Josh Newby

Josh was the Lead Industrial Designer responsible for developing the Waymo Roof Pod System from sketch-concept all the way through production.

Josh created the concept, and collaborated closely with vehicle engineering, sensor engineering, and product research, teams over the course of 2 years to develop the hardware all the way through production, working directly with tier 1 manufacturing partners to deliver a fleet of Waymos that currently cruise the streets of San Francisco CA and Chandler AZ.

Josh’s work along with the work of his teammates on other sensor modules won the Waymo ID team a Red Dot, IF, and Good Design Award in 2020.

Josh led the development of the Waymo Via Roof Crossbar, Hood Pod, and Rear Aero Fairing Sensor Modules.

Josh was the sole lead industrial designer responsible for Waymo’s Chrysler Pacifica Vehicle Platform all the way from sketch concept through production.

Josh was responsible for the design of all of the modules, interior and exterior. He created the concepts and worked closely with vehicle and sensor engineering teams, CAD design colleagues, and design leadership to create and refine Waymo’s first public-facing autonomous TAAS vehicle.

These vehicles are in production and comprise the vast majority of Waymo’s autonomous passenger-carrying fleet in CA and AZ at the moment.

Josh created a breadth of Waymo pick-up drop-off signage concepts and led the design effort to bring this particular concept into small scale production. Josh created several features for which he is the author on a related Waymo signage patent.

Josh was the lead industrial designer responsible for the design of all ‘Laser Bear’ products including Waymo’s latest generation of short-range spinning Lidar called ‘The Honeycomb.’

Josh worked with the laser team to bring this sensor to fruition under demanding technical constraints.

Inspired by Bang and Olufsen's parabolic sound reflectors, Josh pursued a project to develop a home audio product that disperses sound evenly throughout an interior space. Josh carefully considered the internal volume of the speaker enclosure to match the specification of the bass driver manufacturer. The tweeter sits 1 meter off of the floor to align with head level of a seated user. The legs have a wide stance to mitigate the possibility of the speaker tipping. At the end of each leg is an isolation cone to decouple the speaker from the surface it sits on. The surface on top of the speaker slopes steeply inward to discourage things like beverages being placed on top.

Josh leads the Laser Bear Industrial Design team at Waymo.

Among those products is the Laser Bear Bridge, an accessory that currently ships with our Lidar units to our customers.

Josh designed and led the development of the Bridge from concept sketch through production, and designed low-cost, low-volume packaging to ship the Laser Bear products. Josh worked closely with local packaging vendors to bring the designs to fruition.

The Beacon was one of Facebook's first hardware products. 

Josh worked with another industrial designer at Frog to develop this product from conception to form model. Facebook put this product into production and it has been distributed to millions of retail spaces.