Making Good

Getting to Know Each Other, 7000 Miles Away: One World Youth Project is helping students from across the world understand each other in meaningful ways.

2011-12-21T16:45:13+00:00

Not long before Lake Area Middle School was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, Jess Rimington was facilitating a classroom exchange program there; one of the earliest implementations of her then-fledgling organization, One World Youth Project. Jess’s classroom was paired with a classroom in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Over the course of the academic year, the students in her New Orleans classroom and their Mongolian counterparts shared their experiences, stories, and learned the similarities of their lives. They got to know each other.

When the floodwalls were breached, the Gentilly was flooded and with it, Lake Area Middle School. Jess heard nothing from her New Orleanian students. It would be months before she would hear the harrowing stories of students waving down planes from their rooftops or hear about the boy who was forced to break through his ceiling to get free.

It was the students in Ulan Bator that she heard from. They were worried about their friends. They had heard about the storm and seen pictures. They set out to help. The students raised a few hundred US dollars—a lot of money in Ulan Bator—and collected and sent clothing.

Why? Because they knew the students in New Orleans. Their lives had intersected and a hurricane 7000 miles away had come ashore in their own lives.

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Jess founded One World Youth Project eight years ago as a high school student. She’d had the opportunity to travel to South Africa and experience the life-changing shift that occurs when you are able to step out of your own context and see it relative to the very different and very similar lives of people in other contexts. But she knew this was not an opportunity most people get to experience. Out of this realization, OWYP was born.

In the eight years since it’s founding, One World Youth Project has connected students in 67 schools in 26 countries.

One World Youth Projects develops global citizenship skills by establishing OWYP “Hubs” at universities around the world. University students are trained in the curriculum and program methodology. These “project ambassadors” are then assigned to local middle or high school classrooms, where they facilitate a cultural exchange program with students in another classroom somewhere else in the world.

In the eight years since it’s founding, One World Youth Project has connected students in 67 schools in 26 countries, most recently focusing on Washington D.C. and Prishtina, Kosovo. This coming year they will expand to Islamabad, Istanbul and Georgetown in Guyana.

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Recently, OWYP hosted a reception here in New York City. Several of their painfully young and smart staff shared stories. Surya Kundu spoke of the challenges she had as a Teach for America corp member in Chicago with students entirely unfamiliar with her Indian heritage. Ossob Mohamud spoke of her experience in a OWYP classroom in Qatar, discussing women’s rights with students, some of whom questioned whether the idea was inherently Western. Cady Voge expressed that “once you know someone’s story, it is impossible to hate them.” Jess told the story of the Ulan Bator / New Orleans connection.

Their experiences have proven to them the importance of building a skillset that increases student capacity to see themselves in one another, while developing the ability to communicate cross-culturally and work together effectively.

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I’ve had the pleasure of working with Jess and team for about two years—along with my colleague Kaushik Panchal—to help the group communicate online and develop some of the tools they need to do their important work. In my work life, I have tried to focus my energy as much as possible in supporting organizations who are doing good work in the world. OWYP meets this criteria in every way.

I have no doubt whatsoever that their successes are just beginning. Please take some time to learn more about them. Not long from now we will speak about them in the way we speak about Teach for America today. That’s where they are headed. They have no small plans. I just thought you’d like to know now.

Example of: Empathy, Telling Stories

Make Your Own Rules:

2011-12-08T16:10:57+00:00

As I walk to work, I often have ideas as my mind wanders. (Such as this one.) This is one of those. It was sparks by thinking of the sentencing of Rod Blagojevich, marijuana possessions, and crimes committed by financial institutions during the financial crisis. When you compare sentences, the magnitude of the crime and its impact on society often seem disconnected.

This is also true with government spending and taxes. The actual “settings” often don’t match what we think the should be. We are also usually unclear as to what the settings are at all.

The purpose of this idea would be to A) clarify what we feel is most important B) see how that matches with reality and C) develop a sense of where our priorities should go.

I don’t have the time to take this any further, but here’s what I mocked up as a possible Web tool to accomplish this.

Example of: A Visible Future

Thoughts on the Recent #dotgov Dialogue:

2011-10-10T17:49:21+00:00

Recently the General Services Administration conducted an open, public dialogue to solicit ideas about how the government could improve Federal .gov websites. The dialogue was conducted online using the IdeaScale platform and will be archived for future review. I’ve compiled my thoughts on the dialogue for the GSA team. It’s long, but I want to give as much feedback as I can.

