Scoop is a carpooling/ride-sharing service. Basically, I put in when I want to leave and it matches me up with people who want a ride near my work/home. They pay $6 and I get $5 of that per trip. The service in general is greatly appreciated, but the experience leaves…
The essence of data visualizations is to tell a story. There are some great charts like Napoleon’s march to Moscow and Florence Nightingale’s chart on the causes of deaths in the Crimean War. Recently, my oldest son pointed out the following chart to me. Both are an image of Washington…
I never really thought about this until recently, but my first job as a product designer came when I was 32 years old. Maybe it’s best to backtrack and show the progression of what I thought I was. In 2nd grade, I made a sculpture of my father’s head. It…
I spend a good deal of my life sitting in an office chair. It’s a good bet that you do as well. The chair at my desk; I have adjusted to have the right parameters of height and position. However, it’s still fairly uncomfortable. When I get up, I find…
Sometimes I imagine the whole world is a simulation and you could change one single variable to see what happens. What would life be like without John Wilkes Booth? What if Franz Ferdinand didn’t get lost that summer day in Sarajevo? What if Alexander the Great had died in his…
I love that phrase, “It captured my imagination”. It makes me think of my imagination as a wild animal. I’m hunting it, stalking in the shadows, staying downwind. I am trying not to scare it away. My imagination is quick and nimble, like an antelope or an ibex. (Hudsucker Proxy!)…
UX Candidate Design Challenge – v1 UX Candidate Design Challenge – v2 UX Candidate Design Challenge – v3 As I am now hiring more people on the design team, I came up with a new design exercise. However, to jump to the end, it was too damn hard. So I…
There are lots of threads/books/posts/podcasts on the topic of Creativity. Here is a sampling of my thoughts on the subject. Creativity is combining two unrelated items to form a new thing. I imagine our brains as a home office. We have our desk where we work on things. We have…
I tried very hard to make CalTrain work, but I had to give up. It took too long, with too many transfers. I would have to buy a scooter or bring my bike on the train. Ultimately, driving was way easier. Goodbye reading. 🙁 So driving takes between 30 and…
Preface: Designers are a terrible audience. We have no real loyalty to anything. A new tool comes along and we abandon our old tools in a moments notice. Right now, Sketch + Invision is pretty popular, but I think these new tools are far superior and people are already swapping…
A fairly straight-forward question, with an impossibly hard set of answers: When something is bad in the world today, what is the role of the United States? First, let’s agree on some facts: Human rights abuses, Genocide, and Natural Disasters are Bad One country taking over another country is Bad…
Disclaimer: My own site isn’t perfect. There are much better portfolios than mine. I have done a terrible job of showing the problem, iterations, and case studies for the work I have done over the past 205 years. I put plenty of energy into this blog, but not as much…
After using Windows beta operating systems since 1992, I now have a new 13″ 2018 MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar. I have it plugged into a 34″ widescreen monitor. I keep the MacBook open on a stand to the left of the monitor. Here are my thoughts after using…
I am settling into my new position at Treasure Data. The people have been great. Currently, I have one immediate open head count, plus more coming soon. If you are interested in working with me, please let me know via LinkedIn. Here are some good things to know: We are…