1989 headquarters four gateway center 444 liberty ave. suite 1600 pittsburgh pennsylvania 15222 united states key people dutch macdonald ceo peter lucas founder joseph ballay founder number of employees 59 2012 website www.maya.com maya design inc. is a technology design firm and innovation lab founded in pittsburgh pennsylvania united states in 1989 . maya helps companies design more usable and useful technology products as well as information rich services and environments . it has established a pervasive computing practice to help companies design smart connected products environments and services . 1 2 the name maya is based on an acronym coined by the industrial designer raymond loewy and stands for most advanced yet acceptable . the company s tag line is taming complexity . 3 maya was started in 1989 as maya design group by peter lucas a cognitive psychologist joseph ballay an industrial designer and james morris a computer scientist . at the time all were colleagues at carnegie mellon university . 4 5 in 1998 the name was changed to maya design inc. the current president and ceo is dutch macdonald . 6 maya has been selected as a top small company to work for in america by inc. magazine 7 fortune small business 8 and entrepreneur magazine . 9 maya has created four spin off companies maya group in 1998 maya viz in 1998 now called gd viz since being acquired by general dynamics in 2005 ; 10 rhiza labs spun out in 2008 11 and luma institute in 2010 . 12 contents 1 human centered design 2 research agenda 3 see also 4 references 5 external links human centered design edit the company practices human centered design hcd with an interdisciplinary team of engineers computer mechanical and electrical engineers human scientists cognitive psychologists anthropologists human computer interaction specialists and visual designers industrial designers communication designers film makers a traditional architect and game designers . research agenda edit in addition to doing commercial technology design maya has a research practice that focuses on two primary areas information centric computing 13 which explores the aggressive use of direct manipulation in the context of well defined physics based interaction rules . the company has done extensive research and development work in this area under awards from the defense advanced programs agency darpa and the national institute of standards and technology nist . its visage collaborative visualization platform was developed with leaders of the sage research project at carnegie mellon university 14 and is the framework for the command post of the future . work in this area has also been applied to global public information systems transportation logistics and drug discovery . architectures for pervasive ubiquitous computing which explores how to structure and build radically decentralized information devices for an era with more than a trillion nodes . 2 15 16 see also edit brainstorming design management design methods design thinking ethnography human factors innovation industrial design interaction design internet of things pervasive computing user centered design user experience references edit maya pervasive computing practice a b techburgher maya s mcmanus to present at aspen ideas festival maya web site pg news executive in the spotlight the battle against the ugly alliance pittsburgh business times cmu spinoff maya design finds success in simplicity dutch macdonald appointed ceo president at maya design top small company workplaces maya design money best small companies entrepreneur great places to work general dynamics acquires maya viz maya launches rhiza labs luma institute maya research practice peter lucas ; cristina c. gomberg ; steven f. roth april 1996 . visage dynamic information exploration . chi96 acm electronic proceedings . joe mckendrick december 9 2009 . trillion node network arrives we need smart design more than ever . zdnet . peter lucas march 1999 . the trillion node network . maya design . external links edit maya web site trillions a video by maya design retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title maya design & oldid 723418580 categories design companies of the united stateshidden categories pages using infobox company with unsupported parameters navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 2 june 2016 at 23 03 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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