You can jump to the ideas I found most useful.

Dialogue Catalyst

I was asked to participate as a “dialogue catalyst”. The GSA folks didn’t set down specific requirements and allowed me and the other dozen or so catalysts to determine how best they could participate. Some catalysts felt their most valuable role was in lending their unique subject matter expertise to the discussion. This made a lot of sense for the people who have very deep knowledge within a specialization. I felt the way I could be most helpful was in encouraging discussion around posted ideas, bringing in ideas that I see outside the dialogue into the discussion, and reaching out to experts whose input would make the discussion richer.

Quality of Submissions

In general, I found the quality of suggestions was very high. The discussion around submitted ideas also usually helped to fill out the original submission. Across the board, ideas seemed to be coming from people who “knew what they were talking about” and who have thought deeply about the issues outside of the dialogue.

Participation

In just over two weeks, 436 ideas were submitted and 996 people participated in the discussion, either by submitting ideas or commenting on existing ideas. I heard some feedback that the fact users had to register to participate was a disincentive to participate, but my feeling is that it kept the quality of discussion high and clean. (You could register without identifying yourself.)

Many of the people who participated appeared to either be government folks, or people who might be considered near-government: either good government advocates or people who encourage government to address certain issues. This makes perfect sense, although I would have liked to see more people who are Web practitioners from across the private sector offer up lessons from their work. This is harder to do, and something that would be worth trying to figure out for future efforts.

Also, there was a strong tendency towards practices that are thoughtful, measured, research-based, and done “the right way”. Generally, this sounds great. We want the government to practice in a responsible, considered way. But outside of government, this isn’t always the case. So what’s the problem? I feel weird saying this, but sometimes there are situations where the best thing you can do is “just get it done” and put it out into the world. In the world of startups, there is a lot of discussion now about Lean thinking; that if you wait until your product is fully ready, you waited too long. So I’m not advocating for bad practices, I’m just saying that voice, for good or bad, wasn’t really present in the discussion, but it definitely exists outside of government decision-making.

Important Ideas Raised (General)

Big vs. Little, One vs. Many

One theme that emerged across many ideas was the issue of whether the government should focus on delivering services through fewer, or possibly one central website (see “Follow UK’s Directgov Model”), or whether it should focus on more, topic/audience-specific websites (see Kaushik Panchal‘s “Use the Network”). As with most things, both is probably the answer. To me, the best approach is probably to encourage practices that allow content to be found and shared easily across platforms:

Apply proper metadata
Use semantic marked up
Ensure easy discovery via search
Properly archive outdated or ephemeral content
Do whatever needs to be done to put content and services at hands-reach for 311-type services

Differentiate between ephemeral and evergreen content

This is an issue that I think about a lot and which I see done wrong all the time. Content is not all created for the same purpose. Some content serves a short-term purpose and some is more timely and ephemeral. This is not just an issue of old vs. new content. Being conscious of the purpose and appropriate channel for the content is important. Generating content is easy. Managing a large collection of knowledge and up-to-date, relevant content is hard. Which leads to…

Content Strategy

Kristina Halvorson recommended creating a federal website content strategy. Other people submitted ideas along the same track. The point of the theme is that you should think ahead about the substance, function, need, audience, governance, and maintenance of the content you produce. This is often at odds with the last minute push to “get something out” about an upcoming event or marketing push. It’s important to recognize the needs of those who are marketing the efforts of an agency, but they need to be balanced with the needs of those within the agency or department who need to serve the ongoing content needs of their audience.

Better promotion of existing .gov services

Many times during the dialogue you heard people stating that the Feds should do this or that, followed by the Fed folks humbly stating something like “you can similar service here”. The takeaway is that there is a ton of great work already being done by the various Web teams that people don’t know about. Somehow more effort should be made to let the public know about these things, or increase their visibility. Some things, such as search.usa.gov are great tools, but could potentially be tweaked in ways to make them more useful or more visible. This mirrors my personal belief that one challenge for government is that when it does things well, it doesn’t get credit because those efforts become invisible.

Usability

There was a lot of talk of usability. i agree, but you can read the usability stuff here. Be sure to read Aaron Gustafson‘s “Optimize user paths”.

