All of the SCAD IDUS4Haiti design teams (and many more outside SCAD) are immersing themselves in news reports, data and on-the-ground accounts of the tragedy, trying to identify patterns in the complexity that may provide opportunities for design intervention. They are likely also absorbing an unreal sum of human suffering and misery. Read More

This is a weekly journal of the efforts comprising DMGT 765: Business and Design Practicum at the Savannah College of Art & Design. Our team is just one of many involved in the IDUS4Haiti project blitz at SCAD. We are all very eager to engage as many people (both inside and outside SCAD) as possible - especially, of course, those actively involved on the ground in Haiti - so please share any and all ideas, suggestions, leads or arguments here and I will hook you up with the appropriate team(s). Read More

We are a collaborative species. No single perspective could possibly cover every aspect of an issue, but together through the collage of our collective experience we wage war on the challenges of our reality. This is collective intelligence, an emergent characteristic of life that we see in many other social species like honeybees, ants, and migratory birds. At every level of complexity an individual's best efforts could never compare to the magnitude of the seemingly intelligent behavior of the swarm. Read More

I have considered myself a systems thinker for as long as I can remember. Believing that everything happens according to a great universal order makes this frenzied modern life a little easier to reason with. We live on a planet that, for the past three billion years, has been home to incalculably vast and unimaginably complex systems of living organisms. I believe that by deepening our understanding of this natural world we will unlock a deeper understanding of our own nature, and in doing so discover we still belong to the system and are not simply an exception to it. Read More

We are a collaborative species. No single perspective could possibly cover every aspect of an issue, but together through the collage of our collective experience we wage war on the challenges of our reality. This is collective intelligence, an emergent characteristic of life that we see in many other social species like honeybees, ants, and migratory birds. At every level of complexity an individual's best efforts could never compare to the magnitude of the seemingly intelligent behavior of the swarm. Read More

I have considered myself a systems thinker for as long as I can remember. Believing that everything happens according to a great universal order makes this frenzied modern life a little easier to reason with. We live on a planet that, for the past three billion years, has been home to incalculably vast and unimaginably complex systems of living organisms. I believe that by deepening our understanding of this natural world we will unlock a deeper understanding of our own nature, and in doing so discover we still belong to the system and are not simply an exception to it. Read More

A few weeks ago I had the good fortune to attend a CoolHunting Academy at MIT in Cambridge. The week-long workshop marked the kickoff of an exciting collaborative research initiative between MIT, Savannah College of Art & Design, University of Helsinki and University of Cologne. Read More

In July of 2007 I was recruited by USAA in San Antonio, Texas, as a contract designer during the closing months of a massive web redesign campaign. Six months into my contract USAA made a full-timer out of me and I joined a small team of UI Designers responsible for the core applications of usaa.com, like My Accounts, Web Billpay, and Account Summary pages. My primary responsibility was to engineer the UI of mobile.usaa.com. Read More