Professors take sabbaticals as breaks from their research work; so I thought it would be a good opportunity as a practitioner to take a break, and opt-in to the world of academia. Providing myself with space away from the hyper-speed of commercialization to go inward has allowed me to foster deeper musings on vision, philosophy, psychology, and the future of human computer interactions.

I believe that design requires perspective and approach beyond mere measurement of commercial output – that the way in which create is as relevant as what we create. Our work as designers is critical – it captures the hopes and dreams of humanity; it's necessary to take a step back to understand and approach our work with the rigor that allows making meaning out of requirements. To understand decisions through interaction research and critical inquiry allows us to make sense of the user interactions we create.

My dissertation research was a critical exploration on how consumptive media companies, whether conscious or not, promote the loss of user mental autonomy. To regain autonomy, which is an essential human psychological need, we can leverage HCI interactions by prompting awareness toward user intention as key interaction to keep user behaviour in track with intentions. In short, it was a proposed interaction to combat distractions to keep us on-track to the life we want.

I’m absolutely fascinated by psychology; specifically learning psychology, behavioral psychology, and cognitive sciences. This helps me investigate human experiences one layer deeper than just interactions: such as the limits of cognitive capacity, conditions required for neurochemical release responsible for motivation, and how individuals or users construct behavioural mental models of their environments.

My interests in psychology split into three categories:

First is self-motivated behavior, with a particular interest with Ryan Deci’s Self-Determination Theory (SDT) which outlines three basic human psychological needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness.

The second is how dopamine release schedule can be controlled to affect motivation in the context of user interactions.

And finally, socio psychology in the framework of organic community building and belonging – which you can see in my work building intimate design communities via the Makeshift Collective.

As design leader that works with high level concepts to the execution and public release of software, I care deeply about the implications of what we create. It’s one thing to build a compelling commercial experience – it’s another thing to understand how that will create cultural and behavioral shifts through larger scales of time.

I have also become fascinated with the idea of user “states” within user experiences. A user is often classified by their behavioral or "user" profile, capturing a predictive model of their preferential behaviors. However profiles don’t account for the changes in everyday interactions that are affected by different temporary “states”, such as moods, circumstances, routines, or scenarios. How might we design user experiences that accommodate to multiple user “states” rather than profiles?

And finally, I care deeply about the user well-being and how to create experiences that don't overload or fatigue users. We are working with an attention economy – and engagement has to be created meaningfully over bombarding users with notifications.

I perceive design to be less of a vocation, more an approach to investigation that combines systems thinking with cultural investigation to produce interesting human experiences.

I care a lot about humans and their experiences – ever since I was young, I’d find myself imagining new ways for people to interact and would build new social groups, and new interactions online even with my personal acquaintances. I recently dug up an old drawing of a "digital chalkboard" concept I drew up in elementary school to reimagine how the classroom's chalkboard could increase accessibility and clarity to homework information. This value system isn’t something I simply learned – by living it, it radiates into everything that I do inside and outside of work.

My mission is to contribute to the cultural progression of our world through the interaction with technology, so that we can be healthier, happier, and increase well-being through community and the ability to self-author our own lives. I believe strongly that tech should help unlock human achievement, and not hinder it. Therefore there’s important ethics to always be considered behind everything that we create.

Many organizations seek designers when they have clear things to execute on; however, by definition this removes the process of creative exploration. I find this to be unfortunate – the skills of designers are more than ripe for contributing to innovation; but without a clear integration of autonomy and allowing innovation to trickle upward, talent becomes wasted.

I respond to this in three ways. First is to position myself as a strategic partner who also can tactically execute the mission. My practice thrives on navigating unchartered territories and blank canvases with an open and enthusiastic mind; guiding my team and stakeholders through the journey of discovery and expanding possibilities for new interactions and new lines of business.

Second is to lead designers on my team in a way that allows them to celebrate autonomy, mastery, and relatedness; this allows them to have a clear sense of how to contribute to the organization’s mission but also become leaders with influence as positive change-makers to all areas of an organization.

Third is to influence other parts of the functioning organization to leverage the creative abilities of a design team; to diversify design team functions to better suit the broad creative challenges of an organization. My role is straightforward here – to make handshakes and advocate for design across the org. Through this interaction alone I've been able to mature organizations' UX maturity by integrating design into broader organizational functions.

The output is to build, operate, and lead a team of design leaders, who affect their influence throughout the organization – and operate with strong missions towards organizational needs.