Daniel Harden, CEO & Founder, Whipsaw, Inc.
Dan is an Industrial Designer and Principal Designer of Whipsaw Inc., a highly acclaimed design firm in San Francisco, founded in 1999. Whipsaw designs products and experiences for companies around the world including Brita, Cisco, Dell, GE, Google, Haier, Intel, J&J, Merck, Nike, Olympus, Samsung, Sony, TP-Link, Uber, and many exciting startups including Aescape, Ohm, Owala, Tonal and Tile.

Dan is the creative voice of Whipsaw, where he directs the strategic and conceptual direction of most projects. His passion and experience combined with his personal philosophies about art, culture, psychology and technology permeate the work and the Whipsaw brand.

Throughout his career Dan has designed hundreds of highly successful products across many categories. Some of these hits include the Owala water bottle, IonQ quantum computer, Google products (Chromecast, Wifi, OnHub, Trekker, Nest Dropcam cameras), Brita water pitchers, Dell Precision line, Tonal strength training system, Aescape robotic massage, Ohm resonance lamp, Cisco Telepresence systems, Livescribe smart pens, Eton emergency radios, Skrolla lounge chair, Adiri baby bottle, Yubo lunch box, PacBio Revio gene sequencing, Ravenchord piano, Intel healthcare tablets, Aristocrat slot machines, Leapfrog LeapPads, Tile tracker line, TP-Link networking devices, Topcon survey equipment, Braun Thermoscan thermometer, Motorola cell phones, Gateway PC line, Sony headphones, the original Acer Aspire PC line, NeXT computers, Oracle Network Computers, Logitech mice, and AT&T answering machines.

Dan helped conceive and design many ground-breaking technology products where his design gave identity to entire categories. Some of these include (in chronological order) the first digital answering machine for AT&T / the Motorola Envoy PDA which helped to pioneer mobile communications / the first network computer (N/C) for Oracle / Rio Audio digital music players that preceded the iPod / Roku’s first media streaming product / the groundbreaking Leapfrog LeapPad educational tablets / Dropcam camera which ushered in modern home security / Google Chromecast which made TV streaming accessible to the masses / Silk Road Medical surgical device that reduces stroke risk / Tonal digital strength training system that changed home fitness / Ceribell, the first mobile electroencephalogram / Aristocrat slot machine line which transformed the gaming industry into an entertainment class / Aescape, the first full-body robotic massage system / Ohm resonance breathing lamp / and the revolutionary IonQ quantum computer.

Dan has won 382 design awards in his career, including many Spark, IDEA, iF, Chicago Athenaeum Good Design, MDEA, D&AD, G-Mark and other awards. He has been granted over 600 patents. His work is in the collections of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, The Henry Ford Museum, the Computer History Museum, and the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design.

Fast Company magazine selected Dan as one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business and ranked Whipsaw among the world’s top five design firms. Dan’s views and work have been featured in Abitare, Architectural Digest, Axis, Business Week, CNN, Domus, Form, Fortune, Metropolis, Newsweek, Time, Wall Street Journal, Wired, and several design books. Dan is a guest host and judge on the TV show “California by Design” and “America by Design”.

Dan was awarded the prestigious Industrial Designers Society of America Personal Recognition Award in 2019 for his “outstanding contributions to the field of design”. Dan was also inducted into the World Technology Network, a curated membership community in association with TIME and CNN that honors individuals doing “the most innovative work of the greatest likely long-term significance”.

Prior to founding Whipsaw in 1999, Dan was VP and President of Frogdesign, a renowned industrial design consultancy. At frog, Dan designed several notable products working with legendary clients including Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Andy Bechtolsheim, and Rupert Murdoch.

Before joining Frogdesign in 1989 Dan was a lead designer at Henry Dreyfuss Associates where he designed several products for AT&T, J&J and Polaroid. In the early eighties Dan interned with design master George Nelson. He also interned at Hewlett Packard and Richardson Smith.

Dan graduated from the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture and Art in 1982.

When not designing, Dan is painting abstract impressionism works of art or writing music on his guitar at his homes in Woodside and Carmel, CA.