Chronicle
Everything works better again if we unplug it for a bit, including our minds. @2:50 meets live daily for ten minutes of mindful quiet together at 2:50 pm in multiple time zones. https://at250.org
We conduct qualitative and quantitative research with local tech, design, and business communities to assess the state of User Experience (UX) professions in Hawaii. We aim to build a more robust user-centered tech sector.
A Study of sleep. No matter who or where we are, when the need for sleep becomes strong enough, it overwhelms all other needs and desires. In the following images, we see sleep overcome. The sleeping succumb to a slow choreography. The environments slant and skew as the need for rest overtakes consciousness. Photographs from Honolulu, July 2020 to January 2025.
The session introduces “generative listening” as a valuable tool for problem-solving. Plenary, US Center for Clinical Standards, Designing for a Better World.
Multiple application developer groups migrate from one CI/CD set of tools to a designated enterprise version tool. Service design strategy managed the developer experience, collaboration, and training. Case study for service design strategy.
In today’s interactive workshop we practice a simple method to help us ‘learn from the future as it emerges’ using all of our senses. Stuck Practice workshop guide.
@2:50 participants report a color representing their mood after each ten-minute mindful session. This infographic illustrates each color’s frequency during the month. No color is chosen on all days, and on no day are all colors chosen
Japanese songs from popular music, art song, modern pop, Ghibli, and opera. Taka Komagata, Mika Mimura, and Eden Kai.
The concept is that what we dream of is already here. We get together with other musicians based on a dream we’ve had since childhood. We explore identity and our roots. Concert at Garuba Hall, Tokyo. Read the program notes.
The final in-person component for the ABSC certificate with Presencing Institute’s u-lab. Preparation to activate change processes in my own context toward a more sustainable and equitable world. Artwork courtesy Olaf Baldini
Nalu minds the flow with 28 ten-minute tracks to help us build insight and enjoy more clarity, resilience, and focus. Simple mindfulness practices through breathing, sensation, observation, and gratitude. Visit Nalu.
Our software support teams miss out on vital user experience opportunities for improvement. We need a way for the whole team to alert UX, from within the digital places where they already work with customers.
Meet Uxo! Our “User Experience Opportunity” mascot engages anyone to notify the UX team when they see an ‘opportunity to improve user experience’. Staff and customer alike use the #uxo hashtag or emoji in any Slack channel. An automated signal aggregates daily to the design team, who follows up.
Moving toward a Zero Trust Architecture requires cross-functional, interdisciplinary collaborations between, UX/UI DevSecOps experts, governance specialists, business process influencers and service design. Read the case study.
The MIT State of Supply Chain Sustainability research effort and report spanned four years, with a 50% growth in respondents and downloads each year. Our strategy leveraged our sponsor network and social media influencers (primarily LinkedIn) under the slogan, “There is no sustainability without supply chain sustainability.” Read the case study.
Peculiar Produce Labs was a series of healthy eating and healthy living workshops for kids and their caring adults. The Labs supported the publication of Peculiar Produce, The Alphabet Book.
Popular music celebrating nature for tenor and vibraphone curated from Japanese songs, Ghibli, Disney, and elsewhere. Read the program notes.
For On Shuffle, the audience picks from a hat to choose the song order for the musicians, as if picking songs on shuffle from an app or listening device. The musicians and emcee chose real-life prompts relating each piece to an emotion or memory from audience members’ own lives. Read the program notes.
Technology and industry changes drive increased global demand for actionable education and learning products. To accommodate this need: we identified and socialized user personas for each product category; built a comprehensive brand guide and per-service product strategy; published a 70/20/10 content strategy with 70% actionable, 20% congratulatory, and 10% CTA content; and created a universal cross-product annual content and experience calendar. Read the case.
In 2020 and 2021, led the production team to publish two titles for MIT CTL Press. Cover art, production management, marketing, publicity, and events.
Peculiar Produce teaches us about uncommon foods and introduces us to children’s names from different cultures. The book uses alliterative text and aspirational vocabulary to encourage discussion on body positivity and rare vegetation! Written for children and their caring adults. Peculiar Produce book.
