Affectiva to Tellart

I didnt realize it had been so long since my last post. So to all 5 of my readers, im sorry. Luckily this time it was not because I had nothing to post about, but because I have been doing so much, and many nights it came down to work or post, and I choose the former.

I have been doing a lot on the bildr front. I finally finished some things that I had been wanting to do for some time, but I will wait until another time to do show-and-tell.

Why the post?

Last month Tellart offer me a position at their design firm.

Im starting the new job in just over a week, and though I am leaving Affectiva, it is only in body.

When I started at Affectiva last year I was eager to be this hybrid of developer and designer and I hit the ground running. Soon it became aware that there was just too much work to be done, and we hired a full-time developer so I could focus on the interaction design, and visual design of the software. It wasn’t long before I realized just what 10 years experience and a degree in computer science could do better than my 1 year of dabbling.

Over the corse of almost a year we hired many more people, and soon, everyone had someone similar to themselves working there but me. I was still the only designer. During that time, I dissected many a UI element and reconstructed them in different ways to understand just what was it about the way the pixels align that pleased my eye. In the end, I found myself creating much nicer graphics, but very similar interactions.

This, mixed with the over 2 hours of driving for the job each day, was the reason for my departure.

After graduation I was not ready to stop learning, and in no-way have I. But things have slowed down on some fronts that I didnt expect. I still push my self to near RISD extremes, but without the teachers and classmates, I was playing the same note over and over.

Tellart is an experience design firm just a few miles away from my house. The ability to save 600 hours a year in driving, and be able to learn and work with a very talented group of designers was just something I couldn’t turn away from right now.

The unfortunate reality is that in doing so I am saying good-bye to Affectiva, the company I joined on the day we got phones for the office – before we had proper desks – before we had a logo, or a website. Affectiva is now 4 times the size it was when I joined, has a CEO and some major players. The products I worked on there will truly be ground breaking.

I had my hands in every aspect of design, and almost all of it to this point was by my hands. This is something I will probably not have another chance at for a very long time.

But for now, I focus on life, growth, and exploration.

Small update

Hadn’t posted in awhile so I figured Id do a short one.

Things at work have been really busy. We finished our beta product, and sent it off to our first customers. You never remember all the things that need to be done to make this happen. Everything from shipping and boxes to serial numbers and systems in place to make that happen.

The software that I head up  is really shaping up. There are so many little things that need to come together to make this happen well, and you get so jaded when you start on it because you can plow through so much so quickly. But soon it comes down to the nitty gritty and things move at the same pace, but look much slower. But as my good friend Zack Kamen said “Applying the varnish can be 90% of the work” – And from what I have experienced, the varnish is what changes “so-so” software into great software.

I started looking at my bildr code database, and started seeing redundant information due to adding things on to it. But I didnt know how much until I took it into a visual editor and was able to see all the tables and all the fields at once. The schema helped me completely redo it into something that I hope will work much better.

Coming down to the wire

Just a quick note: I don’t  think most people know, but “down to the wire” actually refers to tires.

So tonight while working on the bildr video, I thought. This is kinda long, and it starts to change tone here. So I am splitting it up into 3 videos. So i should have it all done by tomorrow night. I decided to make a short 45sec one with it. It’s actually just the first part of the video, but it seemed to work so well on its own.

It took over 90 illustrations (many very small) to make this happen. But I believe the aesthetic came out very nice, and I think people will like it.

Let’s just hope it compels people to help make it real.

But bildrs’ not what’s coming down to the wire. In just a week I will be headed back to Tucson to get married. Wow did this sneak up on me. Ill be gone for less than a week, and im sure it will feel like the blink of an eye. I really just help it all comes together as well as I see it.

At work: I just hired a developer to take over the majority of that portion of my job so I can focus more on the design of the product. Right now it is so hard to know what will happen in the next few years, but I have a really rare opportunity for someone so soon out of school. Im in a position to really lead the design vision of a company. It’s a little scary in a way, but more liberating than anything. I hope years from now when I look back Im amazed at how much has happened and how much I was involved in. It’s been almost 3 months, and I already am.

From Flash to Flex

Just over a year ago I started learning ActionScript. At the time it was actually to develop multi-touch applications for the table I had made. Back then, I did everything in code, and there was no real interface aside from the black background. For this, flash was great, I just did all my code in a document class, and it worked very smoothly.

Well nowadays Im building AIR applications and have been using flash for it. Building an interface in flash it like doing it with cutout pieces of paper. Seriously. But like that, you can never get everything in the perfect location. It drives me crazy coming from a web development background. Things in flash have no structure. Things can easily overlap. If you move one element it does not affect the elements next to it,  meaning you now need to change all of them. And there is no super simple way to do it numerically (all done with the mouse), making it even harder. (if you change the size of a movie clip you stretch it’s contents so you can’t just readjust size from the info box)

So the company I am with just bought Adobe Flex  and I am starting over in it. I really like building interfaces in it a lot more than flash, except coding in it is not as easy. This is what I find really funny. Adobe creates a program for flash developers, who want to just code everything. But in the end, you need to do a lot more before you can start coding.

