I mentioned earlier this week that the Edward Tufte workshop in Atlanta eight years ago was a driving factor in returning to graduate school, but that’s actually a partial truth. There were actually five lectures that sparked an interest in design research and grad school. All of them held in vast hotel meeting rooms with hundreds of attendees, but each of them connecting with me on a deeper level.

Jonah Lehrer, AIGA Gain Conference, October 2008, New York City

Gain was AIGA’s “Business of Design” conference¹ and there was a roster of big wig, influential speakers. Jonah Lehrer was there to talk about his best-selling book, Proust was a Neuroscientist. Lehrer connected creativity with neuroscience advancements, arguing that artists often figured out how the brain worked before scientists did. This concept that neuroscience and creativity could be linked was fascinating to me. A few years after...

I realized the other day that our family tends to give places nicknames and that to an outside observer, our place names would be undecodable. Here are a few of my favorites.

• St. Mary Ashley. In reality, this church is St. Mary Episcopal Church, but our former babysitter, Mary Ashley got married here. It’s on my drive home and when my wife would ask where I was, I’d say “I’m by St. Mary, you know, where Mary Ashley got married.” Eventually, I shortened it to St. Mary Ashley.
• The Honeybaked Ham Plant. Not far past St. Mary Ashley is sprawling industrial facility. Once owned by Honeywell, it’s now operated by Shaw Industries and makes carpet fibers.¹ It obviously does not “make” hams, but I guess at some point, Honeywell became Honeybaked. If I told my wife I was near the Shaw Industries plant, she’d have no idea where...
  Continue Reading →

I still have Facebook, primarily to check my memories. Usually, it’s something funny that the kids said, or some family pictures. But today was different:

“Just left Columbiana in a stampede. Rumored shooting. Scary.”

We’d gone to Columbiana Mall near our house to do some shopping and stopped at the Red Robin near the exit to get some dinner before heading home. After dinner, we stepped out of the restaurant into a stampede of people running toward us. A woman yelled “Go! There was a shooting!” as she ran past. We darted back inside Red Robin and left through their exits. I had Norah and Jill, and we got briefly separated from Ryan and my wife, Liz as we left through different doors. We found each other, ran to the car and got the hell out of there as police and first responders poured into the parking lot from all directions.

That is...

I attended a lecture tonight at the University of South Carolina with Helen Armstrong, professor and researcher from NC State. The talk was well attended… mostly students with a handful of professional designers sprinkled in. I didn’t take notes, but figured I’d share some quick impressions.

• Designers need to learn to use AI. Think of artificial intelligence as a tool that we can wield to design more effectively. The point isn’t that AI will do the whole project, but that we can choose how to implement AI tools most effectively.

• Designers need to partner with data scientists to maximize the impact of AI tools. Helen talked about the importance of partnering with data scientists to understand the tools and help focus AI products.

• Designers can craft the interface to AI. Right now, we think of most AI tools as text prompts, but designers can work to help build the interfaces that allow people...

  Continue Reading →

New app lets iOS users weave together sources

When the Iconfactory announced their Tapestry Kickstarter, I backed it immediately. I’ve been a fan of the Iconfactory’s work for decades, and was a loyal user of Twitteriffic before Musk cut off the API. I’ve had beta access for months as a Kickstarter perk and I’ve been using it daily.¹ Now that Tapestry is released to everyone, I wanted to write a little review with some thoughts about how it’s working for me.

One app for pretty much everything. Tapestry is a unified feed reader. You build a feed from a variety of sources and “connectors.” I’ve used connectors to bring in my Micro.Blog, Mastodon and Bluesky social timelines. I still use Feedbin as a traditional feed reader so I’ve also some of my favorite RSS...

In one of my early grad school classes, we had a conversation and some readings on parasocial relationships… mostly one-sided relationships you “build” with people that you watch on tv, listen to on the radio, or subscribe to their podcasts. We think we know these people. Maybe at some point we met them, but our real “relationship” is surface level. We might know their favorite athlete or actor, but have no idea what their spouse’s name is. We may know all about them, but they don’t actually know we exist.

(My grandmother had a very strong parasocial connection to the Augusta, Georgia NBC affiliate morning show hosts. She would tell me all about them when I visited, as though she knew them.)

Social media is a little different than local television celebrities. You can have interchanges and discussions, but the reality is that these are also incomplete. You can’t get to know...

Posts in the “Then” category were originally shared on my “Now” page.

My first “Now” update of 2025. The start of the year has been chaotic. Cold weather and threat of snow, but only a couple of flurries. Then, last week, both kids had the flu. The semester started and I’m taking two classes. Work remains busy. Tomorrow is MLK Day and it’s a holiday for us. Hoping to use the day off to recharge and reset.

Feels

• Anxious. A car accident before Christmas. Wildfires in California. Insane political news. Sick kiddos. The general state of the world. It’s just one thing after another.
• Optimistic. While the state of the world is depressing, I’m excited about the direction at work. And I’m moving toward finishing my Ph.D.

Health

• Still stalled. Had hoped to hit reset after the new year, but alas, things are just too chaotic. I was looking to start walking...
  Continue Reading →

Posts in the “Then” category were originally shared on my “Now” page.

The last day of the year. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks leading up to Christmas and before New Years. A minor car accident complicated the already busy season. Everyone is fine, and it was the other driver’s fault, but now we are just waiting to find out if the damage is repairable. Thankful for good auto insurance.

Normally by now, I have a plan for the next year. And I guess I have some ideas, but I haven’t written it out yet. I probably need to go ahead and do that today or tomorrow, since, you know, 2025 starts tomorrow.

Feels

• Drained. So many things to do at the end of the year. I was productive, but have not rested enough over the last couple weeks. I have two more days of vacation before I head back...
  Continue Reading →

My themes for 2025 are essentially the same as they were last year. And the year before. I need to get healthy. I want to write and be creative. I need to stay organized.

It’s somewhat boring that my major themes have stayed the same for three years. I’ve made progress, but I still have a ways to go. I thought about changing them up, but these four goals still reflect what I need to work on so I’m sticking with them. Just some slight modifications…

• Get healthy. Once again, this needs to be my top priority. I made some good progress late in 2024, but I need to carve more time out for walking and exercising. And I need to continue to make better food choices. I turn 50 this year, and I’d like to be healthier at 50 than I was at 40. To pull that off, I...

  Continue Reading →

Posts in the “Then” category were originally shared on my “Now” page.

First up, Happy birthday Norah! My oldest turns 20 today. Two decades is a long time and so much has happened… and yet, it feels like it has flown by.

I’ve seemed to settle in writing these updates every other week instead of weekly. Since they are mostly for me, I going to be okay with it. But if you happen to be reading along, just a heads up.

Feels

• Excited. I’m excited for the Christmas season. Yes, most people started planning for Christmas early, but we have three family birthdays between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Hard to focus on Christmas when we are still celebrating birthdays!
• Proud. Of my kiddos. All three of them are growing up to be amazing people. I love them so much, but I’m also incredibly proud of who they are. I’m also very proud of...
  Continue Reading →