Javier de la Fuente
Associate Professor and Area Chair
Contact Information
Email: jdelafue@calpoly.edu
Phone: 805-756-1607
Office Location: 003-405A
Dr. de la Fuente serves as the Chair of the Industrial Technology and Packaging Area in the Orfalea College of Business at California Polytechnic State University. He is an Associate Professor that teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on design thinking, product and packaging design and development, and healthcare packaging. Dr. de la Fuente also serves as Adjunct Faculty at Universidad de Monterrey, where he teaches product usability and innovation at the graduate level.
His student project mentoring has brought national and international recognition to the Cal Poly Packaging Program. Students in his classes have excelled at national and international packaging design competitions, including the Institute of Packaging Professionals (IoPP) AmeriStar, World Packaging Organisation (WPO) WorldStar Student, and Paperboard Packaging Alliance (PPA) Student Design Challenge. In 2019, Dr. de la Fuente, together with Professors Irene Carbonell and Mary LaPorte, earned Cal Poly’s Learn by Doing Scholar Award for their four-year collaborative pedagogical research project, Design Thinking as a Framework for Teaching Packaging Innovation.
Dr. de la Fuente’s background includes industrial design, graphic design, packaging, and scientific research. He is particularly interested in design-driven innovation, the role of affordances in usability, and inclusive design. His research group develops novel methods for using mobile eye-tracking technology in usability testing of physical products.
He has more than 40 publications, including book chapters, peer-reviewed articles, refereed conferences, and trade-press articles. He has co-authored the “Packaging Design and Development” and the “Medical Device Packaging” chapters in the last edition of the Wiley Encyclopedia of Packaging Technology. He is currently co-writing the human factors chapter of the upcoming edition of the “Medical Device Packaging Handbook.” One of his research articles won the prestigious Best Paper Award at the Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology organized by the Engineering Department at the University of Cambridge.
Dr. de la Fuente is also co-founder and partner at Factor IDD, a design and innovation consulting firm specializing in packaging, product design, and brand identity.
Dr. de la Fuente holds a five-year degree in Industrial Design summa cum laude from the Universidad de Buenos Aires. He received his Master and Doctorate in Packaging from Michigan State University.