MAYA Design

MAYA Design Inc. is a technology design firm and innovation lab founded in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States in 1989. MAYA helps companies design more usable and useful technology products, as well as information-rich services and environments. It has established a pervasive computing practice to help companies design smart connected products, environments, and services. The name MAYA is based on an acronym coined by the industrial designer Raymond Loewy, and stands for Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. The company’s tag line is “taming complexity.”

MAYA was started in 1989 as MAYA Design Group by Peter Lucas (a cognitive psychologist), Joseph Ballay (an industrial designer), and James Morris (a computer scientist). At the time, all were colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University. In 1998, the name was changed to MAYA Design, Inc. The current President and CEO is Mickey McManus.

MAYA has been selected as a “Top Small Company to Work For in America” by Inc. Magazine , Fortune Small Business, and Entrepreneur Magazine.

MAYA has created four spin-off companies: MAYA Group in 1998, MAYA Viz in 1998, now called GD-Viz since being acquired by General Dynamics in 2005; Rhiza Labs, spun out in 2008 and LUMA Institute, in 2010.

Human-Centered Design

The company practices Human-Centered Design (HCD) with an interdisciplinary team of engineers (computer, mechanical, and electrical engineers), human-scientists (cognitive psychologists, anthropologists, human-computer interaction specialists), and visual designers (industrial designers, communication designers, film makers, brick and mortar architects, and game designers).

Research Agenda

In addition to doing commercial technology-design, MAYA has a research practice that focuses on two primary areas:

  • Information-centric computing, which explores the aggressive use of direct manipulation in the context of well-defined "physics-based" interaction rules. The company has done extensive research and development work in this area under awards from the Defense Advanced Programs Agency (DARPA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST.) Its Visage collaborative visualization platform was developed with leaders of the SAGE research project at Carnegie Mellon University and is the framework for the Command Post of the Future. Work in this area has also been applied to global public information systems, transportation logistics, and [...]-discovery.
  • Architectures for pervasive/ubiquitous computing, which explores how to structure and build radically decentralized information devices for an era with more than a trillion nodes.

Major Clients

Major clients of MAYA have included ADT, Bayer Healthcare, Bobcat, Bosch, Ciba Vision, Comcast, DARPA, Dun & Bradstreet, Eaton, Eastman Kodak, EV3/Covidien, Fidelity Investments, GE Energy, General Dynamics, Hewlett-Packard, Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, Lutron, Merrill Lynch, NIST, Philips Electronics, Respironics, RSA, St. Jude Medical, Seagate, Siemens, Samsung Electronics, Target, and Whirlpool.

See also

  • Brainstorming
  • Design management
  • Design methods
  • Design thinking
  • Ethnography
  • Human factors
  • Innovation
  • Industrial design
  • Interaction design
  • Internet of Things
  • Pervasive computing
  • User centered design
  • User experience