MJ

My given name is Michael but people call me MJ.

I'M A DESIGNER
As a kid, I took every day things apart to understand how they work. Later, studio art taught me how to create from empty space. With the emergence of the Internet and my graduate studies at NYU I realized the power and potential of combining these two. I have been hooked ever since. I thrive on taming the complex within new systems and services and building products with passionate teams. 

I'VE BEEN INSPIRED AND CHALLENGED
Over the past decade, I have been able to study and learn from visionaries and pioneers, Red Burns of NYU's ITP, Hartmut Eslinger of frog and Bob Greenberg of R/GA. Their vision, organizations and processes, taught me how to take ideas from white-space to workshop and prototype to product launch. With core depth in UX and Design Research, I've been fortunate to be hands on with the voice recognition that powered Siri, the first cloud services of AT&T and the complexity of building an early smart phone from scratch. 

I BUILD WORLD CLASS TEAMS
At present, I lead a cross-disciplinary design studio, Fjord San Francisco, owned by Accenture. I have grown the team from an initial fifteen to seventy. Success is grounded in culture building, talent cultivation, and new practice expansion. I work hands-on and through process and structure. I insist on solutions that are elegant, simple, informed by emotion, logic and curiosity. Prior to Fjord, I helped grow the Interaction Design and Design Research practice of frog, established frog Sydney with initial team of thirty and anchor client, Telstra. Between, I was ECD for RGA San Francisco, leading a three-year transformation from single client campaign work to digital product creation, including a re-staffing and growth of 300% and dramatic reduction in attrition.

See the work