I’m a creative problem solver. I get lost in time when I get to be creative. Learning and collaborating on a project with people make me feel alive. The more complex the problem, the longer I am in flow. To some, I could be seen as being a workaholic, but to me, I’m spending time doing what I love.

But as humans, we all, at one point or another, get stuck… unsure what step to take next, and eventually hit a wall. The challenge you were so energized about in the beginning, for one reason or another has turned into…

Transformational wellbeing for the new normal.

What a year. The uncertainty brought about by the pandemic, social movements and strong emotions between information filter bubbles has certainly motivated me to prioritize wellbeing, not just for myself but for my friends and family.

I knew I needed a mental detox when life started to feel too hard, like there was no time to rest. It got harder to focus, harder to sleep well, harder to smile. The constant multi-tasking left me feeling tired and unproductive and finally manifested as stiff joints, muscle aches and excessive body weight.

I researched solutions from…

As if living through this pandemic wasn’t enough, add paranoia from coughing more than a couple times a day, anxiety from election buzz, topped with overwhelming stress from uncertainty of when my next paycheck will come, as we prepare for the holiday season.

It’s a plate of despair I refuse to eat…

Anxiety can be so powerful that the emotional pain manifests into muscle tension, stress and the inability to focus. My mind rationalizes the triggers: It’s a side effect of being productive, just ignore it. Years pass and chronic pain and disease settle in to remind me that my body has long disconnected from mind and spirit.

“Thoughts…

Being aware of cognitive bias and how we can learn to make better decisions from biomimicry.

Cat get your attention?

Assumptions and biases drive our outcomes more profoundly that we’d like to admit. We get stuck in incremental improvements and marginal outcomes and the busyness of being productive keeps us from asking bigger questions.

If your solution isn’t solving a real need, and you need a nudge to get you unstuck, ask yourself the following questions and you may discover where you weren’t really solving the right problem.

The problem with problem statements

As information increases exponentially, decisions get harder to make, more choice, more…

An article pops into my news feed — a flying car will be available to a select beta group within 3 months, looking for early adopters to test-drive, will receive compensation.

My agent, Jasper notices my excitement from facial recognition and promptly asks, “Are you thinking you’d like a flying car?”

I might respond, “Maybe…. can I afford one?”

“Let me check…” Jasper accesses my digital financial wallet . “Give me a few minutes to run some numbers and come up with a couple of scenarios”.

I continue browsing and Jasper interrupts with another question. …

Human machine interactions in our daily lives are evolving from what to consume, to how we make smarter decisions with better outcomes. Automation and personalization are still the methods to get there. And just as mobile opened up space for responsive design, data is a design medium for decision intelligence.

Digital transformation is a people challenge. We need to widen the transformation paradigm across lines of business to find the unmet needs and patterns for reframing. Beyond the AI hype, we’re still fundamentally solving the same problems. How might we …

1. Extract and transform structured data from one system for…

I got invited to give a class on interaction design at RISD this past week for the Product Design and Development (PDD) class. It’s Matt’s last class at RISD before he starts a new Integrated Design and Management program at MIT in the fall of 2015.

I wanted to share my knowledge, give designers a realistic perspective of working in the real world and I realized I need to share more of my thoughts and experiences.

This is by no means an exhaustive checklist but more a work in progress, that for now best applies to big data applications.

1. Applying quantitative data to design

Should…

COLLECTION

Efficient information retrieval

organize : classify : personalize

Collections organize and classify entities for a purpose, personal to the owner or an organizational goal. It has map-like orientation, functions like a container and changes over time.

In enterprises, data is often silo’d, duplicated and database administrators are tasked with organizing and categorizing entities, structuring data to make it easier to access by automating service and repeatable processes. Efficiencies of use.

How do you automate what to collect in a way to efficiently find what you need, when you need it, in the most cost effective way?

Technology solutions revolve around this question — human feedback loops within…