Good design isn’t just about how it looks, Martini explains. “Part of the experience is what you see on the screen, but there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes. We have to think very carefully about how we design our tools so that engineering can build them and maintain them.”
Martini first decided to pursue a career as a designer when she was in high school and was inspired by the renovation of her parents’ house, which was based on an architect’s drawings. Not being good at art, she decided to approach design from a technical perspective and created her own design major under the umbrella of mechanical engineering at MIT.
She studied design principles at the MIT Media Lab, working with Professor John Maeda (SM 1989, later dean of the Rhode Island School of Design), and was inspired to minor in anthropology by a class taught by Heather Paxson, a lecturer at the time and now assistant dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. Anthropology taught Martini to understand human behavior and notice the difference between what people say and what they do, for example. “Having that background and framework is very helpful,” she says.
After graduating, Martini worked in hardware design at Apple and the design consulting firm IDEO before earning a master’s in product design from Stanford University in 2011. He then joined a genetic testing startup, where he was promoted to product design director, before joining Google in 2017.
These days, Martini says she enjoys the opportunity to work for a company that lets her design products used by people all over the world in a rapidly evolving field. And that’s exactly why she loves her job: “There’s so much to learn, and it’s always changing.”
