Oogo Stoodio

Bio

Hugues Belanger started out wanting to be a physicist. A detour through experimental psychology — chasing questions about how people perceive, understand, and react to the world — led him to computer science and computer vision engineering in the mid-90s, and from there into a 25-year career designing for technology before it had settled into familiar patterns: multimodal voice interfaces, early web-based insurance tools, computer vision, kiosks, connected health devices.

His fundamentals haven't changed: deep research and observation first, strong intuition to generate ideas, then rigorous empirical testing to validate them. What has evolved is the practice itself — over 25 years he's adapted that core approach through Agile, Design Thinking, and the shifting tools and methods of each era, always in service of the same underlying discipline.

Through consulting, he's applied that method across transportation, finance, insurance, AgTech, and healthcare — thriving as much in fast-moving startups as in large corporate environments, with a specialty in reviving stagnant projects through stakeholder collaboration and iterative, user-focused design.

Key accomplishments include designing one of the earliest web-based applications for insurance adjusters, contributing to over $3 billion in annual revenue, and growing reservations on Enterprise.com from 100,000 to 7 million annually.

In his spare time, he and his wife enjoy the company of the family's two energetic dogs, Jacques and Maurice, and is an adept of the triathlon sports of swimming, cycling, and running (just not all at the same time!), with his favorite events being the Bike MS Ride and the Snowball Series in the winter.