Punchcut Announces Expanded UX Research and Design Technology Practices to Help Businesses Thrive in Current Economy

Unmatched Insights and Expertise Accelerate Design for the Evolving Relationship Between Humans and Machines


SAN FRANCISCO, March 11, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Punchcut, an industry-leading digital product design firm, today announced two expanded practice areas within its Design Intelligence domain. These practices will focus on critical design disciplines dedicated to helping clients accelerate design and produce digital products that meet evolving customer expectations of more natural human-to-machine experiences. The expanded UX Research and Design Technology practices will be led by newly promoted directors Joy Wong Daniels and Emilo Passi and will provide Punchcut clients specialized expertise and design intelligence for leading edge digital products and interfaces.

“We’re keenly focused on applying systematic design thinking in nimble ways to help companies accelerate design to adapt their product experiences in the face of exponential change,” said Ken Olewiler, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Punchcut. “As businesses continue to navigate the changing landscape shaped by the pandemic, we’ve seen a huge increase in demand for research, analysis and methodologies that address ‘what’s next’ in consumer behaviors and preferences. At the same time, our clients are rapidly evolving their digital experiences to embrace intelligent technologies for more personalization and automation. Our expanded practice areas deliver on these needs and tap the power of design to drive business growth for our clients.”

These practices strengthen Punchcut’s core Design Acceleration services – Future Vision, Product Design and Team Growth -- that accelerate companies’ abilities to envision and realize more intelligent, immersive and systemic products for the future. Punchcut’s clients will benefit from Punchcut’s innovative leadership in Design Intelligence – human and machine discovery to identify customer needs and leverage new technologies for better user experiences.

UX Research Practice:
Punchcut’s UX Research practice is a specialized team of researchers and designers that deliver a full suite of strategic research services to uncover the most valuable human insights to drive new experience strategies and solutions. With degrees in Psychology, Human Factors, and Human-Computer Interaction, the team brings proven experience and expertise. Punchcut’s design-research approach employs proven methods, both qualitative and quantitative, to uncover what’s happening today and predict trends for the future.

Joy Wong Daniels, recently promoted to Director, will lead this practice. In her role, Joy collaborates with clients and design teams to transform research into actionable insights for emergent technologies. Joy is a tireless advocate for the human experience and has led research for major brands including Samsung, Google, Toyota, and Visa. An alumna of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design she also holds a master’s degree in Learning, Design & Technology from Stanford University. Joy has a wide range of experience from applying advanced research approaches and tools to generating insights that drive product design decisions.

Design Technology Practice:
Design Technology brings together a designer-developer mindset to focus R&D on emerging technologies, technical prototyping, and developing intelligent systems and tools that automate experiences for designers and end consumers. With Punchcut’s long history of partnering with major technology, health, and mobility companies, this practice provides technical insight in the early stages of product design to stand up prototypes and reference builds that help clients more quickly iterate and test new design solutions, and is focused on seeing “code” and “data” as design elements. Historically separate disciplines, design and code are becoming more convergent. And with the growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning, design technology will continue to require a deeper understanding of how machines think, feel and act in order to ensure they are supporting people in the most effective ways.

Emilio Passi, recently promoted to Director, will lead this practice. With a background in computer science and design, he’s made a career out of helping product and design teams build future-forward products. A maker at heart, Emilio has led Punchcut’s design technology and development initiatives for companies including Samsung, Google, Ford, and Amazon. Emilio is a seasoned technology leader, digital product designer, prototyper/developer, and UX consultant who helps clients build the right thing, the right way. Emilio specializes in high-fidelity UI prototyping and development, using code to design sophisticated interactivity and motion for a variety of media including web, mobile, watch, TV, voice, and XR. Emilio holds a Computer Science degree from California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo.

If you’d like to learn more about accelerating product and service design efforts in response to shifting consumer values and technology growth, we invite you to explore more from Punchcut:

Learn more about Punchcut’s Design Acceleration services

Review and Download Punchcut FutureView 2021 Report

Learn more about successful Punchcut client projects

Gain knowledge and insights from the Punchcut blog

About Punchcut

Punchcut is a digital product design and innovation company that specializes in future experience transformation. We consult with the world’s top companies to envision, design and realize next generation digital products and services that more consciously engage customers and transform businesses across emerging technologies. We provide Design Acceleration services that spark future vision, energize product design and fuel design team growth for our partners. Learn more at www.punchcut.com, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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