I was born in Pistoia, a beautiful small city in Tuscany near Florence, Italy.
Growing up in the cradle of the Renaissance, I was lucky to be immersed by the timeless masterpieces of masters like Leonardo, Botticelli, and Brunelleschi.

I soon became passionate about design, programming, and electronics. I studied design at the University of Florence, where I fell in love with photography, theater, cinema, and creativity in all its forms. I was inspired by the ideas, values, and teachings of Bruno Munari and Adriano Olivetti. At that time I started an online community called Officina Creativa, to help students, creatives, and designers around Italy connect, learn, and share ideas.

As I learned more about design and technology, I was inspired by Douglas Engelbart conceptual framework and Vannevar Bush's 1945 essay "As We May Think" to explore how to augment human intellect. I grew passionate about interaction design, HCI, user experience, and learned about the work and ideas of Ivan Sutherland, Alan Kay, Alan Cooper, Bill Verplank, Bill Moggridge, Bill Buxton, and Don Norman.

In 2006, for my final university project, I explored new types of interactions using touch interfaces, and developed an application focusing on the direct manipulation of UI and content on screen. It was a new approach at the time, and little I knew that just one year later the first iPhone would be announced, pushing those concepts to the next level and fundamentally changing how we think and interact with technology.

From there my journey started: I left my hometown in Italy to follow my passions and travel the world. I lived in London, Stockholm, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco. I learned new cultures, worked at great companies, and met incredible people that helped me see the world from different perspectives, inspiring me to stay curious and keep learning.

During these years I've been exploring new interaction paradigms, studied the evolution of our relationship with technology, and had the opportunity to work on the incubation of innovative products that have the potential to improve people's lives. I've immersed myself in different industries learning about marketing, education, gaming, productivity, manufacturing, automotive.

I worked with different technologies and interfaces, learning about touch, gestures, voice, gaze, EEG, AI, holograms. And the more I learned and the more I reflected on the role and purpose of technology - how can it be ethically applied to create meaningful solutions that help improve people's lives?

I had the opportunity to build, lead, and grow organizations, defining strategies, shipping products, and learned the importance of growing the next generation of leaders and focus on culture to create successful products and services. I was inspired by Ed Catmull's book "Creativity inc", and committed to build inclusive, transparent, and collaborative environments that foster creativity and enable everyone to express their full potential and achieve great results.

This journey led me to work with brilliant teams on exciting projects, including reinventing spatial computing at Microsoft, mobility at Zoox, and personal AI at Google.

I've been invited to share my ideas and experience at conferences all around the world, and had the immense privilege to be invited to teach interaction and product design to new generations of students and professionals.

Work Experience

UX Director
2022 - Present, San Francisco

At Google, I'm helping to shape the future of Personal AI and build solutions that are easy to use, always helpful, and accessible to everyone. Through natural interactions, contextual awareness, and human literacy - we have the opportunity to enable more people to have frictionless access to knowledge, boost creativity and productivity, and make things happen on users' behalf.

Currently focusing on Gemini, generative AI, LLMs, and enhancing AI expertise and capabilities.

Senior Director, Product Experience
2019 - 2022, San Francisco

Zoox is developing the next generation of mobility - a new, fully autonomous electric vehicle, designed from the ground up to move beyond our concept of cars, and provide an unprecedented experience for passengers and our cities. A new service to help shift society away from single vehicle ownership, toward a shared, autonomous, electric transportation platform.

At Zoox, I am responsible for all the aspects of the product experience, including research, design, product, and prototyping. I'm growing a team of exceptional talents to research, invent, and design solutions that address the unique challenges around autonomous mobility, and define new interaction paradigms to help advance the human experience through design.

Principal Director
2013 - 2018, Seattle

At Microsoft I created and led teams to build innovative applications, devices, and platforms, including the incubation of Microsoft HoloLens, the first untethered mixed reality headset, HoloLens 2, Surface Hub 2, Surface Duo. And the first mixed reality applications, for both consumers and enterprise, including Remote Assist and Layout.

Creative Director
2010 - 2013, London and New York

B-REEL is an independent creative agency. As Creative Director of the London office we were working at the interaction of interaction and storytelling. During those years B-Reel became the most awarded Digital Production Company working on both digital and physical campaigns like Google Web Lab.
There I started new internal R&D program exploring new interaction concepts, and ways to blend digital and physical world together, like EELS. In New York I started new department to focus on proactively incubating our technologies, defined an innovation pipeline for all our studios around the world and invented Escape Flight and Mind Scalextric.

Interactive Director
2009 - 2010, London

Specialmoves was an award winning digital production studio, helping companies create digital experience, including Rolex and Nokia. As Interactive Director I worked on multiple projects to define new interactions and started new R&D program to explore new interaction models across for collaboration across devices.

Tech Lead, Senior Developer
2007 - 2009, London + Stockholm

UNIT9 is an award winning global production partner focusing on VR, Digital, Gaming, Innovation and Film projects. As tech lead and senior developer I worked on creating innovative interfaces and interactive experiences, including Simple Machines, and online educational game for the Museum of Science of Chicago.

Interaction Designer
2005 - 2006, Firenze

The Media Integration and Communication Center (MICC) was established by the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research at the University of Florence in 2001 as a Center of Excellence in the area of new media. The MICC works as an interdisciplinary center for advanced research in the fields of computer vision, multimedia technologies applied to smart environments, natural interaction, Internet Based Applications and collective intelligence.