Fabricants are makers.
My mother, Florence, is a well-known food journalist and cookbook author who taught me how to make fantastic meals from scraps in her pantry. My big sister, Patricia, is an award-winning book designer and artist. I have had a much harder time focusing. Over the last 25 years, my work has spanned everything from the design of interactive environments and virtual worlds to biofeedback devices, in-car navigation displays, mobile messaging services and public health systems. I even made a book with journalist / designer Cliff Kuang.
These days I co-lead the global design practice at Dalberg Design, with creative teams in Dakar, London, Mexico City, Mumbai, Nairobi and New York, working with under-resourced communities in the USA and around the world to make positive social change on the issues that most deeply impact their livelihoods and well-being.
DALBERG DESIGN
The experimental practice I founded with long-time collaborator, Ravi Chhatpar. A small but mighty design studio on four continents dedicated to social impact within a firm with deep expertise in international development and civil society. DD cultivates design talent and leadership in places where it is sorely missing. Our passionate team gets to work every day on issues that they care deeply about.
USER FRIENDLY
You might think that user experience design was invented by Steve Jobs, but the origin story is both more unusual and more compelling. Six years ago I reached out to Cliff Kuang, the only writer I knew capable of reporting and capturing this paradigm shift for a broad audience. The result is the book User Friendly which he so eloquently crafted and which I am proud to have helped to bring to life.
FROG DESIGN
I was privileged to work with frog’s amazing creative team for more than 13 years, building our flagship New York studio and working globally to help launch frog in China and South Africa. During this period, I co-led a team of over 250 designers and built disciplines in design research & experience strategy while also launching frog’s social impact practice.
PRAEKELT.ORG
Praekelt is at the forefront of using mobile technologies and messaging platforms like WhatsApp to reach millions of people with critical, life saving information related to their health and well being. Their platforms provide services to low-resource communities in 65 countries at population scale. I have had the privilege of collaborating with the Praekelt team and serving on the board for more than a decade.
Doodle books
What is the purpose of note taking in the digital age when we already share files that capture more information than we can possibly absorb? So, I developed a note-taking style that visually captures the color of a conversation as a series of pictograms. My little doodleboxes have been featured on Fast Company, TED and Poptech.
SELECTED PROJECTS & COLLABORATIONS
Selected Articles
FAST COMPANY / We’re in a Golden Age of UX. Why is Zoom Still stuck in the 90’s?
Today we have cloud storage and augmented reality—all on our phones. Yet the user experience of Zoom and its competitors has not evolved in over 25 years. At a time when we desperately need online environments that encourage dialogue between people from different backgrounds and perspectives, why hasn’t video chat evolved at all? Read more →
HBR / The Rise of UX Leadership
UX is the new black in business culture. Most of the executives I meet with promote UX as key to their product strategy. But it’s easy as a designer to recognize which executives know their products intimately, and which manage from a spreadsheet. Thankfully, I’m seeing the emergence of a new generation of UX-oriented leaders with little patience for the hands-off approach. Read more→
WIRED / The Rapidly Disappearing Business of Design
Why are leading design firms contracting or exiting the business just when it has become more relevant than ever to corporate America? My reflections on the rapid consolidation of the design business and the critical need for an independent design sector to tackle broader social and ethical issues that do not fit within a single corporate mandate. Read more →
Selected Talks
INTERACTION / Hindsight is 2020
To understand where we are going as UX designers we need to start with a better picture of where we have come from. In this talk, I argue that the roots of our history lie in plain sight and have changed the course of industry and society, yet they have not been woven into a coherent story that explains where we are today – when UX has increasingly become the operating system for modern life. Watch →
INTERACTION / Behavior is our Medium
Citing examples from ancient history, I present a broad view of interaction design as a practice that has shaped society beyond just computing. I argue that interaction design's primary medium is behavior not technology and share some of my social impact work related to HIV prevention in South Africa. Watch →
AIGA / Value Equation for Design
What do we mean by “value” in both a business and social context? What are we learning from the social sector that is leading us to reconsider our definition of the value of design? My keynote set the tone for the conference by looking at different dimensions of the “value equation” for design. Watch →