Launching the AI Safety 1.0 benchmark with MLCommons' AI Risk and Reliability working group (AIRR). The benchmark is an open source LLM evaluation tool that assesses the safety of LLM-driven text-to-text chat systems to identify and quantify hazards. I work closely with consortium leadership to identify partners, use cases, and to define benchmark goals and scope. Please get in touch if you're in AI Trust and Safety and interested in red teaming and LLM benchmarks: we want to talk to you!

I’m completing the Third Edition of Observing the User Experience, the user experience research textbook I wrote with Elizabeth Goodman (ISBN 978-0-12-384869-7). We’re updating it to include the challenges of UXR in the age of AI, emphasizing the opportunities and tools AI provides in helping entrepreneurs, product designers, and managers understand how people respond to technology. It will be out in 2025 on Elsevier. As part of my research for the book, I’m interviewing practitioners across AI, UX, and design. If you’re interested in talking, please reach out!

Sketching in Hardware is a global community focused on inventing tools that lower the barriers to building digital electronics. My goal is to let anyone create a digital electronic product as easily as they sketch on paper. Sketching in Hardware is both an annual invitation-only international summit and an active online community of diverse practitioners. It counts among its 850 members senior Apple, Intel, and Microsoft technology leaders, MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, and Cornell faculty, the inventors of the Arduino and BBC/Microsoft micro:bit, artists, educators, designers, and serial entrepreneurs.• As a community focused on the experience of electronic hardware prototyping tools, and how to make that experience more accessible, Sketching was likely the first event of its kind.• It directly influences the cutting edge of a rapidly changing digital electronics world by bringing together a diverse interdisciplinary group of professionals. Recently it has increasingly emphasized the impact of AI development at the edge.• I created a vertically integrated event organization. I hired a team to manage the logistics, I invite participants, identify locations for the event, guide the online community, develop every annual theme, create relationships, and present my own work.• Many attendees return year after year, regardless of whether we hold the event in the the middle of LAX, the Arizona desert, an 18th century dining hall in London, or a Masonic temple basement in Detroit.• The community is a professional ecosystem that fosters many successful collaborations. It inspired digital products, accelerated interoperability, and directly influenced everything from urban policy to children’s toys.• Sketching counts Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Arduino, SparkFun, and Seeed Studio among its recurring annual sponsors, received multiple National Science Foundation grants, and was the recipient of a significant grant from the Knight Foundation

I built an applied cognitive science R&D lab to look 3-5 years into Accenture’s clients’ future and transform how their employees and customers work and live. The lab combines emerging AI, neuroscience, and AR/VR. It produced 12+ working prototypes, filed 20+ patents, and generated $2B in client opportunities.• I define my lab’s multi-year integrated research vision (in short: distributed cognition) and guide its project portfolio. Recent projects include a VR + EEG + ML tool for first responder training, a LLM + agent system to translate jargon in online meetings, and a 3D generative AI pipeline for product ideation.• Recruited a diverse and skilled team of professionals, each holding a PhD. I coached the team and individual members to translate research aims into specific projects and follow through to rigorous scientific results that support enterprise goals.• Lead product development with full-stack teams to deploy our research as scalable tools. Accenture leadership presented these tools at CES and the World Economic Forum in 2023 and 2024.Initiated collaborative initiatives with internal teams and MIT, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Cornell Tech, CMU, and UC Santa Cruz research labs. These produced multiple publications, and directly influenced Accenture’s Tech Vision. Projects included VR for robot teleoperation, generative audio guidance for training, detecting human responses to robot errors, a decision-making AI assistant for patients, VR generative design exploration, and EEG speech detection.• My team filed 20 patents: synthetic EEG generation to preserve privacy and train ML on rare signals, style grammars for AI-assisted design, multi-agent decision support for complex decisions, and brand-specific Generative AI image training.• Led SF lab-wide initiatives: recruiting/hiring, speaker series, and tools, policies and practices for ethical research. I expanded each initiative, added clarity and rigor, documented practices, and created strategic plans.

I founded the user experience practice at PARC and helped build it into one of PARC’s largest technical groups. My team collaborated closely with PARC’s world-renowned scientists to leverage their groundbreaking innovations in deep learning AI, printed electronics, indoor radar, and multi-material 3D printing. We created novel products and services for PARC’s Fortune 500 clients and for Xerox. We created everything from printed electronic cryptographic packaging to building-wide indoor sensor networks.

I built an interdisciplinary team of designers, researchers, and prototypers to translate technological innovations created by PARC research scientists into novel products and to explore new markets for our clients.• I defined the capabilities for the UX team, recruited all the members, and coached the team as we invented and refined design and research techniques for emerging technologies. I supervised the development of prototypes.• We invented and patented cryptographic printed electronics, electronic feminine hygiene and surgical dressing bioassays, and multiple other products at the intersection of embedded electronics, cloud services, and healthcare.• I led client engagement for the team, for which I created and delivered presentations, proposals, and developed new product offerings with PARC’s sales team. This led to $1M in annual direct sales for team work, with high potential TAM for our inventions for clients.• I sponsored the creation of an AI Ethics Review Board and served as one of its founding members. We developed one of the earliest modern frameworks for ethical AI research and design practice, and open sourced it.• Advised PARC and Xerox senior leadership (CEO of PARC, Xerox VP of Strategy) on applications of new technologies, and worked closely with PARC’s AI and 3D printing pioneers to develop new approaches to commercializing their inventions.

Created, co-organized and promote a series of joint industry-academic workshops on user experience design aspects of emerging AI. I wrote the original proposal to the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the leading international society for the study and promotion of AI. I invited senior co-organizers from industry, academic, and design: Google, Carnegie-Mellon and the Art Center. The workshops attracted key international practitioners from across the spectrum: Spotify, IBM, Stanford, etc. The workshops were warmly received and highly influential.

I co-founded and led a hardware manufacturing company that has sold over 300,000 units globally and counts Amazon and Google among its largest customers. The company designs, manufactures, and sells smart open source LED lighting hardware for data centers, warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and R&D prototyping.• As the product and business co-founder, I developed the business model, guided product design, set up the manufacturing supply chain, led sales and negotiated distribution agreements, and organized all operations.• With my technical co-founder partner we built a completely virtual electronics manufacturing company by directly negotiating with contract manufacturers and distributors.• We built the company without using any outside funding, using several successful $100K+ Kickstarter campaigns to provide seed funding. The company now employs several people in California.• The company has sold 200,000+ units of its most popular product, the blink(1) LED, and 100,000+ units of its other products. Major customers include Amazon and Google.• Support for our blink(1) USB LED light is included by default in the Linux kernel, which makes it usable by billions of devices around the world.

Co-founded an influential consultancy focused on high-value UX design and strategy to Fortune 500 companies. Engagement manager, lead designer, and head researcher. Led in-house branding and positioning. Clients included: National Public Radio, Overture Services/Yahoo, Crayola, Sony, Yamaha, Cypress Semiconductor. Adaptive Path was acquired by Capital One in 2014.