Meet the Author

The world is becoming increasingly complex. There are more platforms, more devices, and more complexity than ever. Today’s digital interfaces aren’t as self evident as yesterday’s mechanical ones and, with more choices than ever, people won’t tolerate interfaces that aren’t elegant and intuitive. They’ll just go elsewhere for a better solution to their problems.

That’s why we need Human-Centered Design.

By understanding the needs, wants, perceptions and aspirations of our users, we can build better experiences.

While there are no shortcuts to building great experiences, here are a few small steps you can take toward humanizing your design process.

Three months ago, we were approached by Leadership Atlanta and the organizers of the (co)lab Summit with a big task: to awaken the change agents within Atlanta and inspire the region’s most talented citizens to help transform education.

To do this, we were tasked with writing briefs, helping to rally the community around education, and designing/producing two short videos that would bring to light the challenges our city is facing in regards to educating our children to life. 

People with an engineering mindset look at problems from the standpoint of product/service performance. They seek opportunities for functional improvement.

But not every problem has an engineering answer. After the easy fixes are in place, future efforts start to suffer from diminishing returns. At a certain point, it becomes incredibly difficult to enhance the functional value of a good. So how do you improve the experience without changing the reality of its performance?

You focus on the perception of its performance.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Charles and Ray Eames. Their contributions to design, architecture, filmmaking and furniture are unparalleled in our nation's short history. So, it was a huge honor to launch a digital campaign to help preserve one of their most important works, the Eames House.

Like many things in life, this campaign never would have happened if it were not for a chance encounter that took place two years ago.

In the past, I've blogged about the value of task cohesion. For those of you that missed the original post, military studies have shown that task cohesion is the most important factor in determining whether or not a difficult mission gets completed regardless of the circumstances.