Noyes was behind 20th-century classics like the IBM Selectric typewriter and Mobil service stations. He advocated for user-centered product development and brought in other innovative designers and architects for corporate projects. including Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, Paul Rand, Alexander Calder, and Isamu Noguchi.  Noyes also reshaped the internal structure of corporations, pushing for design departments to have equal footing with marketing and engineering. This led to the development of each company's "corporate character," expressing their unique values to the public. He promoted collaboration between designers and top executives at companies like IBM, Westinghouse, and Mobil Oil.

Noyes graduated from Harvard GSD in 1938. He worked with Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius before becoming the Museum of Modern Art’s first Director of Industrial Design in 1940. In 1948, Noyes established his own architecture and industrial design practice in New Canaan, CT. The first to settle in New Canaan, Ct., he was the central member of the "Harvard Five" who, one by one, moved to the town and formed a center of the Modern Movement. He was instrumental in developing the International Design Conference in Aspen, serving as its President from 1965 to 1970.

Noyes was a unique figure, respected as both an architect and an industrial designer with an office capable of overseeing comprehensive programs.