Personal Digital Network
In 1999, I was one of several Co-founders of StickNetworks Inc., a startup company with a vision to create a new wireless location-aware device. The PDN device embodied that vision as it evolved over 2 years.
Platform: Wireless Handheld Device and Supporting Network
My Role
Human Factors Director
1999 - 2001
I directed a team of designers in defining the PDN's unique personalized user experience.
I was part of a small group that defined the models and algorithms that enabled the PDN's capabilities to learn about each user and contextually deliver content.
My Role
Human Factors Director
1999 - 2001
I directed a team of designers in defining the PDN's unique personalized user experience.
The User Interface included simple ways to assemble content items into screen displays for user-defined contexts (e.g., work, home, morning, evening) and a contextual content display viewer.
Research / Design Activities
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Ethnographic Research
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Focus Groups
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Marketing Segmentation Research
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User Panel
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Behavioral Modeling and Algorithm Development
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Flash Prototypes
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Investor Reviews
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Physical Prototypes
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Usability Testing
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Design Communication with Management, Users, Development, Partners, Investors, NEWS
INITIAL CONCEPT
A handheld, location-aware device with a private and secure text-messaging capability.
An associated network to manage quality, privacy and security.
Focused toward young teens as primary users.
User Research
With various partners we conducted Ethnographic Research, Focus Groups and User Segment Analysis.
We also created a teen-panel from which we could obtain ongoing feedback as needed.
Ethnographic Research
User Segment Analysis
Teen-Panel Research
EVOLVED CONCEPT
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​Location-awareness
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Phone plus text-messaging
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Expansive view of content categories and items (content includes any informational or relational items that users create or experience)
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Device platform includes "players" for presenting various types of media content (video, music, photos, voice mail, text, etc.)
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Useful content is made available to users through a complex and adaptive system that uses context, user-preferences and other habit and behavioral user models (all within users' control)
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Empathic and conversational interaction style
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User Interface incorporating a new medium for content delivery -- a dynamic presentation stream of content items based on context, user preferences and habits.
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Named places and activities to provide personal context references
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User visibility to network and relationships under user control (including parental controls)
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User designed assemblies of content for named contexts
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Graphic, animated user interface implemented in Flash
