Ame has fifteen years experience directing user research, designing user experiences, and teaching methods to help organizations innovate. She is a Design Research Community Lead for global innovation consultancy IDEO, where she leads teams delivering technology strategy work in the San Francisco office. Her clients include Acer, AT&T, Ericsson, Fuji-Xerox, Gannett, HP, Logitech, Salesforce, and Samsung.Ame’s passion is the social and organizational implications of technology, and uncovering unmet needs is at the heart of her practice. Her project portfolio spans multiple phases: from initial need-finding and strategy, through prototyping, implementing, and evaluating.Prior to joining IDEO in 2007, Ame was a Research Scientist in the Computing Science Lab at the Palo Alto Research Center (formerly known as Xerox PARC), and at Ricoh Innovations where she focused on ubiquitous computing applications and shared media.She earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley for her work developing hybrid physical-digital interactions to support the architectural design process and a Bachelor of Environmental Design from the University Colorado, Boulder. She holds 7 U.S. patents, and is the author of numerous peer-reviewed publications, including a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology.