Shaun Modi

CEO

Washington, District of Columbia, United States17 yrs 6 mos experience
Most Likely To SwitchAI Enabled

Key Highlights

  • Founder of Capitol AI, driving AI research and storytelling.
  • Key designer at Airbnb, shaping user experience for millions.
  • Patented innovations in user personalization at Google.
Stackforce AI infers this person is a highly experienced designer specializing in AI-driven user experience across multiple industries.

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Skills

Core Skills

Artificial Intelligence (ai)User Experience Design (ued)Design StrategyUser ExperienceProduct DesignVisual DesignIndustrial Design

Other Skills

Customer ExperienceEmerging TechnologyDesign ThinkingUser-Centered DesignExperience DesignUser InterfaceUser Interface DesignInteraction DesignHuman Interface DesignHCISketchingConcept DesignInDesignInformation ArchitectureCustomer Journeys

About

Shaun Modi is the founder and CEO of Capitol AI, a venture-backed technology company that empowers anyone to research and tell stories with artificial intelligence. One of the founding designers of Airbnb, Shaun has been named one of Business Insider’s Top 75 Designers in Technology. Shaun specializes in blending business strategy, emerging technology, and UX design; he is known for decoding complicated design challenges in service of business growth, operational excellence, and customer experience. Shaun’s work spans artificial intelligence, transportation, space exploration, national defense and emergency management. Shaun has designed software products for technology giants, the government, and its agencies, including Google, the White House, the Department of Defense, DoD Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, NASA, CDC, Airbnb, Motorola, and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. At Airbnb, Shaun worked side by side with CEO Brian Chesky at the start to articulate and design Airbnb’s full customer journey and user experience. A fee-free cash transfer app Shaun designed for Sendwave is currently used by three million Africans every day. At NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Shaun worked on the design of a lunar base proposed for the polar region of the moon. And for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Shaun designed software that detects and disrupts extremist recruiting activity. Shaun serves as an advisor to the White House and as a guest lecturer at MIT's School of Engineering and Sloan School of Management on the topics of design, technology, and product development. Personal life -Started coding at the age of 13 -Launched first business, a sustainable shoe company, in 7th grade. Redesigned people’s junky shoes into wearable art using found objects—and sold them back to the original owners. The line was discovered by Nike -Met wife at Airbnb. Together they have three children -Everyone in his family is a graphic designer—both parents and his sister. The Modi family has done work for the New York Times, UNICEF, and New York’s MTA subway system -Grandfather David Z. Beckler served as the Chief of Staff of the President’s Science Advisory Committee under six presidents, starting with President Eisenhower

Experience

Capitol ai

CEO

Jul 2021Present · 4 yrs 8 mos · United States

  • Capitol is the fastest way to create research based content with artificial intelligence. Capitol gives you superpowers to convince, persuade, and educate your audience.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)Customer ExperienceUser Experience Design (UED)

Office of the director of national intelligence

Strategic Advisor

Jan 2020Jan 2021 · 1 yr

Tm

Co-Founder and Managing Partner

Oct 2014Feb 2021 · 6 yrs 4 mos · San Francisco

  • TM is a product design and innovation group in San Francisco. Its mission is to support enterprising teams looking to improve the world through technology.
  • TM leverages business strategy, emerging technology, and UX design to engineer entirely new ways to realize real-world, immediate value for established businesses looking to change—and startups looking to change the world.
  • Founded by the minds that designed Airbnb’s ecosystem from the ground up, TM blends creative and pragmatic experience working with leaders to define a product’s vision in order to drive measurable, meaningful impact. We specialize in using design to integrate complex, emerging technologies—artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, geospatial data, and more—into your product in the most intuitive way possible.
  • Clients include startups, technology companies, and government agencies. They span industries including healthcare, cybersecurity, transportation, enterprise applications, financial services, and consumer products. Whether a pre-launch startup or a modernizing institution—our clients are looking to reimagine themselves through emerging technology as a way to take control of their future and growth
Design StrategyUser ExperienceEmerging Technology

Airbnb

Design Lead

Feb 2012Jun 2014 · 2 yrs 4 mos · San Francisco

  • Served as one of the first product designers at Airbnb. Worked closely with CEO Brian Chesky to define the company’s product vision, strategy, and user experience, helping to shape its transformation from a low-cost alternative to hotels to its current state as a travel marketplace that’s been used by over 500 million guests across every country in the world (except for North Korea, Iran, and Sudan).
  • Some of Shaun’s most notable projects and experiences at Airbnb include:
  • Led user research and design teams to reinvent the booking experience on the guest and host sides of the marketplace.
  • Led product development of Airbnb Wish Lists, which introduced a viral distribution and sharing mechanism into the product; in turn, Wish Lists helped to increase conversion and became an entirely new organic marketing channel.
  • Architected a rehaul of Airbnb’s visual design system, which emphasized immersive and inspirational photography of homes and destinations. Soon after the launch of the redesign, engagement with the Airbnb website increased by 30%.
  • Collaborated with CEO Chesky to create an early prototype of the Airbnb Experiences product, which is now the company’s fastest-growing business unit
User ExperienceProduct DesignVisual Design