Open Analytics

Dmitry Kachaev recommended “open Web analytics for all .gov websites. This is an interesting idea. It would allow the public to crunch numbers in an interesting way. I think it would encourage content creators, who don’t always have access to analytics about the content they create, to take better care of existing content.

Important Ideas Raised (Social Media)

I was asked to pay specific attention to the Social Media space. Ideas from this discussion that I find important:

Use existing and open source tools

There was a theme I liked that focused on using existing tools, frequently open source, often with established users and cultures. It makes sense from an economic standpoint, but even more because these tools reflect iterative lessons learned about what works. Some known areas of concern for the .gov context involve accessibility and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) considerations. See:

Dan Latorre‘s “Encourage use of popular #OpenSource platforms”
”Do Not Replicate Social Media”
”Have a Gov-Wide Team that Evaluates, Presents and PurchasesTools”

Allow Feds to communicate with citizens via social media

The idea to Support Employee Access to Web 2.0 Sites was raised. I agree, though it does raise some issues of workload, loosening control of message, and culture shifts.

Plan for effective use of social media in disasters

I posted the idea Institute Effective Social Media Emergency Plans. Many gov teams already probably do this, but what may not be as considered is the content strategy for producing resources, materials and content ahead of time that can prove effective in times of crisis, and pushing those materials out as soon as disasters strike.

Tension over ‘get the basics done” vs “be where the people are”

While not an idea in itself, I wanted to call attention to the difference of opinion between those who feel .gov teams should do the basics first (read: create effective websites”) before embracing additional responsibilities such as engaging on a variety of social media platforms.

Requirements, Guidence, Incentives

In reading through the ideas, you read a lot of “require all .gov websites to…” or “all .gov websites should…” statements in connection with thoughtful ideas. (Ex: “All Gov sites should use search.usa.gov to power site search” or “Make usability testing and 508 testing required PRIOR to launch”) In considering the validity of an idea, I think it is wise to consider the requirement aspect separately from the idea aspect. Establishing requirements for some perfectly good ideas could create inflexibility or “box checking” that would work against creative problem solving. Some things should be required. Some should be encouraged. Some should be incentivized. Some should be nudged. My guess is that the require/encourage issue closely mirrors the submitters’ views of the role of government in general.

Summarizing concepts

The next step for the GSA team will be to ingest all the ideas that have been submitted. They have said that they will in some way report on lessons learned from the dialogue.

Ratings

It would be good for the team to take the user submitted ratings with a grain of salt, especially on the lower and middle end. I think it’s safe to say the really highly rated ideas deserve their ratings, but when it comes to the ideas that were submitted in the second half of the dialogue, they are handicapped by two things. As more and more ideas were submitted, it became harder to get a sense of the full breadth of ideas submitted and you started to see some fragmentation and related ideas being discussed under different posts. Also time wasn’t on the side of late submissions.

Themes

I believe it was Candi Harrison who recommended that a summary of the dialogue could be gathered into maybe a dozen themes. I’d second this approach. I do think themes emerged, and a good summary would look for those themes and then cite key ideas and comments from within those themes, which I think don’t necessary align with the pre-defined campaigns set up in the IdeaScale system. The themes may be along the lines of “Process Issues: Activities that ensure a consumer/citizen focus”.

Tag IdeaScale

I would also recommend the GSA teams add/edit some of the tags associated with the ideas into a useful taxonomy that could aid in the consumption of the ideas in tandem with the summary.

H2>Potential future structure

To me, the IdeaScale platform succeeded in it’s core function of collecting ideas from the public and allowing for some discussion of those ideas. I don’t see any reason not to use this or a similar platform again in the future. But there may be ways to make the process even more successful. Here’s one approach:

Instead of keeping all topics open the entire time, it may be helpful to have a series of focused sessions (usability, search, etc.)
Possibly 3 or 4 days in duration
Market each session to the main websites, experts, or organizations of that specialization
Have dialogue catalysts with a somewhat more focused role of nurturing discussion, asking follow-up questions, seeding topics, and drawing in important voices
Have an additional role for high profile subject matter experts whose task is to use his or her social reach to drum up activity and who would be the main participant of…
A live, webinar/web chat/audio discussion that would happen half way through the session. The public could log in and listen to/ask questions of the expert related to the ideas that have been submitted. The expert could select some of the ideas he or she finds more important for further discussion.
The dialogue catalyst could be the moderator for the live chat.

