A legend in his own mind (microbiography)
Michael’s approach to humanizing the design process begins with translating unmet customer needs into product strategy. Through synthesis Michael conducts research, designs diagrams, and builds prototypes. Exploring the connection between experience and meaning in an accessible manner allows Michael to shift thinking and focus on meaningful and connected strategies for products and services so that his design work may connect with people in a more visceral way by gathering audience data to gain insights into how people live their lives.
Upon setting his desk on fire in 1st grade, Michael Darius learned that you could affect change by design at a very early age. Born to an immigrant entrepreneur fleeing the onslaught of theocratic dictatorship, Michael learned to channel this rebel spirit and deep dissatisfaction with mediocre attitudes towards suffering through his unwavering commitment to framing wicked design problems plaguing humanity.
Beginning his design career on a KoalaPad and an Apple //e, design and game learning using a stylus with programming languages like logo 🐢 and pascal would be a part of Michael’s early design education and introduction to ergonomics, embodied knowledge and device augmentation research. The college drop out stories of Silicon Valley titans like Steve Jobs would soon become a part of Michael’s own hero’s journey as he was pulled out of college by Sony to design the company intranet.
Migrating from Southern California to Cupertino was the only logical next step for him where he went on to build Apple’s first centralized design team as the first designer on Steve’s soon-to-be favorite team of designers. Proud of the work they were doing, Michael was responsible for the first versions of the products and services many of us have come to know and love such as iTunes, GarageBand and iCloud.
After his 5 year tenure, Michael would soon call Apple family with his leadership skills persistently sharpened and honed by other veterans of the company. However, putting a ding in the universe did not stop with iTunes. Michael took his design practice private and has since been democratizing legacy industries and servicing the design needs of socially conscious projects ever since.
Each company needs to have a clear understanding of the key emotional connectors that tie audience to product. Michael’s techniques have been proven to uncover connectors in order to inform a company’s overall business strategy while strengthening the ties between products, brands and audience for many breakthrough product experiences.
In 2022, Michael and ALANA were married and founded roses/foundation (🥀.fm), a family operated cottage industry incubator for product design and artist development.
