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By Joe Boomgaard | MiBiz
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GRAND RAPIDS — One look at Universal Mind’s client list — which includes the likes of Apple, Sony, FedEx, Kodak, Hasbro, Oppenheimer Funds, NASA, General Electric, Artistry, Johnson Controls and Adobe — and you’d be forgiven for guessing the company was located on one of the coasts or in Silicon Valley.

The truth is, the high-tech “distributed company” that specializes in user experience design is located across several domestic offices, but Grand Rapids serves as its creative hub, the home to its growing design team of currently 20 employees. They hope to expand to 25-30 people by the end of the year.

“We want the best people, but we know the best aren’t all in New York or Los Angeles,” said Christian Saylor, senior user experience design specialist at Universal Mind and a native of West Michigan. Saylor, son of izzy+ founder Chuck Saylor, started at Universal Mind three years ago as its lead designer. “Ever since (the company started an office in Grand Rapids), we’ve been growing at an astronomical rate. We want to keep as many people here as possible to grow the design arm of Universal Mind and keep West Michigan a design center.”

Universal Mind, a $20-30 million company, focuses on the interface between people and technology, whether that interaction takes place on a smart phone or tablet or on the controls of an appliance. The company’s founders started the firm as a high-end development company, but soon realized that what they lacked was a design team to help deliver better solutions to clients. They needed to “bridge the gap of art and science,” Saylor said.

Using the example of Apple iPhone technology, Saylor said that while the products are a finely crafted piece of technology, if they didn’t work, customers wouldn’t be buying them, and vice versa. A key piece in making the technology work is the user experience. As more technology platforms crop up — there are several brands of smart phones to compete with the iPhone, each of which uses a different operating system, for example — companies are relying on groups like Universal Mind to ensure customers’ experiences are the same no matter the kind of device they’re using.

Universal Mind’s team has three layers: architects, designers and technologists, Saylor said, and all three are represented on every project and at every meeting. The architects develop a solution, while the designers make it look good and ensure it’s feasible and user-friendly. Then the solution is handed off to technologists, or the developers, to take those boundaries and “breathe life into it.”

“The spectrum is very broad for who we work with,” Saylor said.

They’ve created an application for IGA, the management group for singer Lady Gaga, and are currently working with Sony for a product involving the Jimi Hendrix catalog. The team has also paired with GE’s appliance division to develop the touch screen displays, for example. Other samples of their technology can be found in almost every iPad, Android phone, store kiosk and in-car display.

“What we’ve done is found a team and assembled them locally with the experience to do all of that,” he said.

Part of growing the company and shoring up West Michigan’s design community has meant that the company hires local students from Kendall College of Art and Design, where Saylor has taught in the past, or Grand Valley State University.

“We want to embed ourselves into those institutions to foster these designers so that when they graduate, they’ll say they will not go to the coasts, that they feel they have a great opportunity here. Right now, we’re starting that process,” Saylor said. “Our front line of defense is making sure we can find people from West Michigan. …Although we’ve all had the opportunity to move elsewhere, we’ve felt something strong was going on and wanted to stay here. I’m all for travel, but I think the creative community we have here is unique. You don’t get this feel in Chicago or New York City.”

All but a couple of Universal Mind’s clients reside outside of West Michigan, meaning that its services are exported and result in the flow of new money to the region, whether because of contracts or because clients on the coasts travel and stay here for meetings. The lack of local clients wasn’t by choice, but rather because the firm had kept a low profile in the region. As they started to get out into the design community, the word spread, resulting in work with Amway’s Artistry line of cosmetics and with Johnson Controls.

“We’re starting to get the word out in West Michigan that we’re open for business, but we’re not begging for work. At the end of last year, almost everyone was double or triple booked on projects, and that’s just here in Grand Rapids. We’re in a unique position,” Saylor said.

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• fedex
• general electric
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• johnson controls