IMERJ.
Scope
Project
Role
Year
Building Vision, Practice and a World-Class Team
I led the vision from concept to execution-starting solo, then building and guiding a world-class design team. We created a seamless dual-screen experience that spanned devices and OSs, earning over 100 patents. Though the product was too early for the market, it remains a defining project in my career-one that reshaped how I design, lead, and think.
Designing Disruptive Products
Ideas are easy. Execution is hard. The journey is my calling.
No single project has ever completely engrossed my life, and pushed my capabilities to the extreme. I have never been on a project where I started off as the sole designer to conceptualize and create the vision for a product, and then create build, lead, inspire a world class design team.
The Imerj Dual screen phone was the project of a lifetime. My role? "Vision" Designer, Thought Leader, Conceptual Designer, Product Design Director, UX Manager - not sure what I would call myself, but all of the above starts to paint a picture.
Serendipitous Start
In June 2008 I joined Flex. I found the gig on craigslist. They were looking for a GUI designer, and I needed to get out of a bad design gig. In 2008 most people didn’t use the word GUI anymore to describe UX professionals. I knew I was dealing with an old school shop.
Flex had a small group of folks that were looking for someone to help create GUI’s for test automation software. Sounds exciting right? Well that wasn’t why I went. They also were looking for help on Notebook Innovations. That caught my eye.
Can a Smartphone be the Only Computer you Need?
This question started a project that would change the course of my life. It would change how I designed, and how I saw myself, and how I worked with those around me. This project was in all aspects a successful product design, but a market failure. It was too early and the business didn’t hold up.
This was the question that started off on an ambitious design, of a single computing platform, that spanned multiple screens, and multiple OS’s, seamlessly across multi-devices.
This project pushed me to my limits, changed me in good ways, and in not-so-good-ways. (Its taken a few years to turn the not-so-good ways ‘off’).
Over a 100 granted patents, and 300 applications later, I feel like I’m finally off the ride.
