Studio
Current Focus, Clients & Projects
I am a designer focusing on researching and developing new products, platforms, and experiences. On the side, I run a global creative studio in the San Francisco Bay Area dedicated to enabling change. I work with purpose-driven people worldwide to identify unique opportunities to radically improve and impact our world.
Recent engagements
Creative Director, Hiring Manager Professional Applications Between 2001 and 2011, I was part of the tight-knit design leadership team that introduced the world to Apple’s most iconic lifestyle products. more…
Role: VP/ Chief Designer Huawei Consumer my job was to simplify Huawei Consumers’ entire design ecosystem. Working across all of Huawei’s business groups, this effort led to the redesign and rebrand driven by the design charter — design that’s driven by people’s intentions. more…
Role: VP Global UX my job was to simplify PayPal’s entire design ecosystem and introduce ‘mobile first’ best practices to the company. Working across all of PayPal’s business groups, this effort led to the redesign and rebranding of PayPal, driven by the design charter — design that’s driven by a brand that’s all about trust and people. more…
“I’m dedicated to one single mission: making the best products on earth, and to leaving the world better than we found it. .”
— Abi Brody
My Belief
In every project, I’ve started believing that the best design gets out of people’s way and that you can craft delightful and unforgettable experiences by keeping things simple and obsessing over the details.
who I serve
From Fortune 500 companies to start-ups and everything in between, as an employee, consultant, or advisor, I help companies or clients challenge the status quo in their respective industries and become a yardstick of quality in their field. I help them develop new habits, redefine their thinking, and, ultimately, shift towards a truly customer-centric mindset.
Value driven
What does it mean for me to focus on value when designing a product or experience? It’s plain and simple: with everything I touch or every project I engage with, I’m dedicated to one single mission: making the best products on earth and leaving the world better than we found it. That’s called world-class.
From Fortune 500 companies to start-ups and everything in between, as an employee, consultant, or advisor, I help companies or clients to challenge the status quo in their respective industries and to become a yardstick of quality in their field. I help them to develop new habits, redefine their thinking, and ultimately, shift towards a truly customer-centric mindset. We define and execute digital strategies that combine strategy, design, brand, content, and technology to create relevant experiences that people will love. While living in the United States of America, namely the San Francisco Bay Area, I work internationally with strategic and creative hubs worldwide, especially in Asia and Europe. My 20+ year legacy and expertise in successfully transforming businesses and brands occur at the crossroads of technology and the humanities. They center around team collaboration, a personal approach, unbiased advice, and focus on establishing long-term partnerships and friendships.
Why did I choose the field of design? Put simply, I like to learn new things and help people. Working with diverse companies, clients, and partners gives me a unique perspective, and I’m always tackling new challenges and problems. I’m ever-expanding my frame of reference, allowing me to solve your problems unexpectedly. Plus, it keeps my approach fresh. I have been designing ‘multi-media’ and screens since the nascent days of the web and arrived at Apple in 2001, helping them set up a design team — its very first — for their newly formed productivity and professional applications division to introduce best practices and principles for software design. My service offerings remain core to my mission — experiences designed to earn a spot in people’s lives through a well-informed strategy, research-backed design, and an obsession with details that matter. Have a look and see for yourself and let me know whether I can help your company, vision, or mission.
If you want to learn what projects I’ve done and the kind of companies I’ve worked for, check out the work section of my site.
what I do
As a global creative entrepreneur, I’m dedicated to solving complex design and communications challenges to build social movements and inspire action.
What matters to people, matters to business.
People
Experiences
Products
Current Focus
I run a globally-oriented design consulting studio and lab, radically committed to developing change, making a difference, and bringing aesthetics to the world. I team up with luminous minds to work with visionary companies, founders, and pioneers in some of the fastest-moving industries. Now more than ever, we need advocates for life on our planet and both speed and imagination to create better solutions for tomorrow, to explore and unleash their full potential.
Clients
Although I work for you.com, I still take on very selective clients: individuals, start-ups, VC firms, and big corporations. They are both individual people — or companies. Whether you are a Fortune 500 company or a privately-held firm — as long as our values align, we can team up. Those values are usually about creating meaningful products and services at the intersection of the humanities and technology and making a real difference so that we all can have a better world and make a dent in the Universe. That’s the experience I have been having, and that’s what I believe.