Gentlemen of Chance is a slow communication experiment in social hacktivism and “spiritual bureaucracy.” The art/action/communication consists of mailing 108 letters to prominent public figures from the Forbes 400. These are people who may influence fortunes or multitudes. Each letter contains a unique type-art impression designed for the recipient. The letter invites each person on a hero’s journey mindfulness practice to discover what action they are destined to take to help repair an imbalance in the world as they see it. The letter requests that each recipient responds with their journey’s findings by filling in an enclosed “form” and mailing it back to the artist. Read the full story. Final artworks compiled in 2021.
Songs from the Homeland invited singers to perform their favorite art song from where they considered to be home. Read program notes.
Balcony Series presents, うた: Japanese Song Night. Enjoy select songs from traditional and modern Japan as sung by Taka Komagata and Hana Omori with pianist, Rui Urayama. Experience, the premiere of “Boston Sky’s Red Dragonfly” an arrangement of “Amazing Grace” with “Aka Tombo”, by Rui Urayama. Read the program notes.
The Type Bar engages participants to create hand-typed letters to be mailed anywhere in the world. This art service pairs guests with volunteer typists who listen and reflect and then hand-type letters for each guest. Deep storytelling often happens. Type Bar uses vintage manual typewriters, stationery, and postage, to help move participants out of time and into creative spaces. The Type Bar started in 2002 as a one-off one-to-one listening and letter-typing activity. It grew over 16 years, eventually appearing in locations all over the world, including Tokyo, Honolulu, San Francisco, Black Rock City (Burning Man) and Boston among others. Thousands of Type Bar letters have gone out through the post or been hand delivered. Experiments and history here. This iteration of Type Bar concluded in Feb of 2019.
With Gratitude_x, I studied three types of learners participating in a massive open online course or MOOC. As the community manager for the learners in these courses, I had unique access to, and interest in, their perception, motivation, and practices. I had the sense that learners might perceive the free and low-cost learning platform and its related courses, as a gift to them and to the public. If my sense was validated, I wondered would this perception create a circular spirit of gratitude and giving in the course membership and learning community? Would this spirit lead to greater cooperative production than can be accounted for by calculating only economic, reputation oriented or other motivating forces? The paper was published in 2018 as my graduate thesis for the Master’s of Design Innovation (MDes). These talks were given at MassArt, MIT, EdX, Pearson, and EduCause.
Redefine target audience value proposition and update all materials according to brand standards. Integrate CRM, automated email communications, and transactional billing for a seamless customer experience. Provide robust in-application reporting for staff and the production team. Read the case.
Balcony Series provides opera flash mob performances in any locations to unsuspecting listeners through impromptu performances. Read the program script.
Having practiced many styles of breath and movement, I want to explore what shapes the practices leave in space. My intention is to record the full range of a flow in one exposure to discover what that might reveal about the practice and about the body. The act of recording these images is an especially intensive in-the-body experience as the movements need to be consistent throughout the entire exposure. In addition, these photographs take place in complete darkness where I am blind. This acts to deepen the practice, timing, breath, and balance. View Kinetic Umbra.
– Because communication technology continue to supply more ways to rapidly connect people,
– Because the complexity, speed, and ubiquity of these tools are ever-increasing,
– Because there exists in the culture a growing expectation for immediate responsiveness and always-connectedness,
– Because more and more of our memories and consciousness are becoming located outside our organic minds,
– Because expression and communication are becoming evermore predetermined by database fields, templates and standards,
– And because the defining lines between media receiver and producer are falling away…
We offer this manifesto for slow communication.
This document is intended to serve as a guide for anyone who seeks insight and balance in their communication habits. With this manifesto we intend to:
+ Continually strive to improve our communication skill
+ Take pause and breath before responding to synchronous messages
+ Allow our selves the freedom to respond to asynchronous messages in our own preferred time frame
+ Allow ourselves time to draft, re-draft, think and re-thing any communication before sending
+ Make efforts to understand inherent and apparent bias or judgment embedded in any message we send or receive
+ Continually observe our posture, expression, muscle tension, and breath while communication is taking place
+ Meet in person when possible and make eye contact during verbal communication
+ Engage in non database or template driven creative activity
+Take short or long term breaks from any or all rapid communication
Revised, February 3, 2016. Boston, MA
Original, June 21, 2011. San Francisco, CA)