I enjoy inventing simple solutions to complex problems, creating new paradigms for interaction, bringing principles from game design to serious software, and serious design practices to entertainment. Lately, I have spent considerable time working on improving design quality in enterprise software development. I also loved resolving the problem of brand and message recall in advertising in interactive games, because information legibility and memorability are fundamental issues in software design.
Career Highlights
Award-winning user experience design expert with accomplishments in a wide range of platforms, user types, and industries:
- VIRTUALIZED SOLUTIONS: enterprise hardware and software companies
Virtualization introduces new issues and tradeoffs, so users are simultaneously domain experts in a highly demanding environment and yet not conversant with the implications of virtualization
- Created a "bio-available" solution: assembled and lead a team to create a simple web-based "consumer" interface for an existing, highly complex and unusable enterprise learning management product. Eliminated many features and added "scent-based" work flows.
Results: far greater feature usage resulting in deployment in over half of the fortune 100 companies with 9 million end users. Rave reviews from the customer council after years of angry complaints about the original user interface
- Designed an innovative product for database virtualization: this innovative database virtualization software solved the important problem of database proliferation but required careful visualization to make the implications of the technology intuitive.
Results: converted a 3 day process to 3 clicks, and all workflows completed by new users within the time and error rate targets.
- Simplified management of virtualized storage : worked on the design of management software for the next major transition in enterprise storage.
Results: tasks completed easily with support for new ways to think about performance and capacity that are currently unfamiliar to storage managers
- HIGH RECALL & RETENTION: for interactive advertising in games
Ads don't work well in games because game players are to focused on the game to notice them. That's what the game industry has learned over the last decade.
- Defined best practices for interactive floor game and advertising design: researched how to design fun games for a system with a camera and interactive video projected onto the floor deployed in 200 malls nationwide. Discovered how to drive recall in games.
Results: 3x better 72 hour brand recall and 12x better message recall than Arbitron had measured in any medium including TV and print. Briefly described in this Stanford seminar (extended description with videos in this downloadable powerpoint presentation)
- NEW INTERACTION PARADIGMS: for new interaction paradigms
I have been involved in inventing the right techniques to use for a new interaction paradigm number of times.
- Designed original touchscreen interactions: used iterative design and testing to develop principles for handheld touch screen GUIs in the late 1980's while designing a suite of game-like interactions for controlling consumer electronics.
Results: fundamental touch screen interactive paradigms still used today as well as the Java programming language. (The first touch screen handheld, the *7, is featured in this YouTube video which also shows snippets of the highly animated, game-like GUI)
- Designed a full body interactive gesture language: developed best game design practices for a plasma screen, 3D camera, multiplayer gaming system.
Results: our empirically verified techniques from 2008 are more effective and usable than the current Microsoft Kinect system. Described in this Stanford seminar (extended description with videos in this downloadable powerpoint presentation)
- Created the first unified control scheme for third-person gaming: developed the technique for avatar control used in the There virtual world.
Results: a single control mechanism for walking, running, driving, flying, shooting, shooting while walking or running, and shooting while flying.
- GAME & VIRTUAL WORLD DESIGN
- Led Electronic Art's UK Studio game design process: Re-engineered the game design process from ideation through final design.
Results: improved the playability, praise, and sales for football, racing, and simulation titles.
Recognition: first Game Design Fellow at Electronic Arts.
- Designed EA Games: Worked on the game design for four AAA titles.
Results: over a million units in sales for each.
- Led the game design of Harry Potter: first lead game designer on Harry Potter and the Philosphers Stone and worked on the design of many follow-on games (e.g. every Harry Potter game including World Cup Quidditch)
Results: Harry Potter was the largest selling game series of all time.
- Answered the question of "Why have a body?" in a virtual world: Co-designed natural autonomic and voluntary emotionally expressive body language and facial expressions, enhanced by a cinematic camera. Violated traditional rules of multiplayer game design to enhance social interactions.
Results: an enthusiastic user base, There was used for the Laguna Beach TV show.
Recognition: There won an Emmy award in 2008 for “outstanding achievement in advanced media technology for creation of nontraditional programs or platforms” based on my avatar-centric communication system. Stanford seminar on avatar-centric communication (video available)
The "secret sauce" behind the success of these diverse engagements is rapid prototyping, iterative design, and extensive user testing. I was originally trained in experimental psychology and was interested in enhancing human reasoning and mastery. Although I helped Terry Winograd bootstrap his design program at Stanford (he needed students to get money, money to get faculty, and faculty to get students so I gave a class on Film and Game Craft in User Interface Design, Stanford seminar), I have focused on developing practical techniques for applying empirical iterative design practices in startups. I have led large design teams and I have worked as a lone designer. I have worked in industries where user experience is the focus (e.g. gaming, Apple-like companies) and in industries where user experience attracts little attention (e.g. enterprise). In every engagement, these techniques have helpled me create interfaces with empirically-verified usability and subjective impressions that match the intention of the developer.
DETAILED RESUME
