The Mayor of Saint Étienne, France cordially kicked off a two-hour long presentation on #DesignInTech in a collaboration between Automattic Design and the Material Design team at Google. Complete context for the collaboration is available on our aptly named microsite:
https://materialdesignandautomatticdesigninfrance.blog/
Direct jump to talks by Dave Martin | Jeff Ong | Kunal Patel | Alison Rand and Dylin Martin | Alexis Lloyd View the exhibits online with focus on Typography | Elevation | Components | Icons | Colors.
Our two-hour video was shot at the cool Saint Étienne Line Center covering Design in Tech Report, Material Design, The Four Planets, Automating Asset Creation, Design Ops, and a Meditation On The Open Web:
Speaker Bios
Rachel Been is the Creative Director for the Material Design team at Google where she leads the design system for both Google and the greater developer/designer community. Rachel has additionally launched the imagery system for Google, served as the creative director of Emojis, and was the first Art Director on Google Play, redesigning the brand and introducing editorial design and original imagery to the store.
Alexis Lloyd is Head of Design Innovation at Automattic. Design, UX, and product leader whose work focuses on creating experiences that push the boundaries of how we engage with information. Previously Chief Design Officer at Axios and Creative Director of The New York Times R&D Lab. Alexis is an accomplished writer and public speaker who skillfully convenes conversations amongst diverse groups about the future of design, technology, and UX.
Dave Martin is a Principal Designer at Automattic. Prior to this he was VP of Product & Design at Help Scout, Creative Director at Automattic, and Lead Designer at Campaign Monitor. His interests span design, development, and business with a particular passion for product design, open source, remote work, and user onboarding. Dave adores clean, usable, bloat-less interfaces. He’s a fan of user research, data informed design, making quick iterative improvements, and polishing everything until it’s just right.
Dylin Martin is a Program Manager on Google’s Design Relations team and works closely with Google’s top partners to deliver beautiful digital experiences to the world through Material Design. She’s also a trained Sprint Master and has worked with several companies — from startups to corporations — to solve product problems in a Design Sprint. Martin holds a B.A. in Philosophy from U.C. Berkeley that she insists is totally relevant to her job.
Jeff Ong is a Design Director of Creative Technology at Automattic, leading initiatives to develop computational systems that automate and scale our design processes across brand and product. Before Automattic, Jeff worked as a technology lead for frog design, prototyping and developing interactive experiences (apps, connected devices, physical installations & environments) for clients including Chipotle, Cigna, Deutsche Telekom, Under Armour, AT&T, and Verizon. He has also been on a robot-fighting reality TV show in China.
Kunal Patel is a Senior Interaction Designer on the Material Design team at Google, creating design patterns and guidelines for beautiful, usable applications adopted by designers and developers around the world. He holds an MFA in Design & Technology from Parsons The New School for Design, and a Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University.
Alison Rand is Head of Design Operations at Automattic. Design operations leader whose work combines personnel management systems combined with project management expertise to enable scaling design. Previously Director of Program management at frog and Director of Program Planning at Hot Studio (acquired by Facebook). Alison’s passion is to create cross-disciplinary teams and environments with operational structures that enable them to pursue the best creative work of their lives.
Automattic Design 