Orange Cone

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About Mike

I am a consultant, designer, author and researcher focused on the experience of technology and how it affects design and business. I spent 10 years working full-time on the Web, but right now I am most excited about designing the experience of tangible technology. This puts my interests in the cluster of fields that includes ubiquitous computing, pervasive computing, ambient intelligence, technology-based art, physical computing, architecture, interaction design and industrial design.

My formal university training was at the University of Michigan in traditional computer science and visual arts (I graduated with a dual major in Computer Science and Film/Video Studies). I believe my strongest talent is in transposing and synthesizing ideas from many different fields to provide original, creative and valuable solutions to hard problems. I see this as the product of a lifelong interest in how technology changes the way we live, and a voracious exploration of all the aspects of that idea. Since college, my work has alternated between design, art, technology, and research, but it has always sought to understand the effect technology has on the people who use it. I believe that technology should always be created in the service of making people's lives better and businesses more successful.

In 2003 I wrote Observing the User Experience, a large collection of techniques for understanding how people experience designed products, and advice for how organizations can change based their newfound understanding. The examples in the book come from the Web, but I believe they apply equally well to any object that's designed to assist a person in performing a task. With little change, the techniques will work equally well with Web sites, washing machines, cell phones and amusement park rides. This book is being used as the standard required text in a number of university programs focusing on user experience evaluation.

Other notable accomplishments:

• I was the VP of Design for Presence, one of the first Web design studios, where I directed the design of many early commercial websites, including one of the first ecommerce sites (HotHotHot, a hot sauce sales site, which launched before Amazon, cookies and secure web connections; they're still using the graphics I developed for them in 1994).
• I was the UI designer of HotBot, an early and successful search engine.
• I founded Wired Digital's User Experience Lab, where I performed some of the earliest Web-based research.
• I was a co-founder of Adaptive Path a successful Web consulting company.
• I co-founded ThingM, a ubiquitous computing product design, development and manufacturing company.

I'm currently working on a book of case studies of user experience design for mobile and ubiquitous computing, due in 2009 from Elsevier.

Observing the User Experience

The Smart Furniture Manifesto

Recent Photos (from Flickr)