As Head of Product Design & Research at Oracle, Jod leads a design practice that strives to meaningfully impact climate change and provide SaaS solutions that bring critical energy services to populations globally. Jod has more than 20 years of extensive end-to-end expertise in the enterprise and at both agencies and start-ups driving cross-channel experiences across platforms for blue chip clients such as Sony, Microsoft, Riot Games, Google, and Wells Fargo. Jod has always pushed for businesses to become human-centered and provide solutions that are resilient and seek enduring value. Before leading design teams at Oracle and Accenture Song, Jod was an experience designer and strategist at shops such as Razorfish and Possible, where he’s been exposed to a large spectrum of business models and design problems, from CPG, Financial Services and Entertainement to Non-Profits, start-ups, and innovation labs. Jod has an MFA from Naropa University and and BFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. When not at home in Los Angeles, Jod is probably hiking with his wife, 12-year-old son, and dog in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Past Talks
10 October 2024
Should UX designers prioritise designing solutions for the ever-changing future (Design for Tomorrow) or focus on delivering practical solutions with immediate benefits (Design for Today)?
Practicality vs. Investment: Do the costs of deep futurism outweigh the potential benefits?
Agility vs. Vision: Can a long-term vision hinder an organization's ability to adapt to change?
17 May 2024
Most organizations struggle today with the pace of change, especially as it applies to the tension between capturing near-term revenue and long-term market viability. While there are popular frameworks, such as the 3 Horizon framework that inform planning, few organizations apply futurist principles and methodologies to the 3rd horizon, missing an opportunity to apply evidence-based imagination on the futures that we want to author now.
Jod will share insights on how futurism practices can be integrated into the product design sphere to create a visionary blueprint for innovation. He will illustrate how a commitment to experimentation and adopting a long-term thinking mindset can lead to groundbreaking products and services that resonate with generations to come.
Learn about the methods and mindsets that empower designers to transcend traditional boundaries and engage with the future as an active element of their design process. From embracing 10-year time horizons and longer, such expansive thinking contributes to the creation of products and services that not only fit into a long-term vision but also catalyze the very future they envision.
Prepare to be inspired by a future-forward approach that fuses the essence of futurism with practical design strategies to drive progress and pave the way for a new world of innovation, today.