Design chief Jim Wicks leaves Motorola to join Northwestern University

Jim Wicks, the brains behind innovative designs of Moto RAZR, Moto G, Moto X/Droid and Moto 360 is leaving Motorola. Wicks will be heading to Northwestern University's McCormic School of Engineering next month to teach design courses. He will be replaced by another Motorola executive, Ruben Castano, who has been working with the company since 2005.

"Wicks, currently senior vice president of consumer experience design at Motorola, will be a full-time faculty member of the Segal Design Institute. In this role, he will bring his decades of user-centered design experience to the institute’s undergraduate and graduate programs. He will teach design courses and serve as a mentor for student design teams." North Western University stated in a press release.

Wicks spent 15 years at Motorola since 2001, out of which he headed Design for over 12 years.  Before that he worked with Sony and Sapient. The news comes after Lenovo decided to merge all of its phone business, to bring them under one brand name Moto by Lenovo. The company recently launched the Moto Z and Moto Z Force.

Wicks becomes the second top executive to leave the company after Rick Osterloh, former president of Motorola. Osterloh is now the head of new hardware divion at Google and will overss Google's Nexus devices among other products including Project Aura (Google Glass), Chromecast and OnHub. 

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