Professional Information
You can find me on linkedin, here is my public summary.
Here is my CV.
Directly below you can see my Portfolio, Design Values, Research Interests, and Philosophy on Life.
Portfolio
Bizzaro Olympics --WINNER games4health competition
Designed for tweens with an eye for a broad appeal. This game is a fun, surreal world where you play, burn calories, and learn about healthy living principles. We talk about this game doing for the Olympics, what Dance Dance Revolution did for dancing, with the twist that you are actually learning while you burn calories. This game storyboard won the games4health competition 2007.
EventStream --Accepted as a finalist, Design Competition SIGCHI 2007
An integrated transit information system designed to promote public transportation and reduce the use of Single Occupant Vehicles, we made it to the finals at CHI 2007, and this paper is published in the ACM digital archives.
Thermomostat
A design question that involves the union of user interpretation of use and installed hardware that is essentially just an semi-automated on & off switch. Based on the classic thermometer design, made interactive and animated, but still simple and beautiful to look at.
Design Values
These are the values and approaches I strive for in my work as a designer.
- Design is intentional.
- Design is human-centered.
- Design is service oriented.
- I balance resources, constraints, and interests that often conflict.
- I must be an advocate for the user.
- Call it what you will--interaction design, game design, UI Design--I design an experience.
- I use a human-centered and artifact centered design and critique process that is iterative.
- My work is based on a postmodern stance drawing from both phenomenology and structuralism as well as whatever schools of thought are useful in that design context.
- I believe that technology, like any tool, aligns itself to the moral intentions and philosophy of those who wield it, but as designers we embed certain values with their attendant constraints into the things we create, thereby we can wield great power.
- I ought to wield this power intentionally and thoughtfully.
- I must accept that ultimately what I create is not fully my own and will be used however and by whomever finds it useful, quite probably in unexpected ways.
Research Interests
At this point in my career, HCI & Design are at the base of what I do. You will notice I differentiated between game studies, game design, & design. Game studies, or ludology, is an emerging field which studies and critiques games. I am also interested in actually designing serious games as well as the theory of game design. Most acts of creation, whether it be knowledge creation, software creation, or games are an act of design. I am interested in studying that process with the idea I may improve both the process and the designed artifact.
Because I believe in the power of teaching via games, and I have an interest in "serious games" (games that are explicitly made to teach people) I think that learning theory is an important part of understanding. making, and critiquing these kinds of games. While I may not be doing a lot of research in that area, I need a lot more knowledge in this area in order to carry out my other activities. The kinds of questions I hope to ultimately answer are: What are the kinds of things that games are really good at teaching? Are there some places where games and game-based learning won't help? Should games play a part of a official curricula?
Social Informatics as it applies to games for me is the tremendous implications games have on our society. I'm not one of those crazy people who blame video games for violence, but I do think using any designed artifact, a book, a game, a map, shapes the way we think and react to the world. Video games and virtual worlds are becoming a larger part of how we meet, work, and play with other people. The kinds of questions I would like to ask are: How do the embedded values in them work in games? What does this form of communication mean for us? What are it's characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses? How can individuals, institutions, and businesses best use these emerging technologies?
Philosophy on Life
- I strive for balance in all I do.
- The unseen can be as or more powerful than the tangible.
- I believe in the divine.
- I believe in human dignity.
- I believe that family is the core unit of society, and I love mine, even if they make me a little crazy sometimes.
- I believe that we need to regularly reflect, and be willing to change our selves, our ideas, & our lives.
- I believe that we only get stronger as we talk about issues that are important to us and those around us, even when we disagree.
- I believe that treating our bodies well with a clean enviroment, healthy food, and proper rest will result in an increase in productivity , happiness, health, energy, and wisdom. I as a person, and the organizations I affiliate with, should promote practices that support this both within themselves and in their communities.
- I think we need to stop marketing to our children, and bombarding them with images and messages about what they should wear, look like, etc.
- I think that most of the time we do the best we can in the circumstances we are in.
Values: Balance, Integrity, Authenticity, Diligence, Obedience, & Service.
I'll be the first to point out that these are not things I always am/do, but I do strive towards them in all that I do, and what I want to become.
