Riccardo Giraldi

Riccardo focuses on the relationship between humans and technology to invent and design innovative solutions that help enrich and improve our lives.

He is the Principal Creative Director at Microsoft leading the New Experiences and Technologies incubation team, a multidisciplinary team with the goal to inspire, prove, and enable transformative experiences that push and define new platforms and devices. His latest project was the incubation of Microsoft HoloLens, the first fully untethered Holographic Computing device.

As a creative leader, Riccardo strives to build inclusive environments that foster creativity and enable people to express their full potential. He champions design and leads creative teams through strategy, research, ideation, prototyping, and validation.

Riccardo grew up in Pistoia, a small city in Tuscany (Italy). He is a self-taught programmer who studied electronics before falling in love with design, which he studied at the University of Florence. Following his passions, he lived in Florence, Stockholm, London, New York, and Seattle. Over the years he had the opportunity to work in some of the very best digital companies, such as Unit9 and B-Reel before joining Microsoft. First as a developer, then as a designer and creative director, Riccardo worked on digital campaigns for clients like Google, Honda, Nike, Rolex, Lipton, Sprint, and many others.

Riccardo has explored the future of HCI and new ways to go beyond the margins of screens to bring digital experiences back to the good old tangible world, from Mind Controlled cars to 360 interactive projection mapping. For Google, he created Chrome Web Lab, the first global exhibition of its kind that connected visitors online with those at the Science Museum of London. In NYC, he invented and incubated Escape Flight, a project that inspired a more human-centered approach to booking flights and planning vacations online.

After shipping HoloLens, Riccardo is now working at Microsoft on the incubation of many secret and exciting projects yet to be announced.

He is a speaker at conferences like FITC, KIKK, GLUG, DDD, and Cannes Lions. He teaches design courses around the world, and he is an adviser for the Museum of Science and Industry of Chicago.