Erin ‘Folletto’ Casali
Erin Casali, known as “Folletto”, is a senior product design director and coach. She has a hybrid background in design, psychology, business and technology — with a people-centered approach. Over the years she built products and helped businesses transform by trusting people and giving them agency and by clarifying goals, with a firm belief in transparency and diversity. Her objective is to change for the better the quality of life of the people through the businesses and products she designs. She currently works in Xero, and was previously in Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and a more other products.
She believes that “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”, as Leonardo DaVinci reportedly said and her approach is to reach a focused simplicity through the existing complexity.
During her 17+ years of professional experience she designed consumer and enterprise products and services for millions of users worldwide in different markets — and with WordPress, 40%+ of the web. She worked with companies like Bank of England, Intesa Sanpaolo, Banca Sella, Unicredit, Nokia, Vodafone, Telecom Italia, Ferrari, and Benetton.
She co-founded Good 50×70, an international social communication project and Baker Framework, a platform to publish HTML5 books and magazines on the iPad.
She was a design partner in the startup WideTag where she led the product design of WideNoise, listed in the Compasso D’Oro selection, the ADI Design Index 2010, and selected in the Top 10 Internet of Things Products of 2009. She worked on P2, a remote collaboration platform that got nominated for ProductHunt’s Golden Kitty Award in 2020.
She developed with Gianandrea Giacoma Motivational Design, a method that provides a theoretical approach and tools to deal with social dynamics and design social environments.
She has been on the board of advisors in many startups over the years: Ernest, Impacton, Flythegap, PosterForTomorrow, Tallyfy, Pick1, Tonight.eu, and Hunie.co.
