Duarte started his career at Psycroft where he cowrote xBill with Brian Wellington. He left Psycroft in 1996 at which time he moved to Hyper Image Productions where he was the lead designer on Phase Zero, an unreleased shooter game for the Atari Jaguar. In 1997 he left Hyper Image Productions and moved to MagicArts where he filled the role of Vice President of Design until 1999. In March 2000 Duarte took a role at Danger as the Director of Design where his team won the 2002 Wired 'Industrial Designer' Rave Award4 for their work in designing the Hiptop/SideKick. In August 2005 he took up a role at Helio, as Vice President Experience Design and left shortly before the company was acquired by Virgin Mobile. In September 2007 Duarte was hired as the Vice President at Palm, Inc. to lead development of Palm’s webOS Human Interface and User Experience and introduced the design of webOS at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show. In May 2010 Duarte was hired by Google as Director for the Android User Experience working on the interface and design for Android 3.0 (AKA Honeycomb).5
Duarte graduated from the Science, Mathematics and Computer Science Magnet Program at Montgomery Blair High School, Silver Spring, Maryland. He earned a Bachelor of Science with Honors from the University of Maryland with a B.S. in Computer Science.7 He took on additional concentrations of study in Fine Art and Art History, and managed the Student Art Gallery from 1993 to 1996 at the University of Maryland.
Duarte is married, and had a daughter in June 2008, another one in 2010.8
Paczkowski, John (27 May 2010). "Exclusive: Palm Loses Mobile Design Guru Matias Duarte to Google". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 30 June 2010. Retrieved 12 June 2024. https://web.archive.org/web/20100630193030/http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100527/exclusive-palm-loses-mobile-design-guru-matias-duarte/ ↩
"The Helio Ocean 3 that could have been" Archived 20 September 2010 at the Wayback Machine, MobileCrunch http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/05/26/exclusive-the-helio-ocean-3-that-could-have-been/ ↩
"Matias Duarte bringing Sidekick, Helio UI expertise to Palm’s new PalmOS Nova", intomobile.com http://www.intomobile.com/2008/07/06/matias-duarte-bringing-sidekick-helio-ui-expertise-to-palms-new-palmos-nova/ ↩
Macworld, Mac OS X team wins Wired Rave Award, 17 January 2003. "...but lost to Matias Duarte, Joe Palmer, and Andy Johnston..." https://archive.today/20120906134340/http://www.macworld.com/article/8848/2003/01/rave.html ↩
Engadget, Exclusive interview: Google's Matias Duarte talks Honeycomb, tablets, and the future of Android, 7 January 2011. https://www.engadget.com/2011/01/07/exclusive-interview-googles-matias-duarte-talks-honeycomb-tab/ ↩
Macworld, Mac OS X team wins Wired Rave Award, 17 January 2003. https://archive.today/20120906134340/http://www.macworld.com/article/8848/2003/01/rave.html ↩
Bailey, Spencer (3 August 2017). "Matías Duarte's Material World". Surface Magazine. https://www.surfacemag.com/articles/matias-duarte-google-is-designing-our-lives/ ↩
"Mama, tell me a story!". matias duarte 4.o. 23 August 2008. http://www.matiasduarte.com/2008/08/23/mama-tell-me-a-story/ ↩