Michael is an industry leading human interface designer with 20 years providing insight performing research and product experience planning for startups and Fortune 100 companies, including five years designing presentations for Steve Jobs' keynotes.

With a missionary spirit and background in comparative media studies, Michael has enjoyed working with world-class teams at Sony, 3Com, Cisco and Apple. His work spans mobile, product and web interfaces, applications and the connected experiences that captivate people to create deep brand affinity.

Michael's approach to humanizing the innovation process begins with translating unmet customer needs into product strategy. He conducts research, synthesizes, diagrams, prototypes and designs solutions. Exploring the connection between experience and meaning in an accessible manner allows him to shift thinking and focus on meaningful and connected strategies for products and services so that his designs can connect with people in a meaningful way by gathering audience data to gain insights into how they live.

Each company needs to have a clear understanding of the key emotional connectors that tie audience to product. Michael's techniques have been proven to uncover these connectors in order to inform a company’s overall product strategy and have strengthened the ties between products, brands and audience for many breakthrough product experiences many of us have grown to know and love such as iCloud, iTunes, and the iLife suite of apps.

Investigating the boundaries between identity construction, object narrative and the connected self Michael is also chapter founder of IxDA San Diego, Design Partner and Principal Coach at darius design, a design for service practice and building information management for service interaction and building design practice for startups.