This has been, what we might call at IDEO, an empathy building exercise. I’ve gained a huge amount of appreciation for those with injuries who have to rely on crutches, casts and other types of ambulatory equipment to get around.

In the first few days following the injury, the first doctor advised me to use a pair of crutches from their office to try and keep weight off the foot. That seemed reasonable, and I was on board with the idea of keeping pressure off the foot in the interests of recovering more quickly.

In practice, however, crutches were incredibly difficult to use, both over short and long distances. The amount of effort required by the user’s upper body is exhausting, and they make it startlingly easy to lose stability while moving around. Navigating unsteady terrain such as sidewalks and streetcar tracks also made for a difficult experience. I usually arrived at work covered it sweat from the exertion required to get around, with sore armpits from having most of my bodyweight rest on the crutches. After a few days, I abandoned them in favor of limping around.

The crutches did provide a really great benefit though that I didn’t expect, one that a doctor who fitted me for a boot cast a couple weeks later made obvious — they made the injury visible.

They did provide a really great benefit that I didn’t expect, one that a doctor who fitted me for a boot cast a couple weeks later explained — they made the injury visible. “You need to have other people see you’re injured so that you can have the time to rest wherever possible.”

This became immediately obvious when taking transit. While boarding a busy train here in San Francisco with my crutches, someone almost always offered me their seat. The effect wasn’t as common once I ditched the crutches and started wearing my air cast boot.

Transit became an interesting testing ground in observing reactions to my injury. People reacted to my clear disability in a variety of ways. Some didn’t notice, or (more interestingly) pretended not to notice, either due to some kind of social apathy or that they see me as an otherwise healthy young male who can deal with standing.

Other passengers with injuries were more sympathetic, however. One guy with a fluorescent green cast made a significant effort to get my attention and offer me his seat, and would not take no for an answer (sometimes I would decline, feeling a sort of guilt or shame in taking someone’s seat). There were several times when I was asked to give up my seat when an elderly passenger boarded the vehicle. There was a value judgment happening, where their age trumped my injury.

Throughout all these experiences, I felt more easily angered and frustrated than usual. Having to make people aware of my difference in ability was stressful. I felt more on edge and anxious when I thought people couldn’t see my injury, where a potential mis-step by them could easily knock me off balance or worsen my injury. Situations with crowds such as bars and other social gatherings were especially stressful, both for the anxiety brought on by worrying about other stepping on me, and the knowledge that I would have to leave earlier than I’d like once exhaustion from resting on my one good leg sets in.

All of these concerns and feelings present design challenges and opportunities. How might we make injuries more visible without embarrassing the patient? How might we reduce the stress and exhaustion endured by patients using crutches? How might we set the patient’s expectations around the feelings they’ll experience while injured? How might we make people more aware and sympathetic to other people around them?

It’s what I value in any company: great people, management, culture, processes and work. Many of these things can be at odds with each other, but truly great companies have matured enough to excel in nearly all of these areas.

The nature of the work was an area that I wanted to expand on as well. I strongly believe great design thinking isn’t limited to a single domain, whether that be digital, print, products, systems, environments or otherwise. Teams of cross-disciplinary designers produce the best work in the world.

I spent a good deal of time searching for an employer with these qualities, and had many, many conversations with some of Toronto’s best and brightest to try and uncover those opportunities here. While I had many excellent discussions with incredibly talented people, I quickly realized that my heart was set elsewhere, on one company in particular.

IDEO is the kind of place that I love to talk to people about when I describe what goes in to producing great design, and is what I perceive to be a great company. They invented design thinking. They understand how to ask the right question when tackling a big problem, how to observe and learn from people’s behaviours, and how to turn that into an innovative, yet simple solution. 

When I first visited their headquarters in Palo Alto, California not too long ago, I was blown away by the professionalism and passion of the people there, their management team, and the incredible design studios and prototyping labs. It became pretty clear how they manage to turn out such epic work.

That’s why I’ve decided to take on the role of Principal Designer at IDEO at their headquarters in Palo Alto. I’ll be making my move to San Francisco in just a few short weeks, and I can’t even begin to describe how truly excited I am to work with an organization that I admire and respect so much.

It’s a bittersweet decision, as I’ll be moving away from my friends and family, and the city in which I grew up. However, I’m a short flight away, and I’m really excited to start making new friends, traditions, and a new home in in 2012.

I really do cherish the great people and clients I’ve worked with over the past few years, and fully intend to cross paths with the best of you again in the near future.

And so I here I sit, preparing to pack up my apartment in Toronto just four months into a new lease and uproot to San Francisco. This isn’t a move that I’ve been planning for long, but I do believe life has a way of presenting some pretty serendipitous opportunities. It’s up to us to take hold of them.

I’d like to thank the many friends, family members and colleagues that have leant me an ear, coffee, meal or drink over the past little while, especially those who encouraged me to follow my dreams and trust my instincts. I’ll be sure to keep in touch with you all!

When I started working on the idea for Rocket Radar over a year ago, its goal was simple: to let you know when the next transit vehicle would be arriving where you’re standing. It’s not a problem isolated to Toronto, however, but any big city where getting from point A to B can seem daunting.

Today I’m happy to announce four new apps for transit riders in cities in the United States — Charlie Radar (Boston), Metro Radar (Los Angeles), Muni Radar (San Francisco Bay Area), and Unitrans Radar (Davis).

These apps follow the great success we’ve seen with Rocket Radar here in Toronto, and their launch is very timely as we approach our one year anniversary since launching v1.0 in the App Store.

Since then, the team and I have learned a great deal about what it takes to make, and more importantly sustain, a successful app. I’m stopped constantly by people who know me as the “Rocket Radar guy” and it’s been a tremendously rewarding experience seeing people use the app and hear them talk about it with others excitedly.

We recently redesigned and launched Rocket Radar 2.0 with a fresh design, and as with Rocket Radar, we’ll continue to tweak and improve these apps over time to better serve the local transit riders. Muni Radar in particular will likely see the integration of other transit systems over the next little while.

As always, these apps wouldn’t be possible without my incredibly talented team — developed by Jeremy Koch and Mohammad Kurabi. I’d also like to give a huge thanks to designer and friend Greg Cira who I worked closely with on the new visual design and to Jason Sao Bento, whose initial visual design of the app paved the way for what you see today. Lastly, I’d like to extend my gratitude to both Canada Type and Jan Fromm, for allowing us to use their beautiful Gibson and Rooney fonts you see in the apps.

The creative adult is the child who survived

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Things we say today which we owe to Shakespeare

Glorious cover for Bjork’s new album, Biophilia.

Rainbow ROM

A fantastic Kickstarter project to build a pool in New York City’s East River is nearing its goal.