normal' and 'desired' that cannot be addressed simply through user-friendliness. Christian also holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic design from Rhode Island School of Design and has taught interaction design and typography courses at IUAV University of Venice, Domus Academy, and the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea.

A salty cape codder, Christian can also be found stoking kilns, chopping wood in the mountains of Piemonte, and surf casting the tidal flats of the Cape.

Past Appearances

May 27
Christian Palino judged AIGA SF's Enrichment Scholarship in San Francisco, CA.