HP Innovation Journal Issue 05: Winter 2016 | Page 30

EMPLOYEE PROFILE
Stacy Wolff
Global Head of Design, HP Ken Musgrave
Head of Global Customer Experience &
Global Experience Design, HP
Stacy Wolff and Ken Musgrave are leading a design
revolution in HP’s personal systems and print di-
visions, respectively. Wolff, who joined Compaq in
1997 and stayed with HP when the two companies
merged in 2001, moved into his current role in
2012, after leading notebook design at the com-
pany for a decade. Musgrave joined HP last January,
after years spent leading different design groups
within Dell and product design and branding at the
medical technology company, Becton Dickinson.
Where’s the connection? Both are passionate
about designing experiences that will delight HP
customers. and I went on to get advanced degrees in
design and business from Georgia Tech and
the University of Utah.
[Really, though, I] found the profession in
high school. I noticed car companies and ski
companies were tapping into my emotions
and creating all sorts of irrational want. That
made me want to learn how they were doing
it and how to design the things I loved to use.
What inspired you to become
a designer?
Wolff: My dad is an industrial designer, and I
was always drawing and doing projects with
him—either at home or in his office. It was
always: How can you improve something?
It was always: If it didn’t exist, let’s make
something to do the job.
[Before I really turned to ‘design,’ how-
ever] I earned a five-year bachelor of fine
arts at Michigan State University. I started in
architecture at the University of Miami, and
then I went to the University of Detroit. This
was back in the early ’80s, and I remember
going out and … you had a pretty bad econ-
omy at the time, and all the architects said,
“Go find something else to do.”
Musgrave: I earned my bachelor of science
in industrial design from Auburn University,
30 Innovation Journal · Issue 5 · Winter 2016
How did you find your way
to your current role at HP?
Wolff: When Meg Whitman came to the
company, I got a call late one night, and the
perso n said, “Be in California the next morn-
ing.” I told my wife, “I either got fired, or I got
promoted.” As it turned out, I got promoted.
Meg said, “We need to make design import-
ant.” She wanted to lead with design that was
consistent, and she wanted to stand out. We
translated that into a design philosophy: We
want to be progressive, we want to be har-
monious, and we want to be iconic.
Musgrave: It was a role I’d been speaking
to HP about off and on for about six years.
It wasn’t good timing before, but when the
company split and I saw the leadership on
the HP Inc. side, I said, “These are people I’d
like to work with.” And the fact that HP Inc.
was standing itself up as a new company was
an interesting challenge. This was something
that rarely ever happens, where you get to
refocus on the core products. Print hadn’t re-
ceived the attention many other parts of the
business had. It made me feel like there was
a lot of opportunity to make an immediate
impact, and that was attractive. Ultimately, I
felt the business challenges facing HP were
also design challenges. The products need
to connect with a new type of customer—a
digitally-native customer who lives in a mo-
bile world. And there’s an opportunity to re-
craft our products in the eyes of this next
generation of users.
What opportunities excite
you the most?
Wolff: The goal for design is to delight. You
want to delight people. It’s indescribable. It’s
intangible, but that something is there—how
it feels, how it turns on, how it sits, how it
articulates, how it sounds. It’s greater than
the sum of its parts. You feel it, and you go,
“This is right.’”You always ask, “Are we moving
forward?” And it feels like the last four years
have been light speed. We’ve gone from dis-
organization and a lack of focus to extreme
focus—an almost maniacal focus on making
sure the experience is right. What we’re do-
ing today is probably the most exciting time
we’ve had. What was declared “the end of the
PC” has actually turned into a renaissance of
new solutions.
Musgrave: We want to take our printers we
have today and bring them into the modern
age. First of all, they have to look more ap-
pealing. Second, they have to be more ap-
pealing in their out-of-box experience. If we
have this conversation again in six months,
it will be rich with new things for us to share.
We’re putting the user at the center of our
thinking. We’re wrapping designs and expe-
riences around the customer that have never
been thought about in this industry. There is
a design revolution coming to print, and it’s
just getting started. 
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