Pasta on the floor

My son Nova is an amazing little guy. In the short time I’ve been his daddy, he’s shown me a universe of lessons I couldn’t have even fathomed before he graced my life. There was a point last year where he really took to the piano. Obviously, he’s no Beethoven (just yet), but I decided to record what he played anyway. You can find his full album on Amazon. I’m not the kind to hold back creativity – so I invented a new musical genre for him – Toddler Experimental!

Buy The Album Here

Conscious Eclectica Podcasts

Music has always been a major source of therapy for me.  Listening to it, moving to it, allowing it to envelope me is a healing balm.  It’s also been a major source  of inspiration and insight in my life.  Conscious Eclectica has been this ongoing concept that’s ebbed and flowed in my head over the years.  I’ve struggled to find the right channel to share some of the pieces of music that mean so much to me.  I think I’ve solved it, for now at least, by creating this post – I’ll use this space to list out my podcasts, both the ones from the past as well as the ones I’ll be making soon.  I hope you enjoy as much as I do.

Episode One June 2009

The Magic Mouse

Apple’s migration from the venerable mouse to the very interesting trackpad is hardly a new concept.  Digital artists have been using single gesture trackpads to illustrate with for years now.  But it’s a deceptively simple move – the multi-gesture trackpad changes everything.  No only does it bring the worlds of the ipad, iphone and imac into harmony, but it begins to open all three worlds to a new dimension of use – multidimensional metaphors.  Up to now, the time-tested mouse has been perfect for a 2 dimensional screen environment.  The screen’s never been what’s stopped us from stepping into a 3D world, and now with the magic trackpad, Apple is primed to change the fundamentals of the visual metaphor.  Take a look at Apple’s latest patent and see what you think. It’s perfect for the trackpad!

Having written this, I admit I’ll be the first to hold on stubbornly to the Magic Mouse.  I love the limited gesturing I can do to scroll and click.  I was never a huge fan of the seemingly limited battery life, but that seemed like a minor shortcoming compared to how comfortable it felt.

I’ll miss you, Magic Mouse!

User Experience Confessions

In discussing the User Experience discipline with consultants and peers, it quickly becomes obvious that this term means many things to many people.  The expectations for this discipline, and what it brings to the project table are varied and sometimes disparate.  All of us are struggling to pin down the right talent within the User Experience market.

Those questions made me think. What is it that I bring to the table that’s unique?

• I’m a deep generalist.  Although I’ve authored wireframes in Omnigraffle, Visio, Axure and even paper towels, I’m much happier if I’m not enclosed in a dark room implementing the thinking.  Wireframing, at its best, is a collaborative process.  Wires are the result of group problem-solving, and that group should involve writers, developers, branding stakeholders and information architects.  In the end, the best user experience contains the perfect balance of all of those disciplines.  And the blueprint for that experience is reflected in the wires.
• I’m not a developer.  If you sit me down to code out a wireframe, I will get it done.  I will use tools like Axure and Fireworks to make that happen.  I will not, however, code that SAAS application or web application from scratch.  My focus will be on meeting your needs, and I’ll find the best and quickest way to get your prototype (not the final product) done.
• I am a visual problem solver.  Your challenge could be taxonomy, it could be a 7 million page website or it could be a fragmented marketing campaign.  Where I excel is in applying a combination of two decades of experience with critical thinking and a deep curiosity for how people behave.  I take these three elements, and I apply it to my own ability to understand the technical realm, and how best to apply business solutions to technical mediums.  In other words, I mix an innate creative problem solving need with 20 years of hackery, experience and a get-it-done-already work ethic.
• My work is often the result of other brilliant people.   As a matter of fact, a good user experience talent has to know how to collaborate, facilitate and bring out the best in others.  My work is often a conglomeration of amazing deliverables.  Most recently, I worked on a project for a Fortune 100 company, and I was perpetually humbled by the work of the Senior Designer and the Art Director.  Tom and Erin not only designed exquisitely, but they made my job easier because they themselves were acutely aware of the user experience vision.  The same is true for most of my past projects.  Jay Worman at Perot Systems (a true master of design), Jason Bell & Jon Poteet at Broadlane, Lisa Carr and Belinda at IMC2 – a host of talents and specialists along the way have been the true masterminds to the work.  The User Experience specialty requires the ability to seamlessly integrate data – taking the core message and integrating it into the media that most effectively deliver it to the target market(s).

As the User Experience discipline evolves, so will sub-specialties.  Some will be looking for information strategists, while others will want more tactical UI-centric minds.  In the end, what I hope happens is that we all become User Experience experts.  Every person in the project plan, from the developer to the designer, from the project manager to the brand champion – should be a User Experience expert.  My field is meant to be something that we all aspire to understand and prioritize.  Why?  It’s all really about the user and their experience.  That’s the end game for the client – it should be for all of us too.

Micah Boswell explains, ‘Why Conscious Shell’?

Why Conscious Shell?

The joining of unity and diversity in the discipline of proportional limitations is an expression of nature in the nautilus shell, and also in human endeavors such as new media design, where the essence of good web design packages the mathematical vastness of code. It also involves the essential importance of content, and finding ways to present it as simply, yet as aesthetically as possible. In both instances of nature and new media design, we see polar opposites that seem to fight against each other, but in the end, nature seems to find a way to make chaos meaningful and mathematics almost spiritual. With Web Design, those that craft the front end should do so using the timeless principles of color theory, brand awareness and gaze motion theory, but should always keep in mind that way they are building is a means, not an end. It is a package, and what is being packaged is a distribution tool, which may be HTML or Cold Fusion, or a combination of both – and both of these elements exist to distribute the essential element of a web site – content. In the end, design is not the master. Design is married to Code to serve as one complete delivery mechanism. The unity of diversity, and the appropriate proportions are deemed by the content.

So often, that which governs our reality seems to do so with such quiet and understated delicacy and balance that it takes a second look to see through what seems to be a chaotic world. So it is with web design, where so many opposites reside they seem to constantly rip at one another – one must be a master at understanding the limitations, and understand the source of the conflicts to conquer them – an artist has to be intimately familiar with how the code and content will be driven to match its temper and pace with a front end, while balancing the visual needs of the brand and the content.

Nature seems to seek, and achieves the union of complementary opposites; by the same token, good web design is design that complements good code and the distribution of content therein. The complexity of code must be balanced with the depth of content, and the user interface must bring all polarities into a balanced presentation that is both usable and visually palatable, without submitting to the predictable layout of a database sheet [the infamous rectangle], and without drowning out the content – the real star of the show.

My portfolio extends back to the early 1980′s, and much of it reflects the growth and evolution of my philosophy in design and direction.

So, why conscious shell? Natural growth is planned. It is deliberate almost to the point of conscious. Design, as any other craft or field, has its elements – its influencing factors that motivate it to move and grow. A nautilus shell grows in direct proportion to where it has been. Web Design should be molded proportionally to the back end, and to the content, thereby existing in a manner that defines itself as ‘appropriate’ design.