Melissa is a design leader, practitioner, and educator whose 20+ year career has spanned developing digital products and services in healthcare, e-commerce, energy management, arts and entertainment, social media and internet technologies. Her education and practice are deeply rooted in human-centered and value sensitive methodologies pulling from psychology, cognitive and behavioral science, philosophy, ethics, and futurism. She has a deep interest in how technology shapes the more intimate aspect of the human experience such as death, relationships, raising children, eating, and navigating our environment.
She currently serves as a Principal Design Director at Google where her teams develop digital product experiences intersection for Google Search. Prior to Google, she led Product Design for Integrity & Safety at Facebook developing products to give people more control over their experience, increase safety, and minimize bad experiences. She also led design at Collective Health, a platform for delivering more human-centered, modernized health benefits and led design initiatives at Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, SFMOMA, Hyundai, and Pacific Gas & Electric. Her teams have won numerous awards for their innovative work including Fast Company’s Innovation Award, Interaction Design Association Award, AIGA Design Award, and the Ptolemy Data Science Award. Outside of tech, she has served as faculty and guest lecturer at California College of the Arts, the University of Evansville, Interaction Design Association, SXSW, IA Summit, and UX Week San Francisco.
MFA, California College of the Arts, 2009
BS, University of Evansville, 2003