Thanks!

I was really pleased to be a part of the dialogue. I hope these comments help, and I apologize for the length.

Example of: A Visible Future, Identifying Value

National Dialogue on Improving Federal Websites:

2011-09-18T22:13:49+00:00

The Federal government is asking for your input and guidance. They are seeking input from the public, in particular those professionals who have deep know on the various aspects of content, search, usability, accessibility, social media, multilingual content, and online services.

The National Dialogue on Improving Federal Websites is a two-week online discussion of how the Federal government can better deliver information and services online. The dialogue will launch Monday, Sept. 19 at 2 pm ET and run until Friday, Sept. 30. You’ll be able to access it at: http://web-reform-dialogue.ideascale.com/. Please join in the discussion.

I will be participating as a “dialogue catalyst” to help keep the conversation moving. I’ll be trying to connect ideas and ask good questions; draw people into the conversation who may not already be in it. I’d appreciate if you do the same. Join in. Share what you’ve learned. And if you think particular people would add to the conversation, reach out and ask or contact me and I will.

You can also follow comments about the dialogue on Twitter using the hashtag #dotgov.

As Craig Newmark puts it, “the deal is that Fed workers are seriously interested in better customer service, etc, via their web ops. I’ve worked with these folks for years, they’re the real deal, and are really listening.” I agree. In my experience working with Federal employees on HealthCare.gov and in other capacities, I’ve been impressed time and again with their intense commitment and drive to serve the public.

Of course, diversity improves all things, especially ideas. Those of us who work on Internet-related things all practice differently. We all do things in ways that we have found better for one reason or another. That’s what they want to learn. Upload your wisdom so that we can all learn.

And please, let’s keep this positive. We’re citizens and our government is asking us for advice. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? Candi Harrison warns, “whiners aren’t allowed to play. This isn’t a gripe session. This is a chance to float your ideas and join citizens, colleagues, advocates, authorities, and others in thrashing out ways the government can improve customer service through the web.”

I’ll see you at http://web-reform-dialogue.ideascale.com/

Example of: Identifying Value, The Long View

Attack Big Problems:

2011-09-17T12:16:29+00:00

When you have a worldview that looks to solve the big, underlying issues, you start with the problem and seek the solution that will fix it. Too often I feel like those of us developing Internet-related products or businesses are not thinking big enough; aren’t moving us ahead in really consequential ways.

If you’re developing a business, it is of course important to find “product/market fit”. If someone’s investing money in your company, they don’t want to think you’re on some meandering expedition to just make some stuff. But simply finding a market and figuring out something to put in front of them is, well, kind of boring.

For the last ten years, my MixTrail partner Robb Smylie has been helping Teach for America solve their big challenge: to educate children in low-income, underserved communities. That’s a big problem. He’s done this by leveraging technology in a way that makes the impact of the organization scale up efficiently. The more work that can be automated through algorithms, or eliminated by making data more usable, the more that can be done with fewer resources. Technology can have a huge impact on how people do their jobs when applied thoughtfully.

In my own design practice, I have tried to work with and accelerate the efforts of clients that were doing good work in the world. Whether it was designing the site that allows all Americans to find the private and public health insurance options available to them, my work with colleges helping current and prospective students know what educational options their schools offer, or helping a youth-run organization articulate it’s mission of developing young people’s global citizenship skills to investors and partners, I always try to work with people who were working towards big things.

Look, I spent many years working on projects that were interesting and challenging, but that didn’t quite get at the big issues. They pushed product or told a good story, but they largely left the world alone. I know that experience well. But I work towards more.

MixTrail is working to solve a big problem. Despite, or perhaps because of, the Internet’s low barrier for publishing information, we are not necessarily more knowledgable, deeper thinkers. As a whole, we don’t have a better handle on complex issues. In many cases, the reality is obscured by a lot of fluff and news. We’re likely to hear the latest news, but not be able to contextualize that information.

MixTrail’s not going to entirely solve this problem, but it’s the space we’re working in. Bit by bit, we’re trying to create a system that will allow you to connect ideas and content in ways that makes it easy for you to gain background, context and peripheral ideas.

We’ve got a lot of work to do, but we’re excited and working hard to make it great. More in time.

