matthew canning

Like many boys, when I was about ten years old, baseball was the most important thing in my life. I could name every professional who played that year, collected cards with whatever money I earned, and played for both my elementary school and the local little league. Despite hours spent drilling each night and putting in more work than almost any of my peers, I was average at best.

The league all-star was Denny Walls. I remember him well. I tried to look him up recently, to no avail. Though he was only a kid, he looked like a grown man—at least in my memory. He could hit home runs, was an all-star pitcher, and could outrun anyone else in the league. I remember thinking about him once when I was back in my yard after a game, throwing a ball against the pitch-back net my mom bought me. I wondered what I was doing wrong that he was doing right. (more…)

The epicenter of a national emergency seems an appropriate place from which to write a blog post on preparedness. I am currently burrowed in my home during one of the largest storms ever recorded. The sky is black, my sump pump is working overtime, and the wind sounds like a chorus of ghosts clamoring to enter my back door. Power is intermittent, and we are occasionally plunged into darkness and analog silence punctuated only by the nature’s rage. It looks apocalyptic, and so, let’s discuss the apocalypse. (more…)

Over the course of my professional life, I’ve been asked quite a few times to explain the idea/importance of User Experience (UX) Design to a person with no prior experience in the matter. Based on my professional background, this was usually in reference to web application development, but the core idea behind UX both originated from and continues to branch well beyond digital media. As anyone in the field would surely argue, it’s a many-faceted discipline that involves the marriage of both traditionally “left-brained” (problem solving) and “right brained” skills, as well as the ability to empathize with the challenges faced by a theoretical end user. I’ve found that it’s often difficult to convey the nature or importance of the discipline, as many of the most successful interfaces the average person comes across are — due to their very intuitive nature — some of the the least noticed. As Donald Norman, author of The Design of Everyday Things and Living With Complexity might argue, sometimes a User Interface is only noticeable when it fails to be intuitive. (more…)

Non-genius/retired FBI need not respond.