This device was developed for a student industrial design project while studying in Paris at the Sorbonne. The premise was to create a product to acknowledge the value of “creatively taking time out” from the hectic demands of contemporary business life.

My inspiration was to address the stressful immediacy demanded of checking impersonal email. Lost not only is the intimacy and subconscious sense of the writer of personal letters but also the recognition of the time needed to hand write anything. There is an emotional satisfaction in receiving a hand-written note from a dear friend that is absent from an email.

The challenge was to design a device that used modern technology while evoking the warmth of a time consuming handwritten letter. Using industrial, graphic and user interface design, I developed a portable leather covered iPad-like tablet that allowed a user to hand write a letter on a pressure-sensitive surface that digitized the nuances of written words, and was then sent electronically. Using the reverse side of the device someone could see these messages as handwritten letters.

The interface was specifically designed to retain the mental experience of opening a mailbox and letter, in order to replicate the sense of anticipation that is normally felt when opening an envelope from someone special–when we had time to indulge in hand written letters.

Home video with no music? Video Tuneup is an app in progress to mix, match, and time a music track with a video in a user’s iPad library. It differs from iMovie audio in that it synchronizes with the action or cuts in the video. Created with the iOS SDK and the Echo Nest API, I designed the user interface and co-developed the app with a partner, Brian Jordan.

As a beta work in progress, future iterations will implement key user activated features to incorporate the action in the video track to modulate the tempo and volume of the sound track. Ideally, the app will then be able to adapt user selected music for a sound track or generate rights free music algorithmically to complement the original video.

Working as CTO of ParallelCities, I designed and developed the company’s flagship iPhone app using the Appcelerator Titanium framework.

Designed to allow users to find local events in their city, the app provides a social layer for people to connect and meet in person at those events.

ParallelCities has since changed direction. It is now an in-house intranet app available by subscription only, and is no longer downloadable as a mobile app.

After graduating with his masters in architecture, Ian Wulfson needed an online portfolio to showcase his work.

Taking into account his work in environmentally-friendly architecture I created a design striving for minimalism and simplicity, inspired by the thin geometric lines of an architectural plan, that could provide an aesthetically pleasing backdrop for his designs and models.

To permit easy updating of information and images, I also provided a backend system using Symphony CMS.

My first large-scale web application, State I’m in, lets users quickly update recurring statuses and display them on their profile page.

For example, if a user wants to let others know whether or not he is in the office, he can create an “in or out” state. When others want to check his state, they visit his profile to find out.

Additionally, State I’m in supports various customisation options, as well as a log of past status updates. The application was written using the CodeIgniter PHP framework.

State I’m in provides a central place for people to tell others about their current status.

Schloss Tirol is a 12th century castle in the Northern Italian province of South Tirol near Merano. It is a destination museum of architectural distinction, designed with a free standing staircase independent of the walls so as to protect the integrity of the historic 11th century tower. Exhibitions mounted along the stairs showcase historic artifacts of this unique area, which until 1918 was a part of Austria.

Initially, their website was developed only in German and Italian, the two languages of the bilingual South Tirol. I was asked to edit and smooth out an awkward early English translation of the site and then, with my fluency in French, create a French translation.

The Fog is both an online and print newspaper that I produced in high school. For political and editorial reasons I was urged to create an alternative to the long established school newspaper, and for the online version I used the Expression Engine content management system, which I still find to be flexible and suitable for quick updates.

Enlisting creative writer and photographer friends, and with my own experience in graphic design, I was able to lay out and edit print versions of the paper which grew in popularity and provided a healthy stream of alternate articles, reviews, photographs and essays. It was commended by the student body for its quality and production values as well as new insight into some of the events they had been participating in.

Working as an intern for the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra based in San Francisco, I was asked to undertake a complete redesign of their existing website at the time. This previous site was an expedient layout in stark white without a complex structure and unable to expand into the areas that they wanted to explore for their devoted audience. Topics like descriptions and photographs of their original 17th and 18th century instruments or explanation of their youth-oriented programs could not be adequately defined.

My design solution contrasted dramatically to their original online presence by incorporating rich warm saturated colours complementing dramatic photographs of their Baroque era instruments, suggesting the richness of style and dress of that period.

The navigation interface was also redesigned to better categorize and reorganize their topic pages, while I added drop-down menus to simplify the user experience of the site.

An additional new category that I implemented was a pre-concert “Prelude Podcast” section for which I interviewed musicians, the conductor Nicholas McGegan, and other notable artists and experts in Baroque music. These podcasts developed from topical interviews to an audio collage of music snippets, quotes, observations and personal insights of the musicians and artists, with my own questions and voice-over guiding the production.