Example of: The Long View

Do What You’re Paid For, Then Do Some More:

2011-07-25T12:00:32+00:00

If I look back at my career so far, one of the things that has been most helpful is my seeming inability to stick to the scope of the project at hand.

That doesn’t mean I’m a pushover when I’m prodded to deliver more than originally agreed upon. It means I pretty much always stick my nose where I haven’t been asked. Not forcefully, of course. Just out of inquisitiveness.

You know those moments, don’t you? When you feel that the thing that needs to be done isn’t exactly what you’ve been asked to do. It’s a bit beyond that. It’s the thing that others think isn’t really necessary. But you know, if you just did it, they’d see it’s value and it will make everything better. You can always just skip it, but sometimes it’s an opportunity.

It can be an opportunity to practice an aspect of your craft that you are still trying to figure out, or gain experience in. In the work I do, there are many invisible or behind-the-scenes things that clients often don’t know they need. It’s a great chance to work through it, develop your skills in the area, and create examples of real-world work that can help you get paid for similar work in the future.

At Work

I’m sure this is true is most work scenarios, but most of my work is consulting with clients. Here are two examples of how this has played out for me.

Free People

Free People is a long time client of mine. Together we’ve redesigned their e-commerce site (a few times), created a mobile store, launched several new feature sets and a wholesale e-commerce store. It’s an ongoing relationship that has grown and changed over the years. (All development has been by Weblinc.)

It started when Carrie Yotter saw the site I designed for the band Blanche many years ago. She thought there was an aesthetic affinity with what Free People was about. There was. The tactility and sense of history fit well with the Free People sensibility. The earliest work I did with them focused on telling the aesthetic story.

By the time the project was complete, Free People knew I approach problems from as broad a perspective as I can. When they decided to foregoe new physical wholesale showrooms in favor of an online wholesale site, I was brought in again. Much of the information architecture and user experience work was not explicitly called for in the original agreement, but it was clear that it needed to be done to get it right.

We needed to think through the way wholesale buyers shop showrooms and how that experience and mindset could be translated in an e-commerce experience. We spent far more time on wireframes than planned, but it showed the value of the process and cut down on fiddling with designs later.

A bit later, when FreePeople.com was ready for another full scale redesign, the design efforts focused entirely on creating a cutting edge store with a structure that would allow Free People’s super-creative internal design team to regularly and easily reskin the site along with their marketing campaigns. The resulting site still pushes the limits from creative and technological perspectives, all while being appropriate for their unique audience. It was “Responsive Web Design” before there was such a thing.

So while the original motivation for approaching me was because of certain aesthetic affinities, the reason I’ve been asked back again and again is because of an entirely different skill set that I proved I had along the way.

More info on Free People work: Free People Retail Redesign | Free People Wholesale site design | Other Free People projects

Oberlin

Another (shorter) example is Oberlin College. The college was undergoing a large scale branding overhaul that spanned more than a year. While the larger effort was under way, they asked for some help creating an interim Admissions site. The designs were well received. When the branding project wasn’t, they commissioned me to take a stab at designing the homepage.

The design that was delivered wasn’t just a graphic arrangement of elements. It foreshadowed the extended site experience, and also dealt with some difficult issues they faced; namely a branding campaign in which they were deeply invested (but wasn’t well loved), and the organizational challenge of being two schools in one, the College of Arts & Sciences and the Conservatory of Music.

That design seemed to strike the right could with all the interested parties, and I was asked to take over the redesign of the full global website. This work subsequently led to other higher education work for Columbus State, GWU, Stockton and more.

More info on Oberlin College work: Oberlin College Website Redesign

Work Outside of Work

Using your “work skills” outside of the workplace is another great opportunity. Contributing your most valuable skills to help community groups or advance social issues you care about frees you from many of the constraints of paid work. You can often approach problems in ways that business often prevents. The work you do in a volunteer capacity is just a usable in exhibiting your skills for future employment. Take it as an opportunity to do it the right way, document you work, and take it seriously.

For me, extracurricular work has been very important in my career. I’ve written about my work on HealthCare.gov already, so I won’t go into it here. Also, I plan to write soon about the work I did for Blanche and all the projects it led to.

Conclusion (finally)

There are lots of opportunities to do the work you’re interested in. If you can’t figure out how to get paid for it yet, do it anyway and use the experience and output to prove you can do the job. That work, because you care about it, will be your best work. It’ll be the best projection of where you want to go and will help others see you in that light.

