Max's passion is bringing ideas to live and making them tangible for the client from immersive visual storytelling to hands on prototyping. He designed multiple virtual collaborative workshops that are beyond the average sticky note and knows how to make experiences delightful and unique even virtually. Pre IDEO Max got his Master in Speculative Design and Industrial Design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and started his design career in the Start Up Journi designing the user experience for a mobile photo diary app. He is highly skilled in designing human centered designs with focus on the visual appeal and experience which a future facing approach. At IDEO his work focuses on user experience design, communication design, and storytelling. He also knows how to present and visualize designs and research through videos, websites and tangible click through prototypes to make ideas tangible and immersive for clients.

“For me, design is a powerful tool to confront the public with critical issues. As an ever-learning designer, in my work I explore and communicate future worlds we head towards—whether realistic, utopian or dystopian—in order to raise awareness on today’s actions and their long-term effects.”

If you are interested in a collaboration or you want to get in touch with me please write me!

makslackner@gmail.com 

More about me…

After growing up in the Austrian Alps in a traditional blacksmith family, I have moved in the capital of my region to start a five-year high school with a curriculum concentrated on industrial design and engineering. I successfully graduated with solid skills in implementation and presentation of objects, and continued my studies this time for extending my design thinking towards systems and interactions at the University of applied Arts Vienna. The university provided me with a supportive environment to follow my passion over this period. There, I also had the privilege to be supervised by Fiona Raby, and my design view has been mostly substantialized back then.

This course not only encouraged me to develop conceptual ideas while dealing with our complex world, but also allowed me to become proficient in tools and tactics for questioning systems which vary from technology to politics. Such complex domains could only be investigated with an informed approach. Multidisciplinary collaborations and partnerships with various experts from scientists to activists helped me to find a right balance between design and fiction in my studies. In parallel with developing of ideas, I reflected these ideas into three dimensional objects, visual media and/or direct actions, and therefore, I have gained a wide-ranging know-how in communicating my work. 

Over the past few years I had various chances to display my work in different events and galleries. My works were exhibited, among others, at the Shanghai Biennale titled “Things That Move” in 2014, at the Design Week Milan under “Future of Health” section in 2015, and concurrently at two different spaces titled “How will we work?” and “Design for agency” under the Biennale Vienna in 2017.