Small = efficient
I realized that while big companies have many resources (people, money, and facilities), their resistance to change and their ability to innovate is significant. Therefore, more than a year ago, I quit my full-time role at a big corporation to focus on start-ups with a purpose and tinkering with products that I, my family, and friends would love to use. Turns out that the other entrepreneurs and I are not entirely alone on their quest and desire for better and more personalized and human experiences. One of the things I found out is that if you have an idea and talk to your friend about it and everyone is tired of hearing about it after a while, it’s probably not that good an idea. If people tell you, you should pursue your project more, then it holds up a little better.
Results that speak for themselves
Also, a while ago, when an extraordinarily intelligent and caring friend, mentor, and investor encouraged me to team up with other entrepreneurs and start-ups and build one of my own, I realized that I deeply enjoy teaming up with founders and people who have a vision. The results are beginning to show, including the recently unveiled SKAI (vehicle, product + brand), Nuria Beauty (name only), Nacero (brand, look & feel), and Nanoscent Labs (brand, look & feel), and a few other still stealth projects.
My approach
I bring out the best in teams to make meaningful connections between brand, product, and culture — always balancing reality and business while never compromising quality.
Design Expertise
Design
It always begins with your idea or problem. Then, I help build products, services, and experiences that matter and earn a spot in people’s lives. Finally, I help companies to define the entire spectrum of their offerings, from concept to launch, including strategy, look & feel — functionality, implementation, and branding. Work includes Apple’s iPhone, Huawei’s Mate, P-Series with Leica®, and the SKAI Craft in cooperation with BMW Designworks.
Eco Systems
I help to define ecosystems in lots of spaces. Consumer Electronics. Enterprise. Mission-driven nonprofits. Lifestyle brands with a purpose. Media and publishing companies.
Simply put, I help design systems that bring a human touch to our digital way of life. I create all touchpoints people can feel, touch, see, and hear. I’ve been designing wearables, mobile devices, AR/VR, and vehicles. PayPal, Apple, and Huawei.
Design Systems
Every once in a while, revolutionary technology changes everything completely. I’ve contributed to such outcomes. For example, I currently work on ChatGPT, which took the world by storm in the fall of 2022. I worked on comprehensive design systems, from concept to launch. Furthermore, I’ve developed look & feel, design patterns, and the definition of interactive products, services, and entire ecosystems, e.g., Apple’s ‘ProKit,’ and Apple iOS1 — when multi-touch debuted in 2007, PayPal Mobile, and Huawei’s EMUI.
Brand
Suppose you want interactions with your brand to be more productive and sustainable. In that case, you should be thinking about establishing true relationships: I help create these relationships by distilling a company’s brand essence that cuts through the clutter and noise of the marketplace. I always partner with the best of the best industry, both up-and-coming designers and established agencies, such as Landor, Edenspiekermann, or Wondros. Brands I helped create or redefine include Apple’s iCloud, PayPal Mobile, Google X’s first spin-out, Nacero, and Huawei, to name a few.
Talent
Every company knows it needs (design) talent, but hiring and aligning that talent takes expertise. So you can bring me in as your (interim) Head /VP/ of… to help you build a successful design organization or direct work streams globally and with world-class external partners and talent. It is a kind of value-driven corporate culture. I can help you create, and my experience to ramp up your ambition and internal design capabilities to turn product strategies into success.
Strategy
I team with companies, investors, and venture funds to help build companies that transform lives worldwide. During my 10-year tenure at Apple, I led software application design teams and identified and conceived new product markets. As one of the best design strategy talents in the industry, I now advise startups and creative agencies on product roadmaps, user interface design, business development, launch plans, and more.
How I can work with you
The shape of my consulting engagements can be highly elastic, from just half a day or day to weeks, months, many months on end, and from ongoing part-time focus to a full-time relationship. Check the ‘services’ below for details.
Contact me today to book your first appointment.
Though it’s just me — that appears awfully small, don’t be deceived; my reach is wide, and I partner with the right talent to fit the needs of each project, regardless of the domain. I’ve created the world’s most iconic mobile devices, art-directed movies, and campaigns and launched VTOL vehicles, to name a few examples. Of course, this means I only take on a few projects at a time, so I carefully choose clients I genuinely believe in and maintain the world-class quality my partners and I are known.