Example of: Identifying Value, Live / Work

How I Became Involved with Healthcare.gov:

2011-07-20T18:15:43+00:00

Last summer, I was asked to join the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) team that was going to be building out HealthCare.gov—one of the earliest requirements of the Affordable Care Act—as Design Lead. How this came to be is pretty amazing.

In late January of 2010, I was walking to my office, stewing about something I had been listening to on the radio before I left home about the proposed Health Reform bill. At the time, there was still a question over whether or not it would be supported by those on the left advocating for a public option.

To me, the public option was far less significant than the most important part: the establishment of the Health Insurance Exchanges. It seemed that because the idea of the Exchanges was fairly abstract, people were just skipping over it; not recognizing its value.

As a designer, I could see what they could be. How they could be used. It seemed to make so much sense! This is one of the key roles of the designer: Make Visible the Future. So I set about to it. I spent a couple days working through concepts. When I finished, I published Envisioning a Health Insurance Exchange on this site.

In addition to publishing it here, I sent a simple @macon44 Twitter mention of the post to White House Director of New Media Macon Phillips. The account was very new and he didn’t have a ton of followers yet, so I thought it was a relatively less congested channel to try. (No longer the case.) I didn’t hear back, but it got through.

Four months later I got an email from someone helping to bring together the team to develop HealthCare.gov asking to talk. After a couple of calls with Macon and HHS CTO Todd Park, who was heading up the project from within HHS, I was asked if I wanted to come down to DC to try to bring to life some of the ideas I had talked about. Two weeks after that first email, I was in the trenches working with the full team of subject matter experts, regulators, technologists, writers, internal Web pros and White House folks.

Examples of the work and links to press clips, including a videos of Macon and Todd discussing the serendipity of my participation and the President using the site, are available here.

HealthCare.gov is not a Health Insurance Exchange. The Exchanges will be in place by 2014. Some states are working to get them up prior to that date. HealthCare.gov is two things. It is a informational site with lots of clarification on the law and the current state of HealthCare.

Perhaps more significantly, it is also a one-stop shop for finding ALL the health insurance options available to you. Thanks to The Affordable Care Act, for the first time, insurance companies must report a whole slew of information about all of their plans and costs. This information is then pumped into HealthCare.gov via the the Insurance Options Finder, which sorts through billions of available options, filters them down, and presents a manageable menu of options that are available to you.

It was a major first step. And it was launched in less than three months! Working with Macon, Todd, and the rest of the team was the most amazing and intense project of my career. The work was high stakes, fast-paced, intellectually fascinating, and most importantly, really meaningful. I worked on HealthCare.gov for five months.

When you send out your ideas into the world, you really don’t know what they will lead to.

I recently spoke with Brian Casel and Dave Yankowiak on their Web series Freelance Jam about this and other projects - Watch the Show

Example of: A Visible Future, Identifying Value

Obama on Empathy:

2011-01-20T16:41:00+00:00

The practice of empathy seems to have been a central force in Barack Obama’s life for a very long time. It was certainly front and center from the moment he stepped onto the stage of the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

His capacity for empathy allowed him to connect with a broad range of people. His recognition of an empathy deficit, and the public’s unquenched desire for a more empathetic world, gave momentum to the movement that led to his Presidency. Edwin Rutsch from progressivespirit.com has compiled a collection of videos of Barack Obama speaking on the topic and value of Empathy.

Edwin Rutsch from progressivespirit.com has compiled a collection of videos of Barack Obama speaking on the topic and value of Empathy.

Example of: Empathy

An Amazing Year:

2010-12-21T22:32:32+00:00

2010 has been very hard for many people. But for me, I’m incredibly thankful for a year filled with amazing collaborations.

From my work in D.C. on HealthCare.gov to the smallest updates for long-time clients, this has been a year when my goal of working with great people doing important work in the world has been fully realized. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the opportunities I’ve had this year. I want to take a moment to thank the people I’ve had the good fortune to work with…

(in approximate chronological order)

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Columbus State Community College - Community colleges play a huge role in reshaping our economy and workforce. Thanks to Tony, Will, and everyone else at CS for the chance to help reshape the Web communications for the 30,000-student-strong school (plus an additional 20,000 people getting career training).

