Associate Professor Cara Wrigley and Dr Karla Straker both reside in the Design Lab — an interdisciplinary research group within the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at The University of Sydney, Australia. They are traditionally trained industrial designers who actively research the value of design in business — specifically through business model strategies that lead to emotive customer engagements.

Prior to their current appointment they spanned faculty appointments in Design, Business, Engineering and Information Technology — emerging in a newly formed discipline, the nexus of design and innovation. Building on solid practical industry experience and combining this with scholarly understanding of emotional design, they have developed a unique insight into innovation in both industry and academia. Through copious industry projects, their work has crossed many disciplinary boundaries and appears in a wide range of high-quality research publications.