Hello.

Strange Attractor is the design studio of Tim Gasperak. I’m a design executive and facilitator who helps people make sense of complex, intractable problems and find ways to act with meaning.

I work with communities and organizations that face complex, systemic issues that are crucial to humanity. I help these institutions to improve their ability to navigate the ambiguous and complex contexts in which they operate. My consulting firm, founded in 2014, works with a diverse range of public and private institutions including national and state governments, non-governmental organizations, local communities, and private companies.

For almost 30 years, I have been helping leaders and organizations develop and implement innovative solutions to complex institutional and social challenges. I use various long-term participatory change approaches such as collective sense-making, futures and foresight, transition design, and participatory design methods to equip communities to make sense of the world, increase their adaptability, and explore and actualize their preferred futures.

Before establishing Strange Attractor, I served as the Creative Director at Adaptive Path, one of the earliest user experience design consultancies. I was also the Director of Web Design at Gagarín, an Icelandic studio established in 1995 that creates immersive, interactive experiences for museums and public institutions. Before that, I held the position of senior designer and project manager at Human Code in Austin, Texas. During my tenure there, I helped some of the first web-based companies and established early online shopping design patterns. I also designed and built one of the world’s first interactive textbooks.

My clients include Fondation Botnar, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Kaiser Permanente, GE Healthcare, Abbott Diabetes Care, OPTI Medical, Donate Life America, National Co+op Grocers, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Alþingi (Parliament of Iceland), FDIC, and others.

I am a former board director of the Bateson Idea Group, whose mission is to further the exploration of the ideas of the late Gregory Bateson. The non-profit organization manages the archives and intellectual property of the Gregory Bateson Estate, which includes books authored by Bateson that have been continuously in print.

I received my BSID in industrial design with distinction from The Ohio State University, and I live in Boulder, Colorado.

Publications

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3872-6862

Contact

Mastodon: @gasperak@social.coop