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George Washington University’s Semester in Washington Journalism program - Thanks to Amos and Andrea for allowing me to help express their program’s mission of introducing students to the quickly changing landscape of journalism as it’s practiced today. More info.

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YourPBC.org - A Knight Foundation-funded, issue-based community resource that brings together local organizations in the Palm Beach, FL area to work on shared issues. More info. Thanks to Slade and Nicole from the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties.

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And to thanks to decimal152, who I partnered with on YourPBC.org. I really value my collaborations with decimal152. Todd Bennett and Adam Forrand are always insightful and comprehensive, and share an interest in finding holistic solutions to complex problems. We also worked together on Stockton…

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Stockton College - An opportunity to re-establish the online identity of this public liberal arts college that’s been getting a lot of attention for its recent rapid upward movement in the college rankings. Thanks to Kim and the rest of the Stockton team. More info.

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On many of my projects this year, I worked with Brian Casel of CasJam Media on the development side. Brian is quality-, detail-, and standards-oriented and has been a great partner in turning designed pages into working ones.

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One World Youth Project is an organization that connects schools globally for collaborative learning and community service. Thanks to Jess and Jeff for the inspirational example and the opportunity to participate in the behind-the-scenes planning and strategy work. (More on this in 2011.)
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And thanks to Kaushik Panchal of Buscada, who is my collaborator on the OWYP work, both for his role on this project and for the ongoing shop-talk and design conversations.

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HealthCare.gov - From the moment I was contacted to join the Department of Health & Human Services team building out the online companion to the historic Health Care Reform bill, it was an exciting adventure. I’m incredibly proud of my contribution to HealthCare.gov. More Info.

Thanks to everyone from HHS, the White House and the experts who lent their expertise - I am proud to have worked with you all: Todd and Macon, who saw some seeds of potential in this and brought me in in the first place; and the rest of the team I regularly worked with (in alphabetic order): Alison, Amit, Barb, Ben, Behnaz, Beth, both Craigs, Damaris, Diane, Dick, Erin, Frank, Heather, Jaime, Jenny, John, Julia, Karen, 3 Kathryns, Kaya, Kevin, Linda, Lisa, Marsha, Martha, Mary, both Michaels, Mikio, Missy, Nafisah, Prudence, Read, Sara, Shayla, Susan, Ted, Teresa, Tim, Yvette, and Zabeen. (I really hope I didn’t miss anyone, but am sure I did.)

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As well as a very special thanks to my wife, Bilyana Dimitrova, without whom the D.C. stay (and most other things in my life) would have been impossible. And to Todd, Adam, Brian and Kaushik who picked up the slack back home.

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Free People makes amazing women’s clothes. As part of Urban Outfitters, Inc. it is one of the most creative companies I’ve experienced. I’ve worked on several projects with them over the last four years or so: retail and wholesale e-commerce, mobile, social and more. It continues to be inspirational working with such creative and perceptive people. Thanks Dave, Bill, and Todd for the work we did this year. And also to the in-house creative folks who keep the site lively and beautiful - Carrie, Lizzy, Kevin and the rest. More info.

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And a general shout out to Weblinc, Free People’s amazing development partner who brings all the designs to life. Thanks Darren, Dan, James, Eric and the rest of the crew at Weblinc.

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Terrapin Bright Green - Terrapin applies innovative ideas and strategies to developing a more sustainable built environment. We made some updates this year to help their ideas spread and flourish. That’s important. Thanks to Catie, Chris, and the rest of the Terrapin team. More Info.

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So yeah, it’s been an amazing and full year. I wish I could gather you all up in matching snowman sweaters and take a big group photo!

Looking forward to 2011

I’m working on some exciting things now. I look forward to sharing them with you in the New Year!

Example of: Live / Work

Compressing Time: The Lifecycle of Stupid Little Plastic Doodads:

2010-12-16T16:48:31+00:00

Chris Jordan’s amazing photographs of birds and the indigestible pieces of plastic that killed them are amazing in their efficient and potent storytelling.

Since I saw this series, I can not get them out of my head. Every time I see plastic in a gutter, I think about this. And that’s great.

Someone designed all those things. Someone used them. Some person lit dozens of cigarettes of that lighter. Someone took those caps of their soda. Maybe me.

View the full Midway: Message from the Gyre series.

Example of: Telling Stories, The Long View