Dr. Barry Kudrowitz is a Professor of Product Design and the Head of the Department of Design Innovation which includes five Schools of Product Design, Apparel Design, Graphic Design, Retail and Consumer Studies, and User Experience Design all within the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, USA. There, he founded and directed the product design program from 2011–2021.

Kudrowitz received his PhD from the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), studying humor, improvisation, creativity, and idea generation. He also received his MS of Mechanical Engineering from MIT studying projectile toy design with Hasbro.

Kudrowitz is interested in how creativity is perceived, evaluated, and learned. This is a theme throughout his teaching, speaking, and publications. He has years of experience working with the toy industry and has taught toy design, product development, and creativity courses for over a decade. He also consults regularly as an expert witness on patent cases related to toys and mechanical product technologies.

Kudrowitz co-designed a Nerf toy, an elevator simulator that was in operation at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., an Oreo separating machine for an Oreo ad campaign, and a ketchup-dispensing robot that was featured on the Martha Stewart Show.

He is the author of Sparking Creativity: How Play and Humor Fuel Innovation and the Associate Editor of the International Journal of Food Design. He enjoys teaching, running workshops, and giving talks for industry and academia on play, humor, innovation, creativity and more.

He currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his wife, two kids, two dogs, and many indoor tropical houseplants. In his limited free time he enjoys cooking, foraging, shopping, finding new dining experiences, making music, farmer’s markets, board games, gardening (specifically growing varieties of Capsicum chinense peppers), theme parks (specifically well-themed, high speed, indoor dark rides), and traveling (specifically for eating across south east asia).