{"id":853,"date":"2018-04-03T15:15:05","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T15:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev-design-lab.pantheonsite.io\/?p=853"},"modified":"2018-05-02T17:42:08","modified_gmt":"2018-05-02T17:42:08","slug":"don-norman-debates-john-maeda-of-automattic-the-company-behind-wordpress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3lectrik.com\/designlab\/don-norman-debates-john-maeda-of-automattic-the-company-behind-wordpress\/","title":{"rendered":"Don Norman debates John Maeda of Automattic, the company behind WordPress"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"gmail_default\">In January, world-renown executive, designer and technologist, John Maeda, and a team of 25 people from Automattic joined Don Norman and the UC San Diego Design Lab for a spirited debate. Automattic is a web development corporation that powers about 25 percent of all websites &#8211; the largest of any of the content-management systems. Maeda serves as the\u200e global head of computational design and inclusion at Automattic, which has 520 employees in over 50 countries and is currently valued at over $1 billion.<\/div>\n<div class=\"gmail_default\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"gmail_default\">Reflecting on the debate, Don Norman said, &#8220;It&#8217;s always a delight to talk with John Maeda about the nature of design and how it should be moving. To John and me, design is more than making pretty things, design is a way of thinking and approaching significant problems in society.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div class=\"gmail_default\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"gmail_default\">\n<div class=\"gmail_default\">While Automattic is most known as the company behind the free blogging service WordPress.com, it is also the company behind WooCommerce, Jetpack, Simplenote, Longreads, VaultPress, Akisment, Gravatar, Polldaddy, Cloudup and many others.\u00a0Automattic was founded a\u00a0belief of\u00a0making the web a better place\u00a0and their goal is to democratize publishing so that anyone with a story can tell it, regardless of income, gender, politics, language, or where they live in the world.<\/div>\n<div class=\"gmail_default\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"gmail_default\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1408\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/designlab.ucsd.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Maeda2.jpg?resize=980%2C590\" alt=\"\" width=\"980\" height=\"590\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"gmail_default\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"gmail_default\">\u00a0<strong>About John Maeda:<\/strong><\/div>\n<p>Maeda draws on his diverse background as an MIT-trained engineer, award-winning designer, and executive leader to help businesses and creatives push the boundaries of innovation in their markets and fields. As an artist, his early work redefined the use of electronic media as a tool for expression by combining computer programming with traditional artistic technique, laying the groundwork for the interactive motion graphics that are taken for granted on the web today.<\/p>\n<p>Maeda holds MS and BS degrees in Electrical Engineering + Computer Science from MIT, an MBA from Arizona State University, and a PhD from University of Tsukuba in Japan. He was the recipient of the White House\u2019s National Design Award, the Tribeca Film Festival\u2019s Disruptive Innovation Award for STEM to STEAM, the Blouin Foundation\u2019s Creative Leadership Award, the AIGA Medal, the Raymond Loewy Foundation Price, the Mainichi Design Prize, the Tokyo Type Director\u2019s Club Prize, and induction into the Art Director\u2019s Club Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n<p>Maeda is an internationally recognized speaker and author; his books include \u201cThe Laws of Simplicity,\u201d \u201cCreative Code,\u201d and \u201cRedesigning Leadership.\u201d \u00a0His talks for TED.com have received cumulative views of over 2 million to date.\u00a0Maeda previously served as Design Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield &amp; Byers (KPCB), a world-leading venture capital firm.\u00a0He was also previously a Full Professor and Associate Director of Research at the MIT Media Lab in which he worked on advanced user interface and experience design.<\/p>\n<p>Maeda is currently a board member for Sonos Inc (the leader in high fidelity wireless audio systems), Wieden + Kennedy (the world\u2019s last independent global advertising agency), Google (advising the Advanced Technology &amp; Projects group), and Cooper Hewitt (advancing the Smithsonian\u2019s mission to place design at the center of the nation).<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1410\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/designlab.ucsd.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Maeda3.jpg?resize=980%2C653\" alt=\"\" width=\"980\" height=\"653\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1411\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/designlab.ucsd.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Maeda4.jpg?resize=980%2C653\" alt=\"\" width=\"980\" height=\"653\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In January, world-renown executive, designer and technologist, John Maeda, and a team of 25 people from Automattic joined Don Norman and the UC San Diego Design Lab for a spirited debate. Automattic is a web development corporation that powers about 25 percent of all websites &#8211; the largest of any of the content-management systems. Maeda&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3450,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","entry","has-media"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/3lectrik.com\/designlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/John-Madea.jpg?fit=1513%2C1365&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3lectrik.com\/designlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3lectrik.com\/designlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3lectrik.com\/designlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3lectrik.com\/designlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3lectrik.com\/designlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3lectrik.com\/designlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3451,"href":"https:\/\/3lectrik.com\/designlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions\/3451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3lectrik.com\/designlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3lectrik.com\/designlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3lectrik.com\/designlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3lectrik.com\/designlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853"},{"taxonomy":"post_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3lectrik.com\/designlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_series?post=853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}