Someone at adobe needs to take a closer look at how javaScript works. Let me have my interface in one document, and my code in an other. Let me name elements and directly talk to them from code. In flex, you can do either one of these, but not both, and that’s not cool. Even flash let me do that, and you claim it is for designers. Well I guess that’s it. I am a designer, but I also like hard structure.

Then again, I have used flex for 1 day. Give me some time.

But if I had to say, I still think flash is the worst applications from adobe now. It tries to be like illustrator, but does not act the same. The key combos are not the same as all their other applications. And it wont behave in the OS like it should (mainly hiding).

I had no clue

I had no clue it had been so long.

Ok… so I have to say. I hate moving. Maybe worse is unpacking. Im here in my new place typing this in my own room. I call it the studio/ office/ lab. It’s pretty full of junk right now, but I think it is going to be perfect when im done setting it up. I may actually have real space to not only work on my design/web work, but a completely different table to work on electronics.

So the real reason for no update has been the move/ unpacking. The last 3 weeks have been dedicated to only that. Not to say that work hasn’t sucked the life out of me, but I managed to take some of it back, and it looks like most nights will be mine to work on my own stuff for once.

At work, I guess I can say, I should be able to at least, I am working on the development of the software for our product. It is being developed in adobe AIR so we can write once and deploy on what ever platform you want. It is basically flash for the desktop. So I have an application with a real icon who actually updates, opens ands saves files, and does everything an real application should do. It’s pretty nice.

Because of it, I have been learning a ton of new action script stuff, and if I ever get time to write some multi-touch apps again it should be much easier.

Once the product is out there I can tell you more, but we will be offering a product in the field of Affective Computing, AKA the ability for computers to interrupt human emotion. It’s a really cool field of research started by Rosalind Picard (who happens to be my boss) to expand the field of artificial intelligence.

People look at Spock from Star Trek as this perfect example of a perfectly logical human, and how smart they are. We often think of emotion as getting in the way of decision making, or at least messing it up.

Well, it turns out that people with too little emotion actually have a hard time making decisions. Imagine going to a restaurant, your favorite one. Maybe you look over the menu and see a few things you like, but end up going with a old favorite. Your emotion kicked in and helped with that choice. If you had been perfectly logical you would have considered 1000 things about the food (from taste, ingredients, health etc) before making a decision. Ultimately, you would spend more time and possibly end up with something you would like less in the end.

So if humans need a certain level of emotion to make better decisions, what about computers. If people want to make computers act and think more like people, then they too need to have some emotion. That is what this area of study is all about.

Quick post before work.

It’s only been a few days, but I think I have gotten a lot done with bildr Code.

But first. Work has been good. A lot better now with the commute being manageable. I have had a few hours every night now to work which keeps me happy. I have been doing some web work and I am getting ready to start design on some software. I actually can’t talk too much about that so I won’t.

So bildr Code right?

Well Im about 80% there. Right now it works. Completely non destructive editing. In fact this is what happens. You go to the site and edit something. As soon as you change anything, the site creates a complete copy and slips it in (user never knows) so that you are working on a completely isolated version. So you can delete/ add files, rename things (soon to be able to move things around) all without changing a thing on all the other versions. Even if two people are editing at the same time, they are working in their own environments and will not affect each other.

This is needed because when programming, what you do in one file is often dependent on changes you made to a second or third file. So if you add dependency on a new file, someone else can’t accidently ruin that. It also means that anyone trying to ruin the program, can’t do much damage.

The only issue I have right now, is that they system seems incredibly wasteful (database wise) and I can’t figure out how to resolve that. I guess that will have to wait for version 1.0. This is after all a usable proof-of-concept. AKA a beta.

Time to get ready for work.

A few things before I take off

Im off for a few weeks tomorrow. Going on vacation.

But before I go, I wanted to give an update on what I have been up to. I do now have a job. This was a really touchy subject because I found my self with 3 wonderful job offers with 3 wonderful companies. Making a decision was the hardest part of all. I think if you read Predictably Irrational (see below)  you may understand why. But I ended up going with a Startup Company based around Affective Computing. I will be doing Interaction and Industrial designer for them and I can’t say how excited I am. It is just such a cool area of work.

My friend bought me this book for my birthday (last Feb) and I just had a chance to read it on a recent train trip to NYC. I really recommend it to anyone who ever wonders why people make such ridicules decisions. (myself). Dal Aliely does a spot on job not only explaining the irrationality of people, but also proves it in some really great (and great reading) ways. It is not too complicated, and is a very fun read. Thanks Zack!

I have been working on bildr a bunch, and have a little better version on the front page going on. It has a lot more content, and hopefully will give people a better idea of what t will be all about. But… I have also been working on the proof of concept, and just finished an alpha version of a visual category editor.

You may have seen this before (see video below) on my theses work. Well I had to have it. So today I spent most the day working on making it a reality. Like I said it is still in alpha, but I would Imagine within a month this will be a true reality for anyone who wants it on their wiki. It uses a ton of MooTools work, and 4 ajax/json calls. But I think when I can get the API calls to work via PHP and that will really speed it up and reduce its footprint.

Anyways, that is what I have been up to. Ill see you in a couple of weeks.