Services
Head of Design
Often, companies, especially start-ups, find themselves without a head of design, whether they’ve just realized they needed one, the one they had left, or something temporary occurred that creates a gap. Whatever it is, you need someone in the quick order to straighten things up, bolster the team, or just keep a steady hand at the helm, someone who can work well with executives, engineers, and other cross-functional team members. I have built and led many design teams of different flavors and sizes and can readily assume the role, whatever the situation. In addition, I bring 20+ years of experience in cross-disciplinary design practice, creative direction, process development, recruiting and hiring, program management, and even product management.
Design Leadership
Some companies hire design team leaders who emerge from manager, engineering, or marketing backgrounds — yet often without formal training or education in design. As a result, they struggle fulfilling their new design leadership roles, as the skills that helped them succeed as a manager are not those that will help them lead and art direct designers. Having worked both as a hands-on designer and led teams for 20+ years, I know these challenges firsthand. And I’ve worked hard to develop my own ‘craft’ of design leadership and -management. I’ll work with you to figure out how best to realize leadership potential within your design organization, either by hiring the right talent or complementing the manager in your organization. Approaches include leadership assessment, ongoing coaching, advising, and, as needed, a workshop.
Design Critique
Through my work as an executive, design leader and manager, and entrepreneurial industry leader, I have coached and advised numerous executives, investors, and designers. I can provide the services of a thought partner who has ‘been there’, and can help you as you figure out just how to best move forward, whatever the situation is. Contact me to start a conversation about how we may best work together.
Talent & Hiring
Identifying and attracting great candidates is extremely difficult. Throughout my tenure at Apple, PayPal, and Huawei, and even as a start-up founder, I’ve staffed entire departments, including designers, researchers, and operations professionals across all levels of experience and for various industries, including start-ups. I can revise your recruiting and hiring practices from top-to-bottom: role definitions and job descriptions; strategies for sourcing candidates; best practices for initial outreach; an intelligent and sane interviewing process that respects everybody’s time; committing to that final hiring decision, and presenting an attractive offer. I will even roll up my sleeves and drive the hiring of talent and leadership roles.
Speaking and Workshops
I regularly speak at public events and corporate gatherings (offsites, design weeks, conferences, panels, etc.). In addition, I offer guidance about how to conduct workshops as an opportunity to dig into the more complex issues of design leadership and design organizations, as well as design talent.
Good to know
My strategic and creative wisdom and decade-long experience are rare and valuable assets. I can’t afford to give it away for free. I also know (from decades of experience) that the best work happens in a committed relationship. I, therefore, don’t take part in unpaid sessions where someone might get ‘my advice’ or ‘pick my brain.’ I offer for free to potential clients an initial design briefing via email and/or a 10-15 minute video assessment. Contact me today.
My Values
Essentialism
I’ve worked with the world’s most iconic companies on exceptional products, platforms, and ecosystems. In every project, I’ve started believing that the best design gets out of people’s way and that you can craft unforgettable experiences by keeping things simple and obsessing over the details. Via essentialism, I embrace my own truth: “I choose to only do a few things that matter, and while I can do anything, I won’t do everything. This allows me to do a few things, and those very well.
Quality
Many people talk about world-class and need to learn what it takes to become a yardstick of quality. Regarding design and my work, I pursue high-quality outcomes by effectively stewarding my time, talent, and resources. You will often hear me say, let’s do fewer things, and those truly well.
Integrity
I bring integrity and intellectual honesty to every relationship and decision. My goal is that through radical transparency, honesty, and carefully managing expectations, everyone knows where they stand and why.
Transparency
I provide transparency to traditionally opaque and closed design processes. You will always know how results or outcomes are achieved.
Humility
I approach every situation with humility in speech and action, albeit my radical transparency and honesty will sometimes be hard to accept, especially when telling the truth and candor in general.
Service
I serve and empower those I’m privileged to partner with — designers, engineers, talent, investors, and companies. Together, we’ll commit our focus to one purpose: improving people’s lives. We’ll reimagine and redesign how people communicate through their devices every day worldwide, and how they can be more productive, too.