Nathan Shedroff

Davis Masten Chairman &Catalyst, Cheskin

Nathan Shedroff is one of the pioneers in Experience Design, an approach to design that encompasses multiple senses and requirements as well as related fields, Interaction Design and Information Design. His speaking, books, teaching, and projects all support this new direction of design. Part designer, part entrepreneur, his skills lend themselves to strategic thinking and design for companies who want to exploit the strengths of experience media in order to build better experiences for their customers and themselves in a variety of media, including: print, digital, online, and product design. Growing-up in Silicon Valley has given him an entrepreneurial understanding and outlook. He currently lives in San Francisco where the climate, culture, and industry make it easy to have an esoteric and amorphous sounding title like Experience Strategist and actually make a living. Nathan earned a BS in Industrial Design, with an emphasis on Automobile Design from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. However, fear of Detroit, coupled with a passion for information design led Nathan into this arena, where he worked with Richard Saul Wurman at TheUnderstandingBusiness. Later, he co-founded vivid studios, a decade-old pioneering company in interactive media. vivids hallmark was helping to establish and validate the field of information architecture, by training an entire generation of designers in the newly emerging Web industry. Nathan has recently established a software company called Deluxe, which builds coordination tools for small businesses. He teaches and speaks often at international colleges, like the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy, where he serves on the advisory board. He has written extensively on the subject, including, Experience Design 1, which explores common characteristics in all media that make experiences successful, and maintains a website with resources on Experience Design at http://www.nathan.com/ed Nathan was nominated for a Chrysler Innovation in Design Award in 1994 and 1999 and a National Design Award in 2001.

Davis Masten creates customer inspired breakthroughs for his clients with innovative brand and product experiences. Davis joined Cheskin Associates, Inc. in 1975 and worked closely with founder, author and motivation research pioneer Louis Cheskin. Davis stepped down as the CEO of Cheskin+Masten to gain increasing flexibility to pursue his passions. Focusing on the areas of branding, trust, Hispanic culture, innovation and grass roots, Davis has offered his expertise to more than 2,500 projects in innovation for retail environments, packaging, interactive environments, corporate positioning and identity, as well industrial design. He is a pioneer in expanding client perspectives, offering a unique and time-tested view of marketplace trends. He applied ethnography to branding in the early 1980's. Current clients include Microsoft and Coca-Cola among many others. In 2003, Davis was selected to be a mentor at the Oxford University School of Business and a member of the President's Circle of the National Academy of Sciences. Additionally, Davis recently finished his tenure as a board member of TRUSTe. Davis also stepped down as Chair of the AIGA Center for Brand Experience where they explore the variety of points of interaction between brand, culture, science and technology.  Davis is an established authority. He has been a guest on Good Morning America and other television programs. Speaking engagements include the American Marketing Association, the Graduate Business Schools at Stanford, UCLA and Berkeley, the American Management Association, International Institute of Research, AIGA, IDSA and numerous other conferences. The author of many articles, most recently he coauthored an article for the Design Management Journal on Digital Ethnography appearing in the Spring 2003 issue and has an article inBrenda Laurel's new book called Design Research. Davis has been quoted in many publications, including Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Marketing News, Ad Week and Ad Age.

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