Meet Michael Smith ’91: SIGD Advisory Council Member

His charge is right there in the company’s slogan: “Keep Reinventing.”

Smith, who joined HP in 2022, is the leader of an international multi-disciplinary team spread over the U.S., Singapore, India and Korea. In his role as vice president, he oversees the formulation and execution of design strategies for the company’s consumer, small business and enterprise print portfolios. His responsibilities included both the digital and physical customer experience.

Prior to joining HP, Smith spent almost 20 years at Dell Technologies in various design roles including mainstream computing, peripherals and gaming. Over the final six years of his Dell career, he served as Vice President of Design for Commercial Solutions—the company’s largest end-user computing division. Before his years at Dell, Smith held various design roles in agency consulting, corporate telco design and home appliances.

As a new member of the SIGD Advisory Council, Smith is eager to share the lessons learned over his long and diverse career.

“I would like to bring my 30 years of experience in the private sector to help shape SIGD’s curriculum going forward,” he said. “I have extensive time interacting with design school intern programs both domestically and internationally. Based on those experiences, I think there is an opportunity for Auburn to build on its legacy and become more relevant in the future as a design education program.”

Smith also hopes to emphasize the importance of a well-rounded education of the type he feels he gained at Auburn.

“I didn’t understand it at the time,” he added, specifically recalling his time in Design Process 101 with Dr. Walter Schaer, “but requiring principles of finance, economics and marketing in some classes turned out to be differentiators that many of my later design colleagues did not have. I would recommend we take a fresh look at a foundational curriculum for SIGD to take advantage of such a ‘university’ approach.”