innovation + motivation + inspiration

Following SXSWi 2008 (Best. Conference. Ever.) I spent a week overhauling my portfolio for the first time in 2 years. While I haven’t broken free from Flash for this revision due to time constraints, I completely restructured the site from an organizational, experiential and aesthetic perspective, and I’m pretty happy with the result. Let me know if you agree/disagree. Since I’m launching this blog in tandem with the portfolio redesign, I figure it makes sense for my inaugural post (yes…I’m ridiculously late to the blogosphere) to discuss my process. Hopefully the assumption that anyone might care isn’t too narcissistic…hehe.

So, the most important choice I made with this redesign was whether or not to start from scratch with a new concept, or to retain the general idea behind my previous portfolio design, the Cardell Catalogue (heh). Okay, all puns aside, after careful thought and consideration, I decided that this general concept was still highly relevant to me and the web as a whole, not to mention the fact that I was recently approached by a couple authors who want to include my self-promotional materials in an upcoming book (I’ll leave my thoughts on printed books as a delivery mechanism for discussing digital content that is perpetually in flux for another day :)).

I know what you’re thinking, but hear me out…hehe. Although most people younger than me (I just turned 25) have never even seen a card catalogue (I think my hometown library branch got computers and linked into the Minuteman Library Network when I was about 7 or 8), the Dewey Decimal System solved the familiar problem of organizing a vast amount of perpetually growing data. Interestingly, one of my first uses of the internet was accessing the library catalogue using Gopher with the help of my Dad and our Modem 2400 (600 Baud). To sidetrack briefly with a blast from the past, this was followed shortly thereafter by: reading alt.urbanlegends; finding a complete list of emoticons (yes, I was far too cool to use these for years, but lately they just kinda feel nostalgic and I kinda like that); playing with IRC (trumpet winsock, anyone?); marveling at Mosaic the very first time my Dad showed it to me at his office; getting a screenname on AOL when their pricing structure was still pay by the minute and Compuserve was the only other option; getting in trouble for downloading photos of ponies (all girls <3 ponies) that took about a day to download; getting kicked off AOL (hehe…i think I’ll stop there to avoid explaining that).

Additionally, despite the fact that there’s definitely a focus right now on user-created content and the other Web 2.0 or 3.0 foundations, some companies have made significant efforts to diversify their investments to include the digitization of offline knowledge and resources. I think this is, in a word, brilliant. I may be slightly biased because my entire primary education took place while online sources were in the infancy of acceptance from teachers. I remember having to defer to encyclopedias over Encarta. I recall being annoyed by limits of one internet source per paper. For me, finding information online seemed so much more efficient. I’m sure most people agree with me at this point and I’m certain we’ve moved beyond the general distrust of the internet in education somewhat, but I think that the underlying issue which involves the searchability of printed publications is as problematic as ever. There is a a huge amount of potential in the physical world, especially the printed word that all has yet to be digitized. By facilitating access to information from every resource that exists about a particular topic, the greater purpose of accessibility of knowledge would be far better served. Obviously, copyrights constrain this concept a great deal, but it should be noted that the power of crowdsourcing relies upon the fact that individuals as part of the collective all have been exposed to different sources both on and offline. Wikis are a great resource but the information contained therein is still passing through multiple human filters. Having access to original sources in an comparably searchable way would be an incredible asset to collective knowledge and the progression of ideas and innovation.

Finally, in an attempt to get back to my original point and away from that particular tanget, I really do love reading and I grew up reading books. In this way my portfolio pays homage to my roots as well as my research process for a lot of the sites I have created. I’d also like to think that I’m hinting at the fact that great user experience design is informed equally by tactile and digital experience, although that might be a stretch.