Google

UX Design Lead

Mar 2010Apr 2011 · 1 yr 1 mo

  • Led design on a skunkworks team collaborating closely with co-founder Sergei Brin and Andy Herzfeld (lead engineer of Google Circles) to unify and personalize the Google experience across the company’s entire suite of products. Worked closely with product leadership, designers, engineering, managing executives and founders across multiple properties, including Google Maps, Chrome, and the Google product ecosystem.
  • Key initiatives included:
  • Unified Google product experience: Led design of high-profile project that introduced a single user identity to connect customer actions across Google’s core properties: Gmail, Maps, Search, and YouTube. This project introduced more personalization into the Google ecosystem and was core to Google’s transformation into a more cohesive, people-centered product. This work also included creating a shared visual language and global site navigation across Gmail, Maps, Search and YouTube. Worked on a system and method for personalizing content for a user, which incorporated user feedback in order to continuously update the machine learning model. Shaun later received a patent for this method of organizing a stream of content. Shaun received additional patents during this time for displaying related content in a content stream, content access control in a social network, and scoring stream items with models based on user interests.
  • Google Maps: Contributed advanced features and functionality to Google Maps, including 3D map view, metadata overlays, and augmented reality layers.
User ExperienceDesign Thinking

Motorola

Industrial Designer

Jan 2007Jan 2009 · 2 yrs

  • Provided strategic vision and product design solutions for Motorola’s Enterprise Mobility Business, working in both the public and private sectors, including logistics, aerospace, oil and gas, public safety, health care, and the military.
  • Created user-centered technologies, including software systems and rugged mobile computers, for enterprise businesses, factoring in procurement requirements as well as end-user needs. Clients included FedEx, McKesson Health IT, UPS, fire departments, the Army, and Boeing.
  • Used technical tools (advanced 3D software, Autodesk Alias, SolidWorks) to design for durability in tough environments.
Industrial DesignUser-Centered Design

Nasa - national aeronautics and space administration

2 roles

Industrial Designer

Jan 2006Jan 2007 · 1 yr

  • Worked on-site at MIT with Gui Trotti & Dr. Dava Newman under a grant funded by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). Designed rovers and mobile habitats for future exploratory missions to the moon. Worked in SolidWorks and Rhino to design a mobile lunar base using composite inflatables that could expand, contract, and be networked together in order to explore the majority of the surface of the moon. In addition to designing the mobile habitats, work included designing auxiliary vehicles for mission resupply of vital industrial materials, and exploring solutions for radiation events. Concepts from the study have since been included in design requirements for NASA’s 2020 lunar mission.
Industrial DesignUser-Centered Design

Industrial Design Intern

Jan 2006Jan 2006 · 0 mo

  • Designed vehicles and habitats for NASA’s return to the moon by 2020 as part of a select internship at the Johnson Space Center, as part of the Constellation Program set up by President George W. Bush. Worked in the Human Factors Lab, designing NASA’s lunar outpost, lunar ascent vehicle, and lunar lander mobility system—creating a flexible environment factoring in how the body behaves in microgravity for astronauts living and working on the moon. Concepts were evaluated by end-user astronauts, including Andy Thomas. Designed and built a refreshed mock-up of the International Space Station’s crew quarters and conducted ergonomic evaluations of the new crew exploration vehicle. Design reviews of the lunar ascent vehicle were run by Thomas as well as the Chief Health and Medical Officer of NASA.
Industrial DesignUser-Centered Design

Nokia

Industrial Designer + UX Designer

Jan 2006Jan 2007 · 1 yr

  • Selected for a project funded by Nokia at MIT’s Sloan School of Management to invent one of the first wearable devices that utilized multi-touch technology, with haptic buttons in the palm for customizable gestures. The device could be worn on the hand, wrist, or around the neck, and was co-created with executives from Ford and GM, who were also selected for the project. Several trips were made to Nokia’s headquarters in Helsinki, Finland to participate in brainstorming, research, and strategic planning sessions.
Industrial DesignUser-Centered Design

Education

Rhode Island School of Design

BFA — Industrial Design

Jan 2003Jan 2007

MIT Sloan School of Management

Product Development

Jan 2006Jan 2007

International Space University

Aeronautics/Aviation/Aerospace Science and Technology — General

Jan 2007Jan 2007

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