In the Interest of Full-Disclosure, I Should Tell You ...
... I LOVE WHAT I DO. I’m passionate about creating great experiences with next-generation communications technologies. I’m obsessive about crafting clear and compelling language. I’m in love with intelligent, elegant design. I care deeply about this stuff, because I believe there’s a lot more to it than writing copy, designing a pretty UI, or developing cool web apps. I think there’s much more at stake here.
Why? I happen to believe that, in a very real sense, we’re designing when we’re designing new technologies. Because to be human is, after all, to be technological. In this sense, as Donna Haraway famously wrote, we’ve always been cyborg creatures of both virtual and real dimensions. Beyond our biology, we’re products of our own linguistic, social and material technologies. Our words. Our cultures. The stuff that surrounds us.
Think for a moment about your own daily interactions with information and communications technologies. Your iPhone. The Daily Show. Your car’s GPS. Your Gmail. Facebook. And the many other websites and web apps you frequent each day. These technologies reach beyond the digital encoding and delivery of information. They reshape our social networks. They impact our careers. They affect in profound and subtle ways our social interactions, livelihood, moods. Our sense of ourselves. And all are designed experiences.
So, in a broad sense, that’s what I’ll be writing about here. More specifically, I want to talk about cutting-edge research methods, building brilliant marketing strategies, designing great identities, creating engaging content, and techniques to crafting intelligent, intuitive user experiences.
I hope you’ll get in touch with your own thoughts, suggestions for topics, criticisms and questions. I’d love to hear from you.
Social Media & The Arab Spring
IT HAS ALREADY BECOME a truism hat social media have played a key role in the popular revolutions that continue to topple regimes throughout the Middle East and North Africa. However, it seem that thoughtful analyses of the complex interplay of communications, culture, and technologies have been all but nonexistent in the American media.
In this balanced and textured account of these unfolding events, Simon Cottle of Cardiff University explains how ICTs such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, along with online bloggers and mobile telephony, have all contributed to communicating, coordinating and channeling the rising tide of opposition and managed to bypass state controlled national media as new media have propelled images and ideas of resistance and mass defiance.
IN A MOVING AND MADLY VIRAL VIDEO last year (2 million+ YouTube views and counting), classical composer Eric Whitacre led a virtual choir of singers from around the world. In his recent TED talk, he described the genesis of the project, spoke of the creative challenges of making music powered by social media, and unveiled the first two minutes of his new work, 'Sleep,' with a virtual choir of 2,052 (the full version of which premiered recently on YouTube). Below is his original virtual choral piece, entitled 'Lux Aurumque.' Each time I listen to this, I'm struck again by this inspiring new use of our emerging ICTs and the promise of "Experience Design."
Personal
Research & Writings
WHEN
I BEGANresearching and writing this book, I
had no idea what I was getting myself into. In attempting
to better understand my experiences designing
communications media and messages internationally,
I found myself drawn into
the ancient Eastern and Western epistemologies which
give shape to current notions of value and meaning,
art, science and technology.
I was fortunate to
be studying at Georgetown's Communication, Culture
and Technology program, where the scope of the curriculum
accomodated the unexpected range of times, places
and disciplines into which I was drawn. My advisor
was wonderful. The depth and breadth of Professor
Dowdy's understanding of communication, cognition
and culture made my head spin. He encouraged and enabled
me to discover connections and possibilities far,
far beyond my early imaginings.
I'm now in the process
of writing case studies for Technologies
of Sin and Salvation, and am also working to translate
these ideas into a prototype media model, which I
call COR.
Travel & Portrait Photography
I REMEMBERthe
Kodak Instamatic my mother and father gave
me for my 10th birthday. I remember how that
camera seemed to bring the world into focus. And I've
been studying, apprenticing, and taking pictures ever since. I think all those
years of picture-taking and training, have helped me see
more than I would have otherwise. There is still
something about making pictures of new and familiar
faces and places that makes me short of breath. The
way it condenses the senses into a click and
compells me to focus on this moment.
I don't know what it is about taking portraits. Maybe
it's the look on a person's face when they see a photo
that captures something they hadn't seen before in
themselves. That response can be tremendously gratifying.
Much of the pleasure is also simply in spending time
with a subject to create something beautiful together.
It's a unique sort of collaboration.
Current Enthusiasms
Aya It's just an extraordinary experience to watch each day as my daughter becomes who she’s meant to become.
Pulse News
I seem to be a few months late to the party, but the Android version of this gorgeous, interactive RSS reader has already transformed my experience of gathering and processing news and information.
Pandora Radio
Algorithm meets art. This is the best thing to happen to music since frequency modulation.
Esperanza Spalding She's won a Grammy for best new artist, but I still feel as though I've stumbled into a secret jazz dive each time I listen to her.
David Mitchell
If there were one word that might best describe author David Mitchell, it would have to be "eclectic." So many brilliantly varied voices and styles. My favorite work to date, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.
Kate Rusby I'm generally a fan of jazz and classical, but I can't get enough of the pure, unadulterated voice of the Barnsley Nightingale.
Emily Dickinson
"Unique, gemlike lyrics ... distillations of profound feeling and original intellect."
