CEO, Vibes AI
Host, DesignedBy.Show Podcast
CEO, Vibes Ai
Founder, A.I. Design Corps
Host, DesignedBy.Show Podcast
A.I. Design Corps, Board Chair
EarthDNA, Inc., Director
Global Refuge, Presidents Council
Design Executive at Alexa
Devices at Amazon Lab126,
Amazon Web Services, Girl
Scouts, Samsung, IBM and Uber
Design Executive at Alexa Devices at Amazon Lab126, Amazon Web Services, IBM and Uber
Joanna Peña-Bickley, a design engineer, is known as the mother of Cognitive Experience Design and a pioneer in generative AI. Growing up dyslexic, she hacked text interfaces to teach herself to read, and learned a lesson that has guided her ever since. She designs technology that amplifies curiosity, courage and care, because that is humanity at its best.
Curiosity has made her an inventor. A hands-on builder with multidisciplinary acumen in research, design, engineering and media, she has produced 150+ enduring, market-making products and holds patented inventions. In 1999, she designed the first-of-its-kind Matrix phone and mobile games for Warner Bros., putting voice recognition in people’s hands long before talking to machines was normal. In 2014, she coined Cognitive Experience Design, the belief that humans and AI are meant to work in symbiosis, each making the other capable of bolder discoveries.
Courage has made her a leader of firsts. She built and led teams that created one of the first streaming video players for ABC News, the first banking experience on the Apple Watch for Citibank, a smart mobility platform for General Motors, Alexa devices used in over 100 million homes, and Samsung’s reimagining of the touch-first Android experience as a voice-first Agentic OS. IBM, Uber, Nokia, Land Rover, Ford, L’Oréal, Sephora, American Express, NASA, John Deere, Boeing, MTV, Pepsi and Jay Z have all benefited from her customer obsession and tenacious leadership.
Care is shaping her next decade. As founder and CEO of Vibes AI, Joanna is building a near future where technology moves from screens to voice, and agents don’t just respond, they truly listen. Vibes AI Studio builds with Spatial Hearing AI to create conversational, context-aware products for automotive, financial services and insurance, healthcare, travel and hospitality, technology, consumer electronics and media. Vibes AI Labs leads research in neurolinguistics and voice biomarkers, decoding human intent from subtle shifts in speech, delivered through Vibes AI Cloud. And VAIA, the company’s consumer product, brings Mind Care to everyone: because your brain has a frequency, and in an age of infinite noise, everyone deserves the power to tune it. Her ten-year goal: AI that strengthens human resilience, helps people stay present and works for 100% of humanity.
Named one of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women and an MIT Fellow in Agentic AI Design, Joanna founded the AI Design Corps to champion workforce up-skilling and has contributed to state and federal AI governance policy. From the stages of CES, SXSW, Cannes Lions and MIT to podcasts around the world, she shares a protopian vision: the future is something we build together.
Joanna is a results driven, visionary who balances rigor & wonder to artfully solve human problems. Her inspirational vision and passion for action learning impassions, mobilizes and develops teams to craft human experiences that deliver results. Joanna believes that design is a journey of lifelong learning and unrelenting upskilling.
She approaches every invention, product or service with an insistence on the highest standards that use a combination of skills, methods and tools.
Research: Qualitative & Quantitative Generative, Formative, Evaluative research.
Industrial Design: 3D Modeling, 3D Printing, Laser Cutting & CNC Carving
Human Interface Design: Visual, Touch, Voice/Conversation Sound, Gesture, Taste and Brain | Menu Driven, Touch Grapical Interfaces.
Systems Design: System Decompisition, Conceptual Data Modeling and Entity Relationship Model.
Cognitive Experience Design: Human Factors, Cognitive Ergonomics, Neuroergonomics
Computational Design: Parametric + generative geometry, geometric modeling, algorithmic generative modeling
Natural Language Processing (NLP): named entity recognition (NER), Part of Speech tagging (POS), Text catagorization, machine translation.
Natural Language Understanding (NLU): relation extraction, semantic parsing, sentiment analysis, paraphrase & natural language inference, dialog agents, summarization
Machine Learning Modeling: Classification Algorithms, Regression Analysis Neural Networks, and Ensenble.
Research: Field, Human Factors & anthropometric inquiry, human reliability, usability, survey, correlational, applied experimentation, data havesting, longitudinal studies, probability sampling, Stratified random sampling, Cluster sampling, Cross-tabulation, TURF Analysis.
BioDesign: Anthropometric & human musculoskeletal data usage to inform Biomimetic, Biomimicry, Biomechatronic design, sensors & physiological measurement systems (EEG, EMG, PPG, GSR)
Interface Design: command line, graphical user interface (GUI), menu driven, form-based, natural language
Computational Design: HTML5, CSS3, PHP, MySQL, Node JS, REACT.JS, p5.js, Python, Lambda
Systems Design: Capture & simulate, Designbe & Synthesize, Validation & Verification, Specify & refine.
Cognitive Experience Design: Mental Workload Measurement, Brain and Inhibitory Mechanisms, Non-linear Effects of Neuromodulation, Attentional Dynamics and Dominance Effects, Performance Monitoring and Effort Withdrawal.
Machine Learning Modeling: Scikit-learn, decision tree, Support Vector Machine (SVM), perceptron, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Anomaly Detection, Stacking, random forest
Research & Data Science: Pen, Paper, Calipurs, Excel, ClickTake, UsabilityHub, UserTesting, Qualtrics,Tableau, D3.js, MATLAB, Tensor Flow, Weights & Biases, CSAT, Star Ratings, Net Promoter Scores
Design Operations: GSUITE, Word, Excel, Keynote, Powerpoint, Monday.com, Zoom, Expensify, Concur, PlanGuru, Xero, Asana, Jira, Conflux, notion.so
Industrial Design:
Spline, AutoCAD 360, 3dsMax, Fusion360, Inventor, Rhino3D, GrassHopper
Computational & Interface Design: Sketch, Figma, NotePad, BBEdit, Visual Studio Code, Blue Works, Xcode, Sublime Text, VoiceFlow, Python 3, SQL, TensorFlow, Google Cloud ML Engine, Pytorch.
Protoyping: Figma + Framer.js, Sketch, AdobeXD, InVision, Flinto, Qt Design Studio, Marvel, Proto.io.
Product Design Testing: TrymyUI, UserZoom, UserTesting, Validately, Loop11, UsabilityHub, Crazy Egg, Userlytics, HotJar, ClickTale, TestRail
Generative & Parametric Design: Fusion 360 from Autodesk, NodeBox OpenGL, GenerativeComponents, Grasshopper 3d, Rhinoceros 3D, VIKTOR, Marionette, Trimble SketchUp, Modelur, NodeBox, Geo Pattern, Korpus, Everypixel, Geo Pattern, Korpus, Everypixel
Inspiring Orator
Joanna is regarded as a thought leader and headline speaker at the conferences. Her subject matter expertise in AI, Ethics & Workforce Development is customized to inspire and influence global audiences.
+ View Talks | + Book Joanna To Speak
+ Ready-To-Wear The Future Blog
+ CognitiveExperience.design
+ AiDesignCorps.org
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the tool of the modern inventors. Amidst the great global transition, AI aided product design accelerates what is invariable complex seem indistinguishable from magic.
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