Tristan is a design thinker, philosopher and entrepreneur. Tristan co-founded the movement for “Time Well Spent” for technology built to help people spend their time, and their lives, well — not maximize engagement or screen time. Like the Organic food movement changed farming practices and created a new market for safe and healthy food, Time Well Spent aims to change design practices and create a marketplace for technology competing to create net positive contributions to people’s lives. Integrating insights from behavioral economics, psychology and product design, he has taught design workshops around in the world that support Time Well Spent, including the “Empowering Design” methodology.

 

Tristan was Product Philosopher at Google until 2016, where he studied how technology influences a billion users’ attention, wellbeing and behavior. He led design sprints with product teams, including a meeting between Google’s lead product designers and Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, international spokesperson for Mindfulness.

​

Previously, Tristan was CEO and Co-Founder of Apture, which Google acquired in 2011. Apture enabled millions of users to get instant, on-the-fly explanations without leaving their place, across a billion page views per month on its publisher network.

 

Tristan graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Computer Science, focused on Human Computer Interaction, while dabbling in behavioral economics, social psychology, behavior change and habit formation under Professor BJ Fogg in the Stanford Persuasive Technology lab.