Hi – I’m
A human that likes to build things with other humans.
I am primarily a visual thinker - I see patterns, missing pieces, and elegant solutions everywhere.
Solving them is what I do best.
Rainbows of Confusion
Just one more label. And another color. Let’s set up some filtering. Maybe a Kanban board will help.
The body of work I am responsible for spans multiple titles, teams, and dependencies. We use Asana to manage all of this, and while it's extensible and highly customizable, it lacks a certain level of visual connectivity and context that I'm looking for. This inherent customizability is also it’s downfall.
A recent project of ours spurred the idea of developing a more visual approach to augment our data-driven project management. This was a large scale project spanning multiple months and platforms. The details were covered, but the broad scope of the project was unclear and the risk of slipping our goals was increasing on a daily basis. We needed a simpler way to visualize our progress and instill ownership over the crucial pieces required for a successful product release.
Enter The Boat.
The Boat was a form of digital "rallying point" that provided our team with a fun and engaging way to visualize the status our project at any given time. Using a tool our team was already familiar with (Figjam,) I created this interactive white board to represent the various pieces of a large, multi-quarter spanning project.
Very quickly this tool became a gathering place for everyone to customize, edit, and ultimately celebrate the progress they were making while also providing our leadership team with broad clarity of the overall health of our initiative.
Why does this work?
There’s a lot of noise inherent in building digital products. Every system and tool we use comes with a learning curve, a process for updating, and mental bandwidth to keep things organized. Large, deeply connected database-driven project management tools can be deceptively difficult to gauge progress.
By introducing something fun, weird looking, and easy to edit, the team was able to bring their own unique ideas to the table and discuss the status of certain features, blockers, and ideas a new way.
The team quickly took to the boat and made it their own. Over the course of three months they reorganized the compartments, validated different development gates, added lots of humor and memes, and even bought captain’s hats to help bring the boat to life.
When doesn’t this work?
Not every project benefits from this kind of visualization. On a more recent project our team created a fantasy map to visualize the various components of a large-scale feature completion project.
Our studio was in the process of transitioning to a more “outcome-based” development style - where discovery and iteration are at the center of how we make things. A robust, feature based visual quickly became unnecessary.
ALWAYS BE SOLVING
Not every project benefits from this kind of visualization. On a more recent project our team created a fantasy map to visualize the various components of a large-scale feature completion project.
Our studio was in the process of transitioning to a more “outcome-based” development style - where discovery and iteration are at the center of how we make things. A robust, feature based visual quickly became unnecessary.
Hi – I’m
A human that likes to build things with other humans.
I am primarily a visual thinker - I see patterns, missing pieces, and elegant solutions everywhere.
Solving puzzles is what I do best.
Rainbows of Confusion
Just one more label. And another color. Let’s set up some filtering. Maybe a Kanban board will help.
The body of work I am responsible for spans multiple titles, teams, and dependencies. We use Asana to manage all of this, and while it's extensible and highly customizable, it lacks a certain level of visual connectivity and context that I'm looking for. This inherent customizability is also it’s downfall.
A recent project of ours spurred the idea of developing a more visual approach to augment our data-driven project management. This was a large scale project spanning multiple months and platforms. The details were covered, but the broad scope of the project was unclear and the risk of slipping our goals was increasing on a daily basis. We needed a simpler way to visualize our progress and instill ownership over the crucial pieces required for a successful product release.
Enter The Boat.
The Boat is a digital "rallying point" that provided our team with a fun and engaging way to visualize and communicate the status our project at any given time. Using a tool our team was already familiar with (Figjam), I created this interactive white board to represent the various pieces of a large, multi-quarter spanning project.
Very quickly this tool became a gathering place for everyone to customize, edit, and ultimately celebrate the progress they were making while also providing our leadership team with broad clarity of the overall health of our initiative.
Why does this work?
There’s a lot of noise inherent in building digital products. Every system and tool we use comes with a learning curve, a process for updating, and mental bandwidth to keep things organized. Large, deeply connected database-driven project management tools can be deceptively difficult to gauge progress.
By introducing something fun, weird looking, and easy to edit, the team was able to bring their own unique ideas to the table and discuss the status of certain features, blockers, and ideas a new way.
The team quickly took to the boat and made it their own. Over the course of three months they reorganized the compartments, validated different development gates, added lots of humor and memes, and even bought captain’s hats to help bring the boat to life.
When doesn’t this work?
Not every project benefits from this kind of visualization. On a more recent project our team created a fantasy map to visualize the various components of a large-scale feature completion project.
Our studio was in the process of transitioning to a more “outcome-based” development style - where discovery and iteration are at the center of how we make things. A robust, feature based visual quickly became unnecessary.
ALWAYS BE SOLVING
Over the course of my career I’ve worked with a wide variety of businesses, from small local businesses to industry giants and cultural leaders in design and technology:
Intel / The New York Times / Facebook / Google / Tetris / PAUL Component Engineering / White Industries
From simple websites, to user research, to AR explorations, each experience has provided me with a wealth of experience that I leverage on a regular basis.
I started as a designer, became a developer, and eventually merged the two when I started seeing that every role is another puzzle looking to be solved. These days I’m excited about the unseen and intangible problems that every team, studio, and business grapples with.
Interested in working together? Let’s chat!
