Blurring the Lines: From Human Centered Design to Customer Driven Development

At Hot Studio, Inc., Josh Damon Williams is a Director of Product Strategy and he works with clients to make cool things. As a local leader for IxDA in San Francisco, he brings some of the best thinkers in interaction design to the design community in order to talk about cool things.

Since the late 20th century, he’s designed and developed for a wide variety of digital products and platforms, contributing to the vision, design, and implementation of projects at strategic and tactical levels. His work includes projects for LeapFrog, Hotwire.com, The World Heritage Alliance (a partnership between the UN Foundation and Expedia, Inc.), eBay.com, Cisco Systems, Warner Music Group, and Architecture for Humanity.

Prior to rediscovering San Francisco, Josh studied film in Los Angeles and slaved away for seven hard years in the animation industry where he supervised the digital composition of animated TV shows, commercials and video games. His most indulgent endeavor was the recent completion of an MFA in creative writing at University of San Francisco.

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For over 15 years, Darren has traversed the blurry edges at the intersection of technology and design, exploring nearly every conceivable project role as both client and contributor. His rich and storied career has wound from paper to pixels to people, across a myriad of companies and ventures that ultimately led to several “world’s firsts” and awards. At Stimulant, he provides business, vision and experience design leadership for an inspiring team of like-minded compatriots and pioneers, from whom he learns something new every day.

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Maria Giudice is the CEO and Founder of Hot Studio, Inc., a San Francisco-based, human-centered design studio dedicated to making the complex beautifully clear. Maria is considered a pioneer in the field of information architecture and was prominently featured in the 1996 book Information Architects by Richard Saul Wurman. In 2002, she was included in the book 1000 Most Creative Individuals in the USA. Maria has coauthored two best-selling books about web design: Web Design Essentials and Elements of Web Design. Since 1997 Maria has lead Hot Studio’s team of individuals dedicated to creating design systems that are both beautiful and highly functional. Maria has more than 20 years of experience working with and mentoring people from many different disciplines. Maria holds a degree from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and has spoken about design and the power of collaboration at conferences around the world.

Alon Salant is a founder and owner of Carbon Five, a software development firm dedicated to delivering high value software through an agile collaboration with its clients. Alon has over ten years experience delivering web applications to his clients. His areas of expertise include Agile Coaching, software design, automated testing and rubber-hits-the-road software development. He has written articles and book contributions for O’Reilly and spoken at JavaOne, CodeCon and Bay Area-based user groups on technology and process topics. He holds a degree in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Rob Spiro is the co-founder of Aardvark, a fifteen-person startup in San Francisco working on Social Search. As assistant curator of birds, he leads user research and product design. Previously, Rob worked in consulting and co-founded Mifly, a mobile software startup. Rob holds a BA in History from Yale.