Dan Harden

Dan Harden is an industrial designer. He is CEO, Founder and Principal Designer of Whipsaw Inc., a highly acclaimed design firm in San Francisco, California that he founded in 1999. Whipsaw designs diverse products 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, Owala, Tonal and Tile.

Harden is the highly active creative force of Whipsaw, where he directs the strategic and conceptual direction of most client accounts. His passion and experience combined with his personal philosophies about art, culture, psychology and technology permeate the work and the Whipsaw brand.

Throughout his prolific career, Harden has personally 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 Stream water pitchers, Dell Precision line, Tonal strength training system, Aescape robotic massage, 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.

Harden has been a visionary in the field of industrial design for over three decades. He helped conceive and design many ground-breaking technology products, where his design gave identity to whole 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; the Rio Audio line of digital music players that preceded the iPod; the first Roku media streaming product; the groundbreaking Leapfrog LeapPad educational tablets; the Dropcam camera which ushered in modern home security; Google Chromecast, which made TV streaming accessible to the masses; Silk Road Medical, a surgical device that reduces stroke risk; Tonal digital strength training system that changed how people use home fitness; the first mobile electroencephalogram for Ceribell; the Aristocrat slot machine line which transformed the gaming industry; the Aescape full-body robotic massage system, a robotic first of a kind; and the revolutionary IonQ quantum computer.

Harden has won 380 design awards in his career, including many Red Dot, IDEA, iF, Chicago Athenaeum Good Design, MDEA, D&AD, and G-Mark awards (see list). 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 Harden as one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business 2014, calling him “design’s secret weapon.” Fast Company also featured Dan as a “Master of Design” in 2005 and ranked Whipsaw among the world’s top five design firms. Harden'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. Harden is a guest host and judge on the TV show “California by Design” and “America by Design."

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

Prior to founding Whipsaw in 1999, Harden was Vice President and President of Frogdesign, a renowned consultancy founded by Hartmut Esslinger. At Frogdesign, Harden designed many notable products for several legendary clients including Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Andy Bechtolsheim, and Rupert Murdoch.

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

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

When not designing, Harden is painting abstract impressionism pieces or writing music on his guitar at his homes in Woodside and Carmel, CA.

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