SavaJe Technologies announced it is expanding its operations with the opening of a new office in Palo Alto and the addition of a user experience design team.

Two highly regarded hand-held product designers are joining SavaJe to lead the new team, including Macksoud "Soudy" Khan as the User Experience Creative Director, and James Leftwich as Principal Designer.

The Palo Alto office will include the expanded user experience design team and be the base of business development activities with partners and customers on the West Coast. The team will extend the company's design leadership as it further develops its uniquely functional and powerful user-interface language and architecture, one allowing for richer and more customizable graphics, menu structures, icons and other elements of a next generation mobile environment only made possible through the use of Java technology.

"After selling out of the developer's version of Group Sense PDA's SavaJe-powered Jasper S20 phone in a few hours at JavaOne, it's clear the mobile user experience revolution is at hand," said Lamar Potts, Senior Vice President of Business Development and Sales for SavaJe Technologies. "Developers want a compelling environment for mobile applications and consumers want a versatile, multimedia mobile device that does not require an advanced degree to operate. Our new design team and office demonstrate our commitment to delivering the ultimate mobile Java experience through continuous technical innovation and intuitive design."

Khan brings to SavaJe more than 12 years experience in product development and marketing with PDA and wireless consumer electronics companies, most recently as the Director of Product Concept & User Experience at PalmSource. He is a recognized expert in comprehensive user-experience design, which synthesizes the impact of human factors with industrial and graphic design, engineering, manufacturing and marketing. Previously, Khan spent over a decade in product development and marketing consulting. Recently, Kahn and Leftwich were awarded a patent for their joint work on an innovative interface used in miniature computing.

Leftwich, a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), has over 22 years of award-winning design experience and holds multiple patents in interactive human interface design and development across a wide range of products from mobile devices to wearable computers, webpads and palmtops. Most recently, he was Director of Design and User Experience at PalmSource, and before that served as Director of Human Interface and Industrial Design at PEMSTAR Pacific Consultants, Inc. Earlier in his career, he founded Orbit Interaction, a pioneering and broad-based interaction design and intellectual property development firm, where he consulted with a variety of companies including Sun Microsystems, Apple Computer, Thomson, Macromedia and others.

To ensure an unparalleled mobile user experience, the new designers in Palo Alto and broader SavaJe team are also working with consultants from Seren Partners, a UK-based company that has been involved in user experience design efforts for such large mobile operators as Vodafone.

The new design team complements SavaJe's existing user experience design and development resources at its worldwide corporate headquarters in Chelmsford, Massachusetts; its European headquarters in Cambridge, U.K.; and a development partnership it has with HCL Technologies in India.