Leandro Agrò – CV
KEYWORDS: Managing Innovation – Interaction Design – Wireless Devices and MobileTV - Antropocentic Interfaces – Team Leading - Prototypes

- Partner, Advanced Design Director and vGeneral Manager SR LABS: The Eye-Tracking Company – www.srlabs.it

- Founder and Publisher of http://www.idearium.org - The Italian Interaction Design Network (since 2001)
- Advisory Board Member at Siena Design Project (Siena University)
- Professor at MIU–Master (Milano Bicocca University)
- Visiting Professor at I-Design Master (Domus Academy)
- User Experience Teacher at Ateneo Multimediale / Scuola Politecnica Design in Milan
- Former User Experience Manager Webegg Group (2003)
- Founder, member of the board, former Chief Creative Officer and VicePresident, Altoprofilo SpA (Milano/Boston – 2000/02)

Personal Info: born in 1968 (Agrigento). Married. Living in Milan (Italy)
Mobile +39 3488508522 (Italy) or +1 562 7353060 (Usa)
My websiste: http://www.leeander.com - email: leeander@leeander.com


Design + Management
Background in interaction design with experience in products and expecially in services design (internet and beyond). I own more than 8 years of experience as manager in ITC/Internet Companies (mostly focused on presales responsibility plus leading production and/or managing R&D team).
In addition to this I’m teaching -since 2000- in a Post-graduate Master and writing on my website (more of 35K readers saw my articles in 2004).

Ten years with real projects and customers
Since 1995, I have been part of some of the most innovative TCP/IP based italian projects. For instance: H3G (interface prototyping for 3G world + mobileTV), Banca Intesa (eBanking on iTV) , eBiscom/Fastweb (iTV/Video on demand), IlSole24Ore (marketplace), Telecom Italia (eLearning), BPM/We@Bank (eBanking Usability), Generali (eBanking/web Identity), CartaSI (Intranet Information Architecture), Unicredit (eBanking/Digital Identity), Pirelli (B2B eTyres), FIAT Group (Intranet), Orange (GPRS service prototyping), SmartWorlds (concept for a wireless handheld), ENEL (Usability and Corporate digital-identity), and others...


2004 (current position)
Leading a team developing projects based on multimodal interfaces, I earned a position as partner and the responsibility of Advanced Design Director in SR LABS: a highly innovative italian company.
Two important project in 2004, were:
- Medical interfaces (we developed -for Philips- a voice/eye controlled GUI)
- Process, enviroment and interfaces for an innovative eye-tracking based 3G-video optimization service. Cool and effective!

In addiction to that, I spent more than 100 hours working at the University (mostly spent at Milano Bicocca University teaching usability and web services design).

2003
From February until the end of the year I worked for Gianroberto Casaleggio (Ceo Webegg – Webegg / Telecom Italia Group) as User Experience Manager. This was my fourth year in the consultancy business.
In 2003 I was been a very busy year for my traditional academic activities, and -in July- Antonio Rizzo (president European Association of Cognitive Ergonomics) asked me to join the Advisory Board of The Siena Design Project. - http://www.saul.unisi.it/cdesign/

In the new-economy era (2000/2002)
In 2000, I co-founded the first italian firm in e-business consultancy. Our Company, called Altoprofilo -The User Experience Company- was supported by a multimillion venture capital from Pirelli Group (myQube), and we started out in Milan and Boston (in which we located the R&D team, lead by Giuseppe Taibi). At the very beginning I got the role of Chief Creative Officer and I built two different divisions of the company (Creative Staff + HCI department) . My activities involved recruiting, salary planning, team building, etc. For two years I have been part of the Board of Directors (toghether with some top-manager coming from Olivetti, Pirelli, Telecom, IBM) and, in the second half of 2002 I have been named VP for Creative Business (PreSales and R&D).
This experience was very important to establish a deep understanding of the consultancy business. I also learned an important lesson about how to manage a company involving more than one hundred people. In the first quarter of 2003, I left this position.

…before 2000
From 1997 to 1999 I was the head of production (managing 15 people and two web products) in a very-cool and aggressive newmedia agency called THINK. Before this –since 1994- I worked as a graphic designer and –since 1996- I was involved in high-visible internet projects.