Claxton has more than 25 years experience in industrial design and has been with Motorola 20 years. He directs the award-winning industrial design and human factors innovation teams for Motorola's Communications Enterprise. His teams create the look of future products and implement designs for Motorola businesses worldwide.
Motorola's handheld telecommunications and data products equipment are designed in Plantation, Fla., to support customers globally. The teams include industrial design, human factors, graphic design and strategic design planning. These teams have been recognized globally for their excellence. The facility in Florida includes a design studio and human factors usability lab.
He has led initiatives for Motorola that exceed the traditional boundaries of industrial design. The design team has facilitated numerous creative problem-solving sessions addressing a range of material from engineering and design issues to future business strategies for new directions for the corporation. Claxton's creative problem-solving background includes Synectics, the Parnes method, and other techniques. He is an alumni of the Creative Problem Solving Institute at SUNY University of Buffalo, N.Y., and a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, in industrial design.
Claxton is the past vice president of the Southern District of the Industrial Design Society of America. His design work includes consumer products, heavy equipment, personal care, and business equipment, in addition to the wireless communications/computing products from Motorola. He holds 39 U.S. patents and numerous foreign patents and is a ·Distinguished Innovatorö at Motorola. In 1998 he participated on a four-person United Nations delegation to China sharing the value of industrial design with educators, businessmen and senior government officials. He is known in the international design community, and has sponsored several student programs both in the U.S. and abroad.
The design team was awarded a ·Goldö award from the Business Week international design excellence design award competition. They won best in class in the consumer products category with the ·Talkaboutö two-way radio in 1998. In 1999, the team earned a Gold award for the i1000 communicator. The Talkabout series of products also won a gold award for the "Design of the Decade" issued by Business Week and the Industrial Design Society in the fourth quarter 1999.
Motorola's Web site is www.motorola.com.